635: $1000/mo Renting Out Plastic Bins: Starting a Box Rental Side Hustle

22:20Why didn't I know about you before? And she introduced us. There's apparently there's like meetups of interior designers and there's like there's like these conventions for like organizers, which I would never have imagined. And they have a lot of business. A lot of people have big homes and discretionary income and they want to hire these people to make their pantries Instagram worthy. And, you know, what happens is that then translates into their office needs work, this needs work, their kids need work. So whether they move, remodel, get a design work done, get any renovations done. And we also do a lot of retail stores now, which just was from accident.

22:56There was a store that sold auto parts. A mom and pop store sold auto parts and machinery. And they were getting their floors redone. So they had to pack up everything off of their shelves and store it for two weeks while the floors got done. So they wanted our boxes because they thought the cardboard, everything's going to collapse, it's going to tear, it's not strong enough. And, you know, so there's just so much opportunity for using these boxes. That's not just for somebody moving from one house to another house. Gotcha. And did they find you through the website? They did. Okay. Was there anything specific that you did to help it in terms of local SEO ranking?

23:31I honestly just Googled like how to improve your search rankings. And I use Wix, which I guess wasn't very recommended, but it was cheap at the time and they had a package deal. And so I just, you know, would put keywords on our homepage and other pages and connect our socials. One business owner gave me a suggestion to you should allow people to directly have a booking request on your website rather than sending you an email or calling. Just put some form in there. How many boxes do you want? What do you want? All of that and send it to you. And that's been heavily utilized as well. So I'm really not sure what it is.

24:03I'm grateful for it. But Wix, too, also has an SEO checklist. Like, did you do this? Did you do this? Do this? So I've been working on that. I haven't hired anybody to do any of our website or technical stuff. Maybe I should. But it's been working so far. So far, so good. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Ten years ago, I would have been really hesitant to recommend Wix from an SEO standpoint. Just because a lot of their stuff was kind of dynamically loaded, hidden behind JavaScript in a lot of ways. They have improved quite a bit. And by virtue of being one of the few players in town, it sounds like, hey, look, you know, eventually you're going to trickle to the top of Google just by virtue of word of mouth and the on page factors that you do have in place here where it says, you know, if you need moving boxes in Sacramento and you want to rent them, here we are.

24:50Yeah, some of it is luck. Some of it is just doing what you can to be proactive about making sure you have the right content on your website. Now, how about the interior design? It didn't sound like you went to this conference, but it sounds like you were proactive about building those relationships, too. Yeah, it was once this first woman had reached out to us. She was really nice. And we didn't have Instagram until about two years ago. We just had a Facebook page. Again, I've never done any advertising, really. And she's like, you need to get Instagram so I can put you guys on my story. So we created an Instagram page.

25:24And she did. And that was great. She's like, look at these boxes. Look how great they are. They're so easy, eco-friendly. And she did a little spin on the dolly. And her friends found it. Like, wow, where are these? Who's the owner? Where do I find them? So that's the power of the community here. Is that it's just like they trust each other. They lean on each other. Even though they're in competition, right? They don't want somebody doing something that their clients think are really cool. And they don't offer it. Or they don't know anything about it. So we don't do a lot of moves with them. but we do a lot of, like I said, organizing projects.

25:56All right. This is CalBoxRental on Instagram. We'll link that up. We'll go check it out. What kind of risks are associated with this business? I mean, it seems pretty straightforward. Like it's a plastic box, but I don't know. Do you find any risk or liability here that people should be aware of? Yeah, it's a couple of things. I mean, one of the things that we did was, I mean, my first customer, we didn't have a rental agreement, right? So technically she could have just like kept the boxes or destroyed them and I would have no record. So she's like, I don't have any boxes. What are you talking about?

26:25But fortunately, she didn't do that. So it was after that, I was like, you know what? We should probably have something more than email to make sure customers are on the hook for this. So I went to, I think I went to the library and I looked up like, you know, those NOLO books and they have like how to write a contract. So I just Googled like how to have a rental contract and I would just put stuff in there that basically indemnified us for anything. If they were, if the boxes were dirty, if they were late, how much we would charge them. If they got hurt or if there's liquids in them, like we're not liable.

