This is Waste to Wealth, a podcast about turning your waste hauling business into a profitable, scalable, cash flowing machine. And now, here's your host, Michael McCall.

Have you ever heard somebody say, it must be nice when they hear that you own a business and that you schedule your own time and you have the freedom to go around and do what you think is right instead of having a punch o'clock? Well, that is normally not a phrase that is wrapped in admiration as much as it should be. It's more of a phrase of ignorance because it must be nice to have your own business people don't realize all the heartache that goes through it. So that's what we're gonna talk about today, the hustle. What does the hustle actually look like? Have you ever spent your Saturdays and your Sundays where you wanna be hanging out with your kids or your buddies or relaxing on a boat and going to the beach? Have you ever spent that time that you should be relaxing, working on a truck, running payroll, making sure your finances are in order, trying to make sure that you're ready for Monday, trying to figure out how do I hire the next person, dealing with the stuff on the weekends when you wanna be doing relaxing things? Well, that is one of the myths of being a small business owner is that You don't get the freedom that you thought you were going to get when you start the business. You actually get the opposite. You become a slave to the business. The illusion is that owning your own business equals freedom, money, luxury, get to do what you want, earn as much as you want, and have tons of free time. But what most people don't see is the stress, broken down trucks, equipment that's got to be repaired, people that don't show up on time, filling in for more than one worker, waking up early, like three o'clock in the morning, having to go on emergency runs to go get parts, calling in favors from people that you really don't want to call in favors from. Owning a business doesn't mean that you own the business normally, it's more like the business owns you. It owns your time. If you're thinking that, hey, you're gonna work 10, 20 hours a week and be successful, that is completely the wrong idea. It's more like the opposite. You're gonna be working 60, 80 hours a week just to keep up with what you were doing at a nine to five job. And yeah, it can be glamorous, but it doesn't start that way. Definitely starts the opposite way. So if you're working a nine-to-five job, and then you switch over to being a small business owner, in a nine-to-five job, you have set hours, right? Maybe you have some times when you're on call, but you have a set of responsibilities, and then you go home, and you can leave that responsibility at work. Now, if you take it home, which some of us do anyway, even when we're working a job, that's kind of on you, not on the company. But when you are the business owner, They're just connected. Everything's connected. Your relationships matter. You talk to people at a personal relationship level, and that bleeds over to your business reputation. And they're very connected, so connected. And if you think that you're going to be able to separate the two, You're not, you're just not going to be able to. And the more you can just get to that understanding, the sooner you get to that understanding, the better things will be because you can leverage that for your benefit, or it can become your worst nightmare where you just don't want to do the business anymore. You don't want to have a business that you grow to hate. So when people say, it must be nice, they've totally missed the context. And that phrase, it just totally doesn't understand what you actually have to go through to make a business successful. And hustling is what we like to do. So most business owners start with a side hustle. They have a job and then they have a side hustle where they grow it into something that's mega successful. That's the dream anyway. And then that side hustle becomes a replacement for their income and they don't have to have the nine to five job and the side hustle doesn't become full-time. Well, that's not the reality at all. In fact, a side hustle, If it's not your plan to turn the side hustle into a full-time gig, then don't even do the side hustle. I think Hustle Nation is just a way to get overworked and exhausted. Because think about this. Let's say We've got someone, we've got Joe. Joe has a full-time job and he wants to become independent. So he goes and buys a truck and a trailer. And Joe now has something he can do on the nights and the weekends that's going to earn extra income, which makes sense. If he's got free time, I can totally understand that. If he's got responsibilities like family and kids, it's going to be very challenging. But that side hustle is going to have to grow because to maintain the vehicles, to maintain the relationships that are going to grow with customers, there's going to be more demand. It's going to be new, and you're going to be competing against people that have been doing it for a long time and have a lot of experience. They've got relationships that are already built. They probably have capital because either they saved up money or they have built a relationship with a bank or investor. that has been doing the game for a long time and has all these advantages, then you have the side hustler who's just doing it part-time and is still learning the ropes. And that is a really long, hard uphill battle. And this has to either grow into something full-time and then