The Waste Warriors

Welcome to episode 3 of the Waste Warriors podcast! In this episode, we are joined by John LaBarge from JP's Junk Removal, a successful million-dollar junk removal business based in Las Vegas. John shares his 16-year journey from starting with a $4,500 investment to building a thriving seven-figure business. We dive into his strategies for effective sales, handling setbacks like a half-million-dollar loss, and the importance of diversification in the junk removal industry. Learn about the nuances of commercial projects, including unique jobs like homeless encampment cleanups and the potential future of AI in the industry. Don't miss this insightful episode filled with valuable lessons and tips for aspiring and current junk removal entrepreneurs.

00:00 Introduction and Sponsor Message

01:35 Meet John LaBarge: Journey into Junk Removal

05:07 Overcoming Business Challenges

09:45 Navigating the Junk Removal Industry

21:27 Commercial Projects and Diversification

25:19 Homeless Encampment Cleanups

33:38 Effective Phone Strategies for Junk Removal

48:37 AI Agents and Their Potential

49:16 Concerns About AI Accuracy

50:44 Future of AI in the Industry

51:59 Understanding AGI

55:14 Using AI for Business

01:00:33 Tracking Business Metrics

01:07:02 Effective Marketing Strategies

01:08:59 Challenges and Growth Goals

01:13:55 Reflections on Business Partnerships

01:21:33 Concluding Thoughts and Future Events

Creators and Guests

Host

Lee Godbold

Creating freedom and independence for small business owners by providing them with franchise level training and support without a restrictive franchise agreement

Guest

John LaBarge

Chief Executive Officer and Owner of JP's Junk Removal & Power Washing LLC

What is The Waste Warriors?

Step into the trenches with The Waste Warriors Podcast, the ultimate resource for waste industry pros determined to build 7- and 8-figure empires. Whether you’re in dumpster rentals, junk removal, front-load services, or curbside pickup, this monthly podcast delivers battle-tested strategies to scale your business. Each episode features raw insights from industry leaders, reviews of game-changing equipment and tech, and proven tactics to crush the competition. If you're ready to dominate the waste industry, this podcast is your ultimate playbook.

003 Waste Warriors
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[00:00:00] [00:01:00]

Lee Godbold: Okay, everybody. Welcome to episode three of the Waste Warriors podcast. Really excited to have John La Barge from JPS Junk Removal on this particular show. And as every Waste Warrior's podcast episode is brought to you by JRA, the marketing agency for million dollar plus junk removal, demolition, and dumpster rental business owners, as well as specialty truck bodies.

If you guys are looking for junk removal trucks, that's junk removal trucks for sale.com, for specialty truck bodies and junk ra.com for JRA.

So we've got John LeBarge here from, again, JPS junk Removal outta Las Vegas. John and I and JRA have been working together for, what, four or five years now?

Something at like five years it's been, it's been a while. So,

Yeah. Yeah. And he's, he's gotten some trucks from us in the past. Um, he has got a million dollar plus operation in Las Vegas. Some of the stuff we're gonna talk about today is John's [00:02:00] extremely good on sales. Um, he has a very high average job sale. He's got some tactics around that.

He's just a really interesting guy all the way around. So we're gonna talk a little bit about his journey into the business. John, if you'd like to add anything else on kind of just introducing yourself. I know I touched on a few things there, but anything anybody would like to, you'd like people to know about you?

JP: well, I've been in business for 16 years. Um, I started up in Portland, Oregon, and, um, got into business, not because I love junk. I don't know anybody that has an affinity for junk. But it was around a very wealthy individual that said he, he didn't do any of his businesses because he loved them. He found businesses that worked, that had good cash flow, um, and good margins.

And then he took that money and went off and created a lifestyle for himself. So took about six months to really in depth research the, um, junk removal industry. And took $4,500 in, um, [00:03:00] in the fourth quarter of the year, which Lee can tell you is probably one if you're gonna start a junk calling business, um, springtime is better than, than fall.

So but I took that $4,500 and I bought this old 1980s manual transmission. Used to be a, a landscaping truck with a eight yard non dumping bed on it. And, um, went out and got my license bond insurance, which I encourage you, if you're looking into the industry, do it right, you know, do it right from the get go.

Um, don't do your personal pickup truck with an old beat up trailer running on your personal auto insurance, paying a guy under the table. Um, do do it right from the beginning which is what we did. And. I put, like about half my money into the truck and the other quarter into licensed bond insurance.

And I took the last quarter and I put it into a website in AdWords. [00:04:00] And, um, and off I rolled. And now, 16 years later moved my company to Las Vegas about seven years ago. Um, weather and population size affects your business. Um, and so we and regulations, so we, we just got out of a nutso state. The Oregon just was getting ridiculous to run a business in.

Um, but built it up to seven figures in, in Portland. Um, had a couple bad deals. Like any business owner, you're not gonna win 'em all. Um, and with regulations and, and a couple of those deals where I lost a half a million dollars. Um, decided to start over again, Las Vegas, and within three years was up to million plus business again.

Um, we survived the economy last year where a lot of businesses in Vegas went out of business. And we can get into that later, but we're well [00:05:00] established. We're the highest rated, locally owned company in Las Vegas right

Lee Godbold: that's a, that, that's amazing. That's absolutely amazing. So, I'm curious, 'cause I don't know, I probably have heard this story, but, um, would you be willing to talk about the deal where you lost $500,000 in Oregon and kind of what happened there and, and how you recovered?

JP: Yeah, so I had, I, I went from just doing junk hauling and I got into demolition and I started with kitchen guts, bathroom guts. You know, you start small and you work up from there. Um, I had two different deals with contractors outta Austin, Texas. Um, and Oregon is a terrible state for contractor protections.

They're kind of their contractor's board is kinda like, ah, if you get screwed, you just fold shop and start a new company and get a new license. Um, and I will never ever do a paid when paid contract ever again. And that's how I got [00:06:00] hurt. Um,

these, was that? I'm sorry.

it's they're called paid when paid. So the general contractor has a clause that they don't have to pay you until their client pays them, but there's no way to prove if their client paid them or not.

So what shady contractors will do is get you to about 75 to 80% completion on the contract and then not pay you. So you don't, and typically on big contracts, I mean, the one was a 200 do thousand dollars contract and the other one was a $300,000 contract. Um, the, the last one, which is a $300,000 contract, was taking down a concrete tilt up heavy equipment.

I mean, just a, a big job.

Lee Godbold: Yeah,

JP: And, um, they know that if they don't pay you and you can't complete the work, there's a clause in there too. Like if you can't complete the work, we don't have to [00:07:00] pay you.

So when they start playing games about paying you and now you can't complete the project, what they do is then they fire you bring in another contractor to finish up for a fraction of the cost.

And that happened to us twice within six months. And I don't care who you are, that was the first year we got into a million dollars. So take a half a million dollar hit it. It just, you just can't survive that. Sat down with my attorney. My attorney goes, well, you could win this. It's gonna take two years and cost you half a million dollars.

So I was like, well, I'm out a half a million either way he goes, yep. And it just wasn't worth chewing down Tums for the next two years. And, and so we decided to find a state that was a lot friendlier for business and that the weather was a lot nicer. And, um, I had to, I had to fire a bunch of guys at that point, which is not pleasant.

Um, and fold up shop, and, and we moved and we got going in Las Vegas and it's [00:08:00] been great here. But, um, one thing, they talk about the difference between success and failure in business. Everybody's gonna have some hiccups. Um, everybody's gonna have issues. You know, you, you show me a successful business person, I guarantee that they have failures.

