Josh Daniel, Owner & Operator of TrashHelp (Interview 12/100)
Josh Daniel is the founder, owner, and operator of TrashHelp, located in Florida and providing a dumpster rental and junk removal service to his community. What caught my eye first about TrashHelp was the description of the estate cleanout with compassion care, discretion, and patience. This is a field that I honestly would not have thought of, but I’m here to give credit where it’s due. Mari Casas reached out to recommend Josh and I’m so happy that she did. Josh has such an empathetic and personal demeanor that makes it so clear so quickly why she thought he would be a great fit. He’s a great dude. It’s that simple.
He also has a talent for telling stories that paint a picture (he was so full of them that not all were recorded and not all could fit in just this one episode). So while we might not all be familiar with the dumpster business, he’s sure to bring us all into the world and show us what it’s really like. Spoiler alert (and trigger warning for some), it’s not pretty. In fact, it sounds downright tough. Obviously, we’re first thinking about how smelly, gross, or physically difficult it might be to work in this field. What had not occurred to me though, is that he and his team are often showing up to do a job while another human is really struggling. We’re talking estate cleanout after a loved one has passed, massive home cleanouts tied to the mental health struggle resulting in hoarding, animals that need help, eviction notices, storm cleanup, and more. Those are already times that are tough to navigate, especially when you have a job to do. Josh balances making sure that he’s doing the job well, but also making sure that he’s taking care of his fellow human being. And that’s admirable.
He’s another leader that is not only a great example of how to lead a company, but also how to treat people in all areas of our lives. In so many ways, that’s what the Capitalism for Good project is grounded in: folks that are just decent human beings in every aspect of the word who happen to own businesses. It seems to come natural to them to take care of their clients and employees the same way they do their families, friends, and neighbors. That’s something that we can all look up to.
It’s also no surprise that his business has just naturally grown and that his community members want to hire him, work for him, and call to check up on him (shout out to sweet Ms. Rita).
Shout out to Jeremey Philbeck at Jeremy's Septic.
Bonus shout out to Mari for all of her help in coordinating, answering my questions, and everything she does. I can’t speak highly enough of her, just like I am with Josh here.
Transcript
AM: Hey folks, thanks for coming over to Capitalism for Good. This is a part of a larger project where I am on a mission to interview a hundred business leaders about the positive impact that they have on their internal and external communities. It is through these interviews that we will dig into how we can use the ways in which we make and spend our dollars in order to benefit the greater good.
Hey folks, today we have Josh Daniel. He is the founder, owner, and operator of a business called TrashHelp, located in Florida in the US., and he, much like my observation about Connor Tracy, is one of these leaders who just inherently does the right thing, and that informs everything else that he does, including his business and his leadership mentality, and the way he treats his clients, and how he moves throughout the world. Before we started recording, he was telling me a story about giving extra food to the homeless community when he was on a softball trip with his daughter, and it just seems to be one of these things that just comes very natural to him, and is something that is almost just more of an example of who he is as a person, and so therefore he's built this business on those same principles, and it's almost like there's not a story there, cause it's just normal for him, but in fact there is multiple stories there, and he kind of like walks us through what a day in the life of him and his employees are, and tells us some stories. The way that he approaches pretty much everything it seems with just compassion and empathy in this drive to treat people as humans, and again, I'll say it, just do the right thing and be a good dude is so evident. And he, I think, could have told us stories for hours and hours and hours if we all had the time and the availability to do that.
And so, I am excited for you guys to hear this. I'm excited to hear what your takeaways are from it. I am so proud to be able to share a spotlight on him. And also a field that I would have not probably thought to look into. So, shout out to one of his employees, Mari, who really was the driver in organizing and getting him here and helping organize him from the back end. And she is really wonderful and she, again, is a great example of this company that they have and the way that they interact with pretty much everyone that they come in contact with. So, once again, very cool. A great role model just in general of how to be a great human being. And I'm excited to share this with you all, so enjoy.
Another very quick note. I just finished editing this episode and there is something to mention about how great of a storyteller Josh is, but also the other side of it is the nature of his business. So some of these stories weren't a trigger warning, especially if you're sensitive to mental health issues, hoarding, the abuse of people or animals. Perhaps if you have young listeners, maybe screen it first, read the transcripts or just skip it if you need to. I promise that it's worth it. The stories might be difficult to listen to, but it also on the other side shows how difficult this kind of work can be sometimes. And both of those things can be true at the same time. So shout out to him and his team that face these kinds of tough decisions. It seems like kind of on a regular basis and for handling them with grace and humility. That is the reason why I thought it would be really great and appropriate to highlight him here. He's a really good fit for the Capitalism for Good Project. But unfortunately, the other side is part of why he is a good fit for the Capitalism for Good Project is because they just deal with some really tough stuff. So just take that with caution. You know yourself better than I would or anyone else would. So I left all those stories in because I think that they are valuable. But just be aware that they are hard to hear.
Jump on in. How did you get started with this? How did you get to where you are?
JD: So it has been a whirlwind for sure. But so my career track has been all over the place. I originally, believe it or not, wanted to be a cop. That was kind of like my ultimate goal. And I ended up working with family doing real estate. So from out of high school, 2006-ish through 2010, I worked for family. Large real estate portfolio, houses, condos, apartments, duplexes, RV parks, mobile home parks, which are different. Commercial real estate, whether it be industrial space or storefront space, triple net leases modified, like everything you could think of real estate related. And I started off as the kind of maintenance management and quickly moved into like the head of the company. Below the owner, of course, which again was family and just handled all things. So like the office girls were under me, the maintenance was under me. And I kind of took it under my wing as like my personal thing, because it was personal. Like it was obviously family. You treat family right. And then ultimately, I wanted my impact to be beneficial. So like, you know, my wife, of course, at the time wasn't my wife, but hated it. You know, she would be like, we don't need to go check on the vacant unit at 1030 at night. You've been clocked out since five. And I was like, oh, no, no, we do, because they break in and we got to go by there and check on it. Yeah, not my stuff. I was getting paid an hourly rate that I had clocked out for hours prior, but it was it was personal.
