The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - How Two Teenage Brothers Built a $900k Junk Removal Business with No Money. Ep #054

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

I sat down with Kirk McKinney, a young and determined entrepreneur who found a business opportunity completely by accident. Kirk shares the story of how a casual bike ride led him to a local dump, where he stumbled upon valuable items that others had discarded. What began as a simple hobby quickly turned into a thriving junk removal business, pulling in over $900K in revenue. In our conversation, Kirk talks about how he balanced school while building his business, the challenges he faced trying to grow with limited resources, and the important lessons he picked up along the way. Timestamps below. Enjoy!---Watch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-ytAsk me a question on or off the show here: http://tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: http://tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: http://tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: http://tkopod.co/p-xFree weekly business ideas newsletter: http://tkopod.co/p-nlShare this podcast: http://tkopod.co/p-allScrape small business data: http://tkopod.co/p-os---02:43 Discovering the Junkyard Treasure03:29 Family Influence and Early Lessons07:20 First Sales and Realizing Potential08:54 Transition to Junk Removal11:23 Balancing School and Business12:18 Marketing Strategies and Early Growth18:13 Deciding to Focus Solely on Junk Removal20:21 Rebranding to Junk Teens21:02 Investing in a Dump Truck23:01 Marketing Challenges and Strategies26:02 Hiring and Managing Employees29:54 Financial Management and Profit Margins30:44 Scaling and Future Plans35:50 Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs40:20 Conclusion and Contact Information

So on the 460 grand you did year two, how much of that was profit and how diligent were you in record keeping in? Welcome to the Kerner office. So I was on Instagram last week once again and I saw a video of these teenagers doing junk removal. And they have a $900,000 junk removal business in their third year, super impressive. They started at two brothers when they were 15 and 17. And I thought, I got to talk to these guys because of a 15 and 17 year old can start a $900,000 a year junk removal business and pay cash for a $75,000 truck in year two, or year one of the two, these guys are impressive. That means anyone can do it. And I want anyone to do it. I want all of you guys to start six, seven, eight figure businesses. So if a teenager can do it, you can do it, especially because they didn't borrow any money from their parents. They weren't raised on a silver spoon or whatever. They did this themselves.

They're just hard workers. So I want you to hear their story and hopefully you're inspired by it. Share with your friends. Love you. Bye. Why don't we start at the beginning? Like, what first gave you the idea to start this business? It actually all kind of happened on accident when I was exploring one day I was on a bike ride and I discovered the dump with my friend. And then we went to the dump and rode our bikes around to explore. And I saw this pair of speakers there that someone threw away and they were really nice, probably like $50 speakers. And I just, I couldn't believe that they were in the trash. So I asked the guy if I could take them and he said yes. So I brought them home and then basically after that point, I kept going back to the dump and finding cool items and valuable

things. And it was more speakers in the beginning. And this is why it happened on accident, because eventually I collected so many speakers from the dump that my entire bedroom, actually where I'm sitting right now, used to be a pile of speakers. And my mom said that I had to throw it all the way. So at this time, I was working at a grocery store too, making $12 dollars an hour and just finding speakers for fun. I didn't think it was like money I was making or anything. It was just a hobby. And when my mom said I had to throw them all away, I just, I couldn't do that because I went through so much effort to get those speakers here. So I ended up selling them on Facebook Marketplace. And that was my first time ever making money for myself,

doing something that I loved. And then from there, eventually I got into the junk removal industry. and that's how I ended up starting the junk removal business with my brother was through that opportunity. It eventually led to me buying a pickup truck and then discovering junk removal and starting that business with my younger brother. Okay. All right. Zillion questions.

I love it already. So first of all, why were there so many dang speakers at this random junkyard? There was the electronics section where people would drop off their old electronics. And that was my favorite section. So I would just camp out there all day. until people would bring good stuff. And if I wasn't the one taking it, other people who were going to the dump

would take the stuff. So it's kind of a common thing. It's called picking. Like, it's a picker. You ever seen the show American pickers? Those are picking through the junk. Yeah, I love that show. That's basically what I did all day at the junkyard.

