Intro: Coming to you live from the Business RadioX studio. It’s Franchise Marketing Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio. And this is gonna be a good one. Today we have the founder and CEO with JunkStart Junk Removal, Daniel McCarty. Welcome.

Daniel McCarty: Thanks, Lee. Excited to be here.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about JunkStart. How are you serving folks?

Daniel McCarty: Yeah. So JunkStart. We are the first and only paid by junk removal company in the country. We’re fast growing franchise system and super excited to get to, uh, to share some more with you here today.

Lee Kantor: So what’s the backstory? How’d you get involved in this line of work?

Daniel McCarty: Yeah, I, uh, I actually came out of the waste industry. I’ve been in the trash business my whole life. Uh, so, you know, I was, we here in San Antonio had a family business in the waste space. A couple of years ago, I was looking around, trying to figure out, you know, another business idea. I love the junk removal space and decided to get into it. And I launched a junk. Start with the idea that, hey, I’m going to copy the way it’s always been done. I’ll just kind of hire some consultants and go the tried and true route. Did that about three years ago. Um, a couple years in, just, you know, found that, you know, a lot of the way that the industry works based off volume based pricing, I thought was a little bit sketchy and unfair. We were struggling with, you know, we didn’t have any differentiation. There was some things about the model I didn’t like. And so knowing that, you know, the key insight came when you go to a landfill, you run over scales and you’re just charged by by the pound. So I always wondered why everyone in our industry normally charges by volume or how much, you know, room the items take up in a truck. And so we embarked on a process of figuring out how to put scales on all of our trucks, which is now patent pending unless your property we have. And we became the first and only pay by weight junk removal company.

Lee Kantor: So then you were kind of leaning into the transparency. That was an important component to differentiate yourself.

Daniel McCarty: Yeah. 100% the way the the model traditionally worked was you’d call in for a price. We would say, you know, they would say, hey, let’s just do a free onsite estimate. I don’t know how much it’s going to cost, but it’s ultimately just based off of how much room it takes up in my truck. And so they’re basically trying to get you to block up two hours of your time for a crew to come out. They do like the hard onsite sales, kind of like a used car buying experience. They would look around and go, oh, that’s gonna be like 500 bucks. It’s like half a truck. It always felt super arbitrary because it was based off really what you and the guy in your driveway ended up haggling it out and ultimately accepted. And so I always hated that as a business owner, you know, I didn’t want my, my, my employees to gouge anyone. I also didn’t want to, to under quote and to lose money on jobs. And so I always felt like it was there was just no transparency. It was really just based off of what, you know, the 22 year old in your driveway kind of thought it might take up in your truck. And so when we figured out how to put the scales on the trucks, it’s kind of like the deli counter. It’s like, you know, it’s gonna be whatever, $0.50 a pound. Um, here’s the weight estimate. But ultimately it’s just based off of the, the pounds we remove and that’s how we’re charged at the landfill. So we felt like that was that was most fair and transparent.

Lee Kantor: So from the customer standpoint, how much difference in money is that?

Daniel McCarty: Yeah. The big for customers is we we believe that we save our customers like on average of like 10 to 15%. But really what we’re doing is like removing the risk of getting screwed, right? Um, so if you called a junk removal guy and he’s a volume based, he could get there and, you know, he could quote you $800 or he could quote you 80 bucks for a job. Like you just have no idea what he’s gonna throw out that day. Um, and so what we do is like, we’ve got the tried and true, like, here’s our per pound price. Um, so like we’re kind of removing the risk of you getting gouged or screwed by someone that’s just trying to, you know.

Lee Kantor: Double and you kind of know up front what it’s going to be. It’s whatever the weight is times the amount that you’re charging per pound. Like it’s math at that point.

Daniel McCarty: Yes. Yep. Exactly. And we can help you estimate that. Obviously the weight it’s going to be. But yeah, ultimately it’s just based off of the math.

Lee Kantor: So then that makes life easier for the person in the truck because they don’t have, they’re not kind of having to have negotiating skills. They just have to put the stuff on the truck and it is what it is.