Um, the difference between the ones that succeed and the ones that don't are, are you gonna quit, right? Are, are you gonna quit or are you gonna find a way forward? Um,

last, yeah. How much, how much BS can you deal with? You know last year in Las Vegas, 50% less houses sold last year than the year prior.

And most of those houses that sold were new construction. Well, if you're in the junk removal business, you know, we rely on existing home sales. And if, if I hadn't gone through the shit I had gone through earlier in my [00:09:00] business and learning how to react faster, we would've been out of business. We're lucky we survived.

I only went backwards $200,000 last year, um, which is,

it was about 20% of my business. So to have 50% less houses sell.

Lee Godbold: Yeah.

JP: And most of those houses sold new construction and to only go backwards 20%. I think it's a testament to the good foundation that I built in the business and the fact that we diversified. Um, if you're only relying on residential customers, um, you're gonna go out of business.

'cause the economy is gonna go up and down and home sales are gonna go up and down. Um, and, and if you haven't, haven't figured out how to find property management companies, commercial clients, um, we do homeless encampment removals. Um, we've, we've really diversified in terms [00:10:00] of our client base, which really saved our ass last year.

So.

Lee Godbold: Yeah. The other thing that we've seen a lot of people have on the residential side, I don't know if you have is smaller jobs. So like we're still getting almost the same volume, not quite, but almost the same volume of jobs as we were in 2024 or 2023, but the jobs are smaller. Have you seen something similar to that?

JP: What I've seen is people haggling in 16 years in business, the last two years, I have never seen people haggle on price like they have. And it's, and it's not just a lower end hou income households, it's a middle class. Like I've never had the middle class hagg on price like they have. I mean, people are just hurting right now.

Um, with that, we're kind of picky about our clients. I'm not willing to, I, I'm not, I will walk away from clients. Um, if you, if you're never saying no, you've got a problem in business.

Lee Godbold: What, what are some situations where you've walked away from a client in the past?[00:11:00]

JP: You know, we go, we go in and, and it's uh, it's I, you know, it may be a half truckload and they want it for 50 bucks, a hundred dollars. I, I, I just, you know, won't even, I, I'm like, I just tell my guys go, um, I

Lee Godbold: you ever think, what do you have? Do you factor in? Do you like give them breaks? If you're like, Hey, you know, I've already got a hundred dollars or whatever in coming out here, let's at least get something from it. Do you do that?

JP: Yeah. I mean, if it's like, like a great example. So if it's like couch in a loveseat, um, and we would charge 'em $270 for that. And if they're like, Hey, I got 250 bucks or 200 bucks, you know, we're gonna do that. Um, if it's a bunch of random stuff that's all spread out and it's around a $300 job and they want to do it for 200 bucks.

That's gonna take a lot longer than a couch and a loveseat. So, [00:12:00] you know, some of, some of that is just a judgment call of years in the business. Um, I, I know my, here's the thing, I know my numbers a lot better probably than most guys in the industry. Um, I have a spreadsheet that I track daily. I know that I need to do $300 to break even on a job.

Vegas is expensive to operate in. Our commercial insurance is outrageous here. Um, yeah, our dump fees are better than a lot of places in the country, but they're going up, um, and they have been going up consistently every six months they raise our dump fees, um,

Lee Godbold: What are you or, dump fees now?

JP: My minimum dump is $60

And one ton?

Yeah, it's the, well, yeah, it's a one ton minimum.

It's actually, the 60 bucks is about a ton and a half. Um, they, they have about a ton and a half minimum. But it depends on where you dump to. If I [00:13:00] have to go out to the landfill like on a Sunday or after hours I'm the only company that I'm aware of that has 24 hours, 365 day access to the, to the landfill, and I had to jump through some hoops to make that happen.

Lee Godbold: Yeah. How did you, how did you how did you go through that that

JP: so the landfill used to be open 24 hours a day to anybody. Well, they got a new, um director of the landfill in, and he is like, eh, nine to five unless you're a commercial hauler. And like, I went and I'm like, I'm a commercial hauler. And so I had to give him, I. You know, I had to give them COIs for my insurance.

I had to, you know, here's my waste collection license and, you know, I had to jump through all these hoops to prove that I was a commercial hauler. Um, I don't know. Some, some other companies may have done it since I did that. Um, but most guys just, you know, they're told, oh, you can't do this. I gave [00:14:00] pushback.

I mean, I was at the school house going, this is bullshit. You know, I've been coming here for years, late, late nights and weekends and, and, and, and pushed back and said, who do I need to talk to? Um, So you, Successful?

Lee Godbold: you would say you're, you're somebody that doesn't take no for an answer.

JP: No. No. And that's why we're successful. And I don't even, like, if the client's willing to pay the money, I'll figure out how to make the job happen. Like, like you, like you, you, I do stuff that no other junk calling company in Las Vegas does. I, I, because I just don't say no. Like, if you wanna pay the money, we'll figure it out.

I'll bring in who I need to bring in on the project. I'll get the equipment I need to do, you know, it's, yeah.

Lee Godbold: What's an example of a job that you guys have done that you know, that really nobody else in the area would've tackled? I,

JP: Um, so I got a call once from this, um, ATM contractor saying you, you remember the [00:15:00] old drive through ATMs? It, it was like Bank of America. They were red and they had the big overhang. They were replacing all of those with smaller units. And the guy called me up and he said, you're the 15th junk calling company.

I've called, nobody else will touch this. I need to get through rid of these drive through ATM kiosks. And I said, do you have a grade all or forklift on site? He goes, yep. I go, what are the dimensions? And he gave me the dimensions. I'm like, yeah, that'll fit on my flatbed. I said, you load it on my flat flatbed.

I'll have it out of there for you. They were all aluminum. They were mostly aluminum and some steel. And so, um, I pulled up, I charged him 600 bucks per unit, Yeah. and I went and dumped them at the scrap yard and got paid on him, I think a couple hundred bucks Yeah, yeah. end. Yeah. And, and it

Lee Godbold: Easy job. Sounds like it was easy. You easy job. He loaded it for [00:16:00] you.

JP: Yep. And even if he went, no, I, 'cause I told him, I'm like, if you don't have a great dollar forklift, no big deal, I'll go rent one, but it's gonna cost more. Right. So it's, it's the guys that go, I don't have the equipment to do that. Go find the equipment. Like in today's day and age, it's, you know, and, and then just knowing what to charge for the equipment.

Oh. I don't have any experience, you know, doing it. Well find out. You have, it is so easy today to figure out how to do a job. You know, go, go YouTube it go. Like, when I got into demolition, um, they would, we would walk through a project and they'd be like, can you do this? Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes I would go and I'd go to the forums and I'd go to the blogs and I'd go to YouTube and just research the shit out of it to figure out how to do it.

And then you do it, you know, you just gotta have this kinda like no fear attitude and, and not be [00:17:00] afraid to make mistakes.

Lee Godbold: yeah, yeah. That's a big part of it. Do you ev do, have you encountered work in the past where you're like, ah, this is a little bit beyond my. Experience my depth. Maybe I'll just sub this out. Do you ever subwork out or do you always kind of tackle it on your own?

JP: Um, I try to tackle it on my own. I may collaborate with somebody else and bring somebody in. Um, for example, I've got a mobile home demo coming up.

Lee Godbold: Mm-hmm.

JP: And I'm gonna have to I used to be a certified specialist inspector up in Oregon. I'm not anymore, but because of the year of the mobile home, I know it needs an specialist inspection.