We had some misunderstandings as most family situations do. And we decided to part ways. And it was a little bad time because my kids were born June of 2010. So they would have been six months old right around that December time when we decided to part ways. And it was Christmas. So we were we had twins less than a year old. I was unemployed and trying to find something to do. So we decided we were going to start a property management company because that's what I had been doing technically. And we've done all aspects of it. So I figured I'd go get my L Cam and I would maybe do some real estate. And it was figuring it out. I didn't think I was going to start as a business owner. I never thought I'd see myself being a business owner. But of course, the first few things were just applying to local property management companies. And I quickly realized that I'm way faster than their pace.
And I'm just getting stuff done way too fast. And it was just my pace was way faster than what they were expecting it to be. So next thing you know, they started giving me multiple communities. I worked for a company for about three months. And within the first month, they were like, oh, you should be able to, we give one property manager one community. Next thing you know, I'm handling three. And I'm like, listen, you're not giving me a difference in pay, but I'm doing three people's job. You said that on day one. So at that point, we started our own company, kind of on the side doing at that time, what we called basically aggressive property management. So the family stuff, going back to that for a second, was not in the best neighborhoods. So going back to the first part, the kind of being a cop thing was that itch was being scratched a little bit because of the very bad neighborhood real estate they owned, we owned. So going back to the property management, we ended up in the middle of a huge foreclosure error, people getting evicted, people getting foreclosed on, properties being just desolate, builders walking away. So we ended up with this community that we're still involved with, believe it or not. 94 town homes, they were 80% vacant as far as the numbers were concerned, but they were 100% occupied. It was all occupied by squatters, drug dealers.
AM: Yeah.
JD: So, and every manager they had hired prior to me was like, the drug dealers would immediately threaten their lives and they would freak out and quit. So I think it was day two. I figured out who the big boy drug dealer was in the community. I walked up to him and there's about six guys around him. And I said, listen, man, this is real simple. I can make your life difficult. You can make my life difficult. I have a job to do. You're doing a job. Or I can give you like a couple of weeks and I'll just do other stuff while you figure out how to redirect your traffic to wherever you plan to go next. But my suggestion will be find somewhere to go, because I want to make your life miserable. You're going to make mine miserable. And I don't know how it ends up. And this dude kind of stepped into my face and goes, “I respect that. Give me two weeks. We'll be out of here.” I was like, I didn't think that was going to go that way, but that worked.
And at that time, we got our first community. You know, we had been there for years doing property management. We got into foreclosures. Somebody called one day and says, hey, do you manage foreclosures? And I said, sure. I don't know what that means, but we'll figure that out. We started managing vacant property that was being prepared to sell to end users. And that was an interesting situation because, you know, again, I'm young. I got a young family. I'm trying to just figure it out, literally. Failure wasn't an option. And it was, hey, I'm the property manager. So now I'm like, hey, I, as property manager, need a pressure cleaning guy. Well, then I realized that my pressure cleaning guy is not very reliable. So I called three others and I realized reliability is not a strong suit in the pressure cleaning business. So we went and bought a pressure cleaner and we started hiring guys. Next thing you know, hey, we need a landscape crew. Buy a landscape rig and figure it out. So we became an all-in maintenance and management company. And that was closer to like the 2012, well, we started in 2011. So probably like 2013, we ran that hard till probably 2015. Foreclosures obviously got processed, they got sold. Foreclosures didn't continue. So from there, as foreclosures went away and foreclosures are very profitable. So like when, let's just say you have a two car driveway, you have a two car pad in front of your house, where two cars can pull up, that's about the size. The bank would pay, give or take about $400 for that. Residentially, that's only worth about 80 bucks. But we didn't know that. We thought it was worth the 400. So when the bank stuff dried up, we tried to do residential pressure cleaning at Last Addalot. And we quickly realized that we were way too expensive and our bar was different.
We had been doing junk removal as one of the services we offered with the banks and demolition work. We still had the labor. Junk removal and demolition is pretty dummy proof. It's pretty easy. It's like CrossFit. You just pick stuff up and put it in the truck. We cut our services down to demolition and junk removal. We were doing good with demolition. We aren't licensed contractors, so we were always working under licensed contractors and subs. But the dumpster business happened on accident. Basically, in 2017-ish, we were continuing more and more demo work and we realized that the dumpster companies here locally couldn't keep up with us. We would take the biggest dumpster they could give us and we would have it full by 11 and say, hey, we've got 12 guys here, the dumpster is now full, when can you get back? Let's just say it's Monday at 11 AM and they'd be like, we can get you in by Thursday. Okay, well, that's not very productive. We decided to go buy a small dumpster trailer and five dumpsters. It was just a makeshift way of being able to continue to move our volume as we needed to. It takes six weeks to get that trailer, those dumpsters built and delivered. And just in passing and just talking, we told a couple of contractors what our plan was with these dumpsters. And they said, “we deal with the same thing. What would you rent them for?” I was like, “oh, we're not going to rent them. They're going to be just for us.” And they're like, “yeah, but if you would, what would they rent for?” And I'm like, “I don't know. We only ordered six. I don't want to really get into the rental business. That's not what we're trying to do.”
So I don't think I'm going to do it. And then after a half a dozen guys are hounding me to give them a price, I'm like, all right, well, if I was going to do it, it would be this. So long story a little shorter, the day those six dumpsters hit the ground, they were all sold out. By the second week, we ordered 10 more. Within probably a month and a half, we had 30 and could not keep up. So it's continued. Now we're 17-ish into 18. At that time, we only offered 12 and 16s, 12 and 16 cubic yard dumpsters. And now, we never wanted to compete with the big guys. We were always trying to stay in our little small niche, like, hey, listen, you want a small dumpster? That's what we do. We can give you a 12 yard for the same or less than the big guys give you a 10 yard. But I can't give you a 20 yard less than they can because they either own the dump or they do so much volume or they can offer those prices so cheap.