Daniel McCarty: Yeah, 100%. We used to have to hire folks that were hard working, safe drivers. They’d also you’d have to teach them on site sales. So they had to learn how to, you know, estimate and do rebuttals. And, and then they’d have to do all the loading and lifting. And it was just asking a lot of any one person. And so now we kind of remove that, you know, on site sales from them. You know, here’s the, the scales do most of the work, right? You’re just getting to be, you know, take care of our customers, work hard, load all the items safely and efficiently. And we don’t have to kind of stress that hard on site sales techniques anymore.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you did this, I mean, it sounds obvious in hindsight, I’m sure, because that’s how you your business would run if you didn’t weigh it there. It’s going to be weighed at some point. So like, all you’re doing is moving the weighing to the beginning instead of the end. Um, how has the competitors handled this? Is this something where it’s going to become table stakes? Now, if you want to be in this kind of business. The customers are going to understand like, well, how much is it weigh? I don’t, I see how big of a space it’s going to take up, but I want to know, you know, they’re going to be more educated, right?

Daniel McCarty: Yeah, we we see for sure. Like we’re still the, the first and only here in the United States. We’ve got, you know, patent pending around some of the technology that we’ve done. Um, so, you know, from, from a competitor landscape, I think the really big guys want to, you know, I won’t say their names, but all the big guys, you know, I think they’re, they’re happy with the way it’s always been done, right? They’ve built a big business. They like the on site sale. They like the way it’s always been done. I know when we switched over to our trucks it was a tremendous, uh, investment, right? How to get rid of all of our trucks? Because, uh, you know, the old trucks, the way, you know, the other ones are built wouldn’t work for this new pay by weight system. So I’d invest an entirely new fleet. Um, had to figure out how to put, you know, this weighing system together and on the trucks. And so it was a tremendous investment to figure out. And so I think that’s going to keep a lot of the other brands sort of on the sideline to try and, uh, you know, do it themselves. Um, so yeah, I think, I think for the foreseeable future, we’ll be, um, kind of in this, this blue ocean where we’ll be the only ones playing in it. And over time, uh, you know, we’ll see if customers start demanding it, then, uh, maybe down the road. That’s something that, that the industry has to evolve to.

Lee Kantor: Now when you’re, uh, when you made the switch, did you, this was kind of a leap of faith. You assumed this was going to work, or were you able to kind of beta test it in a limited way, at least to kind of ballpark the weight before you had the changing of the fleet?

Daniel McCarty: Yeah. Um, I’m not that smart. Lee so, uh, definitely I had a, I had a lot of my mentors and peer groups and telling me, hey, how do you, you know, how can you test this? And I just, I talked to a couple people. Everyone kept being like, oh, I can’t believe that’s not the way it’s always been done. Right? I got enough validation where I didn’t ultimately test it. I said, screw it. I jumped all the way in. I got rid of our entire, our entire fleet. I bought entirely new fleet. I, we, we jumped in with, with two feet. We didn’t start with a minimum viable product. We went all the way in which, you know, in hindsight, you know, to entrepreneurs listening, like it’s smart to, it’s smart to test and iterate. And, uh, you know, I would have saved me a little bit of gray hair for sure. But we decided like, I knew it would work intuitively. And, and so we launched forward without probably testing it in a more, uh, risk adjusted way.

Lee Kantor: So how quickly was the, um, customer kind of the, what did the market tell you and how quickly once you made that change? Was it dramatic?

Daniel McCarty: It was dramatic. Like right away our booking rates went up, our conversion rates went way up. Um, like it just made more sense to customers on the phone. We were getting higher review velocity. Um, you know, when we first started, we were priced at whatever, I guess it was a pretty low number. And, and every month I, I had to go up on price from whatever, $0.40 a pound to 50 to $0.60 a pound. Just trying to find, you know, what we needed to charge to, to, to hit the margin number we needed. And every time I went up in price, our conversion rate just kept getting better. Uh, which was one of those weird, counterintuitive moments. It was, I think we were just getting better at explaining our value proposition. But also, you know, you go to business school and you hear, hey, you raise prices, your conversion rate falls. Right? What we were doing the opposite, I think because we had so much, um, just customers intuitively understood it like that. We were raising our prices and we were increasing our conversion rate along the way. And that really kind of, uh, let me, you know, in on the, okay, I really think this is like a great value proposition that the market really, um, it really likes.

