145. How a Teen Started a $910K Junk Removal Business

0:00They say one man's junk is another man's treasure. What I know for sure is that you can make a lot of money by removing junk. If you don't believe me, then keep listening because you'll learn how even a high schooler can crush it in this niche. Here's some highlights from this episode. Why junk removal is a business you need to start in 2024. How to build a team of A players who are not afraid to get their hands dirty. And what's the secret of juggling your business and other pressing responsibilities. This is Ryan Atkinson and you're listening to the Upflip podcast where we uncover the secrets of building and running successful businesses.

0:30Our guest today is a true business prodigy. Kirk McKinney started his company, Junk Teens, while in high school. Today, Kirk runs a crew of 15 and pulls close to a million dollars per year. The best part, he did that all while keeping up with his education, now in college where he studies entrepreneurship. Kirk, welcome to the show. Super, super excited to have you on. Hey, how's it going? Super excited to have you here. I think our community really loves entrepreneurs and their stories, so I'm super excited to peel that back for you. So let's kind of run back a few years when you started Junk Teens.

0:59What kind of led up to this moment about three and a half years ago? Yeah, so it didn't exactly start at Junk Teens. It all started actually from a bike ride on accident when I discovered the dump. So like, I never actually knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I was on an adventure with my friend and we used to ride bikes all the time. So we were on this bike ride and then we rode past the dump and I was like, hey, what's that? That looks really cool. So we went to explore it. And when we went there, I found this really nice set of speakers that someone had thrown away. And I couldn't believe that someone had thrown those in the trash.

1:35So I asked the guy like, hey, could I keep these? And he was like, oh, yeah, of course. So I brought them home and they worked. I just couldn't believe it. You know, like I loved speakers, like my passion with speakers at the time. I really loved audio equipment and I just couldn't believe this. So after that, I kept going back to the dump and finding more and more speakers and audio equipment that people would throw away. And then that basically led from one thing to another until my entire bedroom was full of speakers and my mom was not happy. So she told me I had to throw it all away. I had to get rid of all of it, get it out of my room because my room looked like a dump.

2:16And I mean, at this time, I was working at a grocery store making$12 an hour. And I was like, I'd worked so hard riding all these speakers home on my bicycle to fill up my whole room. And I didn't want to just throw them away. So I thought outside the box, like, what could I do? That's when I sold my very first radio on Facebook marketplace for$50. And that$50 was my first money I ever made working for myself. And it was doing something that I actually loved. So then from there, I basically sold all the stuff in my room. And that$50 I made like round trip was probably less than an hour. It was more fun than I ever had working grocery store.

2:59So now I was thinking like, hmm, I wonder if I could do this full time. So I didn't know for sure. So it was like a little bit longer, maybe a month or so. I kept selling things, selling radios from the dump until I realized that it was consistent and I could quit my job and start doing that full time. So then it went from selling radios that I would find at the dump to then selling anything I could find at the dump. And then the guys at the dump saw my hustle and they really respected how hard I worked. I would go there every single day that they're open from the minute that the dump's open until they close.

3:33And then after I would help the guys at the dump clean up so that they would start to save me stuff too. Like I was just obsessed with finding junk because like you never know what you're going to find. And it could be like the one minute you're not at the dump could be like the$500 item that you miss out on. So it's almost like you just like want to be there every second. And it was really fun. Then eventually those guys would save stuff for me. I would sell stuff, but they actually invited me to start removing junk with them. And that's where I was originally introduced to junk removal. And this was around like 2020 or 2021 around this time.

4:09And basically, like we realized we needed a pickup truck to start selling more stuff and potentially do the like junk removal jobs on the side. The guys who showed me and let me work with them, they had no problem with us going and starting on our own. They actually supported us with that and they taught us the ropes. So we started doing little jobs on the side. Our first job was like moving a couch for like$100 took us like 20 minutes. And like after that, the rest was history. We just like we focused on junk removal because we made way more money than selling stuff. It was more reliable, more legitimate.

