From Homeless to $50K/Month With This Simple Service⏐Ep. #277

Chris Koerner (0:00)

What would you do if you were broke, 35 years old, just went to prison and just got out of rehab and you need to make money? Well, you start a junk removal business. That's what Matt did. And today he's making $50,000 a month with 35% profit margins. My favorite parts about this story are his marketing methods. They are old school, but they work. Anyone can do these marketing methods to start any service business and get their phone ring off the hook. So if you have any interest in starting a business with very low startup costs, very high margin, very approachable, with a zillion ways you can market it, you're going to love this episode. So from rehab to broke to prison, I know I'm messing up the order here to working in a deli, making sandwiches to making $50,000 a month with your hauling business.

Matt Vick (0:49)

That's correct.

Chris Koerner (0:50)

That's inspiring. That's impressive. OK, I got to hear the story. So you get out of jail, you get out of rehab, and you start to see that there's a need for junk removal, right? And that kind of plants the seed, right?

Matt Vick (1:02)

Yeah, 100%.

Chris Koerner (1:03)

What do you do from there?

Joni (1:04)

Well, he started junk removal, you know, as a side hustle, because he was working at Safeway, making $15 an hour. And when you are having to restart your life again, when you're 35 years old, you know, you're really starting from scratch. So, you know, he started it as a side hustle and really had no idea how much money is in the trash business. He just wanted to make an extra $2,000 a month. That's all he wanted, just to be able to, you know, not just make ends meet, but $15 an hour, you're barely making ends meet. So you definitely aren't saving any of that. So he started it as a side hustle with just a beat up pickup truck. You know, he was working nights at Safeway, and then he would, you know, get off at like eight in the morning. And that's when he would start picking up people's trash. And I remember that he would like leave at one o'clock in the morning. And he was, you know, pulling this little utility trailer that we eventually was able to add to our truck. And he was pulling that out quietly because we live in an apartment complex and hooking that up to the back of his truck so he could like take it to work at 2 a.m. so he can haul junk after work. So it definitely isn't an overnight success. And it was hard work and dedication. And just really that hunger of needing to change and doing whatever it takes to make it happen. So that's how it got started.

Chris Koerner (2:36)

That's amazing. So how did you get your first customer, Matt?

Matt Vick (2:39)

So the first customer came from Craigslist. I did a free post on there in the labor section. And I got a phone call from a realtor. She gave me a call. I went over there and there's a bunch of trash inside of the garage. So I underbid the job. I said, I'll do the whole job for $200. So I loaded up my pickup truck. I'm heading to the dumps. And I remember thinking, do I have enough money to cover the dump fees? Because I was so broke at the time. And I actually did. I got on the scale. It was like $100 for the dump fee. So I made $100, but my is the gas and stuff. So I didn't really make that much money, but I popped my junk removal cherry that day.

Chris Koerner (3:19)

Okay. You saw the light of entrepreneurship. Had you ever done anything for yourself, anything entrepreneurial before that?

Matt Vick (3:27)

Not really. Tell you the truth. The only thing I ever did was sell drugs and sell CDs in a parking lot.

Chris Koerner (3:32)

Okay. And you were 35 when you started this, right?

Matt Vick (3:35)

So I was 35 years old.

Chris Koerner (3:36)

Yeah. Okay. So that first Craigslist ad gets you your first customer. How do you get your next 10 customers?

Matt Vick (3:42)

So pretty much what we did was I stopped at the dollar store, bought some candy dishes, ordered some business cards off of Vista Print. And we hit up every single real estate office in Sonoma County and dropped off candy dishes, introduced ourselves, gave them business cards, and let them know what we did. And that started getting realtors on the team that way.