So funny. My wife always tells me what I should do. And then she gets the opportunity of telling me, I told you so, because I unfortunately don't listen to her as much as I probably should. So she had said years ago that we should probably get into 20s and even 30s. And, you know, I wanted my niche. I didn't I didn't want to branch out. I'm a big whatever the opposite of advocate. I hate change. I don't like change.
AM: Yeah.
JD: So a deal came along where these 20 yard dumpsters were being sold. And ultimately, my priority was to buy them and flip them. This was my plan. I had no interest in keeping them. Same thing as back in 17. I mentioned to a few people we were going to offer 20s. And those 12 dumpsters that I planned to just buy and resell never got sold. We ended up buying more and more. And now, you know, in addition to the dumpsters we already had, 12 and 16s, we had about 25 20s that we'd never planned on doing. And then my wife says, “well, now we're in 20s, we should do 30s.” And I was like, “we'll never do that.” Last year, a business became available. I bought that business. There are two trucks in there, 20 dumpsters, 10 20s, 10 30s. So we know the 20s are going to stay busy. We figured that out. The 30s, I figured we wouldn't use those. We'll let them sit for a few months and we'll sell them. Yeah, now we've bought more. I think we're up to 20 30s right now. And I think I've got two in the yard. And we're actually, this morning, prior to this interview, we are getting pricing to order 10 more. So again, if I would have listened to her, we'd probably be a little more advanced a few years prior. But I would hate to take away the her being able to tell me she told me so.
AM: You got to give her something.
JD: Yeah. Yeah. Got to make sure she's able to have that.
AM: Will you tell a little bit about who a lot of your clients are?
JD: Yeah. So we do not care who you are. There are some dumpster companies, or any company openly, but there's some dumpster companies that prefer just to service residential, and there's some prefer to just service contractors. We don't care. I don't care if you're a 98-year-old lady that wants a little dumpster because you're cleaning out your knitting room, and I don't care if you are a gigantic contractor and you want 1030s because you're demolishing the state prison. We have done really big and really small jobs.
We've done some really cool jobs, but ultimately, yeah, we do not discriminate. We have residential, commercial, contractors, roofers, schools, non-for-profits, brokers, and there's so many things. So it's weird how this stuff takes us, but we did one one day that the guy had 330s that he was planning to fill full of old tracks from like a skid steer, and we were able to repurpose those, which was cool, to use for a guy. He basically cut them in half and used them as runners for like a horse area.
AM: Yeah.
JD: We're actually working on one right now with a big broker we deal with that, I don't know how it's going to work, but they want to recycle food. I don't know who's taking old food, but that's their thought.
AM: I'll tell you, one of the things that caught my eye about you and your business and the things that you do are, and this is another shout out to Mari, for being so wonderful at singing all of your praises. But she was talking specifically about estate clean out type of things, and how in her words, unless she is just reframing from someone else, talking about the compassion first, philosophy of it. Can you talk a little bit about that?
JD: Yeah, I can tell you a couple of interesting stories. Estate clean outs are obviously when someone passes away, if family members, and listen, sometimes there's no connection. So estate clean outs are easy, the house is empty, empty it throw it all away. We had one lady, I'll always remember her. Rita Whitfield was her name. She has this older lady, country accent. Anyways, called me one day, says I need a dumpster. Super talkative, super sweet lady. I probably need to call Ms. Rita and make sure she's all right. I haven't talked to her in a while, and it's one of those people that I just ended up. She'll just call me, or I'll just randomly call her, and we'll just sleep to breathe for five minutes, and I haven't done dumpster for her in like two years. She's a super cool. So anyways, that situation, she needed help. She wanted a dumpster. We gave her a dumpster. She said that her nephews were going to come down. Remember, we're in South Florida. So she was from, I think, Tennessee or somewhere like that.
She flew her nephews down. Her nephews, if her nephews are watching, you guys are horrible, would come down, take her plane ticket, stay in the house that they were supposed to help her clean out. But instead, they would go to the beach every day until their time to fly back. Then they'd be like, sorry, Aunt Rita, we weren't able to help you or Ms. Rita. That was not cool. She paid up front. We picked the dumpster up two weeks later per our terms. When we picked it up, it was completely empty. There was nothing in it. I'm like, “listen, I have a driver there. The dumpster is completely empty. What happened?” She's like, “well, I'm not in the best health. I'm supposed to get help. This is what happened with my nephews.” I'm just trying to figure it out. I'm going to give you the dumpster for another two weeks. She's like, “well, what do I owe you?” I said, “nothing. Don't worry about it. Let's just figure this out.” I gave it to her for another two weeks. She said she would get help.
Two weeks goes by. I called her. She says, yeah, you can pick it up. We go there, it's completely empty. I'm like, “Ms. Rita, what happened?” “Well, my friend was going to help me and this happened, and this happened, and then I fell ill. I had to go back to Tennessee.” I said, “all right, let me know when you're back.” She called me a couple of weeks later and says, I'll be back in a month or whatever. I said, okay, give me a day. She's telling me the day. I said, okay, we're going to drop a dumpster on. Unbeknownst to her, I said, I need you to be there personally so that way we can make sure that the dumpster goes in the right place, so it's easy for you to load. I sent the dumpster and I sent four guys, and I told them just help her out. Figure it out. Let's help her out. And at the end, she of course asked her what she owes us. And I told her her money's not good. Well, she paid for the first dumpster. The second dumpster is free. This is free. Let's just let's just get you figured out. So we took the dumpster that day. We got her good. I think we ended up dropping a couple of days later because she needed help. She actually did fill that one, too. And the whole situation was around the fact that her mother died, who was in her 90s and Rita's in her 70s. Come to find out Rita also struggled with cancer treatments. So she ended up having to go back because her cancer showed back up. And she was like, you know, I'm hoping everything comes back good. And she's like, as much of a pain in the butt as this has been with this house, I'm really hoping that this isn't the end for me and I see you.
