I did different things during college. I had a finance blog in college, and one of the blog posts about credit cards blew up, and I made $2,000 in referrals. I worked at Active International and Benjamin Moore. I also played lacrosse in college. During practice, my cousin and I saw a truck driving past each day and felt we needed to take advantage of money-making opportunities. We knew we wanted to have our own business one day, so we researched, and dumpster rentals made the most sense. I had a marketing degree, and my cousin had a business management degree, so we decided to team up.

I put all the money I had saved up via stocks and crypto, which was around $60,000, toward buying an existing dumpster rental company. We got twenty dumpsters, an old truck, one driver, and a list of customers. We didn’t get any financials; it was just a list of the dumps they had done in the past two years. That’s how we were able to estimate the revenue and profit. I built a website, social media pages, and Google My Business Profile, and started doing outbound sales to get more clients.

The first six months of owning the business were hell. I got thrown into this thing without any guidance from the old owner. Honestly, I wouldn’t really want guidance from him anyway, though. Figuring out the flow of money was hard. We’re owed $10,000 from the job, and you need to go collect that because we owe the dump $3,000 and need to pay our monthly credit card bills. It’s a constant game of balancing accounts payable and receivable.

On our first day in business, we created one Excel sheet for drop-offs and one for pick-ups. As the sheet gets updated, we send bills to customers via Freshbooks. It’s simple, but it works for us. The first six months running the business were all about getting my systems in place and figuring out the logistics. I also needed to put more capital into the industry.

After putting all my money into the business, I had $2,000 left in my name. I went to dinner with a friend in New York City, and he felt terrible for me because I put everything into the business and didn’t have much money. The dinner was $150, which was a lot. I remember thinking that one day, this won’t be an issue; I won’t even have to think about spending money on things like this. I’m a big fan of “eating shit,” as Gary Vee says. If you work hard for long enough, you’ll make money. We were able to do that. But I went many months without making any money.

We were growing so fast in the first six months. I didn’t have enough dumpsters to service our jobs, and service quality declined. I needed to get another truck and more dumpsters as soon as possible. My initial investment was $60,000, and I was up to $110,000 three months later. I used debt for the second investment of $50,000. I was anti-debit until I realized I could make more money using the debt. If the loan is at 3% and we’re making 35% on a dumpster, I’m making money off that spread. I had to wrap my head around this and change my mindset to be successful.

We charge a $300 drop-off fee, and the price per dumpster is determined by weight. We charge $124 per ton. After we dump the trash, we collect the money. Where I am in New York, everyone has to pay the same price to dump at the county’s dump, so we all charge the same price. Whoever can offer the best service and do the best marketing wins.

Today's most significant opportunity for in-home services is buying an existing business from an older owner. It’s much easier to succeed than building something from the ground up, and it’ll probably cost you less money, too. When we bought our business, we already had a list of clients, which was helpful. The existing clients would help us get new clients through word-of-mouth, which is the best form of marketing. The business we bought was solid but had no technology or digital presence, which we could easily add. We quickly took the company from $300k to $750k annually and are looking to hit $1MM soon.

My biggest challenge is CapEx. What I pay monthly in insurance, truck payments, employees, workers comp, gas, and dump fees is ridiculous. It’s around $400k to $500k per year. The monthly costs for the basics are $15k per month. It’s $15k just to turn the key on in the trucks.

The second biggest challenge is finding dependable labor that is reasonably priced. I could pay someone $40 an hour, and they would be reliable, but my margins would significantly decrease compared to the $25 per hour I’m paying today. My drivers aren’t tech-savvy, but they show up and do the work. It’s a retirement job for them. With my generation of 20 - 30-year-olds, finding someone who wants to wake up every day and drive a truck is tough.

My third biggest struggle with the business is accounts receivable. Specific customers take a long time to pay. They’re giving me work, which I appreciate, but they’ll take two weeks to pay, which is really annoying. I’ve had to fire customers before. I’ll make 30-day payments with specific big customers since they’re paying me $20,000 per month, but other times, I’m chasing small customers to pay my monthly credit card bill. The quicker your accounts receive, the more healthy your cash flow is.

I get this question daily. It all depends on your market. This business has a high entry barrier and is over-saturated in many places. Guys have their F-350 with a trailer and are buying three dumpsters, and it’s a big race to the bottom. It would help to have at least $100k to enter this business and go all-in. YouTube guys will tell you it’s a side hustle, but that’s not true. There is a lot that goes into these businesses.

I would never start this business in Texas, Florida, California, or anywhere in the South. These markets are oversaturated and monolopies, where the government contracts with one company, such as Waste Management, IWS, or Waste Connections. In other states like New Jersey, you need to get a license from the Department of Environmental Protection, and that can take up to two years and $10,000 with an attorney. If you can enter a market like that, it’s great because there is not much competition, but it’s hard to break in.

We started the agency mostly because I had extra time since my dumpster business is pretty automated now. I learned a lot about SEO and marketing by running the blog. I met my partner Andy through a stock group chat years ago, and since he was learning how to code, we decided to partner with an agency. Many home services businesses are not doing SEO well, so I knew we could help them. We’ve served at least one client in every state and helped them get their website and Google My Business profile ranking on Google to drive more leads.

Our main focus is getting our client’s Google My Business Profile ranked—this is even more important than getting the website ranked. The key is creating a website on Webflow or WordPress and then building pages about your main services and areas you’re targeting. Make sure to embed your Google My Business Profile on the bottom of the service area pages. We have our secret sauce for every single service area page. Make sure to complete everything on the Google My Business profile and connect the profile to your website. Include a picture on the Google My Business profile as if it were an Instagram or Facebook page. Potential clients will check the profile and will be heavily influenced by it before they ever call you.

I like the digital business model. I’m definitely looking to build more digital businesses. The dumpster rental company is pretty automated. I would consider it semi-passive even though there is no such thing as passive income—I still deal with a lot of headaches. I’d love a diversified portfolio of dumpster rental businesses, digital businesses, and real estate within the next ten years.