26:52So we basically made sure that the rental agreement had what are they renting from? What dates are they renting it? When are they due? And also payment information. So in the beginning days, we only took credit card. We had, you know, Square. It was like if I was meeting them, we would slide little thing on your smartphone. But now you can enter it manually. And now we've gradually moved since Venmo does business now. We primarily try to do Venmo, just keep all our transactions there. We also take PayPal. because the thing is like when I send a rental agreement to a customer we don't have any fancy docusign or anything like that they would have to enter in their credit card information onto the pdf and then send it back to me and that's not very secure so most of the time if they're really persistent on doing credit card which usually they are if they're like a company because they want that the points and all of that is we would do it over the phone so I would take their information over the phone and then once their rental is complete then I discard the information because one mistake I made was if somebody paid by credit card or whatever, and then they didn't return all of the boxes or they were damaged or something, I don't find out until somebody goes and cleans the boxes.

27:55So I would have to call them back and be like, we have to charge you this. And if I don't have the information on file, I don't have as much leverage. Okay. How did you find that cleaner person? Is this like an Airbnb short-term rental type of cleaner? Take a pressure washer to these things or spray them out? I used to do it most of the time. I mean, when I was here. And then, you know, since I've been back, I've been doing it. But now in the last few years, it's the same guy who does our deliveries. He's an employee of the moving company. And, you know, they have downtime. If they have one move or two moves a day, they're maybe done by three o 'clock.

28:26And he'll spend an hour or two cleaning the boxes. And he doesn't charge much. But it is work, right? Because it's like you have to clean each box inside and out. And the one of the sticky things, literally, Nick, is that people leave their labels on these boxes. So fortunately, they'll say like they'll put painter's tape, which is great, right? You can just tear it right off. But sometimes they'll put like, you know, like really adhesive stuff on these boxes, like and those are hard to take off. So we now provide dry erase markers for our customers. If they request them, they can just write it on the boxes.

28:59And then if they forget to do it, it'll just come off while we clean them. Oh, interesting. So the dry erase will just scrub off. Yeah, there's actually a pre-made smooth section of plastic on the boxes, on the side and on the top where they can put a label in. Like designed for that. Yeah, exactly. On the other risks, though, I would say that there is a concern that if a client, if a customer, you know, when you pick up your boxes, if you're not there doing it, you may not know. Because let's say somebody returns their boxes, they're going to be in stacks of five, right? They're not going to have every box just out on its own because you're just stackable.

29:29So if they go back to the warehouse and let's say a few are cracked or there's some that are really dirty or have hairs or dirt or something, who knows what they moved, right? You have to go back to the customer and you have to make a decision. Because if you call them and say, I'm gonna have to charge you$100 for cleaning or whatever, you're probably gonna put a bad taste in their mouth. Well, I didn't do that or I don't remember that. And now they may not write you a good review. They may not come back as a customer. They may not refer you. So you have to really play that accordingly. So I try to just judge it based upon my interaction with the customer.

30:01If it's one or two boxes that are dirty, I'm not gonna charge them. But if it's a consistent amount, we're gonna charge them. And also if they damage the boxes, we have to charge them. And the thing about that that's difficult is if I'm not there, if my business partner's not there and the delivery guy misses it, and let's say that that box that's already damaged goes to a new inventory, now that customer got something and I may have to charge them. So it's really making sure that we play our due diligence correctly to make sure that we're giving each customer clean, new, good shape inventory so we don't run into this.

30:34And we have a reminder on the rental agreement when their rental period is due, we also say, please make sure you wipe down the boxes and they're all empty and all the labels are removed. Most people listen to that. Some people don't, which is why we just clean boxes after each rental. Sure, got it. And you carry some sort of like general liability policy in case, I don't know, somebody cuts their hand open. It doesn't seem like there's a huge level of liability there, but you never know. Yeah, you never know. And that's the thing is like, Like, you know, I've toyed back and forth with bundling this with another LLC.

31:08But yeah, you definitely want to have business liability insurance because you never know. Let's say somebody, you know, like you said, hurts their hand on the box or, you know, they feel like they were charged for cleaning when it wasn't really dirty. So you just want to make sure you protect yourself in any case. I don't think this is a very high risk business at all. Now, if we were like helping them back and I had employees, then that's a different concern. But this is just them getting boxes delivered to their doorstep. They're then in their possession. And then we pick them up. I know. Compared to some of the other rental businesses that we were renting out cars on Turo, or we did an episode on renting out mobility scooters.