Lee Kantor: When they’re buying your services, it’s something that they’re even have an idea of what it should cost. Like, is this something that is, you know, as long as it makes sense, then they’ll buy it. It isn’t something that they’re like, well, you’re charging X and over here is, you know, X -10%. Like it’s hard to for them to price things, right? Comparative pricing.

Daniel McCarty: Yeah, 100%. That’s one of the things I like about junk removal is it’s not like a super understood pricing. Like I came from the ready mix concrete business, right? Family was in that for a long time. And like everyone knew, you were selling to a concrete subcontractor that knew down to the penny what a yard of concrete should cost, right? So if you’re $0.01 above or $0.01 below, you’re going to lose the whole job. Whereas a junk removal, no one really knows what junk removal costs. Right? And so you’re able to be like, hey, we can be there in two hours. Here’s the rough, you know, here’s what it’s going to be. And as long as it’s when it, you know, seems fair to the customer, you do a great job, right? It’s not like you’re going to call around and, uh, you know, get ten bids and get a super interested or a super educated consumer just because it’s usually a lower ticket. It’s not a $20,000 roof, right? So you’re not trying to get a bunch of formal bids together. It’s usually like a, you know, if you can do it on time, um, good service. Um, you know, fair price, it usually works out.

Lee Kantor: And they’re not, it’s not like they buy this every month. Like this is something that happens once in a while.

Daniel McCarty: Yes. I think, uh, you seems like you’re poking up this tree Lee. But like, I think a lot of entrepreneurs, like we think that we’re selling gas, like everyone in the city knows what a gallon of gas costs, and it’s on neon’s all around the city. And you’re like, oh my God, if I raised my prices like 1 or 2.5%, right, like the whole market’s gonna crumble and hate me in reality. Yeah, you’re selling, you know, I don’t know, like a, a tub of mayonnaise, right? You’re like, how much is mayonnaise? Is it? You could tell me $2 or $4 or $6. I don’t really know what it is, but like, I get it every now and then. And, you know, as long as it’s the brand, I usually like, like that’s what I buy. And so I feel like, you know, as entrepreneurs, a lot of times we go around thinking we’re selling gallons of gas in reality, like, you know, if you position it the right way, you’re you normally have a little more pricing power. Um, or at least, you know, the customer’s not as educated.

Lee Kantor: And the, and the customer, just once they want it to make sense. Like it just has to make sense. And you’re giving them a very simple way for it to make sense. So I think that’s brilliant.

Daniel McCarty: Yeah. Fair, fast and easy. That’s like the, the brand pillars we have, uh, like, we just want it to be fair, fast and easy. And if, you know, customers come to us and they feel like, you know, we check those three boxes, we’ll be in a, in a good spot.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you were scaling, did you do these changes before you were franchising or did, did you did you already have some? Okay. So that, I mean, that was a, that’s a big deal. Because if you had done this after you had sold some franchises, that would have opened up a really big can of worms.

Daniel McCarty: Yeah, 100%. I know I talked to some of my entrepreneur friends like I had when I first started. I had the, the vision to build a large giant franchise brand and I was going to do it volume based like everyone else. And and I often think about, uh, you know, just how lucky I was that we, we made this pivot and found our way. Um, before we decided to start franchising, um, this pay by weight model as opposed to, I mean, even if we had only two or 3 or 5 franchisees and then try to change the whole model, right. That would have been a huge, um, you know what? So super thankful. All in good time. Right? Um, it’s all worked out for the best. Um, that we didn’t, you know, immediately launch out of the gate, uh, full steam ahead.

Lee Kantor: But once you made this change and you saw how well it was being received, then it was probably okay, now it’s game on, right?