continue to grow and expand, or it's going to die at some point. Something is going to take it out. either something in that person's life, we're just saying Joe, in Joe's life, or the market's going to crush it because the market is continuing to require improvement. On top of that, you have natural entropy, natural decay. Trucks break down. Trucks and equipment rust. People, their relationships get sour unless you invest in them and spend time on them. That's customer relationships, vendor relationships, and you can't do it on the side. I don't think it can be a side thing for very long. It has to go from side thing to full-time thing as fast as possible. And I've seen it a lot where it just doesn't work being a side hustle. So don't make your dumpster rentals, don't make your junk hauling, don't make your waste hauling a side hustle forever, and don't start 10 side hustles. That is a horrible way to do things. That's a horrible way to actually succeed, is to split all your attention. Because you're already putting a lot of attention in your primary source of income, then you start the side hustle, so you've already split your attention. You can't be good at both. And you might lose your job prematurely if you don't switch over to the side hustle and make it in a full-time gig. So don't make your side hustle a permanent hustle. Turn it into a full-time gig where you actually commit to it. And you're gonna be competing against people like myself who are willing to put in 60 hours a week, 80 hours a week, because they love it, because they have to, because they're competitive. If you're gonna put in 20 hours a week, you're gonna get taken for a ride. You're gonna lose everything. And you'll be like many of the people we see on Facebook groups that are trying to sell their equipment. They're trying to sell their trailer after only a year. They've only had it for a year and they're already getting out of the business. You got to give it like five years. You can't give it like one year. Be committed. To think that another opportunity comes up that looks better, and you're gonna bail on your waste hauling to go chase gutters, installing gutters, because gutter installation pays a really good margin. That is so short-term thinking, because that market is not gonna have high margins forever. Same thing's gonna happen that many people that were doing dumpsters do. They put that down, and then they jump over to this other thing that looks like a great opportunity. So many people do that, that the margins drop, or there's things you don't know about that industry that make it hard. Even though the margins are good, how do you actually get all the materials? How do you get your schedule right? How do you get labor force? The things that we do on the waste hauling are interesting combo because we've got both a thing we do, a service, and we have equipment that does the work. So you have to be good at both of those things. So it's a service-based business because we do things, but we leave a dumpster or a container for trash at a location, and that's like a product. So we sell that product, but we also have to do the service using that product. So it's a unique, unique industry. Most industries, they actually have to do all the work. Like think of a plumber or an electrician, like that's all hands-on, they're doing all the work. They're not leaving something there for the customer to interact with for them to come back and service later. As an electrician or a plumber or tradesman, you do all the work and then you leave. And you can certify your work as good. But in our industry, we leave something for the client so that they can interact with it and then we have to take it away. So we have a compound of things going on at once. And that means you have to have a lot of different skills. We have to have the capital to buy the equipment And when you don't have that capital, that's why you do more service-based with junk hauling. That's way more service-based. And then as you get more capital, it makes sense to just get more equipment. So that's waste hauling through dumpster rental or through residential trash, right? So if you can get through that side hustles phase where you You actually save up money, find out a way to be profitable, build those relationships. You can turn into a full-time gig. I wouldn't even call it a hustle anymore. And you can walk away from your job and become completely independent. That takes a lot of time, a lot of energy. But going through that, that transition is gonna make you the kind of person you have to be. And you've gotta go through it. There's no way to read a book on it. There's no way to just listen to other people talk about it. You actually have to do it. Because if you've ever been in a painful situation, you can't learn those lessons another way. You have to go through the pain. So that means you have to have the discipline to get up early, to figure out how to get trucks fixed, to figure out how to get customers to pay you, to actually deliver on the service, get that good feedback from them. And those are all skills that you've got to learn by doing. And I, um, I'm not really good at fixing stuff, but I do enjoy that, that big dopamine hit. I get when that truck fires up after it's been down for a whole weekend and couldn't get it to work. Couldn't get the starter to work. And we tried all the different things. We tried new fluid, tried, tried replacing the starter and it still doesn't work. But if you can fix your own stuff, that's really, really