And I want to say two months go by. And I would think about her and I'd be like, man, I got to call and tell my wife, I'm like, I got to call Ms. Rita and see if she's okay. And just, you know, life and get busy. And one random day, I got a phone call and I didn't look down at my phone. I just grabbed the air pod and said, this is Josh. And she says, Josh, and I do not, I'm not joking. I teared up a little bit and I was like, “Ms. Rita, you don't know how nice it is to hear your voice.” And I think we did one more dumpster and she, she had made plans to get the rest of the house cleaned out. And it was, we were basically on the backside of that. And that was a cool one. I probably have three. That one was an estate clean out.
To answer the question, estate clean outs, it has to be as compassionate as possible because, you don't know who's going through what, who's upset that the person who passed away is no longer here. You don't want to grab a vase and throw it in the truck from 20 feet away and it bounce off the truck and land in the driveway and you find out that's somebody's ashes or something like that, that's not good. So you have hoarder situations.
Hoarder situations are similar to compassion, very different. It's a mental health issue. A lot more people than you would think deal with it. We're dealing with one right now. Mari was very helpful in that when she answered, she took that phone call. The young lady spent, from what I understand, a better part of an hour on the phone with her. I was actually out of town on vacation with the family and she calls me. I'm walking around Universal after just riding a roller coaster. I don't do roller coasters. So I was probably about half nauseous and regretting my life. She tells me the situation. I end up calling the young lady to explain how we can help, what we can do. She has a dumpster now and is working through the conversation. What was of that? She had basically realized that she has a mental health issue. She's also realized that the clutter and the hoarding that she has is leading to depression. There's health issues, as far as mold, mildew, dust, things like that. I could tell stories for days about this, but we've had two that are probably the worst.
We had one, it was one of the Buried Alive Situations. If you ever seen those where these people are 500, 600 pounds or more. The guy had gotten himself so big that when he fell in his house, the fire department had to cut a wall, a concrete wall out. And crane him out of the home. And when I, I mean, I'm, I'm wider than probably the average, but all of my guys, even my little skinny guy that was there that day, we all had to walk sideways through this house And you can tell it's mental health issues because you like walk in and, you know, there's 7,500 pizza boxes over here. And then there's 200 big gulp cups over there. And it's just like the weirdest stuff. Like it's almost like it looks like an escape room or something. It's weird. So, we dealt with that guy. That was actually early on in our career.
It was on the news. And at that time, we only had, I think, one truck and a couple of employees. And we just, you know, it was one of those things. Actually, it was a news coverage on it because somebody called the news. The guy says, why are you guys here? You know, to help. And I said, “well, to put it as simple as possible, feel the need to help. I've always felt the need to help. You know, whatever it is inside of me that I go towards issues, there's danger to help. But when it's in Texas, I can't go. I mean, I guess I could. But when it's close to home, it's a lot easier.” There's a lot less excuses why you can't help when it's five minutes 10 minutes, 20 minutes down the street. So we would get involved. That guy, we actually did probably a dozen loads and it didn't even make a dent. Didn't charge him. You know, it should have been $7,000, $8,000 in work that we didn't charge for. But again, mental instability. Two days later, he called the police and told us that everything we had done was not asked for. We stole all his stuff and he wants it back. And of course, that truck was just going back and forth to dump. So that stuff was gone. But there was nothing of value. Anything that we threw away was trash. And we put everything of value to the side. And contrary to what he said, he actually texted us asking for us to do it, thanking us so much for being willing to do it, thanking us along the way, thanking us again when we were done. And then there was a whole pile of text messages back and forth of me being like, hey, I just found your gold watch. It's gonna be over here. Hey, I just found your gun. It's gonna be over there. So like we were obviously covered in what we did and we did absolutely nothing wrong. And it sucks because we were there to help.
AM: Right, right.
JD: And then I'll give you one more hoarder and then I'll give you an eviction story. I mean, I got a lot of good eviction stories. So the hoarder, the last hoarder story I'll tell you, it was a young lady that was a nurse. She evidently cut her foot in her home. Her foot got infected and she ended up with gangrene and ultimately having to have her foot amputated. Her sisters, her friends, who all live local, had no clue how her house was inside. And when they called us and asked us to help, they had told us, like, it was so weird. We never realized. And now playing it back in our heads, like, we would go to lunch with her a couple of times a week, but she would never let us in the house. She would always meet us in the driveway or meet us at the restaurant, never let us in the house. And they, I guess they all started kind of talking and saying like, hey, when was the last time you were in her house? And it had been years. So this lady lived in a two-bedroom townhouse, downstairs, kitchen, living room to the right, and then like a kitchen, dining room to the left.
AM: Yeah.
JD: When you walked in, on the right, there was a baby gate. And on the inside of the baby gate would have been that living room. The living room is completely empty. And she would use the living room to set her dog in to do his business. And then pick him back up and say, okay, let's go. So that room was an indoor pee and poop pad.
AM: Yeah.
JD: That never got cleaned up, looked like a poopapalooza. And then on the left side was her living room, couch. And she had two really big macaws, a blue macaw and a red macaw. The macaws were bald. And I had never seen a bald macaw. And I actually asked one of the ladies that was there. I said, “what's the story with these birds?” I've never seen bald birds. Like, why would that be like that? So the roaches were eating the birds' feet from what they say. And the birds get so stressed out from it that they can't sleep. Their feathers all fall off. So we actually were able to help donate the birds to an aviary that's out here by us. Those birds are now beautiful, grew their feathers back and happy as can be. But the story continues. You know, we were cleaning our stuff out. We picked up the couch. There was a family of rats living behind the couch, none dead. They were all alive. The roaches in that house, I mean, I've been in some bad roach houses. That house was so bad that the roaches weren't hiding. Like, they were hiding in plain sight. Like, if there was a switch plate, they would hide where the switch plate and the wall meet. They wouldn't even hide in the plate anymore. It was so bad. I'll leave you with that hoarder story. That was my last hoarder story.