4:44And we honestly liked selling junk and removing it pretty much the same. So that's how we got into junk removal. I wanted to distill some stuff there before we drive into the whole like junk teens. I think what's really cool is like you originally started this by just like flipping stuff. And like some people view flipping as like, I don't know, that's an easy way when you're young. I did it four or five years ago, just flipping clothes and flipping anything. I think that's a really cool way to actually get started with anything entrepreneurship. It's building the foundation box of doing something.

5:11Yeah, exactly. And it all started from a passion too. Like I wasn't even looking for money. Like my mom was telling me to throw the stuff out, the stuff that I loved. I didn't even look at it like, oh, I have all this money in front of me, you know, but then it happened on accident. Yeah, I think that's really cool because you had that experience with like audio. And so yeah, then it progressed a little bit into like actually doing the junk removal and like the dumps and like doing that stuff. So let's talk about then these guys are supporting you to go start your own thing. And that leads into junk teens.

5:39Can you kind of take us to those moments of like finding junk teens after working with junk removal for a little bit? Yeah. So then now we had this pickup truck, my brother and I, and we slowly grew our business. We were knocking on doors, giving out business cards to everybody, posting on Facebook, you know, like other social media platforms like Nextdoor, like whatever we could do to just start our business from the ground up. We did that for the first year and we worked a lot, especially during the summer. We worked probably seven to seven, like most days out of the week. There's definitely some weeks where we worked like seven days a week, seven to seven, just like going crazy because this was our dream and we loved it and we really wanted to build this business.

6:19So we didn't have any employees for the first year. It was just me and my brother. And then in that first year, we grew from like that first pickup truck for$4 ,000 until like ending the year, we made 120K with that pickup truck, just me and my brother removing junk and doing some little landscaping and moving stuff on the side. But yeah, we made 120K that year. And then now it's 2022. And this is when Junk Teens was born because we realized like, okay, now we're taking our business to the next level. We can't keep going with K &J removal and disposal because that's like your local business, like mom and pop.

6:56Like we want to go a little bit bigger than that. So we realized we needed a company, but not even just that, a brand. And we realized like people were hiring us because we were teenagers. So that's why we named the company Junk Teens. And then we went all in, reinvested like all the money we made back into the company by buying our first dump truck. Nice. Yeah. Then we used that to make a little bit more money upgraded our pickup truck. So now this is 2022 and we had our first dump truck and a nicer pickup truck because also our first pickup truck, we beat it to death. The frame was cracked and like it was really a shitbox.

7:30So like we kind of like needed that upgraded truck too. So this is 2022. We worked with those two vehicles and we actually started hiring our friends now at this point. So maybe like I would go out in the dump truck and my brother, he still wasn't allowed to drive the dump truck. Yeah, I want to ask just to lay the groundwork here. How old are you guys in 2021, 2022? Because I think that adds some pretty good perspective to the audience. Yeah. We started when we were 15 and 17 years old. That's when we first bought the pickup truck. Now 2022, it's a year later. So it's 18 and 16. And in the beginning of 2022, my brother still didn't have a license.

8:09So I was the only one that could drive. We never hired anyone that was older than us either because like we just never really had anyone like that. It was just us. So then once my brother was able to drive, it was like he would go out in the pickup truck, I would go out in the dump truck and then we would each have a friend with us. And that's kind of how we ran the business for most of that year. Then towards the end of the year, end of the summer, we started to get bigger jobs and we would have like more friends come, you know, and like a lot of us running the business in 2022. But we ended off that year with those two vehicles making like 460k in sales.