rewarding. And when you don't have a lot of capital and you have time and money, or you don't have a lot of money, but you have time and energy, that's the thing that you have to do is you have to learn those skills. Then once you know those skills, you can level them up and you can actually tell if someone's going to provide good service or not. Whereas if you don't know how to fix a truck, then you just rely on the mechanic or the person that says they know how to fix it, and they may or may not. I mean, we've all heard mechanics where mechanic A does the work, and then mechanic B comes in and says, hey, mechanic A did a horrible job. He's a horrible mechanic. I can't believe that you worked with him. Don't ever work with that mechanic again. I go behind him and fix his stuff all the time. We see that in every profession, and you need to know a little bit about how to fix your trucks, and how to do a weld, and what does it take to get good quality work, so you can actually find good helpers, good vendors. Before you know it, you're going to get through the grind and you actually enjoy this stuff. What used to be hard will become fun. Now, it is nice that when we're doing our work, we get to drive around. We actually have a lot of free time. So we can listen to positive things. So don't just listen to entertainment when you're driving around in your truck. Listen to something that's going to actually give you more skills, whether that's how to be a good leader, you know, how to be a good manager. I'm always reading a book every single week. Let me grab the book I'm reading right now. Actually, I'll grab a couple of books because some are going to be more interesting than others are for you. I just finished one called The Coaching Habit last week. That was really great for how do you actually help people without just giving them advice. If anyone's ever come to you and said, hey, I have a problem and you just come up with the answer right away and you just answer their question, answer their problem, you're actually doing them, you're not helping them as much as you think you are. Yes, you're solving that problem, but go to the old adage of, Teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime. You don't want to just catch a fish for your co-workers or whoever you're trying to help. You want to actually teach them how to fish so they don't have to keep coming back at you. So that's what the coaching habit teaches is how do I talk to people in a way where they can solve their own problem and I'm not just their waving a magic wand. I might not even be solving the problem in those cases. And then the book I'm reading this week is called Simple Numbers 2.0. This is the sequel to Simple Numbers Profit. Should probably get the actual number. This is the sequel to the book called Simple Numbers Straight Talk Big Profits, which I really liked that book by Greg Crabtree. Shout out to him, awesome work. He's been doing finances for, I don't know how many decades now, four, four decades now. Not sure how old you are, Greg. But this book, Simple Numbers 2.0, really good about how do you actually use your numbers to drive good behavior in your business. And if you don't know your metrics, you're just flying blind. I have no idea if I'm going the right way. We'll find out if we hit something. And as an entrepreneur, you're not afraid to risk, so you're willing to run into stuff, but you might as well not drive off a cliff, right? If you can avoid it, don't drive off a cliff. I've heard many stories, you have too, about people who drive their business off a cliff, die and go, oh, okay, I shouldn't have done it that way. And they do it again, and they drive off this cliff the next time. So don't drive blind. Actually know what you're doing with your finances. Actually know what you're doing with your equipment, with your schedule, with your energy. Take all your resources and use those in a smart way instead of just throwing them in a million different directions. And if you can, direct all of your energy into one activity because you're gonna be so much more powerful that activity. That's why it doesn't make sense to have two businesses. It doesn't make sense to have a side hustle on the side of your main thing. If you're going to do that, make that side hustle become the main thing. Don't have two main things. There's no such thing as two main things. You have a primary and a secondary. If this is my primary, Anything that any resources I take away from my primary are going to make me not good at it. So just figure out how to get out of your primary and into your secondary so your secondary becomes your primary. Your waste hauling becomes your primary. So if you're a junk hauler, make that your number one thing. Don't do anything else. I have talked to so many junk haulers that are like, yep, I junk haul. I fix roofs. I repair porches. And they'll say all these things. Oh, it's easy for me to do. I have the tools for it. These guys need help with it. That's great that you can do 20 different things. I'm glad you have that skill set. That'll help you. in your main thing, but do the main thing. Just do one thing really well. If you're a junk remover, just remove junk. If you're a dumpster rental company, just rent dumpsters. If you're a residential trash company, just do residential trash. Don't mix them. because there's bigger companies that only do that one thing and they're gonna come and eat your lunch. You don't wanna compete with them when you're doing 20 different