Daniel McCarty: Yeah, 100%. It was like, hey, here’s the things like pricing power. What about margin structure? Um, we went from almost no commercial revenue to now over half our business is, is B2B reoccurring commercial work. And those are really like kind of, you know, from an opportunity standpoint, I wanted to make sure we had pricing power, uh, you know, and then we can get that reoccurring work that’s kind of offline. It’s not 100% beholden to, to Google advertising, right? And, you know, it lets you kind of build a big, sizable business in your local market. And those were kind of the things I’d hoped this pay by weight pivot would help us check off. And it checked all those things off in spades. And so that really, you know, led us to be like, okay, now’s now’s the time. We spent the years getting all the playbooks in order, the operating systems, like, you know, now here we got the pay by weight differentiation and like, here we go. So it was, it all came together.

Lee Kantor: So how did the B2B, like, where did you find a niche? There are certain B2B clients were easier to find rather than, you know, hoping somebody, you know, needs to sell their house and get rid of all the bunch of stuff.

Daniel McCarty: You know, what, what our, we do really well with property managers like apartments. And so I’d be lying to you if I told you I knew this before we did the pivot. But if you’re a volume based, you show up and you go to a property manager who’s busy and you’re like, hey, we can like remove some of your, your stuff and we just charged by how much room it takes up in our truck. Like their eyes glaze over, like it just doesn’t compute in their brain. They’re like, well, I don’t want to, like, negotiate with you on, on like, every time you’re going to come in here and tell like we’re going to figure it out. And so what happened when we switched to pay my way and we just go, hey, here’s your, you know, you know, whatever property owner, like here’s your standard rate chart. It’s x per pound. Um, and we give them, you know, kind of the rate sheet and like it just totally, for whatever reason clicked in their brain. It makes more sense to them. It’s understood like their invoicing and accounting team understands it. Their bosses understand it. Like if it’s a little bit higher bill, that means they removed higher, you know, more stuff. And for whatever reason, like it all mentally clicked in these property managers minds. And yeah, we went from almost no B2B revenue to, yeah, it’s a giant part of our business now. And it’s really, I think that that core psychological, like, uh, switch up with the way we priced, um, really unlocked the market, which yeah, I definitely did not. Um, I didn’t totally predict that, you know, I wasn’t, all, you know, all knowing before we made the pivot. But that was a great, um, a great thing that happened.

Lee Kantor: And then that’s one of the benefits. The franchisee gets that Intel now that you now, they now have a playbook on how to, um, approach those kind of people in their market.

Daniel McCarty: Yeah, 100%. We’ve got a great, uh, commercial sales team, uh, that we, that we have here. And so like part of our, you know, initial training and ongoing training, weekly coaching calls, um, CRM systems of, you know, how to go, who to go knock on the door to, what are you going to say? What’s the drip sequence like? Um, how do you get that first job and then the second, right? How do you get the reoccurring work built? So we’ve got, um, really great playbooks and trainings on, on how to do all of that in your local market.

Lee Kantor: So what is that ideal franchisee look like? Who is that person in your mind right now?

Daniel McCarty: Yeah, we call it a hell taker, right? Uh, you probably empire builder or some people say, but but for ours, it’s like, uh, it’s a hill, a hill taker. So we want to be the largest and most trusted junk removal company in the galaxy, right? Like that’s just the vision of the brand. Like we want to be the biggest and the best. Um, and so like, we got to be the biggest in each of our individual markets if we want to be the biggest, you know, in the world. And so, uh, like if you’re in Atlanta and you’re like, hey, I think I look around, I see the other brands, like, I think we could be the biggest, like, you know, I want to build a really big, you know, durable business that has enterprise value. That is not just me in one truck and an employee on the side. Like, no, it’s multiple trucks you’re scaling, you’ve got a commercial sales team, you’re focused on leadership and scaling up your business. Like those are the people we want to talk to you, the hill takers that understand like, um, hey, this is a great, you know, it’s not going anywhere. We’ve got this tailwind from AI, right? It’s not like it’s going to get disrupted from, from robots anytime soon. It’s probably gonna get easier to operate as the years go on. Like I want to take, you know, this pitch and build a real sizable business with this model. Um, like those are the folks we’re looking for that really want to, to grow something big, not kind of like a side hobby or hustle. Like we’re looking for folks that want to build a big business.

Lee Kantor: So are these people like, are they the typical franchisee in the sense that, oh, they just got laid off or they retired and looking for something else? Like, are they that person or are they kind of in the industry now and maybe are frustrated and are looking to make kind of a move to something more that’s their own?