8:46And it was also our first year experimenting with paid advertising too, but that was still mostly organic growth as well. Yeah, I want to talk about that because those are obviously huge numbers to hit one like in year two for any company that is a ginormous number to hit. I don't want to like ages of you, but like that's like a very impressive feat. That is incredible. So kudos to you for that. So how are you getting most of your sales and most of the clients in year two when you guys are getting like$460 ,000 in sales? So we would maximize every single customer that we went to their house. We would make sure that they put a post out on Facebook.

9:21We would make sure that they tell their friends, give them business cards and Google review cards so that they would have a QR code to write the review. And we would just spend our time reaching out to every single customer at the end of the day after the job and be like, hey, I just wanted to remind you that Facebook post or that Google review really would help our business. And like, because we're young entrepreneurs, they just want to help. So that reminder would like most of our customers would just go and do that thing to support our business. And it's like a lot of this is just word of mouth and us being persistent with the customers and them doing the marketing for us.

9:55We did some other little things like yard signs and we did experiment with a billboard. That one was honestly for fun. We didn't expect that it was going to bring us a high return. It was like three grand. We kind of broke even on it. We didn't even do paid Facebook ads or Google or anything. It was really just like yard signs, billboard. And like, I think we tried paid next door ads, but like nothing crazy. Still a lot of just like word of mouth persistency. Can I get a drum roll, please? Because we are giving away a free lifetime access to the Academy for one lucky listener. And it's super simple to participate.

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11:04The winner will be announced on July 26th. All you need to do, leave us a review on Apple, send us a screenshot of proof, and you guys can find more details in the show notes below. So you guys are operating at this time in year two around just like the Boston area or where you guys like operating at? Yeah. So this was like, they're running it out of the driveway, really. Nice. And like, we would kind of go within like 30 mile radius. So we drive between like 30 and 45 minutes from our hometown to do jobs. I mean, if it's a big job, we'll go further like an hour. But like most of the time, it's like 30, 45 minutes.

11:39And that's how far we would go. Interesting. So how are you deciding? Let's just say someone's an hour away. And you're like, that's a little far. But of course, a certain price point, we will do it. So how do you guys currently price? Because if someone's listening, they're like, holy shit, this is impressive, because this is impressive. And they want to think about pricing. How do you guys price then? So we would have our normal rate. Let's just talk about first, if it's out of our service area, then add what our time is worth onto that. So if it's an extra 10, 20 minute drive for us and that's back and forth, that might be a total of a 30 minutes extra.

12:13Maybe we'll add a hundred bucks on. We'll just kind of figure out like, okay, how out of the way is this job? How much are we willing extra to do it for? And then we'll do that. But if it's like a big job for like two or three grand, like we'll probably just price it normally. But like how we do our normal pricing is like we just realized like in the beginning, what are people paying for that service? We also called local junk removal companies and figure out what they're pricing at. Most companies charge by the truckload, but that's not what we're doing. We're going to possibly start doing that soon.

12:42But we just charge by the job and look at our pricing sheet and like kind of all the jobs that we've done before. it's like, okay, someone's going to pay a hundred bucks for this pile here. So like now we have the customer send us a picture. If there's like a hundred dollars worth of junk in that pile, it's like, okay, we'll take care of this for a hundred dollars. But there's obviously like a lot of other factors, like where's the junk located? How heavy is it? How far out of the service area are you? There's also specific items like mattresses, TVs, tires. Those are all separate fee at the dump.

13:14So like we have to add that on with the pricing sheet to the total job, But in junk removal, to keep it simple, it's like you really want a price based on volume. So if we went based on truckload, our truckload price would be like anywhere from like$1 ,400 to$2 ,000 because our trucks are massive. Like the industry standards, usually like 15 to 20 cubic yards. Ours are like 26 cubic yards. So much bigger. Let's keep progressing into your story too, because I think it's an interesting story. So year two, we do about$460 ,000. This is 2022. to let's transition to 2023. What were some big things that you guys did in 2023 that really helped move the needle?