And how old were you when you first started all this? When you first found speakers. 15 or 16 years old when I was finding speakers. And I was riding them home on my book. bicycle. This was before I had a license or anything. Okay. And does entrepreneurship run in your family, or did it just come naturally to you? Yeah. So my parents also own a business. They own a tree service. It's a home service business. They do tree trimming. More on like not the heavy tree removal, but like more the artistic side, kind of like making your property look nice trimming. They do

everything, but my dad specializes in tree surgery is what he calls it. So I was able to learn a little bit about the home service business through seeing their company. And I also used to work for my dad too. So I did learn a little bit about business through them, but they didn't give us money to start. They didn't build the business for us. It was all us. They never really gave us much besides the knowledge and their advice. Support. Yeah, and their support. Yeah, but yeah. I don't know if I told you this, but I own a tree trimming company as well here in Dallas. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. So how long has your dad owned that business? About 30 years. I think this is the 30th year. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So you just grew up around small business, home services specific. Yeah. Yeah. And there's also a lot of things I noticed with my parents' business that I just like don't know why they're doing things a certain way that could be done way better. But then there's other things. things that I'm like, wow, no one else is doing this. Like, this is really smart. So I just took what

works and then what needed to be improved. And obviously, it's a different industry too. So there's a lot of different things we had to learn. But that's what we did as well. Now, would your family, like, actively talk about the business around the dinner table or was just something in the background? My brother and I have always been obsessed about the business. So I feel like naturally it ends up being what we talk about at the dinner table a lot. My parents like to talk. about it, but I feel like my brother and I are the ones that kind of engage that conversation more than my parents do. But yeah, we do talk about business a lot as a family too. And we all enjoy it too. Yeah. Would you like asking questions like day, how much did you get for that big job?

Well, what'd you make on it? Like, what's your profit? Would you clear? Do you ask financial questions like that? My parents wouldn't always answer like super deep financial questions. like if I asked how much a job was and then ask them to break down the profits and everything, they would be vague with me. I'm not sure why. Probably just because they wanted me to learn through my own experience rather than like just seeing everything from them. And it's also a different industry. I think my parents are also more private a lot where like I'm more open on social media because they like, I see the impact that I have on the younger generation. So it kind of of encourages me to be more open because it allows people to see. And I feel like I can relate

to more people that way where my parents don't need to do that. So naturally, they're more private. I would go in and see how much the jobs are for that they're doing. And that also gave me an idea of like, okay, this is what they're doing in one day. Could I eventually see myself doing that with junk removal? And I could. So that's another reason why I wanted to do junk removal because I knew, I can make similar numbers or even better in the future, too. Yeah, you're probably looking at it like, all right, I know this chipper costs my dad 20 grand, but with the chipper, he can make two grand a day. So if I buy this box truck and that's 20, you're kind of comparing, even though they're

totally different home service industries, you still need to buy equipment and do something that makes you sweat, right? So in a way, they're not very different. Yeah. And also observing how he manages people, manages the business, dealing with problems. Like all of that was helpful to observe at a young age too. Yeah. Okay.

So you pick up these speakers on your bike and then you go back like all the time. You want to be the first one to get the best speakers. But what's funny to me is you don't immediately start selling them for a profit. You're just like hoarding them like Scrooge McDuck. And it's just awesome. You're just stacking them up. And then you first sell them on Facebook marketplace. Was that, did you sell them all at once or individually or how did that go?

So my mom wanted me to get rid of everything. quickly. So I listed a few items just to see if people would even buy things like this. And literally the next day, I listed a Bose radio that I found and sold it for $50 the next day. And that was like such a shocker for me because like the amount of time that went into selling that radio for 50 bucks like all altogether probably wasn't even an hour. And that's way more than I was making at the grocery store. So then after that, it really encouraged me to want to try to sell everything. Then I just listed everything.