The compassion, the worst one we had was an eviction by far. So a lot of times in the foreclosures and eviction process, they've lost contact and communication with the occupant. And in this situation, it was a very large investor that we have dealt with for years. He's a big, big investor. I want to say he's in Utah now also, but he's definitely a big investor here. We show up to this house like we always do. We knock on the door at the sheriff's office. The sheriff's office's job is to basically serve the writ of possession and say, hey, Josh and his team now has possession of this home. And at that point, we proceed to throw everything inside of the house out. As the deputies always say, it is not moving day, it's eviction day. So grab what you can grab very quickly and you got to go.
AM: Yeah.
JD: In this situation, we knock on the door. A lady wearing scrubs answers the door. And I didn't think nothing of it. I figured she was just getting ready to go to work. And we caught her just before work. Which is personally, I prefer that because we've caught too many homes where we've gone in and the people are at work because they didn't take the eviction notice seriously or whatever. And then they come home to all their stuff out on the curb and the locks change. Yeah. So this situation, the representative for the landlord was trying to make a name for himself. He had only been with the landlord for maybe two weeks. I'm the representative of the landlord until I finish my job. We find out this home has been used as a rehab for elderly people. And they are still in there. So the representative of the landlord is like, I don't care. Let's throw everybody out. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. You're not doing that. Let's go walk in and see what's going on. We walk in and there's about 10 people, 80 plus years old. I would say half of them are bedridden dementia patients.
I mean, we walked in with the deputy and the lady starts asking us which department we're with and she used to be a dispatcher for Redmond City or whatever, where she lived 50 years ago. And we ended up making the landlord's representative leave the property because he was persistent on throwing these people out. And I said, you're out of your mind. We're not doing that. It was 8 a.m. I think we waited till 430 to touch or remove anything because that was when the last patient finally got transported. And it was bad. Along the way, we had, you know, we're sitting there and I'm like, close the door. We're not evicting anybody. The one deputy, there's always two deputies. One of the deputies cut and left because he obviously saw was going to drag out. We didn't need additional backup. And we just stood by us.
Hospice would send an ambulance to come get one and then somebody else would come send one. And at one point it was probably almost lunchtime. This minivan shows up and the back door slide open and these three kids jump out all excited to go see grandma. And I grabbed dad and I'm like, he's got to you for a second. And explained to him what's going on. And I said, please go, you know, it's business as usual, go visit grandma. I just want you to know what's going on. And he had, you know, we had been doing this almost four hours at this point. He had no idea. Nobody had told him, nobody had called him. And of course it was the simple fact that the lady who was running the rehab facility wasn't paying her mortgage, ended up foreclosed on. She's pocketing every dollar she's getting from, you know, health insurance or whatever, ended up in foreclosure, ended up with this guy.
And you know, at the end of the day, he's just a business man. So he wants his property vacant and be able to resell it as quickly as possible. So yeah, that was one of the bad, that was one of the worst ones, you know, compassion or emotions wise. That one, I had two guys with me, both deputies, and I think everybody at one point or another broke down and started crying. Yeah, because it was bad, like it was just so bad on so many levels. I, the representative of the landlord again, was trying to make a name for himself and show how ruthless and tough he is. And I thought the deputy was going to take his badge off and punch the guy in the face, because the guy was so adamant that he wanted to just take these people. At one point, he literally said that. He said, I don't care. I don't care if they're old. I'll go pick them up one by one and throw them in the grass. And the deputy looked at him and goes, listen, man, you're going to need to leave for your safety. And the guy just looked at all of us and I was like, “yeah, I think you need to go.” Once we got this empty and we got this ready to hand over to y'all, we'll call you. But I called the landlord in the meantime and said, hey, listen, this is what's going on. I don't know how long this is going to take, but we can't. We can't rush this one. We can't. So that was. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was a bad one.
Yeah, emotions are tough in these. And I sometimes hated being the guy that was doing it. I mean, it was just a job and they put themselves there. It wasn't like I was a bad guy for doing it. But we've dealt with some tough ones.
AM: Ugh, that's so hard. Ugh. So my follow up for you on that is, from a business owner perspective, like, how do you make all of these decisions to go above and beyond? Like, you're kind of like glossing past the, like, rehoming animals and taking care of children and like all of these things. But those are also like business expenses. I mean, you're paying your guys that are on the clock and like extra time that we kind of talked about this before we started recording about how some people are just only in it for the money. And like, you probably could have had other clients during that time. Like, is it a is it built in in your brain into the business model? Is it a marketing benefit? Is it personal for you? Like, how does that fit in when you're wearing your business owner hat?
JD: So I don't think it I don't think it has nothing to do with this. I think it's just about being a good person. Yeah, I try to do what what I was raised to be the right thing to do. We have plenty of times been on the way to a job and we'll rip a u-turn and push somebody's car that broke down out of the intersection. We will pull over and helps me with a flat tire. We will jus because that's what that's what you should do. Like I'm born and raised here in Palm Beach and like that's what that's what you did in the past. Like that's what we always did. So we saw a spin inside the road. You pull over and see if they need help. Nowadays, because of people who have taken advantage of that, it's weird. You know, like you can't I can't pull over as a grown man and ask a lady and her baby if they're okay, because they're going to freak out. They don't know me and I get that. But they're going to freak out and think I'm trying to take advantage of a bad situation. But you know, if somebody's car breaks down the middle of the intersection, we're going to we're going to block the intersection and help push them off the side of the road. It's just the right thing to do. We've I can tell you plenty of animal stories. We've done plenty of evictions where the people leave dogs behind and we've, you know, taken those dogs and bring them home and try to make sure they get sent to the right place or adopted out.