13:53Is it hiring? Is it marketing differently? What were some things you guys did in 2023? So the third year, we did a lot of things. We outgrew the driveway and we also had enough money to now reinvest into our second dump truck because the demand was getting higher for our service. So we got a second dump truck. We rented a warehouse so that we would have a place to store all these trucks. And then we also started to trust our friends to drive these trucks. Now that we're all getting a little bit older, we know the business better. We've experimented with the business model and kind of know what works now.

14:28We are familiar with the business. Now we can start to train our friends to go out there and remove junk. So now we have three trucks and my brother and I can't even drive those all day. So now we have to have someone go well. It's not even like we had a choice. It's just like we had to do this because we're growing so big now. So that's what we did with like the operations. But like in terms of marketing, this is when we started paid advertising. We still really haven't spent any money on Google ads since the beginning of our business. We might have experimented once with like$1 ,000, but actually going to do Google ads like right now, I have a guy who's starting that with us.

15:04So that this year could take our business to like a whole nother level. But we'd started doing paid Facebook ads, we started going a little bit more consistent with the yard signs. And overall, just like when you do things right, over time, the business will grow. If you don't take shortcuts and you know, like if you dump the junk in the woods, that's not going to get you to the million dollar mark. If you cut corners like that, it's just going to prevent you from ever getting to that level. So we just kept doing things right. Customers and people saw that and they just like, you know, like the word of mouth just continued along with that paid advertising and just like really taking everything more seriously, that's how we were able to grow in our third year more towards that million dollar mark.

15:45It's really cool. And what I'm like really taking away from this is like the customer testimonials, like do customer testimonials get customer testimonials? We had a conversation with someone today who was saying the same thing, like how they grew their business was all through customer testimonials. And it's kind of speaking to true to like what you're saying is like that was a huge lever for you guys. Yeah, one other thing too, is that junk removal is extremely competitive because like anyone can just go get a pickup truck or like literally a U-Haul or just anything and go do it. So another thing we did was just like be very persistent with communication.

16:16So like a lot of the times people would hire us because we got back to them 10 minutes before the other company did. And like people need this stuff usually done a lot quicker. So like my brother's on the phone 24-7 just like picking up phone calls, texting people back. And like all of that just led towards more people hiring us over the other guys. And I want to talk a little bit about the leadership style too, because I think it's really interesting to be running such a high revenue company at like your age and like how you did it too, I think is interesting with like hiring your friends. Can you talk to us about like the challenges you had as like running a company, but like also like hiring your friends?

16:51Like how did you balance that? How do you balance that? I mean, if anything, it makes it easier because you get to work with your friends. So it doesn't even feel like you're working a lot of the times. So that's definitely one thing. But like, it's also easier because like everyone at school kind of knows each other. So it's like you get one kid to come in and they're going to get five of their friends to come in. Five of their friends are going to get five of their friends. You know, like you kind of just start reaching out to people. But another thing we did in our third year is only have the top talent come in.

17:19So if somebody is not like the best, we'll try them out for a day. Yeah, they do. But like, we're not just going to let like anyone come into work because it's cheaper. Like we pay people very fair. We don't penny pinch. We go above and beyond, pay people what they're worth, and then we only want to keep the best. And the best brings the best too. So that's how we started to work with our friends and manage that. Interesting. Have you guys had mentorship to help you make some of these decisions? Can you speak to us a little bit about the mentorship that you've received? That's a great question.

17:50So in the very beginning, it was the guys from the dump, because that's how we learned the business and the opportunity and got to work in it and see what it was like, see that it worked for us as well in our specific situation. But as we scaled, all of our customers wanted to support us. And when you're going to like five or 10 houses a day, you just end up meeting so many people. And like some of those people would just give us feedback, which would help us grow. Some of these people had really nice houses and like we would talk with them. But also our parents for 30 years have owned a tree business and grew that from the ground up after they graduated from college.