Not everything sold because I didn't really know what was valuable or not. I just saw speakers and I would save them. So my room did look like a junk pile. Yeah, that's how I started selling things. You probably learned over time. Yeah, I learned over time like what to sell, what was valuable. And eventually I stopped only selling speakers and started realizing like, I quit my job at the grocery store to do the,

this full time. And then I realized I could probably make more money selling other things too. So I started selling bicycles and lifting weights and all sorts of stuff that I could find. Okay. So how did you go from that phase to buying a truck and getting into junk removal? Yeah. So in the beginning, the truck was like partially influenced by the junk removal idea, but also I would, I told myself and my brother, I was like, all right, If I had this truck, I'd be able to sell more things in a higher volume. It would be easier for me to sell things too. But if I ever get a junk removal job, I can do that on the side too.

So I'm going to buy this truck. And I took a lot of the money that I saved up and went in on it with my brother. We spent $4,000 on our F-150, which was our first truck. And the way I got introduced to junk removal was the guys who worked at the dump, They actually did it on the side as like a side hustle. And they saw how hard I was working. I was literally at the dump from the minute that they opened to when they closed. And I would help the guys there too.

Not expecting anything. I would help those guys clean up just literally to be in the environment. And then they started saving stuff for me too. So they liked how hard I was working. And they just wanted to help me because I was helping them. And they actually brought me into work with them. And they were paying me like $50 an hour to work doing trouble with them, which is kind of ridiculous. I just think they didn't really know how to run the business.

But I saw like, all right, if they can pay me this and still profit, what if I did this on my own? And I asked the guys, and they were totally fine with me trying it. So they gave me some tips. And I saw how the business worked through them. And then I just started going out and trying it on my own. So that's how I got introduced to it. Okay, so how long was the junkyard open all day? Like, what were the operating hours? It was three days a week because this is a small local junkyard. Like, only one town is allowed to go there.

It's not like a big dump. It's like a small transfer station. But there's still a lot of cool stuff you can find there. And it was open from Wednesday, from like 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday from seven to four and then Sunday I think also from like 12 to four I think that was the hours if I remember right how are you able to do that with school on Wednesdays the second I get out of school I'm just riding my bike to the dump and sometimes on Wednesdays with our school it was a short Wednesday every other week so I'd get out early be able to go so it was good timing but the dump was on the weekends, but managing junk removal with school was a whole different ballgame. How old are you today? First, when you started this? Right now, I'm 20 years old, but when I first did the junk removal business, I was 17 and my brother was 15. And your partners in it together,

right? Yeah. We're 50-50. Okay, 50-50 partners. So you buy the truck for four grand at F-150, the most American truck you can find. And how do you get your first customer? What does that look like? Yeah, I think our first customer was actually a word of mouth referral from the guys at the dump. But then after that, we started getting customers from Nextdoor. You started posting? Yeah, we posted on Next Door, Facebook, created business cards, went door knocking. Eventually, we did yard signs too.

But yeah, all of that is how we really started marketing. What proved to be the most effective after the first six months? Yeah, I would say being persistent with our customers and really leveraging every customer to go out there and market for us, like following up with them after the job, asking if they were able to tell anyone about us or if they wrote us a review, a recommendation, whatever it was. then also second would be next door, especially when you're first starting. And like, I think the community on Nextdoor really is just like wanting to support a beginning stage business especially. So that was huge too. It's funny how true that is because a lot of people are too prideful or they have too much ego to want to go beg for business on Facebook groups or next door. But they want to help. Yeah. Especially if you're a new business owner. Exactly.