You know, I know that that dog is going to end up put to sleep if we send it to the to the pound. And it's funny, we actually, as a family, we for some reason always find dogs. We find dogs wherever we are. We've been in the Carolinas. We've been in Georgia. We've been all these random places and we always find dogs. We actually found a cat probably two weeks ago. We're riding down the road. My son's 15 now. He's learned how to drive. And he was about to run over this little what I thought was like a branch. It looked like a like a branch with like some leaves on the end of it. And as we get closer, we find out it's a kitten that's tiny, tiny little kitten. Lock the brakes up, jump out. Of course, the cat at that point, like climbs up into the wheel well. We get we get it out and put it on Facebook. And people are crazy. We get a few people who are asking like, oh, can I have it? My my snake would love to eat that. And I'm like, no, no, no, we're not we're not doing that. So then we had to start vetting people and making sure they weren't going to use it for snake food. But, yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's just it's like I tell my guys, like, if you see somebody broken down, take a minute, help them out. If you see somebody needs help with something, let's help them. I mean, obviously, there's there's always a business aspect.
AM: Yeah.
JD: But at the end of the day, like, we're not handing out cards and and doing all that. We're like, my employees are out there. Let's let's just help. Let's just let's just try to help when we can. And obviously, there's there's an always profitability in it. There's probably less profitability profitability in it than I would even like to talk about. But yeah, it's not what it's about. I mean, sometimes it's just like, hey, you know, we've we've we've pulled over. We were we one day an accident happened right in front of us. We were pulling people out of cars and, you know, trying to get them to safety because the vehicle's on fire. You know, like we've we've we've no, we're not we're not doing that. So then we had to start vetting people and making sure they weren't going to use it for snake food.
But, yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's just it's like I tell my guys, like, if you see somebody broken down, take a minute, help them out. If you see somebody needs help with something, let's help them. I mean, obviously, there's there's always a business aspect.
AM: Yeah.
JD: But at the end of the day, like, we're not handing out cards and and doing all that. We're like, my employees are out there. Let's let's just help. Let's just let's just try to help when we can. And obviously, there's there's an always profitability in it. There's probably less profitability profitability in it than I would even like to talk about. But yeah, it's not what it's about. I mean, sometimes it's just like, hey, you know, we've we've we've pulled over. We were we one day an accident happened right in front of us. We were pulling people out of cars and, you know, trying to get them to safety because the vehicle's on fire. You know, like we've we've we've done that because that's that's just kind of who we are. That's who that's who anybody should be, really. Like if you see a car accident, I mean, yeah, eight out of ten times the person in the car is probably OK. Yeah, let's make sure let's make sure they aren't, you know, there's not something you can do for them that may or may not change their life. And yeah, I don't know. It's just it's just something that it's in me. Like I've always done it. We've been always able to help, willing to help with whatever we can.
AM: And I lied because I just thought of another one that I think is like, you're fine. Like I said, I got as long as you need. But how are you finding employees that line up with your philosophy there? Or is it more of you're leading by example? Or do you think that just you people are naturally gravitating toward you that are also kind of on the same mindset as you? Like, how are you kind of building that internal community of like-minded folks?
JD: So truth be told, it's not easy. Finding employees is not easy at all. We have run the gamut when it comes to friends and family. I've had multiple friends since high school workforce over the years. Obviously, the goal is always to get them to, when we're looking, we tell them first, because hopefully if they put their neck out there for someone, that person would take it a little more to heart. On the helping side, we've hired the local homeless. We've tried that, and that is not always the best case because we hired a guy who was a local homeless guy, he was always begging on the corner. And we said, hey, listen, instead of you begging, why don't you come to work? And we had two of those situations. One of them, the guy worked for us Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and we told him we would just give him a try part time. And we told him on Friday, hey man, we're liking what you're doing, see you Monday. Well, on Saturday, he broke in and robbed a bunch of stuff and pawned it, and then showed up on Monday, like it didn't happen. And we showed him on camera, and we had one other one that I think he went, yeah, he was fine. We used him a few times, and then he just, you know, whether he got his life figured out or whatever he did, we hadn't seen him around actually. So, you know, like we, we, we do that. We try to help there. We try to give people opportunities. You know, sometimes it's, it's being business minded in the world.
So like, like sometimes I'll be at a restaurant and I'm like, man, this guy's really attentive. He looks good and he's dressed nice. And he has a good conversation about him. I wonder if he wants a job. So, you know, I hand him a card and be like, hey, man, I don't know if you'd be interested in a different opportunity, but I'd love to talk to you. And sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. It definitely is hard. And then, like you said, you lead by example from there. So, you know, I end up on a lot of jobs. I train all my employees so they already know, you know, my goal is to let them ride with me for three days. Day one, they sit in the passenger seat. Days two and three, I sit in the passenger seat. And that's usually the goal. So, they'll see things along the way. And even if they don't, you know, we end up places together. Sometimes we'll double up on trucks or double up on a job and they'll see things. And then ultimately, they get training from their coworkers as well who've been here longer. We have guys that are, I mean, I've got one guy that I've known since I'm 19. He's been with us since basically the beginning, I just hired him in 2012. So like, you know, we try to keep the same employees if at all possible.
And the like mindedness is, it does start to rub off. Like we remind, we have, try to say weekly meetings, but it's more like monthly and just kind of go over things, make sure that if there's something that happened on a job that I would have liked to see differently, or how I would like to see the result differently, or how we should have handled something differently. You know, if we see things just in the world that we're seeing that we would like to see something change about our process. And then ultimately the leading by example part, one of the things we always run is there's nothing I tell everybody. Like we do some stuff that is either hard work or gross or both. And I tell them there's not a single thing I would ever ask you to do that I not only wouldn't do, but I probably have already done. And so I know they get frustrated when there's something I ask them to do that's either gross or hard work or both. But I reassure them that it's nothing that I haven't either done or wouldn't do if I was there. So, you know, that's a big piece. Like I don't love people who sit behind the desk and just bark at people. I actually hate being behind the desk. I would rather be a driver.
