I Found A Business That MIGHT Never Fail

imagine starting a trash business and making $30,000 in 11 days out in the field Spencer Scott your mom's favorite garbage man did exactly that from working in software behind the screen to running a garbage business his life completely changed in a matter of weeks how he got started how to generate cash fast and how to completely drisk any deal that's what we're going to learn today so you can steal his homework welcome to Main Street millionaires how did you figure out trash I don't think it was my idea I was in Facebook group uhhuh and

everyone in here was complaining so there was a company called Barnes they sold to a company called cards when that happened cards basically said we're not getting out of the truck to pick bulk pickup up and so they said if we have to get out of the truck we're going to push a button and Bill you 30 extra bucks and so everyone was mad immediately and I basically posted on Facebook if your all is really as mad as you say you are I'll start a trash company that General post got like 150 comments of like

just raging angry people and so from that I was like all right I'll put up a stripe link and I basically said if we get 200 people to sign up and they commit to 3 months of service so 99 bucks 33 bucks a month I'll start a trash company we got like 150 people to sign up in 10 days we raised $155,000 and basically had five grand in monthly reoccurring Revenue in like 10 15 days before the company started in order to figure out if you even wanted to do this Christmas you did really quick

math napkin math one could saykin math how many people in your neighborhood 400 then you figured out how much to charge them they were already billing 33 bucks a month 33 bucks a month and then how do you service them or have customer service yeah they're almost is no customer support you pick up the trash they're happy and how many days a week do you actually have to go out picking up trash one day a week so technically you've been in business for how many days now 15 days in business which means you get what

with this business freedom a lot of freedom we're moving slow we're moving slow oh balls what I just nailed this oh my god look how smooth that is this is way easier than I anticipated that's actually really fun give 15 grand in your bank account from pre-orders now you've realized my God I got to start a trash business from the second it hit to your bank account to the moment you're picking up trash cans how long did that take I think 45 days holy crap or less maybe less run me through that timeline so hits

your bank account next step it was a nerve-wracking situation cuz it hit the bank account and I'm like I refused to do this truck and trailer first thing was like scouring Facebook Marketplace and just deeming everyone who had a trash truck for sale which introduced me to some people who own trash companies and they kind of told me what to look for one of the things they said is if you can get a side loader that would be great because you're a oneman shop and you can move much faster with a sidel loader coincidentally this

one came up in a Facebook group for trash trucks and then went through the process of buying that what's next we had to get the bins here and I thought the bins would be easy and then everyone I called said they had 40-day lead times and I was like that's not going to work cuz we go live in January and what's nice about the trash industry is like you just ask for help and I got introduced to like a third party company in Michigan that sells used trash bins and I bought 200 of them and

then you shipped them out and put them in your driveway so I paid for the bins and the bin company's like yeah uh they're here come get them I didn't know this but in the freight World they call they have this thing called like empty route and basically if somebody is in X location and they are going home anyways they might pick up a route that would be five grand and they'll do it for 2500 cuz they're going that way anyways it's found money for them Y and so we were able to get the bin

shipped down here for about $2,500 and then I had a bunch of used nasty trash bins and they delivered them into our driveway wait the best part is they got here December 23rd I don't know how you're not divorced two days before Christmas yep okay and then you got to clean them I started power washing them in our driveway and they didn't fit so I had like a wall of trash bins which the HOA did not love but most of the neighborhood had signed up so they were there bin so like no one really had

a problem with it then you get them clean and you stap some stickers on theman so we get them clean and the stickers didn't get here in time before January 3rd we went and delivered the bins to everyone but the funny thing about that was they were branded some other company not a single person had a problem with it they all knew the story from the beginning right so everyone was like we love this honestly and we got the stickers in and then it was like a slow roll on that just getting them stickered cuz