Okay, so you think or you're finding that customer referrals are even more fruitful to you than anything else including next door. But you have to be like aggressive and persistent with it. Yeah, and Facebook was definitely huge for us too, establishing our presence in our local community through Facebook. But that was also a big part of leveraging every customer to spread the word on Facebook. Because that's where all the Facebook moms and kind of our target customers are hanging out. after you buy the truck what was that first six months like were you crazy were you all over the place were you taking on any job like what broke those first six months yeah those first six months that's pretty accurate description already we were doing whatever we could to make money with the pickup

truck junk removal being one of the things that we knew how to do the most because we learned from the guys and we also loved doing it the most but we did little tree work jobs on the side trimming trees bushes, landscaping, we did moving jobs. We honestly did whatever we could with our pickup truck to make money doing side hustles, gutter cleaning, all that. I never knew about window cleaning or any of that back then. I feel like it became more well known after COVID as like a side hustle, but I probably would have done that too back then. And the reason why we stuck with junk removal is because for us, we had the most connections. We enjoyed it the most. And it was definitely the hardest. But with scaling, I felt like it could be the most lucrative too.

So even though it would have been the hardest and most competitive one, I just wanted to stick with that. But the first six months were definitely a lot of hustle and learning from mistakes. We had to be really confident that we, like, if a customer is like, oh, have you done this before? Even though we haven't, it's like, I mean, yeah, like this is definitely something we can handle. Like where we have all this experience, we can definitely handle it. And some, a lot of the times like when we're doing jobs, even if we've never done them before, we have the confidence as if we know exactly how to do it. And then we also deliver on that confidence too. Even if we made a mistake, we would do everything we can to fix it and just provide the best service we can.

And we are confident that we could do that. So at the end of the day, we didn't have any dissatisfied customers because even when we made a mistake, we would own up to it and fix it and learn from it, you know? Yeah. Yeah, the customer's like, so have you done this before? And you're like, we're confident we can get it done. Have you done this before? We're confident. We'll do a great job for you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're confident. It's like you show that. Like, oh, yeah, we should it's done. Like I could get three guys in here. We'll get this done in a day, that type of thing. Yeah. I've totally been there. You fake it until you make it. And then when you screw it up, you just have to fix it and own it, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So how are you man? How are you

managing school, both you and your younger brother. Was this mostly after school in the summer, weekends, just planning around school? Yes. So we would definitely do the work after school every day and then we'd have a full truck. And sometimes we would dump the truck in the morning before school because some of the dumps were open pretty early. Sometimes I would have a free block in the morning, which is a class off. And then I'd go to school late and I'd go and dump the truck during that time. sometimes we have to dump the truck after school and yeah we would just do whatever we could to manage it to do everything out of school hours like we would still get homework done whenever we had time but our main priority was business at all times and we would find we would make time for it a lot of

people always say like how do you do this during school but like let's think about it you get out of school at 2 p.m. every day. And then you have two weekend days. Think of how many hours from two. That's a full-time job. Yeah, exactly. Outside of school. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. That's seven hours every day after school. We could work on our business. Then you got two full weekend days. That's a lot of hours that you could dedicate towards building a business. So you just have to make sacrifices. No sports, less hanging out with friends. But that's just what we did. We made sacrifices and used our time well.

That's amazing. I love it. Yeah, a lot of people are like, oh, you can't, oh, they just immediately write off having a business while in school because that's just not what you do. But it's like, no, let's look at this logically and actually break down the hours. You can absolutely do that. Like, and anyway, all right. So at what point did you go from taking any job you could to saying we are only doing junk removal? How long did that take?

That was probably the end of. our first year when we it was around the winter time so we bought our pickup truck in February of 2021 and then around like February of 22 a year later we looked at how much we made and it was around $120,000 with just our pickup truck and we realized like okay out of all of this what did we like the most what was the most profitable what makes the most sense for us to stick with and that was junk removal and we realized we can keep doing this side hustle type of thing and make another 100k and keep doing this. But if we ever want to get to something big, like we have to be the best at one thing and just stick to that and become experts at one thing.