Um, so I'm gonna have to get that done. And then if there's a specialist, I'll have to get it abated, so then I'll sub that out to an abatement contractor. So, I mean, there's just some circumstances where legally I can't do the work. And then that would be a situation where I'd bring somebody else in.

Lee Godbold: Yeah. Sometimes good to bring somebody else in too. Just 'cause it kind of transfers the liability from you to them. It [00:18:00] just case that, and on the mobile home stuff was 1978, I believe, is when HUD started. Yep. certifying everything. So anything pre 78, even though you, I don't think you're normally gonna find asbestos till you get back into the sixties normally,

JP: Yeah. But still, and, and even some border, because mobile homes were, um, a little bit different than residential houses. They, you can find stuff I I anything before 19 86, 19 85, I'm gonna test on a mobile home. Um, and this one's like 1980, just just because they, the, the rules said that they couldn't purchase asbestos products as of 78, but if the company already had the products, they could use it.

So just because 78 was the year that they could stop selling it to manufacturers doesn't mean that that was the year that manufacturers stopped using it. Um, so that's something, [00:19:00] something to be aware of. Um, and, and if you're into demolition, you know, things to look out for, popcorn ceilings, um, do you wanna look for on the air ducting like a white kind of crumbly, tape around the joints, on air ducting, um dry some drywall. Had it in it. A big one are what looked like vinyl floor tiles. Um, but they're, they're actually asbestos floor tiles, um, older. If you're really into de my recommendation is if you're getting into demolition, just go out and become an asbestos certified inspector.

It's not expensive to do. is? Is that pretty quick?

It's pretty quick. You have to just go through and take some classes. Um, I think it was like three or four days for me to take the classes and you have to get like, um, refresher classes every year to get re-certified. It's like every year, every couple of years. But even just to go through the [00:20:00] classes to be able to identify the material.

I mean, it, it saved my ass here in Oregon or in Nevada because I had somebody call up one day and go, Hey, I got some old siding that I need to get rid of. Um. And I was like, oh, does it have a wavy edge on the bottom of it? I, I, it was asbestos siding and most houses here in Nevada are stucco siding. So any, any, and I knew that if they had traditional, like older style siding, there was a good chance it was asbestos.

So I had the guy describe it to me, then I had him send me a picture of it and I was like, sorry, I can't touch this. It's asbestos. So you know that that's a situation where I told the homeowner, you can bring it in yourself. Here's the website you need to go to, um, to get the forms to fill out, to bring it into the landfill yourself.

Or you're gonna have to call an abatement company to come [00:21:00] remove it. Um, and, and just don't get caught with that stuff. 'cause the fines are hefty.

Lee Godbold: Yeah. Okay. Well that's good. I like that. Alright, again, we got John LeBarge from JPS Junk removal, jps junk removal.com. Correct. Is the website there john jps junk removal.com? Yeah. So you guys get over there and check out the stuff John's got going on. He's been in the business 16 years is what he's talking about.

So really, really neat guy. Really knowledgeable guy. He can learn some stuff from his website. I wanna talk a little bit more about some of the commercial projects that you do. Because that was one of the things you identified earlier is, hey, diversification's huge to be able to withstand these ups and downs of the economy, especially what we've had over the last few years and what I'm sure is coming over the next few years.

How do you go about getting those jobs? What type of jobs do you do? Just kind of explain to people a little bit more about that. I.

JP: Um, so we do anything from like office clean outs to warehouse clean outs. Um, and again, that's like the ability to say yes, right? [00:22:00] Hey, I've got a hundred steel racks here that I need to be removed. Can you do it? Yes. Um, a lot of times it'll be like, how much and a good thing to buy yourself time is go, I need to come out and do an onsite inspect inspection.

I need to get some numbers, which buys you time to go do the research. Well, you know, do I need to call up some other junk? If, if you're like totally lost, call some other junk calling companies not in your area. Pick another city where they're not a competitor. Um, but, you know, call some other junk calling companies, maybe some bigger ones.

Um, do some research. But it, it's, I I go to places where you're gonna meet. Commercial contractors where you're gonna meet commercial property managers. We have a organization here in Las Vegas that's anybody and everybody related to the commercial building industry, from property managers to to, um, to banks that do [00:23:00] the big commercial loans to developers, um, stuff like that.

And I, and I go to those meetings frequently just to introduce and get myself around them. Um, you know, having a good AdWords campaign, which I, before I got into junk calling, I used to do sales for AdWords. So I know AdWords better than a lot of people. And Lee can tell you that Lee and I have had extensive talk on our AdWords on my AdWords, probably more in depth than a lot of your clients.

Um, and I have never found somebody better in the industry to run our AdWords campaign than JRA you. You're just not gonna find it. Um. I, I know that you guys, when you got into AdWords, went out and hired the top people in the industry to consult you guys and train you guys. Um, I know that Taylor who is phenomenal is always up on all the certifications for AdWords.

You guys have a [00:24:00] relationship with the top people over at Google and the AdWords department, um, and you guys run it fairly. I tell people that if a company wants to charge you a percentage of what you're spending on your AdWords campaign instead of a flat fee to run it run, you guys have an incentive to make sure that my campaign is running peak performance.

Not am I spending the most money, but is it converting the best for me? And AdWords brings me 90% of my business and I get a lot of commercial clients from our AdWords campaign because we target them. Um, being in this industry for 16 years. Um, Taylor will tell you I've got just a real extensive campaign and I have a real extensive negative keyword campaign too.

I have over 8,000 negative keywords. 'cause it's just as, as important to screen out who you don't want as to bring in who you do want. And then our reputation. Um, [00:25:00] I have guys that I've worked with that large commercial outfits that have gone from one, um large commercial construction company to another.

And because we did such a great job for them, they're telling their new boss, Hey, you, jps is the go-to company for this homeless encampment. Removals is like a big one for us. Um, I know that probably in like Chicago or Minneapolis, like I, I know that Mitch, um, doesn't deal in, in, in up in Minnesota doesn't deal with homeless like we do here in Las Vegas.

So it's knowing your market too. Um, and,

but we have a those homeless encampment. Cleanouts though. 'cause that's, you actually do that for the city, is that right? Um, well, I do it for private right now. I'm trying to get the county contract. Um, the county contract in and of itself is a seven figure contract. But we, we do a lot of, um, commercial, so there's a lot of vacant property down [00:26:00] here, um, in terms of like bare empty desert lots. Um, and there's even vacant buildings.

And so, and the, the, the problem is getting worse for private property owners because of recent changes in law, um, in the state and the county. So the state and the county are allowed now to just, they used to have to give notice to kick the homeless off the public property. They don't anymore. And it is now an arrestable offense to be camping on public property.

So there we're seeing an increase on private property. Um, what typically happens is the property owner will get a citation from the county from one of two different departments and saying, you have, you know, five days to clean this up or else we're gonna start finding you. And the, the fines, I mean the, [00:27:00] the, the fines will start out at like 250, $500 a day, but they quickly ramp up to a thousand dollars a day and they get pretty hefty, pretty quick.

Um, and so these companies don't have a lot of choice. And they're like, okay, well if we hire a junk calling company to go out there, most junk calling companies go out there, the homeless hassle 'em, and they're like, f this, we're outta here. Um, so then they hire a security company. They go out and trespass the homeless.

The homeless leave, but they don't take their crap. And so then the security company leaves the junk calling company comes in and the homeless are back there. So a lot of these companies Yep. Are frustrated. Um, we know, so under Nevada law, as a representative of the property owner, I can trespass the homeless.