we realized people didn't actually care about them being branded or not as long as we picked up the trash here we are a bunch of used trash bins and we just ordered 250 more yeah buddy let's talk about Revenue so how much money do you think you can make in one year in this business in a bad year so a bad year I would say 150,000 and then a good year what do you think you could do so probably like 5 500,000 what do you think the profit margins are on this business so I can

say with the level of confidence at like scale it's like 20% that seems low to me the reason I say it seems low to me is it comes down to your debt tolerance so I've paid cash for a lot of stuff which as I've spoke to better people than me they finance it cuz it's a monthly reoccurring business so it's really easy to finance how much money do you think you'll take home this year in this business in your first year like to put in your pocket ideally none because I want to buy more trucks

buy more drivers buy more bins could you pull out a a living wage in the first year in this business running it yeah how much how much could you pull in owner's earnings I would say 50 Grand yeah if we did 150 we could probably pull 50 Grand so if you're getting up to 300 400 500,000 obviously it's not going to scale linearly but you might be able to make six figures on this business right doing 300 to $500,000 100% And then when you sell that six figures that you're doing you're selling at a multiple

that I would imagine is like what 4 to 8X I don't think it's that high profit not of Revenue yeah correct yeah so of Revenue it would probably be close to two 2x Revenue 2x Revenue which means you're probably probably 7x evx yeah mm I would say and evida obviously is this guys similar to profit but actually a little bit meteor this is crazy we're in an RV park right now isn't this where uh you guys typically see dump trucks hang out yeah D RV live my favorite part this is a 2006 condor which is

a freight liner uh with an CAT engine an Allison Transmission uh automatic side load arm with a high Packer and my favorite part of the high Packer is she thick what does this thing cost like if you were going to buy this thing brand spaking new what it cost oh I have no clue so brand uh 200,000 250 but you sneaky and you said no sir I want to get a deal so what' you get this bad boy for 35,000 and you find it it I financed it did you have to put cash down no

how'd you do that I have good credit I took a personal loan at 7% and it was not tied to anything so they just wrote it to me cuz like it's hard to finance a 2006 trash truck could you have financed it from the owner of this truck I tried he was selling it as a down payment for a $250,000 truck so he needed the cash so he needed the cash yeah and I found out after I bought it uh that he got it out of auction for I'm guessing probably like 15 or 20 the

secret that I'm learning is City auctions so this is formerly owned by the City of Tucson which is good when city owns stuff because there's maintenance records back from the day it was purchased so you know it's not going to be a a it's not been beat up does she have a name no you need one you need maybe put something back here there's no branding on this bad boy what kind of what are we doing I've had it for like 15 days I was like okay oh actually why don't we do this why don't

comment what you guys think we should name this bad boy how did you make sure when you were buying this that you weren't going to be in trouble because the tires were going to immediately blow or I didn't you didn't I think that's the most stressful part about this whole thing is I bought this sight unseen and we were in the hospital so the guy's like are you going to fly out here and come look at it and my third kid was uh being born and I was like I can't and then I also thought

about it for a second when I was in the hospital I'm like what am I going to do fly out there and be like Yep looks like a trash truck yep turns on like I don't know I don't know I've never had a diesel I've never had Hydraulics I've never sat in a cab over like I don't know what any of this stuff is like if I would have flown out there he would have been like oh my God this is an idiot the only thing that gave me like peace of mind which he was

willing to work with me on was I was like hey man I know you're asking 35 do you mind if I only wire half of it until I know it's on the trailer yeah and so I had to hire my own Freight driver which was $2,500 to go pick it up in Tucson and drive it to Dallas and I told the freight driver I said send me a picture when it's on the trailer and I'll wire the second half love it and the guy on Facebook's like this is like no deal I've ever done before

but I'm totally down and so get it on the trailer sent him the second half of the money and love it it got here and I started my pants a little bit because the batteries were dead cuz they left the lights on when they drove it from tucs sunay here so I couldn't get off the trailer and I had my 82-year-old neighbor bill with me so me and bill went to Walmart and Jerry rigged some batteries to get it started so we get it off the trailer everything's kind of figure out aable it's just like