And that's what we did. And that's why we stuck with junk removal. So did you have any employees that first year? Or was it just you and your brother? Yeah, it was just my brother and I. And our friends would come and help us occasionally, maybe a couple times all throughout the whole year, we had some friends help. But it was mostly us like every day working together. So 120 grand. And your costs are gas. I mean, the truck is a little maintenance. It was like a legit business.

So we had an LLC. We had insurance on the truck. And then dump fees, gas. There's got to be more like tools. Obviously, we started buying tools like maintenance on the truck. And then yeah, we didn't spend any money on marketing. So none of that was really it. Because it was our own time, no payroll.

Were you taking any money out of the business or just like paying your bills and just kind of growing the business? Yeah, just saving, to be honest. We would save. We weren't spending a lot of money. And that's how we were able to buy a dump truck in our second year of business. So then the winter kind of dies down and you're in year two now and you're like, we're going all in on junk removal. Were you doing stuff during the wintertime or were you just planning? Yeah.

The winter time is really slow for the junk removal industry and a lot of home service businesses. And for us, we spend that time, we spent that doing kind of a rebrand with the company. It used to be K&J removal. And then we realized we wanted to stick to junk removal. So that's when junk teens was born. And then we took the steps during the slow season to establish the junk removal business. We redid the website with the junk team. brand. We bought a dump truck and then all around established ourselves more for the junk removal

industry. So how much did the dump truck cost and how were you able to afford that just with your savings? If I remember, it was around like 75K for the dump truck and we spent every penny that we had. She paid cash for it? Yeah. Holy cow. 15 and 17 year old. Geez. Yeah. It started to pay itself off pretty quickly because with the pickup truck, we might have made like $500 to $700 every time we fill up that truck. But with a dump truck, we can make one to $2,000 every time we filled that truck up. So then we were able to make a lot more money in the day because it was less trips to the dump. And it really quickly started to pay itself off. Did you buy the dump truck new or used? No. We actually used ones a lot.

The problem is too, we bought the dump truck like right after COVID and COVID like shocked the manufacturing process of the trucks. So they were really hard to find. So everyone was buying the used ones and we actually had to order it from a dealership and it got to us like six or eight months later. It was like six months later or something like that. So in the meantime, we bought that dump truck and kept making money with the pickup truck. And eventually, upgraded our pickup truck for like it was like $10,000 upgrade that we did got a new one in F250 with high mileage but it was really nice we still have it today what about a trailer did you ever use that a trailer would have been really good but unfortunately for us we just didn't have space at our

house to have a trailer so yeah and also we're more in a suburban neighborhood so trailers weren't as ideal. Gotcha. Okay. So you buy this $75,000 down truck. Are you out of pocket while you're waiting for it? Or did you have to just put a deposit down? I believe it was a deposit. Okay. Yeah. So how did your marketing efforts go once you made that pivot to junk removal? Did you find it harder to find only junk removal clients to fill all your time? Or was it even easier? It was really hard actually. And it was a slow transition into it. We knew like this is our priority. But if we need to make money right now to pay off this truck, we'll do moving jobs. We'll do landscape removals, like brush piles, all that. And it just slowly started to niche down to junk removal over time.

But we knew that that was our main goal. All right. So what happens when the dumpster arrives? Do you have jobs to be able to use it? Does it sit empty? Like, is it stressing you out? Are you able to just put it right to work? Yeah, we just used it to work.

with what we were doing before. And it made everything so much more efficient that we had more time at the end of the day to build the business, go market. And we would market by networking with realtors and just going out and establishing ourselves however we could, whether it was building our website,

going on Facebook, whatever we could do, yard signs too. We started doing yard signs around that time too. Tell me about your tech stack, like what were you using for website and your CRM, Did you have automations? Like, was it pen and pad? What did that look like?