31:44Like, oh, you know, this thing had a mind of its own. It accelerated. It drove me into a ditch. There's other things that, you know, would definitely check the box for having more liability than a plastic tub. Yeah. And I am an object. more with gary in just a moment including collecting positive customer reviews managing the inventory and scheduling and his goals for the future of this business right after this a lot of side hustlers suffer from what if it is what if it doesn't work what if i don't have the skills what if i pick the wrong path but one thing 100 of our amazing guests have in common is they took their shot they faced down those what ifs and they got their answers through taking action.

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33:03Go to shopify.com slash side hustle. Shopify.com slash side hustle. One of the tools I personally see make a huge difference for business owners is Quo, formerly OpenPhone. It's the same great business phone system you've heard me talk about before, just with a new name. When you're running a business, you know that every missed call is a missed opportunity. So Quo, formerly OpenPhone, this is the number one business phone system that streamlines your customer communications. It works through an app on your phone or your computer. So no more using your personal number as your business line, no more carrying two phones around.

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34:16And if you've got existing numbers with another service quo will port them over and no extra charge. Whoa, no missed calls, no missed customers. You bet you're collecting reviews. This is going to be Google, Yelp, Facebook, any platforms that you've prioritized and anything proactive that you're doing to collect those reviews from happy customers? Yeah. So I, um, under my signature for our business email, I do have a link to both our Google page and also Yelp. So most of the time customers will leave it on their own, but I do make an effort. I think my business partner told me about this app called nice job or something like that, where it sends like a couple of texts to the customer.

34:53Hey, how was your experience? Write a review. So I just have like a template that I just text to the customers through our phone app. We use Google Voice. And so I would just ask them, like, how was your experience? Like, I would call them and say, hey, if it was good, like, would you mind leaving us a review? Most people are happy to do that. Some people are just like, you did great, I'll refer you. I don't leave reviews. And then some people that didn't have a good experience just don't answer me. They're just like, I'm not going to leave you a bad review, but I'm not going to talk about this anymore.

35:18Like, I just want to be done with it, which is fine. Like, right, it's everybody's right. But we're really fortunate in the people that have done left reviews. I mean, we have a five-star rating on Yelp and Google, a clean five-star rating, which is, it's really, I'm proud of that because after 12 years of business, right, you might have a disgruntled customer that was like, oh, they overcharged me, their boxes are bad quality, they were late on their delivery, or, you know, these boxes aren't that great anyways, or whatever, right? But fortunately, like, it's been pretty clean. Yeah, it's like a law of large numbers is bound to happen after you serve enough clients, somebody is bound to be unhappy.

35:51But that's great. I like this proactive follow-up to say, hey, how was your thing? And if you were, you know, giving me positive, would you mind just typing that same thing into the review platform of your choice? That'd be great. Yeah, exactly. You mentioned it just takes a few hours a week to run. Where does your time go in the business these days? Yeah, honestly, Nick, it's just a matter of answering requests by email and phone. So I'll get a phone call, get a voicemail, I'll get an email and they'll be like, they'll have some questions. When can I get the boxes? How many boxes do I need? How big are the boxes, etc.

36:22And then I help them kind of create a rental agreement and I'll do the scheduling. So I'll connect with my business partner and then he gets a rental agreement. He contacts the customer when they're able to deliver. And that's basically it. And then during the deliveries, I have a I have a spreadsheet of, you know, who's renting what during what time, what do they do? So we make sure we get them back on time. And that's really about it. I also spend a couple of hours a week creating those relationships in the industry. So if we've worked with people in the past, like, what are you seeing today?

36:50You know, would you like to do a custom promo code together? Do you want to do a, you want to collaborate on a social media post? You know, we'll have like specials like Spooktober, like this month, we're giving a free extra week of rental for anybody who rents with us. So we always just try to do something creative and, and just try to connect with people and those who are centers of influence to make sure that they are aware of us still, that we are still around and that we can work together. Got it. I was going to ask about the spreadsheet for inventory management, Because with a thousand boxes and people in different parts of town, you know, with different numbers of boxes, like that starts to become a little bit of a logistical challenge.