So yeah, I think, you know, leading by example is huge. And it rubs off on the guys. The guys see that we hand out, we have all kinds of little merchandise and things we hand out. They look like business cards, but they're bottle openers. We have air fresheners, you know just little silly stuff we hand out and it becomes fun. Like we start making jokes about it. And like, you know, I was at the red light the other day and the guy next to me, I told him, roll his window down. He's like, what? I said, your truck stinks. He's like, what? And I tossed him an air freshener and he's like, and this thing smells good. Thanks, bro. And I was like, and my info is on there if you need a dumpster. And he was like a local roofer. So, you know, we do silly stuff like that just to stick in people's minds, hopefully. And the guys have that opportunity because they have air fresheners, the bottle openers. What else do we have? Obviously flyers, you have a bunch of silly stuff, pens. That they have on the trucks that they can hand out too. So they enjoy it because they'll come back and tell me the joke of what they did or they told the guy's truck stinks like I do or whatever. So it's a fun time to say the least.
AM: I love that so much. In thinking about that kind of mentality and philosophy when you're moving throughout the world, my last question for everyone is, who's another business or leader that you see out there in the world that are doing things the right way? And it can be anyone from an old boss, a coworker, a client, someone you're a customer of, absolutely anyone that you think like, man, they've got it right and they deserve a shout out.
JD: So the list is way longer on the opposite. I'm sure you know. Yeah, I've actually just to quickly touch on that, I've learned a lot of what not to do from people and it's molded us to who we are and who we've become. There's a handful and I'm obviously being put on the spot slightly, but not in my industry. Jeremy Philbeck is a guy that I like. He's a local guy, he does Septic, and he's got a good philosophy. So Septic is one of those businesses. You could tell someone, hey, your Septic system is bad and it's going to cost you 10 grand. You for sure is a female, but even then, I don't know about Septic and I don't want to really go climb into a tank that's full of-
AM: Yeah, not going to do it on my own.
JD: Right. So that being said, Jeremy is super honest and I like that about him. He's in a business similar to a mechanic. Like if somebody said, hey, your car needs 10 grand and work and all he did was fix a $3 fuse, you know no better and there's nothing you can do. So very similar in Septic, probably worse because there's not as many people that do it. And it's a crappy line of work, unintended. That being said, he's always been honest with me. He actually is a, we're counterpart companies, I guess. He uses us for dumpsters a lot. I use him at the house for Septic. But he's very honest.
A buddy of mine is not in the best of health and he ended up calling his preferred Septic company. And they told him it was going to cost $15,000 for a new drain field and Septic tank and all this stuff. So my buddy calls me and says, hey, I know you know everybody. Do you know anybody in the Septic world? And I'm like, yeah, Jeremy, what's up And he's like, oh, well, the guy we use sold us $15,000. He's like, dude, I can't afford that. Like, I probably lean towards selling this house before being able to pay for that or refinance it. I don't know. I don't know how I'm going to pay for that. So I said, call Jeremy. He'll take care of you. I said, if it is $15,000, it might only cost $12,000 from him or $10,000.
AM:Yeah.
JD: But call Jeremy. So Jeremy goes out and looks at the system, looks at the issues, knocks on the door about an hour later and says, hey, it's fixed. And my buddy heart drops. He's like, “oh my God, this guy just did $10,000 in work. I don't have any way to pay him. Like, I don't, I don't, oh my God.”
AM: Yeah.
JD: And, you know, he says, hey, what does it cost? And Jeremy not thinking about it was like, I'll bill you. I'll just send you a bill, you know, we'll figure it out. So my buddy calls me immediately and is like, “hey, I don't know what this guy is about to charge me. Yeah. I'm like literally freaking out right now because I have no idea what he did.”
AM: Yeah.
JD: I have no idea. And so I called Jeremey and I said, “hey man, what did you do? What is it going to cost? Omar is freaking out a little bit. He's like, oh, it was $275. He said $275.” He's like, “yeah,” I was like, “what was it? He was like, it's the pipe. The pitch was wrong. I fixed it. It should be fine. If it's not, let me know. I'll come back out. I'll fix it a little more. He's like, I won't even charge him to come back again. I just fixed it the best I could because I was kind of in a rush.” And I said, oh man, like, that's awesome. Because he was like losing sleep over having to put 15 grand out. And Jeremy further said, listen, if in fact it had to happen, there wouldn't be 15 grand, it'd be like 9,500. I was like, okay, well, that's better. And he's like, and “listen, also just to be clear, it's not because it's your friend, it's how I do things. If the 275 repair didn't work, I would apply the 275 toward the 9,500.” I'm like, “tell me more.” So I ended up talking to him one day. And what he'll do is if he says, hey, I think I can fix it, and it'll be 2 grand. And if I can't fix it, it'll be 9,500. Obviously, you're going to try the 2 grand because why wouldn't you hoping to save the other 7,500? What he doesn't tell you is if the 2 grand doesn't work, you only owe him the difference of 9,500. He doesn't take the 2 grand. And he says within a year, if within a year, I can't fix that and it work, then I'll apply the 2 grand, for example, to the difference. And I'm like, “man, that's very solid of you because most people would take that 2 grand and be like, yeah, I told you it was 9,500. Also, it's been 6 months, prices went up. Now it's 12 grand, you know, like that's not the norm.”