Even to this day, we still use Apple notes for our scheduling. Like, we don't even have a CRM yet. We're literally in the next month, I think we're probably going to get a CRM or start to use one. We haven't done any of that because at the end of the day, the way we looked at it is like, you get junk, you put it in the truck and you get paid. Everyone else is focusing on all these little details and getting distracted from the main. thing that's making you money. So we just kept our focus narrow and focused on making money. And then over time, three years later is now when we're starting to focus on the automations,

now that we figured out how to make money, where a lot of other people figure out on all the other stuff first, spend all their money on automations before they even figure out how to make money. It's an advanced form of procrastination. They feel productive. Like, all right, now we got the website. Let's go follow LLC. And really, they're just like afraid to start deep down. but they can't admit that to themselves, right? Yeah, it could be that for some people. Okay, so what did the second year look like if year one was 120 grand? Yeah, the second year with the pickup truck and dump truck duo, we did 460K in sales.

That's 2022? Yes. That's also when we started hiring employees. I mean, I still drove the dump truck most of the time for 2022. It was mostly me driving, but we slowly started to let. our employees help as we realized that we could trust them to drive to. Did you have to get a CDL to drive that? No, it's like a U-Haul.

Like, you don't need a regular driver's license. Okay. Was hiring a challenge? And did you have to hire people older than you? What broke in the hiring process? I mean, nothing really was broken. But like, with hiring, it was just our friends. And it was also junk teens.

So it made more sense to hire people, our age, too. we just realized eventually that like good people make everyone's life easier and don't like it might be cheaper and it might be easier to find someone who is a B player or a C player but putting in the effort to find the A players the best of the best was worth all of the time and effort and it took us a few months to learn that okay did you ever have a kind of a sticky situation where you had to hire or fire a friend or awkward experiences with hiring and firing friends? Not until recently.

We had one guy that actually stole from us recently. It was our first time ever really having to fire someone and it was really hard for us. We've had people with our companies for the last three years helping us. And people don't really want to leave once they come and work with us. So never really dealt with firing. It's more like we'll have someone in the beginning and if we don't call them back. But we had someone that kind of like was managing our phones and they were doing junk removal on the side and started messaging our customers, like taking our customers and doing jobs on the side. So that's technically stealing.

We paid money to get those customers and that money now isn't being used for to build our business. And like that we just had to fire someone because of that. It's funny how like you could back to the advanced forms of procrastination. You could sit there and watch YouTube videos and read books and listen to podcasts about like how to hire, how to fire, how to manage friends, how to do all this. But like the end of the day, you're, you just have to go through it. You have to screw up. Oh, yeah. To learn it yourself. The best way to learn is through your own mistakes. Like you can learn through other people and it can reconfirm your own thoughts. But like just doing what other people say, you're never, you'll never have your own sense of direction. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you're working for yourself. and other people's advice is really good, but like your own experience is definitely the biggest thing that will help you become a better leader and create the best lessons for yourself. Yeah, and a lot of times you don't even know if the advice you're hearing is based on real experience or just they're just regurgitating someone else's theory.

Like I've had so many people say, oh, don't hire friends and family. Don't do it because awkward and yet. And it gets in relationships are more. And it's like, okay, but like tactically. How do you do that? Like, I go hire some rando off Craigslist that could be a class A felon. Like, no, tactically, you have to hire your friends and family because there's built in trust from day one.

And that is worth more than anything. And yeah, it's going to get a little hairy, but it's going to get hairy when you hire Randos as well. But you just have to. Hiring family definitely changes the dynamic of your family. Like, if you have a certain dynamic of your family that doesn't involve business and you start working with family, it will completely. completely changed that. But it was already kind of the dynamic of our family to begin with. So it just

made sense for us. Everyone's situation is different too. So it's not really fair to say, don't do this because every person's situation is different. And also it's not good to take advice from just considering only someone else's situation too. Yeah. I've noticed when I hire family, I have a rule where like when we're like together as a family like Thanksgiving, we don't talk business at all. Like we're there together as family members. Yeah. But on the job site, like it's another employee.