I feel broken distress at this point like nothing really bothers me I think it bothers my wife more and that probably being married to me is actually the stressful part not this stuff feel that well I think you know there's lots of ways to drisk it too that people could do in this instance right they could have a third party actually analyze it to make sure that they the valuation is correct now that might not have worked because it wasn't fast enough it's old and they won't guarantee it yeah I mean the dr- risk for

me was like is it real do I have the VIN which I do in the title and I know that that's clear if it gets here and it is a lemon can I sell it for at least what I got it for yep I think I could sell it for more like I think there's a whole another world where I could have just flipped this for 1020 Grand that's a great way to do it is ask yourself the question instead how could I make this a fck yes no matter what yeah what's the Worst That

Could Happen the worst that could happen is the truck doesn't work then what like if you just keep keep asking then what it's like well then you just sell the truck well how much are you going to lose well I don't know you'll be able to tell when it gets here but probably not going to lose $35,000 honestly I thought I could make money on it I think I still could make money on it I think I could sell it for 40 or 45 who would have thought my tip to anyone trying to buy a

trash truck Facebook Marketplace is gold everywhere else on the internet people are trying to like broker like auction vehicles but if you get on Facebook Marketplace that's the golden secret because anyone who's selling a trash truck owns a trash company so then you meet all these trash owners and they just tell you everything a lot of the fly out cost right now storage is 120 a month uh a month financing on the truck is 700 I'll have to get you what the insurance is uh but it's under 700 yeah it's it's high though gas is

about $70 a trip so I've gone through two drivers is I pay them $18 an hour cuz they're under CDL if they're over I'd pay them more and then I pay them for the day even if we end up short so that's about4 $45 a day and maybe website costs like 20 bucks a month yes then web flow yeah and then we use stripe for credit card processing so Sprite takes 3% M we pay 100 bucks a month for a routing software and that's who owns that buy that we should let's go uh let's go

dump some trash huh you ready let's do it have you H anything yet uh you want the truth or the lies the truth my second day uh I left armed out and forgot to eject a bit was just driving around just dragging a bit down the road okay I went by someone's car ripped the hole on the side of it second day uh you were in software before you were a software dude yeah and the next logical step is not typically being a trash man but you kind of talked about boring businesses and that you

liked them for a few reasons What attracted you to maybe not just trash but this industry that one's easy coming from the software side like it's very much like software it's a monthly reoccurring revenue and so like if you look at obviously boring businesses don't tend to go away cuz everyone needs them especially with this AI stuff but if you look at like trash in general like I don't have to start the month over so like if you were to do like Roofing or Plumbing or something like that I still think they're great businesses and

would totally invest in one but I don't think I would start one just because the whole like compounding interest of you know subscriptions in Dallas in particular like there's such an expansion of Like Houses yeah that I'm like man like this is going to be forever like trash is forever so I thought it was a good opportunity to go after that Lindy effect you're chasing yeah and I felt like the timing had to be quick too because that company just sold and there's no way the PE firm continues to be crappy yeah and so I'm

like they'll turn it around and like reduce turn so like I've got a window to pick up probably a couple thousand customers I wouldn't have done it if it wasn't monthly reoccurring that was like the deal breaker for me I so almost to you you're like a software company is a widget that is reoccurring and you only have to acquire a customer once and they pay you for a long duration a trash company is a widget or a service I guess you could say both of them are that you only have to acquire a customer

once and they continue to pay you so really there's a lot more in common than not it's the delivery of the service right the service it's the same exact business one is more automated through software but also can be disrupted a little bit easier as we kind of been seeing and this one is like a labor delivery like I got to find trash which isn't the easiest thing but if I can figure out that process or systematize it I think it we'll be in good shape so in my mind it was the exact same business