Daniel McCarty: Yeah, I think I think it’ll be, um, you know, it’ll be some folks that either they’re tired of corporate America, maybe they just got laid off with some, you know, new AI sweeping job, job loss, or maybe it’s, um, you know, entrepreneurs that, that have been in business before, but like really understand the value of differentiation. Um, I think for young start, you know, I’ve been in business when you’re, when I have a differentiation and I’ve done it where we are different, right? And it’s a night and day difference on a value proposition. Uh, just, just life is so much easier when someone says why you, and you can give a valid, like differentiated answer. Um, you can’t do roofing any differently. You can’t really do plumbing any differently. Like, but we can say, hey, we’re the first and only pay by weight junk removal company. Um, and we’re looking for entrepreneurs that, you know, existing business owners, you know, I think can see the value in that if they come from like a real, you know, commoditized service and, and also kind of those corporate refugees that want to, you know, take, take matters into their own hands, control more of their own destiny and build a big business, um, that, you know, employs great people and makes an impact on their community.

Lee Kantor: Now when you’re, when you’re going into a local market, I would imagine that the, the price per pound is different in each market based on what, what the situation is in each market. Do you help them kind of figure that out?

Daniel McCarty: Yeah, 100%. We’ve got great, uh, we’ve got great frameworks and worksheets to help them with that. It just relates on, you know, their local operating cost of disposal, labor, uh, drive time, stuff like that. And then we come up with a really nice, uh, you know, pricing system for their individual market.

Lee Kantor: So there’s a JunkStart algorithm that helps them with pricing.

Daniel McCarty: Yeah, More or less. Yeah. Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: And, uh, so what do you need more of right now? How can we help you?

Daniel McCarty: Yeah, we’re just, uh, we’re getting out and spreading the good word. We just, uh, we launched really in, you know, in earnest at the beginning of the year. Uh, just brought on our first franchisee in Omaha. Super excited to have, uh, them just about to launch in the next couple weeks. Um, and so yeah, talking to a bunch of folks and looking to bring on, uh, some more people. I think this system, I see it kind of capping out at about 150, maybe 200 franchise owners that’ll, that’ll take up and absorb the whole, the whole market. We’re looking for kind of fewer, but larger operators. Um, I think some of our, uh, I’m not looking for 400, you know, one truck operators, right? We want 100, 150 sort of multi truck operators that want to build, uh, you know, a big business. So we’re excited. Um, and yeah, we’re just trying to spread the good word about jumpstart, uh, you know, pay by weight revolution and what we’re building here at the brand.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, what’s the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Daniel McCarty: Yeah, just like jump start franchising.com. Um, you could, you know, on LinkedIn, Daniel McCarty jumpstart, you could find me, uh, Twitter or X, whatever it’s called now as well. I’m pretty active on that. Um, but yeah, if you’re interested at all, you can, you know, hit, hit the, hit the website and fill out a form and we’ll be, you know, a free team will be in contact.

Lee Kantor: Now are you looking to start in certain regions and expand from there or is it kind of, you know, hey, give us a call and we’ll figure it out wherever you are?

Daniel McCarty: Yeah. Right now we’re focused on I played football in college, right. So like I used college football analogies, but like really like SEC country, right? So like the tried and true basically core southern markets from probably Nashville, Charlotte down through Florida, over through, uh, Texas, uh, and really Phoenix is probably as far west as we want to go right now. So trying to lock in that core Sunbelt market, you know, Denver, Dallas, Houston, uh, Orlando, Nashville. Lana. Like we have some of the really great just booming, uh, towns, you know, territories still open. So we’re trying to lock that in before we go up to the, the east northeast and like the west Coast, uh, just to try and, uh, you know, keep, keep our wits about us. You know, I don’t think we want to go into, uh, those, those markets too soon while we still got a lot of open territory, uh, in, in the southern markets.

Lee Kantor: Well, Daniel, congratulations on all the momentum you’ve got going right now. And it sounds like you have a really good differentiator in the space. So, uh, congrats on that. That’s not easy to do.

Daniel McCarty: Thank you Lee, I appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Franchise Marketing Radio.