You just have to keep it as separate as possible. Exactly. So on the 460 grand you did year two, how much of that was profit and how diligent were you in record keeping? Yeah. On top of that for sure, we have an accountant, a bookkeeper. And my mom has also been guiding us through all of the financial stuff from the beginning because that's what she does for her business.

too. But we've always been on top of that since the beginning. And it's like a huge part of staying organized and scaling too. And was that your only question? No, profit. What was your profit that year? Oh, profit. I'd have to go back and think it might have been 50%, but we were also reinvested like all of that too for the part. It's interesting. Even in high margin industries, if you're in a high growth phase, you might not take anything out of the business because you're just reinvesting at all. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so then what did year three look like, 2023? Yeah, we just, we continued upgrading all around.

We started really spending money on marketing, upgrading our team, our resources. We rented a warehouse, bought another truck, just continued upgrading and building. And then we pretty much doubled from last year or from the 2022. Wow. And then how's this year looking? This year is a big experimental year for us. So we didn't focus as much on building the business. Actually, right now we are really focused on it,

but there's been a big time period where I was very focused on the social media. And that's also probably how you found us too. So the reason why I did that is really to establish ourselves in the junk removal industry as an authority, but also just showing people how we're serious and really getting people to know who we are before they know us as people. So it's big for networking and future unexpected opportunities. So while we're young, it was worth taking that time period and that risk. And I began building a team around the content so I can continue to focus on the business while the content is still running. And that's how we've been able to grow our YouTube channel too.

Yeah, I'm curious like where you're at today, like how many trucks you have, what your plans are for taking over the world. Yeah. So I think in the future franchising is definitely a possibility here, but we want to scale to two or three locations and then decide if franchising is what we want to do. And we're currently focusing on systemizing this location so that it could run without us. Obviously, if we got to the point where can run without us, the profits will be really low. so then we would be focusing our time at that point on establishing our second location, which will probably be in about a couple of years when I'm out of college is when I see us

opening the second location. So at least for the next two years, we're going to be looking at every little inch of our business and how we want to scale, what direction we want to go. And in the long term, I could see franchising as an option and I think it would make sense. I just don't know for sure. And then currently where we're at is we have three trucks, a warehouse and a crew of full-time guys, some of them that have decided not to go to college to work with us full-time. And just like so many people want to work for us, it's crazy.

And that's a big thing that the social media has done is create like an endless labor supply. Because that's one of the things I've done is show how fun it is what we do and build our culture, build the company culture too like just posting on social media isn't going to get you anywhere you have to really put in your effort it's not just creating a video it's like posting so where we're at now is also having that tool of our social media and we've done a lot of upgrades on our warehouse and we're currently working on our in-house recycling facility where we like will process loads in-house so we can donate most of it and recycle. So we're saving on dump fees, but we're also helping the world.

And that's what we're currently focusing on. That's amazing. How big is your team today? We have about two to four full timers and then about 20 part timers on call. Okay. And with three trucks, have you had to change your outreach efforts any? Like if you had to get more intentional about keeping all three trucks on the road at all times? or is it still, you know, aggressively chasing referrals, yard signs next door, etc?

We're doing Google ads now and paid Facebook ads, and that's been consistent for us. We're doing similar numbers this year than what we were last summer, but that totally makes sense because we've been putting a lot of effort into areas that don't directly return, like the social media is all in direct value because we can, you know? and I would say like it's not really easy to ever think it's going to be consistent because one week we could make 20K another week we can make 40K and it's all over the place. But you are finding some good like more consistent luck with paid Google and Facebook ads? Yeah, definitely. I'd say that probably is about 40% of our busyness comes from the paid ads, but 60%

or more will just come from what we put into our service and the experience we give to our customers and then them telling everyone about us. People really can tell when you put in your effort and when you care. Because for us, it's not only about the money. We really like helping people and people feel that. So it's not easy. It's not actually very often to find a service or a company that you work with that really goes all in above and beyond on what they're giving you.