with just a little more headache on the operational side of things which if you do software there's just as much headache and maybe the headache doesn't require you to get out of your chair yeah which for me like my favorite job as a kid was installing HVAC units I thought that was the greatest job ever the only reason I didn't stick with it is the only person who like I saw that really killed it the way I wanted to kill it was the owner the other cool part about doing you know more Blue Collar businesses

is it's just not as saturated with our generation and and people who are really operationally proficient because it didn't have to be what is interesting about blue collar is those aren't people who are high educated so like the people I'm competing against are getting steamrolled with like sales and marketing cuz they just never they never did it there's no education they like they're doing it through trial and fire but they're trying to learn technology when they're that's not their thing if it was their thing they I would have went to college yep so it's easier

to operate this business now what's interesting about this truck is it's a rear loader so they have to get out at every single house and that's a huge truck he's going to have a heck of a time getting out of here and you have to have two people in this truck yeah right yeah otherwise you're getting out as the driver right and he does have a cart to cart tippers here uhhuh which will be nice because he doesn't have to lift it but he's not going to be able to turn this around so I wouldn't

be shocked if he has to back it all the way out they come all the way here for this one customer yeah so that's this is they're losing money on this for sure but they're publicly traded so I mean good for them like yeah they'll probably buy you one day yeah hopefully I think that's how the m& space works I think Waste Connections Republic they're private Equity just like at this point they basically are like hey go get all the hard customers that we can't just get in one swoop Y and then we'll just buy

you up when you get to 10 20 30 million 100% companies like this love companies like us they're like thanks for doing the hard work they can't go acquire individual customers anymore it like almost doesn't make sense from a from an economic standpoint they do City contracts they basically are like we're not going to really work on it unless it bills and I'm just guessing I've never I've no accurate information here but I would guess that they don't really do too much if it's under like 5 million like city deals this is a freaking nightmare

right here like so as an owner this is a nightmare cuz like if he hits a car that's a bunch of problems if he hits a mail boox that's a bunch of problems this is a super heavy truck so since it's double axle and the weight is so heavy you have to hire trucker truck drivers like CDL certified truck drivers who have to like be up to date on all the CDL stuff which not to mention look at them in the trees ripping the trees off yeah and then if you see the Big Chain hanging

off the front of the truck that's for if they get stuck in the dump they can pull them out all of this I've learned in like the last 30 like 60 days by the way like this is I who knew I was going to be so passionate about garbage trucks is this is an important point that people wouldn't realize how much one Labor's hard two licensed labor right really hard and expensive so explain the difference between your truck where you can drive it and that one there's a bunch so the truck that we bought is

they call it ASL which is a automatic side loader which means you don't have to get out of the truck that makes things way faster cuz you can just push buttons and go also the truck I have I call it a unicorn truck and the reason I call it a unicorn truck and think I got extremely lucky is it's under CDL so most commercial trucks like all of them honestly are over CDL which means you have to hire a specific person that is CDL approved I gone through all the drug tests and all the training

and then the problem with that CDL people you have to pay a premium for cuz there's less of them and you got to keep that certification up so what we just saw in my opinion was a little bit of a nightmare because that was a over CDL truck coming down here to pick up $33 a month probably less than 33 and this is a week so maybe like seven bucks and they just had two people that they're probably paying one of them $18 an hour and the other one like $25 an hour not including gas

with our truck One driver under CDL don't have to get out it's great when you do have to get out it sucks do you want your kids to eventually take over one of your businesses no no why uh they can if they want to I don't care I just it goes back to kind of want them to be happy but I I think what I want like we have a one we don't have any really rules in our house but the one rule is you can't say can't so like anytime they say can't I'm like

you can ask for help just don't say can't don't can't just for twiitter part of me doing this is not for them but showing them that they can you know young people thought this wasn't cool for a long time we were at a dry cleaning thing the other day remember it this incredible dry cleaners in Austin downtown it's been in the family business for like three generations and I asked the guy I'm like are you going to sell this business are you going to pass it on to your kids and he's like I'm just going