So we go out and we trespass the homeless. Um, my, if they get aggressive with my guys, they either call me 'cause I have prior law enforcement, prior military, um, or if I'm not available, they call [00:28:00] the cops and I just say, Hey, you know, get back in the truck, lock the door, call the cops, cops come out and we will, they can say, yeah, here's our contract.

We're authorized by the property owner to trespass 'em. And then the cops remove 'em and we trash their stuff out. Um, and it's, it's good money because of the, you know, you're dealing with bottles and, and I get very descriptive with my clients. They're like, why pay you? You're more expensive. Well, because we're dealing with bottles of piss buckets of shit, needles, crack pipe.

You know, I get descriptive and my guys, they're, we train 'em, you're gonna use a grabber to grab needles and any drug paraphernalia, you'd never touch it with your bare hands. Um, and so all my guys are trained up on safety in that stuff. Um, but that's why we charge. I mean, I get, for 17 cubic yard truck I get $1,222 for a normal residential load for [00:29:00] homeless encampment.

My minimum fee is $1,500 for up to that 17 cubic yards. It could be one shopping cart. I don't care the liability that's involved in it. Um, and the fact that we're dealing with the homeless and biohazards, it is 1500 bucks. And then anything over that 17 cubic yards, they charge a hundred dollars per cubic yard.

So, um,

so that's good. bucks a load. If it's another, another full load.

Yeah. It's 1700 bucks a load for the second full load. Um, and, and then we. I make more in homeless contracts than a lot of junk hauling companies make in revenue in their whole year.

Lee Godbold: Yeah. Yeah. I would say some areas that have a huge homeless population, that's something definitely to pursue. So your San Francisco, even Asheville, North Carolina has a, a much fee. population, but there's a lot of homeless.

JP: Right. You know, and, and, and realizing that, and knowing that, um, we have companies under contract where we, we go, most of our contracts are, we go out once a week check for illegal [00:30:00] dumping and homeless encampments. Um, and you know that, so we do 1500 initial base for a single removal, or 1500 a month to come out four times a month.

And then we have overages built in there and stuff. Um, but I have one property right now where they're paying me an extra, um, $125. So I have, if I have to go out more than four times a month, it's 125 f just to show up. And so they're having me show up once a day for the next 60 days. So I bill them for all those extra days.

Um, and so that, and, and, you know, it's, it's one of those, we're all over the valley here. Um, it's written in our contracts and we show up on random days and times. So it's it, you guys are in the area, this property that we're responsible for checking on, swing by and check on it, right? And, um, so we, we work it into our schedule and works best and it's at random days and times, so the [00:31:00] homeless don't know we're gonna be there.

And our clients are very, very happy with the service. Why? 'cause we solved a problem for them. We get the county out their back, we're making sure their properties are taken care of. Um, and it's just a win-win situation. So, and that, that saved us, I mean, I do six figures a year on homeless encampment stuff, and, um, that has absolutely been a godsend to us in business.

So,

Lee Godbold: Very good man. I, I loved that little segment there. We haven't talked, I knew obviously you did a lot of homeless encampment 'cause we've done landing pages for you. We have built out the Google ads campaign for homeless encampment. But it, I had no idea that you actually had a deal where you were doing contracts or people paying you monthly to actually go and proactively check on the property.

So that's that's amazing. That's also what an issue homeless must be in that area. If you clean a place up and it's, you know, they, people come back. It's like if you get rid of a, get rid of a squirrel or [00:32:00] something and you don't They're, 10 miles away, it's gonna be back or whatever. It's the they're, they're, it's like, I, I describe it like cockroaches.

Yep.

JP: And it's amazing how much stuff they can show up with in 24 hours. It really is. Um, the largest encampment I did was two years ago, 700 cubic yards, day project, $70,000 job.

Lee Godbold: Wow.

JP: two other companies came out, looked at it and said, fuck this, and walked away,

Lee Godbold: YeaH.

JP: you know, and I was out there with excavators.

I mean, they had like dug into the dirt, like, like four feet down, took, um, four by fours, concreted 'em in the ground, made balls out of pallets and all. and, you know, most guys would look at that and just get overwhelmed. And I went, let's do it.

Lee Godbold: Yeah, find a way. Find a way. You're not a mile or two down the road, just giving people a bunch of like stuff and saying, Hey, you know, here, there's a place you can live right up the road or, or anything like [00:33:00] that. Are you.

JP: Nope, I don't even need to do that. So it, it. It just comes naturally, you know, the effectiveness of the AdWords campaign that you guys have done for us with the, with the Homeless encampment website, um, pages. Um, and then, then when people call me up, I get people calling me up all the time. Hey, I got this vacant lot next to me, or this business next to me and there's homeless there, and what do I do?

I point 'em in the right direction. I go, go, go, go to the county, call code enforcement, notify them. They'll notify the owner. Um, you know, but that, that just increases my chances of getting, getting that job.

Lee Godbold: Yeah.

JP: yep.

Lee Godbold: Very good. Alright, so homeless encampment. You do a lot of commercial work, um, on the residential side, you're very good on the phone at getting people to actually schedule. Would you mind just kind of walking through your methodology and how you kind of approach those phone calls and things that you say that helps you book at a higher rate than what a lot of people do?

JP: [00:34:00] Yeah. Um, no offense to you all that are in the industry, but most of you are assholes and most of you are assholes on the phone. And that doesn't get you business. You cannot be rude. You can't, I, I have booked jobs just off my introduction when I'm picking up the phone, right? So you, you, and, and if you are, if you are too busy to answer the phone and that's affecting your moon on the phone phone, then, then you need to, um, used to be, JRA call center.

It's what? Three by

three solutions.

Lee Godbold: All booked up. Yeah.

JP: All booked up, Yeah. If, if, if, if, if you are too busy to answer the phones, you need to get on all booked up, period. End of story. Um, they, they only answer calls for junk calling. They are, they do a phenomenal job at it. Um, and I still use them. Um, but you, your attitude, I could be having the worst day personally, [00:35:00] and I can pick up that phone and nobody's gonna know it.

I mean, they, they call me. Um, and, and you know, a lot of times the people are calling you, they're, they're under stress and pressure because they sold their house and they're realtors telling they gotta get the stuff out because they got the closing date coming up, or, or their mom or their dad passed away, or they're moving a loved one into a nursing home.

They are under a lot of stress and having a bad day. And it's your job to make their day better. And you're not gonna do that with a shitty attitude on the phone. I, I, and I, I answer the phone like this, it doesn't matter who calls, doesn't matter if it's a prior client, I still answer the phone like this.

If it's a prior client, I use their name because the sweetest sound to anybody is their own name. So if Lee was calling me, I'd be like, Hey, it's an incredible day at jps junk removal. Hey, it's great to hear from you again. What can I do to make your day better? Right? And I always answer [00:36:00] with enthusiasm. I put a smile on my face because believe it or not, the smile will come through in the phone, right?

And so even like, and just practice it, like look in the mirror, practice it, practice an incredible greeting. And I literally had people go, you are more expensive than the other guy. But just the way that you're talking to me, I'm booking with you.

Lee Godbold: Love it. So what happens if somebody calls you up? You do your grading, and the first thing they say is, Hey, what do you charge? How do you handle that?

JP: So I go, well, that all depends on what you have, right? I go, you're, you're, I like painting pictures in people's heads, right? Um, so if you call me up and you're like, Hey John, what do you charge? I got a bunch of junk. I'll be like, Lee, you're, that's like calling a gas station up and going, how much to fill my car up?