What would you say to a 15 or a 17 year old wanting to start junk removal? Like, if you could go back in time, what would you have done differently from day one about this business? And would you encourage someone to do junk removal or to try something else? Because sometimes business owners are so jaded and they're like, oh, you don't want to do it because X, Y, and Z. And sometimes they're like, no, it's a great business. I mean, when I first started, my only goal was to make money. And now obviously money is, I see it differently. It's a tool that's needed to achieve.

achieve my goals, but if I were like going back to when I was 15, I would say it's hard because everyone's situation is different. Like I wouldn't say stick with one thing. For us being able to experiment with all the different services was really good in the beginning because it allowed us to see what one works best for us. So I'd recommend trying that. But eventually not just thinking like you can build some empire by doing everything, by being the jack of all trades, but if not. You should experiment and then figure out what you're best at and then stick to that and just become the best at that one thing. The times when I've seen the most success is when I've gone all in on just one thing, whether it's building the junk removal company, building the social media,

whatever it is, all my effort is going into that one thing and nothing else matters. So keeping the focus narrow and blocking out the distractions too. You'll eventually fall in love with the grind and the results more than you will, whatever friends or whatever other fun things you're doing in life. There were a lot of, I used to love cars a lot and like, and there were certain things I used to really love doing with my free time. But eventually, I've found more dopamine in the productive success and results coming from the company than I did every other fun area of life.

And you can really start to shift your mind to adjust, to enjoy. different things and it's just harder it's hard to do that because it's much easier to have fun doing like sports or playing video games but it's not as it's not as easy to do something that most people won't do and then be successful with it and fall in love with that that's what i would say and it's hard to find that the confidence but honestly this is probably the most simple and the best advice I can give. It all comes down to your goal, your plan, and your drive. The goal is where you're headed. You want to know exactly like, what are you chasing? What are you even going for? That's your vision. You have to be a visionary to be able to make it an entrepreneurship or have someone

on your team that does. That's like the most important is your goal. But then you can dream big, but if you don't know how you're going to get there, you don't have a plan. You're not organized in your way to get there, it's not going to happen. But then this is where the drive comes in. If you have a strong goal and a plan to get there, it's the drive that pulls it all together. And realizing that it's not going to be easy is what should fuel your drive. It's definitely not going to be easy. Yeah, I think an alternative to that, to the people being lazy theory, is that most people haven't found their purpose yet. And they're not really even looking for it. Right. And so I think that's why it's important to test everything, try everything like you said.

And then focus once you find your thing. Most people aren't there testing and trying things. And so they're just, they're not acting on anything, right? Like you don't know what you like until you try a ton of different things. And it seems like that's what you did. Let's make money with this F-150 everywhere we can. And then it's like, okay, junk removal is the thing. And actually, like in the beginning, the goal wasn't even junk removal.

For me, the goal was to buy a Hellcat. That's my dream car. I was in it only for the money in the beginning to just be able to buy my dream car. And then two years into the business, I ended up buying the dream car. Like, I didn't just spend all my money on the car when I had it. I realized, oh, I really like running this business. I'm going to reinvest in it. Then we bought the dump truck.

So I bought my dream car like after we had already started to establish the business, even though I could have bought it. So that's part of the sacrifices. I love it. I mentioned sacrifices definitely like, don't just like cash out too early. Love it. Love it.

Well, Kirk, thank you for your time. Where can people find you? They want to learn more about you or your business. For me personally, you could follow my personal Instagram. If you look up Kirk McKinney Jr. or Kirk McKinney,

you'll see it. So there's that. But also, honestly, Junkteen's YouTube, I feel like that's the place where you can really get to know me and what we're doing more than anything.

So definitely those two places. places. Okay. Well, thank you, Kirk. You've got an awesome business. Lots to be proud of. I'm excited to see where you are in five, 10, 20 years. You can take over the world. Yeah, definitely. Thank you. Cool. Have a good day. All right. Kirk McKinney, awesome guy, junkteens.com. Check them out. And we'll see you next time.