37:28But it is just a spreadsheet. You kind of have an idea of which, you know, how many are with which customer at what time and when they're supposed to come back. Yeah, that's exactly right. It's just a matter of where are these boxes? When are they due? And that's what we go based off. So if I get a rental request and I see that there's boxes due in a week, but they want them this weekend, I'll be like, well, they're not, we can deliver them as soon as this time. So I can see like which boxes are coming back when to make sure, because if a customer wants like 100 boxes, that's a lot harder to do if we are booked than if they want 50 boxes.

38:01But usually most of the time with the level of boxes we have now, I mean, we're not a crazy, you know, million dollar company, right? So we usually have the ability to do that. We're just the neighborhood box rental company here. Is there a target revenue number or fulfillment metric? Like how many are being utilized at any given time? Like, are there key metrics that you're tracking for this business? You know, it's just, did we do better than last year? Right. That's, that's what it is for me. I mean, I, I, I mean, it should be more. And I know there's been people on this podcast and show that are really like running lucrative businesses.

38:33But for me, it, this is not something that I can really scale nationally, right? Because it's very localized. And also a lot of people do it in other cities. And for me, I'm just happy doing like this is a this is an experiment to me, to be honest. Like I was 23. I was like, what risk do I have? I want to say that I started a business and I want to combine it with my passion for sustainability and zero waste. So I started it. And this now, I mean, it pays for basically all of my fun money. You know, I don't have to worry about, oh, man, I can't join my friends out to eat or go on this trip or buy a new paddleboard or whatever I want to do.

39:05Yeah, it pays for all of that. It's a side hustle. That's exactly what it is. And my hope is that it continues to grow. So more people use it and save cardboard boxes. And, you know, maybe we can do something else. But, I mean, we were recently in like a local magazine and there was a feature on us on Good Day Sacramento. So, you know, we try to just be good community partners and make sure that we continue to do well. Were you doing any proactive PR outreach for that or they somehow found you? They're like, hey, this is a cool story. I actually researched. There was a segment I saw in another local business.

39:37I was like, oh, they do that. That's a really cool segment they do. I mean, it's not a very, it's not obviously a national audience like the Today Show or anything. But yeah, you know, I reached out, I saw that there's a lady who had an email that did this. And I reached out to her and we went back and forth a few times. So, you know, hopefully we have a chance to do something. I think a lot of local side hustles have this, you know, PR play in their playbook, because especially if it's something that's a little bit, a little bit creative, a little bit different, like, you know, renting out moving boxes.

40:05It was like, oh, that's unique. Oh, you could turn that into a business. And they, you know, these publications like to feature, you know, local people and feel good stories. And they're kind of looking for angles like this, especially, oh, there's a sustainability play, or there's, there's some angle here that can weave into the story that they already want to tell. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, look, you know, local businessman, you know, does good or local side hustle. It's kind of, you know, how can you tap into what they're already looking to talk about. Yeah, 100%. Like, we have a really good community magazine.

40:34It's called Style Magazine. It's great. It's free. It's always got like cool little stories and tips from experts. But it's really great that it brings business owners, small business owners in the community to give advice or like they'll like they always have like business profiles. Why did you get into this business? You know, what made you get into this business? Why do you live here? Blah, blah, blah. And so you really get to meet the business owners behind your local coffee shop, your local auto mechanic, or whatever it might be. So it really kind of ties that together with their business.

41:02And to your point, gives a unique angle on people with that expertise, how they can help the community. Yeah. And if nothing else, hopefully a backlink, hopefully some social proof, you know, as seen on, you know, good day Sacramento or something. Yeah, exactly. So you may look, you know, this is local, we don't do cross country moves. Is there a geographic expansion? Is there a product skew expansion? Aside from just, we're going to ride the rising tide of interest and awareness in sustainable moving box rent. So there's a new category. This is something that more and more people become aware of it for moving or for storage.

41:39You're going to be a beneficiary of that. Is there anything else to pour some gas on the fire or say we're good with what we get? Obviously there always is, right? We can always get more inventory, rent a bigger space, have a bigger space, get more clients. But for this particular business, I don't anticipate us 10xing or becoming like a, you know, franchising different units or do anything like that. I mean, we have a really good name and our clients and community loves us and hope that as the population continues to grow, there's tons of more houses out here that we can continue to serve them.