Well, that's going to depend on the size of your [00:37:00] tank, how much gasoline is in your tank. So how much gasoline are you putting in your car? We charge, like everybody else charges in the industry, it's based on volume or the amount, like the amount of space that that takes up on the truck. So without knowing how much space it's gonna take up.

I, I, I really can't give you a price. The best thing to do is to send a truck out with a couple of guys, show 'em everything that's gotta go. They'll let you know how much it's gonna be. If you're good with the price, we could do the job right then and there or schedule for another day. If not, you're under no obligation.

You can send the truck on its way. Um, if they really are insisting like, Hey, I need to know a price, um, knowing, so I use a pickup example, so a standard full size. I'll go, Hey Lee, can you picture a standard full size pickup, just like a F-150 or ramp 1,506 foot bed on it? Sure. Okay. So a level bed. And that means like if I dumped Sander water in it and it was level with the top of the [00:38:00] bed, that's approximately two cubic yards.

It's actually slightly more, but you don't want to get into overexplaining things to people because then they get confused. So you wanna simplify stuff as much as possible. And then I'll go, Lee, you said you had a bunch of random stuff, so do you think you would fill half that bed? A whole bed, a heaping bed piled to the top of the cab.

Two or three beds full. 10 beds full. What's your best guess? And then you got to think in your head, I always need to be asking clarifying questions. So they'll come back and they'll be like, well, I think it's two beds worth, is that two level beds worth? Or is that to keeping beds or piled to the top of the cap?

Because that's a huge difference in volume. So you need to clarify that as much as possible. If they come back and they go, oh, I I think that's two level beds worth, I'm gonna give 'em a range, a three price point range.

Well, we, based on your ba, based on your description, [00:39:00] you looking at $295 plus or minus.

It could be 197, could be 388. We won't know till we get there, but it's gonna be that range plus or minus. You could be lower than 1 9, 1 97. You could be higher than 3 88. I never let them pigeonhole me into a specific number. And then the other thing is you need to be using A-C-R-M-I recommend workies.

Um, I'm bringing on a business partner and a new project. We're expanding into a cleaning company and he uses Jobber and we sat down and compared Jobber to Workies. There is no CRM that does the in depth stuff like Workies does. I know that JRA endorses workies and works with them, but one of the beautiful thing about Workies is it saves all communications with clients.

So I could take that phone call 'cause I, the client could be like, they could get there and it could be a $450 job and the client will go, he told [00:40:00] me $295. Right? Like, I know you've been there with junk doctors. I know you've had it. And so then what I'll do is my guys will call me and I'll go, okay, put me on the phone with the client.

And I'll go, Hey Lee, you know what I, you may, I may have said that, would you mind if I listened to the call recording just to verify that I told you that and get right back with you and what are you gonna say? Well, yeah, so then I'm gonna hang up knowing I know what I said, but I'm still gonna pull up that call recording quick, listen to it.

Then in Workies you have the ability to email or text that recording to the client. And so I'll send it to 'em and I'll call back and I'll go, Hey Lee, you know what? I listened to the call recording. This is what I told you. You don't, don't believe me. You're more than welcome to listen to the call recording.

And 99% of the time that client's backpedaling and you've locked them in as a customer because now they feel stupid,

Lee Godbold: or guilty or, yeah. Mm-hmm.

JP: guilty, right? [00:41:00] So, um, but I'm never mean to 'em. I'm never rude. I never like f you. That's not what I said. I always go, well, you know, there's a good chance you're right. Let me verify that you're right.

And then when I can verify they're not, and then, and then I'm still, um, nice to them about it. Right. I'm not an asshole about it. That's the biggest thing I think that's costing a lot of people in this industry business is their attitudes.

Lee Godbold: yeah. No, I, I would agree. And people also get to the point where they look at the phone as almost an inconvenience, and I have been there to an extent. It's like, man, I'm in the middle of something. This phone keeps ringing. But you gotta answer it, you gotta put a smile on your face. You gotta get over that because the.

You wouldn't be able to do anything if that phone wasn't, wasn't ringing and the business wasn't coming through. Now, eventually, I gotta the point where all that's hired off. I haven't booked a junker middle job in a really long time, unless it's for a friend or maybe a prior customer that had my direct number and they texted me.

But until you get

JP: I,

Lee Godbold: point, you better, you better treat that phone like it's your best friend.

JP: and I [00:42:00] still, still as an owner, I mean, I, I, I, my kind of attitude is, is you need to be connected with who your customer base is. So even if you've got a bigger company, I think you should at least be trying to answer the phone sometimes to keep that connection with your customer base. Um, I don't know if you can see it probably not.

Here, this is on my phone in, in, in a webpage. I have the Workies call flow open always, and I try to answer the phone as much as I can. But as being a business owner, like I've got this going on right now, I have in it, in my call flow, I have Tuesday shut off. It goes right to the call center. So when I have to be on site with the client, when I have a meeting, when I have something going on, the beautiful thing about Workies is I can send it right over to all booked up and they can answer all my calls while I'm tied up.

And as soon as I'm done can direct 'em back to me. So with today and [00:43:00] today's technology as a business owner, there's no, no excuse. I I can answer. The beautiful thing about Workies too is I can answer calls on the go in my truck going places just like I'm sitting in the office. Um, and, and until your get to the size of a company where you can justify a full-time person to answer the phone, you need to be doing that.

Um, that's the other thing with a lot of companies in our industry, a lot of people don't know that you should have one employee for every $250,000 in revenue, thereabouts. Yes. If you have more than one employee for every $250,000 in revenue, it's gonna hurt you as a company.

Lee Godbold: Yeah, I think that's a little area dependent too. Um, you know, some, some areas you're, you're, you know, you'll, you'll need need more than that or less than that one or the other, but that's a general kind of roundabout number for sure.
[00:44:00] [00:45:00]

JP: yeah,

Lee Godbold: any with the workies agent, the AI agent?

They've got, they can actually supposed to be able

JP: I, I, I haven't yet. Um, I, I, I was just at a business conference where a very wealthy guy says that I need to, to switch over to an AI agent. So I'll probably be talking to Workies and see. I think technology's great, and I've been in the industry where all this technology's coming up. I, I talked last year at a event about where technology is going. Um. In the future with our, our in, in our industry. And I think it's gonna shock a lot of [00:46:00] people. Um, I think it's a good thing. My question is, is it ready yet?

Right? So I need to talk to Work Eve some more. Hopping on brand new technology as soon as it comes out, um, I think is a mistake. I think once it's proven and you can integrate it, that's the time. Um, workies about a year ago, told me that this was coming. They, they actually talked to me about being a beta tester.

Um, and I was like, Hmm, let's just wait and see. Because now if you're terrible on the phones, if I was like terrible on the phones, I might have been like, yeah, let's give it a try. But when I know that I booked 30% to 40% of the calls that are coming in, all booked up, doesn't book that high of a percentage for me.

So my question is like, how high of a percentage would, would the AI do? So it's something eventually I'll be [00:47:00] switching over to when I'm comfortable with that. The technology has reached the point, and, and at some point it's gonna be better than me, no question about it, because the AI technology will be able to pick up on things that no human would, right?

They, they could take the best sales phone sales guys in the world and listen to all their calls and pick up on all the, the, um, inflections and tones and all the little stuff, and it'll be able to react and, and do better than any person could ever do on the phone. How fast that gets here, we'll see.