18:26So from the beginning, our parents have always given us advice. The one thing that they never gave us was money. They didn't buy stuff for us. And we're very thankful that they didn't buy anything for us because that is what taught us how to actually build the business ourselves from the ground up, which will allow us to continue to scale. Because I feel like if they were to buy something for us, we wouldn't feel really the pain of having to get that money to buy that thing. And it's like, it's really important, but they've given us a lot of advice on like leadership and like training people, dealing with problems, equipment, our parents and huge.

19:04And then recently there's another guy in our area that has like a pretty big tree service also might have like 20 different vehicles going out full time. And like, we've learned a lot about leadership and like scaling big with that guy. Now I'm also a student at Babson College as well. And I hear a lot of guest speakers and CEOs come in there, like the founder of Home Depot. He's also the owner of the Atlanta Falcons. A lot of very qualified people just come at Babson and speak. A lot of like CEO Bank America, the CEO of New Balance, just a lot of people. So I hear a lot of very common things amongst the people at the top in this environment.

19:47So that's another way, as well as surrounding myself with a strong and driven community of people myself. So it's just like all of those things coming together, I would say is the mentorship that we get that helps us. Yeah. I feel like mentorship for me is a really big thing as well as having someone that has built a business before and also can give that feedback that you need. And if you need hiring questions or like, oh, what metrics should we be tracking? All that good stuff. Another thing too is like when you're young and you're running a business, you end up meeting a lot of other young business owners too.

20:20And like you kind of just share problems, situations, ideas and opportunities with each other. That's just another thing that just really has helped us from the beginning. Yeah, because that's basically getting a mastermind together of like-minded people that can share experiences, especially when you're building a company that's young. I mean, I'm 25 as well. It's hard. Running a company is one of the hardest things. It is the hardest thing I've ever done. So being able to relate to other young entrepreneurs that will have other personal interests with you as well is a huge win overall. I also want to talk about, as we think about other young people, I want to continue on this thread.

20:52What advice would you give to other people that want to start their own business, but don't really know where to start? Yeah, a lot of people when they first look at starting a business, they look at it like it has to be some big thing like, oh, I need an investment. I need these resources, this and that. But like a lot of people look way too big when in reality, you literally just have to start and start with whatever you have access to. And that's the best thing you can do for yourself. Because if you like try to go and get other people's money to start, in my opinion, like that's way more risky because a lot of the lessons that it would take for you to understand how to work with that kind of money.

21:30You're not going to have those through your own experience that like made you that money. So it's like, just literally start with what you have. And obviously every industry is different, but for us in junk removal or like a lot of different trades, you can start with like literally nothing and just start developing skills, meeting people and like going from there. So like if someone's looking to get started in junk removal specifically too, it's just like, just start. That's my advice. Yeah, I say it a lot. The difference between a wannabe preneur and an entrepreneur is the people that actually do start and take action.

22:02And that is the most true thing ever. But Kirk, let's go down to our fan boots questions where we have five questions for you that actually comes from our community. And guys, if you want to join the conversation, ask Kirk questions or any entrepreneurs questions, you guys can go to youtube.com slash upflip and submit your questions there. But ready to wind us out there last five questions? I'm ready. Number one, how do you avoid getting sick from mold and all the debris that blow out things when you're moving? Yeah. So if there's ever a tricky job where we're in like an attic, you know, we don't deal with asbestos or anything crazy like that.

22:33So if we know that that is present, we won't even touch that job. But in some situations, if like a piece of furniture has some mold on it or like some minor things, we do have like the respirators, the heavy duty ones, we have face masks. So we'll throw those on. But a lot of times it's pretty obvious if it is going to be like something toxic. And we will just stay away from those jobs because we really prioritize our health too. Number two, how do you handle it when you have loaded something or are loading something and someone changes their mind? That does happen sometimes, not as often as you think, but there's been times where like we brought stuff to the dump, the customer reaches out to us and they're like, hey, I didn't want you to get rid of that.