42:11And there's more renting boxes. I'll be happy when renting boxes is more normal than buying cardboard boxes, right? That means that we were able to prove our concept. I don't know if or when that'll happen, but if people are like, oh, I got to rent boxes from and move, and they're like, oh yeah, where do you rent your boxes from? And that's like an actual normal conversation that happens. Then I'll be like, okay, we succeeded because we were the only ones, at least the first ones here, to bring rentable moving boxes to the Sacramento area. And now it's normal. Now it's something that everybody does.

42:42And that'll mean success. Very good. Well, I imagine you'll keep chipping away toward that goal. And I'm excited to see where you take it. It's been over a decade in the business and sounds like it's set up to be sustainable without a lot of time investment required to keep it growing. So very cool. Gary, thanks so much for stopping by. You are the author of Financial Fives. This is the top 325 ways to save, earn and thrive to retire before 65. You can find that at financialfives.com. The box rental business is calboxrental.com. If you want to check that out, check out what that Wix site looks like, calboxrental.com.

43:23Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for Side Hustle Nation. The number one tip is just try, just start something, right? Do something that's going to move the needle. That's all the best thing I can do because we can plan and research and talk to people. But I can tell you that unless I just told myself that I'm just going to go to Home Depot and buy these boxes. and you see that receipt and you see the box in the back of your car and sitting in your garage, you're like, okay, I need to do something, right? It's something to start that wheel turning, right? Buy that domain name, you know, reach out to somebody, whatever you need to do, pay somebody a hundred bucks to give you a really cool logo and slogan, whatever it means that whatever your idea is, just try something and start.

44:01Yeah, some kind of a forced action, you'll find that momentum breeds momentum. And there's some law of entrepreneurial physics where an entrepreneur in motion tends to stay in motion. It's just that, you know, is that zero to one to get that motivation to go do that first thing. And here we are 10, 12 years later, it's become a really cool side hustle that you built. A couple of takeaways for me before we wrap up. Number one is obviously this focus on partnerships and relationships, partnerships on the delivery and logistics side. And then on the relationship side, think about that strategic partner of who are your target customers already doing business with?

44:38How can you make them? And they're not a competitor, but they're an ally or potential referral source for you. We've talked about them as, you know, lead fountains instead of, you know, onesie twosie lead trickles. It's like, who might need this service again and again and again? I really like the focus there. And then the second thing is like, well, what else could I, could I rent out? Like thinking about something that checks this box, like pretty durable asset. Sure. Some of them are going to break, but the cost of each individual one is not a ton. It's something that could really have a long lifespan, long shelf life.

45:08I think that's really just an interesting one and something that, like you mentioned, is going to be, you know, more and more people become aware of it. And so you put yourself in a good position to capture some of that demand, just like Side Hustle Nation has captured a rising tide of interest in side hustles over the last decade. So I'm trying to see what gold rush can you sell shovels into almost. And, you know, the sustainability, zero waste is like a broader umbrella, maybe one of those to look into. So like we talked about, not the only thing that you can rent out for a profit. So make sure to grab your free listener bonus for this week.

45:38That's my list of 25 other unconventional rental ideas. You may be able to borrow some of Gary's playbook for on the marketing and partnership side. You can grab that for free at the show notes for this episode at side hustle nation.com slash Gary G A R Y or just follow the link in the episode description in your podcast player app, it'll get you right over there. Other rental episodes for consideration if you like this model. We talked about the mobility scooter guy. Love this episode. He's doing like three grand a month with a fleet of six or seven mobility scooters in LA. That is episode 564 with Lenny Tim.

46:12Fascinating episode. You know, relatively low startup costs, relatively quick to break even. And then it's then it's gravy. And then 428, you know, one of the episodes I refer people to most often, this is Steve Nadramia with his portable hot tub rental business. And not really that portable, but like portable compared to a, you know, a fixed, you know, hot tub that's not going anywhere, delivering these things in his pickup truck. And I think he had like 25 or 30 of them really, really cool, creative episode on the side from his teaching job. So 428 on the hot tubs 564 with Lenny on the mobility scooters.

46:46But big thanks to Gary for sharing his insight. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. You can hit up sidehustlenation.com slash deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend. So fire off that text message. Hey, check this out. Maybe we should do this in our area. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen. And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show.

47:15Hustle on.