Lee Godbold: As Lauren and develops for sure. Things are progressing so fast on that end. We haven't tested out the Workees booking agent yet. We are developing. And we should have it pretty quick. 'cause what we're actually doing is pretty, pretty simple. We're developing a missed call or after hours agent that will simply just take down some somebody's information and text it off to the business owner.

And then the next thing is going to actually be able to have a booking agent. And I mean, the, the cool thing about it [00:48:00] is, is the technology's out there now. It can sit there and can listen to your phone calls. It can, it can mimic your voice. It'll sit there and it'll just go through hundreds or thousands of calls that you've had and it'll learn.

So, I mean, really, you can build out your own agent. So Workies has their, they call it somebody, you know, it's its own personality. If you wanted to, you could adapt it to your area. So North Carolina, you hear out how I, how I, how I talk, hear how you talk. It's two different, you know, deals. Now, actually the Raleigh area, I, I, I talk kind of country for the Raleigh area really, but really much outside of Raleigh and Charlotte.

This is what you get. So. By actually developing AI agents that were sitting there and they, if they listened to me on the phone or they listened to Zach, who's our, our dispatcher, and takes a lot of our phone calls, it would be area specific, it'd learn about the area. It would have the same type of accent, and it's gonna book at a higher rate than somebody all booked ups.

JP: Oh yeah.

Lee Godbold: you know, they use people all over the, all the country and

JP: Yeah.

Lee Godbold: the world. So they've got a

JP: Well, [00:49:00]

Lee Godbold: which will book less.

JP: and the other thing that AI will be able to do, like there's a lot of, um, Spanish speaking here in the, in the southwest part of the country, I don't speak Spanish. And that AI agent will be, it doesn't matter what language they speak, they will be able to take care of the customer in that language.

Um, the reason I've been kinda like, hesitant on it is because my, my question is, I. When I'm trying to question a customer to determine the size of the load that they have, I'm just wondering because that whole example of like the pickup truck, and I know in my head that like, would they say a dresser, well, dressers come in all different sizes, right?

And so I'm wondering if the AI agent is like, I'm worried about them not being able to give an estimate to the customer or it being really far off, right? If it was [00:50:00] just a matter of them calling in and booking it, I would've no problems at all. Too many customers want, want a quote, which we don't give quotes.

Um, we give estimates and it's being able to have that conversation to give them a price range where they're satisfied. That's where my concern comes into AI is, I don't know if. No, like if it was a GI, I wouldn't, I, we, that wouldn't be an issue at all. But I don't think the AI is quite to the point where they can, you know, you could, somebody calls up, I have a full house clean out.

My question is, is then how is AI gonna handle that? Right? So, um, so that's, that's my leery on it. Now, with that, when I gave this talk last year, here's where the industry's going within the next 10 years, and it might be as soon as five years,

Lee Godbold: Mm-hmm.

JP: and you can believe me, or you cannot believe me, but we will have trucks that will [00:51:00] drive themselves.

Lee Godbold: No doubt.

JP: We'll have software that books the appointments.

Lee Godbold: Yep.

JP: will have robots that get off and do the loading. They're gonna scan the items, they're gonna give them a rough estimate based on their scan. Then they're gonna load it in the truck. The truck is gonna scan the amount that was loaded in the truck. It's gonna pop up a price on the side of the truck.

The customer is gonna take their phone, tap it to the side of the truck, and it's going to transfer the money.

Lee Godbold: Yeah, I, I agree with everything you said other than maybe the timeline for the last bit where people, robots actually go and load everything up.

JP: Nope. We have the robots that have the ability to do it already. The only thing that's lacking is a GI.

Lee Godbold: Yeah. and

JP: We have AI

Lee Godbold: Yeah.

JP: they're on the cusp of a GI. And if you look at the Laffer curve, the technology, we will be there sooner than people think.

Lee Godbold: Talk about a GI, what [00:52:00] A lot of people listen to this aren't gonna know what that stands for. So what's a GI?

JP: Um, so e everybody looks at AI as artificial intelligence. It's not really artificial intelligence, they're algorithms. Um, a GI is. Conscious thought, like the ability for it to think for itself, it's human plus intelligence. Um, and to kind of give you an idea, um, right now, they determine what it would take a human to learn in 10 years.

AI can learn in 12 hours.

Lee Godbold: Yep.

JP: A GI is the ability for a human to learn in 10 years. A GI can learn in an hour.

Lee Godbold: Mm-hmm.

JP: Okay? But it's not just the amount. Think, think of like intelligence and wisdom. You could have really smart people.

Lee Godbold: Yep.

JP: That do [00:53:00] that have terrible wisdom, and you're like, I don't understand why he did that.

Right. Or you could have very wise people with not a lot of intelligence. A GI is a high wisdom, high intelligence. It's the ability to, that, that concern I have of, so with ai, they program in a dresser is worth this, nightstand is worth this. A mattress is worth this. It's just a bunch of information from it to draw on a GI is, oh, I understand you told me a dresser, but let's get into that.

You know, is it, is it a chest to drawers or is it a dresser? How many drawers are in the dresser? Is it a four drawer dresser or is it an eight drawer dresser? It's the ability to comprehend that there's more in depth, right? I, I don't know if people have messed around with rock or or chat, um, GPT, but you have to give it very specific.

Instructions, and then you typically have to tweak it, [00:54:00] tweak it, tweak it. A GI, you'll be able to give a broader and it will come back and ask you to clarify things, right? Chat, GPP doesn't ask you to clarify things. A GI will be like, well, we, can you clarify this? So they have all the techno, the, the hardware to do what I just said.

They don't have the software to run it. They need it to go in. And when somebody goes, oh, that, that stuff, like I'm looking at stuff in the corner over here right now and I have a lightsaber and I have a fan in a box. And when you go, I need to get rid of that stuff in the corner, like AI would go, okay, lightsaber box, that's both going a GI would go, well, can you clarify for me?

Is the lightsaber and the fan in the box going or is it just one of 'em? Right. And, and like, and, and you know your guy, like, my guys do this all the time. When they just point in a general direction and say that stuff's going. They know to clarify it right. So that they're not, so that's the difference between AI and a GI.

AI [00:55:00] would just say, okay, this is all going, they pointed it in that general direction. A GI is gonna wanna clarify things. Does that make, and that just kinda like really dumbing it down. But hopefully that helps people understand. So

Lee Godbold: Yeah, yeah, definitely. You know, I use chat GPT all the time. So I mean, on my phone I use it as, I use it as a, like a business advisor. And I mean, I've like submitted my personality test into it. So it's like all about me and I've just given as much information as I can about me and about my kids and my wife, I mean wife and, I mean, somebody in China probably has a hell of a file on me at this point, but, um, they've got, that's why I wouldn't use the deep AI or whatever the other one is from China, but.

Yeah. Yeah. But we, but man, I, from a business standpoint, if I have business ideas or if I'm trying to get something done, I go to it all the time and say, Hey, this is what I'm kind of thinking. You're my business advisor. Ask me any questions that you need to know to help me with this one at a time. And it might ask me 8, 10, 12 questions.

And it comes [00:56:00] back with oftentimes what I was thinking sometimes with an alternative viewpoint. But the thing I like about it is now you've got somebody that definitely has an unbiased opinion. I

say somebody Yeah, Like it, it helps. Whereas if you, even if you go to somebody else and you talk to another person, it's a person you like, sort of, kind of doubt them some and,

JP: or they may have their personal opinion in there versus Right, yeah. Versus just straight information. But, but the, the industry's going that way. And, and if you aren't using AI right now, I use AI right now. I use it to write responses to reviews. Um, and it's, it's incredible for that. Um I've used it for legal stuff and, and yeah, if you're not on, on GR or chat GPT, you're, you're, you're getting behind already.