to run it till I die I'm like how old are you man and he's like I won't say his name but he's like I'm 70 something like well it's not that far away so like what's the plan after that hey bud and he's like well I don't want my kids to do it I worked hard so they don't have to and I'm like that's beautiful oh no it's not right and then I said so okay what do your kids do and he said well one of them is an accountant and I just I was like

amazing and and I was and he's like I'm like what does the other one do yeah the other one went to college and uh and is trying to be an attorney and so it's just those are the two boringest jobs in all of the world I would rather I would rather be outside I would rather be picking I always made this joke that came back and bit me in the butt but I'm from Michigan there's an island in Michigan called Mao Island it's the craziest awesomest place ever beautiful there's no cars allowed out there and

so they have horses and there's just all in the road and there's a guy who comes by with a trailer and scoop and I tell people I'm like I could scoop sh if I own the company like I would totally scoop if I and now I'm picking up sh now yeah I'm like that was a bad joke that I told myself years ago like you know how they say yeah that's you R and then this happen I made some mistakes I said what I wanted and then I got it damn it obviously it's a lot

of work we don't mean to belittle that at all there's a lot of work in this business it's just a different type it doesn't I mean it doesn't feel like work it's kind of like what you little boys play with when you're a kid people stop kids run out and stop us we have a there's a house over here that waits for the trash truck and they come running out this lady and her kids waited for me to get there and brought brought out a peanut butter I have a picture of it brought out a

peanut butter and jelly in a Ziploc bag with an apple and a a cheese slice and a Diet Coke and gave it to me I'm crying I'm like no one in software has ever given me as much as a high five like like this is the greatest the way that this is all played out is like a weird local Celebrity Status like people are like oh we love this like the neighbors are buying t-shirts and like wearing like a great day start with a good dump shirts like it's just the show me that again yeah

you didn't see this this is fantastic oh speaking of I got something for you we got you'll love this this is our company saying yeah I love this in Texas we'll come and take it I don't know if that'll fit you that's a large kind of thank you it's a I'm styling there you go let's spit some truth here what are the best parts and then we're going to get to the worst Parts about running a dump truck business in general what's your favorite part driving the truck I like the recurring Revenue I like going

to the dump of course you do I like that you can sell these bad boys somebody will buy it I like not sitting behind a desk I like that you can buy used trucks at a discount and then potentially flip them I like this one day a week I like the fact that you can start without a lot of cash if you pre-sell like you did I definitely like the multiple when we get there someday but yeah I like that I can also do this with no outside investment so far I like the way you

set it up with licensing smaller truck no CDL yeah I like that it's no CDL you stole that one from me that was a good one I sto all these from me let's talk about cons I'll go first one is it's a dirty business be prepared for that liability uh it's a big truck and a lot can go wrong it's a rolling liability hiring is definitely a con right now we're so small so I can't give somebody 40 hours a week so the ideal person right now for us is like a college student or a

retired person the other thing that's tough is you know you can't turn a customer into a $400 $500 a month customer you have a cap on all of the people that you sell to in this business another con is your competitors are big these are big big players the worst thing you could do in some of these service businesses and come in and go those people they don't really get it they don't understand it I'm brand new I'm way better that's you got to have some respect for the fact that you're playing with billion doll

competitors last con I'd say it takes big equipment pre-orders are smart understanding how to evaluate the cost and value a a piece of equipment like this is really important because you have a risk that could be the cost of an entire year of sales for your first year if you don't buy this intelligently and what we always try to do on this channel is be as transparent as possible without being negative and scaring people away from the fact that you are probably way more competent than you think you are and you are capable of doing

things that most people your entire life have told you you are not capable of because only 7% of Americans even own a small business and of those small businesses less than 2% ever become worth a million dollars a year and so it's just a game of numbers most people don't actually try I think you should but at least now you know what you're working with what's the Worst That Could Happen what's the worst that could happen [Music]