things. They laugh at that. They say, that's hilarious because we did that. We had dumpster rental and we had junk removal at the same time. And the people that did the junk removal, like my team, that when they did junk removal, they were really bad at it because they were dumpster rental truck drivers. They drove trucks really well. So the guy that drives trucks really well, is not good, he's not gonna be as good at removing junk. And the guy that's really good at removing junk, like strong, fast, won't step on nails or drop something on their toe, those guys, there's no way that they're as good at truck driving and driving dumpsters, delivering dumpsters, as they are at junk removal. You gotta pick a lane, like what's your lane? And just don't offer that service anymore, just don't. Pick one thing to do. And if you want to partner with someone that is good at those other things, that's a great move. Like if they call you for junk removal service and you've decided you're going to be dumpster rental, then have an outlet, have a referral and do both ways. And maybe you can rent dumpsters to your junk removal guys when they get slammed or their trailer goes down. Build those relationships. There's no reason for you to try to do everything because you're going to be bad at everything. And the companies that just do one thing are going to be awesome at it. And I've made that mistake first. So it's not like I'm speaking to anybody besides myself on that one. It's really just me telling past me, hey, that was stupid. And as soon as we cut the junk removal out, like our dumpster rentals got very clear. Everybody knew exactly what we did. Yeah, we lost customers. We lost junk removal customers. But the junk removal customers are very different than the dumpster rental customers. They're not even close to the same. They look different. They talk different. Because junk removal guys that we dealt with, they were all residential homeowners and they were like one-time customers. We didn't have a lot of relationships with property managers. We didn't have a lot of recurring business. Customers would come at us like once every two years. That's not like the same customer. That's not very good to have to find two years worth of customers. That's crazy. But on the dumpster rental, we had contractors that we worked with constantly, all the time. Like they always had a dumpster. Guess what? They're always working. They're always gonna go find work. And we were just supporting them. And that's what we're doing. And then on the trash hauling side, those are residential homeowners that you're gonna see all the time. Really different than junk removal, really different than dumpster rental. You have to pick your service so that you can also pick your avatar, who you're actually talking to, who you're trying to market to, and what do you want to be known for? Do you want to be known for junk removal? Well, that's really different than being known for waste collection. And they have very different needs, and you build your company in different ways. And the workers are different. You're in a service-based industry. What are you going to use to attract your workers? If you have three different services you offer, you're not going to be good at attracting every type of those workers. Just get good at attracting one. Like, how do I get CDL truck drivers for my 30 yard containers? If you solve that problem, you can compete with the big companies, Waste Management, Republic. And if you can compete with the big companies at a lower cost, Now you solved one of the value propositions, like you're cheaper than the big guys. Now you can probably also give better service than the big guys because you're actually using local people instead of using a call service in India or out of state. And then you got, you beat them on two aspects. Now you're never gonna beat the big companies on capital. Like that's their strength. They win on capital. They have all the landfills, they have all the trucks, they have investor money, they got public money. So you're never gonna beat them on that, but you can beat them on service. You can beat them on talent, you can beat them on price and without going to the bottom. So I recommend just picking one thing and being great at it and saying, hey, who's the competitor that I want to steal market share from? Because there's only so much market and I don't think we're creating a market, we're servicing a market. And so there's only so much of that pie and to take it away from the big companies, that's the easiest thing to do because they're focused on, larger geographical areas. They're not going to be focused on small towns. And you're probably focused on your town. Well, this has been great. I love talking to you guys. The Waste Expo is coming up in Las Vegas in May. I'm going to be there. I'm very excited. And then another conference is going on in May in Tennessee. Nashville is the Docket Software Conference. I'm excited about that one too. So hopefully I'll bring back something to you. If you have any questions that you have about those events, I'm happy to share that with you, but you have a great day. God bless you and keep on hauling.

Michael McCall 

Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of Waste to Wealth. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you connect with us on social media and subscribe to the show wherever you consume podcasts. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review and tell a friend about the show. Until next time.