Lee Godbold: Yeah. And it could be wrong though. I mean, like you didn't understand, like Chad, GBT is terrible at math. Like it's horrible at math. I don't know how much you've done with that, but like it can definitely be [00:57:00] wrong, but it is a, it's an awesome tool and I agree. I mean, I think that's exactly where we're headed.

I don't know if the timeline of having robots that go and actually pick this stuff up and load the truck physically, I don't know if we're within 10 years on having that technology available enough at a low enough price,

JP: a bet.

Lee Godbold: could be,

JP: a bet on it? I'll, I'll, I'll bet

you.

Lee Godbold: know. I don't know if I'm that confident to lay a bet, man.

Like I, it could happen. Like I, I, I, I, I'm not argue, I really

think it could happen.

JP: I'll, I'll put a thousand dollars bet down right now, Lee, within the next 10 years.

Lee Godbold: I just don't, I like it. I like, I'm like 50 50. So that's the whole deal. Like I don't know if I'd bet a thousand, I'd just assume be a thousand. It'll happen. Matter of fact, I'd rather bet a thousand it would happen than it wouldn't happen. 'cause I don't wanna be like the naysayer that's wrong or whatever.

So,

JP: So, so I was around when Commodore 64 and, and, and Atari came out with home PCs.

Lee Godbold: yeah.

JP: And I had it, it came with, um, 30 2K and expanded 32. So I had [00:58:00] 60 4K of memory, and I had friends say, you'll never use that in your entire lifetime. your mouse driver runs off more memory than

that.

Lee Godbold: bought a terabyte iPhone right here, so.

JP: Yeah. I mean, think back to Trek when they had like the, you know, and now it's here.

Um, it, it, you know, we got Elon Musk's landing rockets, like catching rockets in the air. Um, like I said, all the hardware's there, it's just the software. And you look at, I mean, like what AI wasn't even a blip on our radar when we started doing business together.

Lee Godbold: Yeah. No, no, no. I mean, people working on it, you kind of heard about it, but it didn't seem like, it seemed like some far off

JP: Yeah. Far off. You look at where and, and not, and, and, and now they're into quantum quantum computing like. It's just, that's, that's where it's going. Um, and people just need to keep, you know, keep an eye on it. Maybe it'll start with, [00:59:00] with one robot on a truck and one guy, but I would rather pay 20. What's Elon saying?

He is 20 or $30,000 for a robot that's gonna be cheaper than an employee.

Lee Godbold: Yeah, I'd pay, I'd pay a hundred, I'd pay a hundred grand. And you don't have to pay benefits. They get, I mean, they might get injured or hurt and you just

have, you take them to a job and fix them. No workers' comp insurance, they can work 24 7. So, I mean, I, I love people and it sounds, I sound like a, or something when I'm talking about that.

'cause I really do love people. But people come with a lot of issues too that aren't gonna have on robots.

JP: right. So, but yeah. But I could put a robot on a truck with a guy

Lee Godbold: Yep. And that's how it'll probably start. Yeah,

JP: Yep.

Lee Godbold: that's how it would start.

JP: But

Lee Godbold: auto insurance rates so much lower. We get

JP: oh yeah. Right now, if they, if I had the ability with the insurance rates here in Las Vegas, which are outrageous, if I

Lee Godbold: Okay.

JP: to put self-driving trucks on the road right now until the guys aren't touching the steering wheel, I would[01:00:00]

Lee Godbold: Yeah. People were like, ah, well you have more faith in technology than me. I was like, I don't know if I have more faith in technology or if I've just seen how bad people are at driving. Um, I think a robot can do a better job. Are they gonna make mistakes from time to time? Yeah, sure. But humans make a heck of a lot more

mistakes.

JP: statistically they make

Lee Godbold: Not close.

JP: than a human driver.

Lee Godbold: even close. Yeah. It's not even close. So,

JP: So,

Lee Godbold: and I

JP: um,

Lee Godbold: you know, car

JP: yep.

Lee Godbold: that kind of stuff, but I recognize technological advancements when it's staring at me at the face.

JP: Yep. So now we talked all about that. You had touched earlier about average job size. Um, I don't know if you wanted to get kind of into our numbers,

um,

Lee Godbold: do it.

JP: a little bit. So what's a, the industry average job size, what's around four $50 a load?

Lee Godbold: Yeah. I mean, depends on the area, but yeah, 4, 4 50, somewhere in there. Maybe

JP: Yeah. Four. Yeah, 4, 4 50, 500. So I'm looking right now, I have a spreadsheet. Um, and if you aren't tracking your numbers, you have to be [01:01:00] tracking your numbers. Numbers are everything. So for this quarter, we've done 427 jobs so far. Last year we did 337 jobs, um, and you need to be tracking year over year. My average job size for this quarter is $670.

My, yep, six 70. Um, my average, or right now, currently, my, um, revenue per employee hour,

Lee Godbold: Yep.

JP: which is something you should be tracking, is $151.

Lee Godbold: That's good. Yeah, one 50. I actually just did a video on this, on our YouTube channel. If you can get to one 50, you're among the best in the entire industry. Most people are like a hundred to 1 25.

JP: I, I tell my guys if they're a hundred dollars, you're gonna be on a warning list that you may be let go. Like, like, like 125 [01:02:00] is like the goal, like between 125 and 150 an hour is what they should be shooting for.

Lee Godbold: So in the YouTube description on this video, I'll put a link to, um, the SPPH sales per Payroll hour, video that we've recently put out. And for those of you that listen, not listening on YouTube, then you can go to the JRA YouTube channel and check out the video on SPPH

JP: yep.

Lee Godbold: 1 51. Right? How do you do that?

How do you get your guys to get $150 sales per payroll hour? Because again, that's like, I don't know, 3%, 2% of the junk removal. Actually less than that, I'm sure it's less than 1% of the junk removal companies in the country. Get 1 51 SPPH. How do you do

JP: Well, one, most junker removal companies aren't charging enough. Like I, I, um, I don't, and that's why most junk hauling companies are outta business within the first year. I, I can't tell you how many companies I've seen come and go over the years, you know, and, and, and, [01:03:00] and um, when I used to be on the truck, I'd pull in to the transfer station and I'd be like, oh, have you seen, you know, x, Y, Z?

Oh dude, they went out of business two months ago, right? Um, they, they, or they never, you know, they never grow. There's a lot of 250, $300,000 a year junk hauling companies out there, and they don't understand why can I never grow? Well, it's 'cause you don't have the money to grow. You don't have the money to put into uniforms, you don't have the money to put into marketing branding.

You just don't have the money. You don't have the money to put into more trucks. They just don't have the money to grow. Um, never ever, ever have I ever said I wanna be the cheapest guy out there.

Lee Godbold: Yeah, I always, you know, Dan, Dan Kennedy famous model, I dunno if you're familiar with Dan Kennedy's famous Market, and he said, the company that can afford to spend the most money to acquire a a customer wins

JP: yeah.

Lee Godbold: And that's all in a matter of pricing.

JP: Well, and, and, um, [01:04:00] by being on, and don't get me wrong, I'm competitive with like one 800, got international company. Um, the difference between me and one 800 got international company is I refuse to drop my prices. Like, they like, like they'll go on and they'll, they'll do a job for whatever. So they'll come in and they'll.