And in his business, again, like getting a second opinion is everybody stays within reason as far as pricing is concerned near each other. And he's in a business to where nobody's going to argue. Nobody's going to say, hey, man, like, I'll just do it myself. That's not, it's not normal. You know, again, where the car example is, you know, you could go on YouTube and almost figure it out. With Septic, not so much. You need a VAC truck, you need a lot of things. So I like Jeremy a lot for what he does. He's local, he's very successful. He's three generations in on Septic. He's a good dude. So I would say Jeremy, I'm sure I'm missing some other people. I apologize for not mentioning you, but Jeremy has his stuff together.
AM: Yeah. Shout out Jeremy. And shout out to you. This has been so wonderful. And thank you so much. I wish you all the best. I love all of the stories that you're sharing. And I think from what I've known from this one hour with you is just like the way that you lead. It's almost like it's inherent to you. Like you're not even thinking about it. You're just like, you got to do the right thing. And I think that that is such a good example for folks, whether it's like within business or just being being a human out in the world.
JD: Yeah. So with with how we started, I guess I probably should have mentioned it, but how we started with what we were doing and then proceeding into dumpsters. Dumpsters, once we accidentally fell into dumpsters, I urge you. It's actually comical to call your just local dumpster company. I would say 8 out of 10 are going to sound annoying that you called them, which is really weird. And they're just going to try to rush you off the phone and tell you what you know. Tell us what you want. Tell us where you want it. And if you don't know and you're not quite sure and you've never rented a dumpster, they don't have time for you. We did that different. We made sure that we are a one stop shop. Whether you're a contractor that's a quick, hey, Josh, 123 Happy Street and even another 20 talk to you later. Or whether you are completely unaware of how dumpsters are measured, what they cost, what it takes, what happens, where it's going. And what's really funny is the most profitable guys are those contractors that don't have time to sit there and talk to me. They just want to get a dumpster picked up and returned or a dumpster delivered or a dumpster or whatever.
The time we spend is honestly on the least profitable clients, the ones that are needing an hour to coach them through what they may need. And they're only going to rent one dumpster probably in their whole life. But it doesn't matter whether you are a $100 customer or a $10,000 customer, we're going to treat you the same. And it kind of goes back to the first of the whole good and bad news stuff. If I treat you good and you're a $100 client, maybe your uncle's a million dollar client and you go tell him about it. And then he's like, man, let me call this really nice guy who spent the time and was patient and coached you through this. I'm going to call that guy. The people who rush the people off the phone, their bad news travels much faster.
AM: And your reputation is the most valuable word of mouth.
JD: Yeah, yeah, 100 percent. We try to word of mouth, obviously Google reputation, too, but word of mouth and just reputation in general. We've grown from where we started to where we thought we were going to go to where we are now. We've grown so much just because of the reputation and the fact that people know that when they call us, we're going to get it done. Like, we're not going to tell you we're going to get it done and just do it whenever we want.
AM: Thank you so much to everyone who has subscribed through the Patreon. These subscriptions are what fund the project and keep it going. There's so many different tiers available starting at $1 and $2 a month, and each tier gets you access to different kinds of things. So, for example, the $2 a month listener tier gets you access to interviews on Thursday. So early access to the audio and video versions of interviews that are out every Thursday, typically in the evening time. Your $3 a month member tier adds on these weekly Between the Interviews series on Mondays. That's what gave a little sneak peek. There are some early examples of those Between the Interviews that were posted on the main feed so that folks could kind of get a lay of the land and what's behind the motivation for this project. Those reflection episodes are still going every Monday and the folks in that member tier still have access to those things. The VIP tier has access to merch. I really do my best to give back to those that are joining. So check the show notes for the link to the Patreon. There's a lot there. If you're interested in any of the behind the scenes of how this project gets made from the back ends, like if you are someone who is interested in starting anything that looks similar to this, whatever your topic is, I am really open, just like I'm asking these folks that I'm interviewing about the mistakes that they made. I do my best to be very open about the mistakes and the lessons learned that I made, plus the resources that really helped me, the people that I'm looking up to.
Like, yeah, why not share my experience there? So, that's all available there. And just in general, I truly want to hear from you, so please, please message me on Instagram, message me on the Patreon, leave me a review that tells me what you think of it, email me your thoughts and your suggestions, including the things that you don't like. I got a tough skin, people. You can tell me the things that I need to improve upon. I am very open about early days, early stage, that this entire project and almost everything that goes into it is brand spanking new to me. And I am learning, you know, not just from these leaders that I'm interviewing, but I'm learning about the technical side of things, I'm learning about social media, I'm learning about advertising, like I'm learning about all of these types of things, and I am happy to share what I have learned as well. And so I want your feedback. I want the things that I'm not talking about, that you want to hear about, that is within this Capitalism for Good space. So reach out to me. I want to hear from you. I truly do. Send me your thoughts and I'll do your research. Like I said, I really am listening and kind of creeping to see where people are coming from, where you're located, what your interests are. And so if there's an industry or an interest of yours that I haven't hit on, that you are really interested, like some of your thoughts, if you have a question that is related to this Capitalism for Good project, I'll do the research here. So send them on over. I'm already doing it. I might as well do something that fits what you're asking for and what you're looking for.
Finally, my last little plug and shout out here is if you are interested in working together to build better community, check out the business website for CFG. It's at capitalismforgood.com. There's also a link down in the show notes. And whether you are interested in starting or expanding a community give back initiative with your company, if you want to play in a volunteer day and you don't want someone that's already your full-time employee taking away from their normal job to do it, if you're looking for a charity partner within a specific space or that aligns cleanly with your company values and your philosophy, or if you want to perhaps talk about some education around the value of community partnerships and what that can add to your business if done well and done efficiently and effectively, I would love to help. So I'd be happy to get on a phone call, see how CFG can help you with your community goals. Once again, would love to hear from you if you've got thoughts, needs, questions, interests anywhere within that space.
I truly believe that we are stronger when we work together and that we can truly make a really impactful, positive future if we just put all our brains and our skills together and leverage those things to build better community. So, all right, that's enough. Let's go leave this place better than we found it.