Keep dropping until that customer says yes where I walk away and he, and here's the, the difference in why my a GS is higher. My top guy used to work for that other company. And when you drop your prices just to get the job and you do it cheap, that customer calls you again and expects cheap. That customer tells his neighbor he'll do it cheap and their friend and everybody else.

And now you not just doing one job where you're losing money, you got a hundred other clients where you're losing money because you just wanted to say yes and get the money in [01:05:00] the door. Um, I like and I get it, I went through, last year was tough, but I still walked from those jobs. Because bringing in revenue to lose money is still losing money,

Lee Godbold: yeah.

JP: just putting you in a worse situation.

Lee Godbold: Yep.

JP: So our cancellation rate may be a little bit higher than other people. We typically have about a 30% cancellation rate,

Lee Godbold: That's including on the phone though too, so like

That's

JP: including phone, onsite, everything. We typically have about a 30% cancellation rate.

Lee Godbold: What about once you get on site, what do you typically see in there?

JP: About 20%.

Lee Godbold: Okay, yeah, that is a little bit higher,

JP: Yeah. But

Lee Godbold: Six 70. Job average, though, you know, that's,

JP: yeah. But as Right, and, and now we're not wasted. That gives my, okay, we get on site, we see this person isn't gonna be reasonable.

My guys get on and go off and onto the next job. I'm saving payroll hours. Right. So it's, I'm losing less money by saying No. Then by saying [01:06:00] yes. And people, people don't get that. Like if you're in a situation where you're gonna lose money, you might as well lose less money than more money. Because if I do the job now I'm losing money on payroll, now I'm losing money on dump fees.

Now I'm losing time to do and get other jobs done. Um, the other thing is, my guys know to upsell there on site. We're picking up a couch. Hey, is there anything else here that's gotta go?

Lee Godbold: Yep.

JP: Yeah, you know, I get rid of this tv. Okay, is there anything else that's gotta go? Right? And, and so they need to be upselling.

You need to be able to and willing to say no to those non-profitable jobs. Um, and, and you gotta do a good job closing on the phone and closing with the customers. Um, my guys know that if they're onsite and it's um, onsite too expensive, they either have to call my manager or me, right? Um, so that we can either talk that customer up or make that determination.

Is this a losing job? Um, yep. And [01:07:00] then, you know, those are the big ones. And then effective marketing campaign, like are, are your, is your, um, AdWords is your SEO? Good. Um, the other thing we do is I have, um, post-it notes that we put on the doors. Um, I don't do door hangers because people just throw door hangers out.

We get these little post-it notes and, um, they're cheaper than door hangers and people look at it 'cause it's different. And my guys have to put those on 20 doors around the job that they're doing. Um, yep. Or if there's, you know, if there's time, um, we'll go to a parking lot at a Home Goods or a Lowe's or a Home Depot and they'll sticker all of 'em and they're like, oh, what if they call, oh, oops, I'm so sorry.

I didn't know my guys were doing that. Please forgive us. It's always better to ask for forgiveness and permission. Um, depending on where you are, yard signs can be good. Um. Here in Las Vegas, they just steal 'em. It's, it's [01:08:00] ridiculous. Um, so we just stopped doing it because we'd put a sign up later that day, it'd be gone.

Um, but yeah, you just have to be smart about how you're doing business. And then are you talking numbers with your guys? Right. My guys know, I'm always talking numbers with them.

you know what?

Lee Godbold: your guys at all? Is there any sort of profit sharing or or commission

JP: No, but I, I don't restrict tips. Las Vegas is a big tipping town. Um, I, I'll give you, I'll give you an example. Yesterday we had a two full load jobs, so it was like, um, 220 500 just to round it and make it easy. $2,500 job, three guys, they got a $500 tip off that job. Three of 'em took an hour,

Lee Godbold: Wow. That's great.

JP: you

Lee Godbold: Very

JP: guys average 20 to $25 an hour when they include their tips here in Las

Lee Godbold: Love it.

JP: Yep.

Lee Godbold: So what's your major initiative right now? You've got [01:09:00] going on, you got something, you're working towards a goal, you've set something new that you're doing.

JP: So, um, my goal is to go from 1 million to 10 million is my short term goal. Um, I encourage people to get some mentorship, find guys that have done what they want to do and go out and get it. Um, I mentored with Sam quite a bit when he was pretty involved with you guys. Um, now I've, I'm working with a group of gentlemen that have a blueprint to take your company from 1 million to 10 million, then 10 million to 125 million, um, which is, you know, the ultimate goal is to get, get up to that 125 million.

Um, we are getting, so I do, I do junk removal, I do dumpsters, um, I do pressure washing. I. Um, I found a business partner that knows the commercial residential cleaning industry. Um, he's in North [01:10:00] Dakota. He's only 60,000 population. He's capped, right? Um, and so he wanted to move to Las Vegas. Um, and we just sat down and talked and we're gonna open that.

We're gonna start do commercial residential cleaning crime scene cleanup. It's just a natural extension of what I already do. Um, we will have that business to a million plus within the first year. Um,

Lee Godbold: Well, I wanna make sure we get you back on here. Once you get that set up and going, I'd love to talk to somebody about the crime scene cleanup because Yeah, yeah. 'cause that's, um, make for an interesting show to kind of go through some of that. It's something that a lot of people don't think of.

There's a lot of money in it. It's a lot of kind of naty stuff you gotta deal with and a lot of emotion. A lot of you know, obviously, you know, suicide cleanup and murder cleanup and just somebody dying is a, is a bad deal.

JP: Well, and it's knowing your,

Lee Godbold: that do it.

JP: and it's knowing your [01:11:00] market a lot. People don't realize, a lot of people come to Las Vegas just to commit suicide. Like, like it's, they come, they come, they gamble then, and then they go up to their room and they off themselves. So, um, it, it's a, and, and Las Vegas has got, got got this culture where they just don't report it like, on the news.

Right. So, um, but that's, again, knowing your market, like what niche, it's, it's finding a need and filling a need. I.

Like, maybe what I'm doing doesn't work for you as a business, but find that need in your area. And, and then the other thing too, um, I, I get, I get calls all the time and, and if, if people want coaching, I coach, I charge $350 an hour.

Come prepared with your questions. 'cause I'm, I'm, I'm gonna ask you questions about your business and I'm gonna give you raw, honest advice. And a couple of the guys that I coach at didn't like the advice. They called me up and they're like, how do I [01:12:00] build a million, um, dollar business in a town of 25,000 people?

You don't, they're like, what? I'm like, you can't. Do you want a million dollar business? Yeah, I do. You need to move. And they, you know, they don't want to hear that. Um, num numbers are everything. There's a reason I'm in Las Vegas. It's a 2 million plus population. Um, we're gonna be going to Phoenix, Arizona in the next couple of years.

Why? They have a 5 million, do 5 million plus population in, in, in the Phoenix area. And so,

Lee Godbold: cheap. They're, they, they're really gonna negotiate with you. In Phoenix though, Phoenix is one of those areas they negotiate even more than Vegas.

JP: yeah, well, you know, but that's going for the right clientele too. Right. Um, and, and, and it's knowing your customer base and targeting your customer base. So, um, it's gotten better in the last couple of months, but I'll, I'll tell you

Lee Godbold: I agree.

JP: brutal the last couple of years. Just

Lee Godbold: Yeah. Yeah.

JP: Um, yep. Any, Any,

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