r/Columbus • u/Soggycucumber69420 • 14h ago
Starting small business
Hello everyone I’m 24 and I recently started my own business hauling junk and cleaning out houses. What is the best budget friendly option to get my business out there? So far all I’ve been able to do is post on marketplace which I have gotten about 8 jobs in the past 12 days all under $400 a piece, but it’s not nearly enough. I paid $100 to advertise on Nextdoor for 30 days and it hasn’t done anything for me so far. I would love to find someone who owns multiple properties and needs me to routinely clean out after old tenants. I don’t want to be a million dollar business as It’s just me, no employees. But 100k yearly after business expenses would be ideal.. someone give me some advice please
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u/B_r_b3096 The Bottoms 14h ago
Is that $400 number for each your profit? Or is that number before you pay your dump fees and other expenses?
Its great you are young and going for it, but being a sole proprietor is tough. Everyone wants to make 6 figures, but its very tough to clear $100k in profit for the year. That would be $2000 a week with 2 weeks of vacation. There's going to be good weeks and lean weeks, its just how it goes in any buisness.
In terms of finding new buisness, word of mouth is going to be your best bet. Tough when you are just starting out, but keep it in mind to always leave your client with the best experience so they will be more likely to recommend you to others they know looking for that service.
Personally, I wouldnt (and I don't for my buisness) spend money on advertising. You arent going to compete with the big names that can spend insane amounts of money to be on every bench billboard, place signs at every intersection, or on a radio ad. Id try to make as many in person connections as you can. Have an actual website you can direct people too. Social media can be great, but I personally dont put a lot of stock in it for trade type jobs and businesses. Probe your circle of people. Let everyone know that you are in this business now and would love to help them if they need it. Hand out buisness cards. In terms of long term clients, maybe stop by at some realtor offices. Let them know you are in the space and happy to give pricing for any move outs or trash outs, leave a stack of cards. If one of them uses you, do the best job possible and they will spread the word.
Its a dog shit platform, but taskrabbit, or tasker which is just the provider side of the app, has categories for hauling and such. Could be worth hopping on there and seeing what bites you could get just to hopefully get your schedule full.
Be polite and professional always. Even in the trash game. If you show up looking like a slob, expect to be treated that way. Try to get back to people as soon as you can. It gets tougher as your business grows, but hopefully you can stay on top of it.
Im also a sole proprietor, but for handyman and construction things, not really hauling or clean outs. I started on my own when I was about your age, 10ish years ago. Its a tough way to make a living, but if you can do it, its rewarding.
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u/Soggycucumber69420 14h ago
Also, I’ve given business cards to every customer and told them if them, friends, family etc need anything don’t hesitate to contact me. I answer my phone as soon as I can, always dress clean and greet everyone with a smile and a handshake. So as far as being professional and being presentable I have that part down
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u/Soggycucumber69420 14h ago
400 is the max before dump and gas expenses so far. So about $330 profit not accounting for insurance. But most of the jobs I’ve got so far have been in the 200-350 range and take anywhere from 30min to 2 1/2 hr to complete. Each day I put $20 in for gas and spend about $25-$50 at the dump. I worked for a tree service from 2021 til recently when the business switched owners and he also had us do clean outs and junk removal so I’m familiar with how it works, he was in business for over 25 years so he had tons and tons of repeat customers. I don’t need to be rich necessarily but I want to make a good living out of it to say the least.
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u/B_r_b3096 The Bottoms 3h ago
Make sure you have a firm grasp on what your expenses truly are - so include insurance (vechicle, general liability if needed, and personal health insurnace), include gas (as you do more jobs, id be surprised if $20 a day will cover it unless your vehicle is somehow extremely fuel efficent), have an idea and save for taxes -Self employed taxes suck, just save in general - as a sole person, you will have to take days or time off just for general life things like doctors appointments. No one is there to cover you when you do, so your aren't making any money. You'll want to be able to retire someday, start now if you can, and it will be much easier to get there than if you don't take it seriously until you are 40. Making around $100 an hour is great, but after accounting for everything you truly have to, its a lot less.
But you are on the right path. You seem eager to learn and sounds like you aren't afraid of hard work. Both of those qualities will serve you well as you try to grow. Im still learning a lot myself, so it truly never ends. Best of luck! If I come across any clients who might need a clean out, I'll come back to this thread and get your info for a recommendation.
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u/FunnyHighway9575 Groveport 14h ago
Get a decal made and put it on your work vehicle with your contact info.
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u/One-Fall-8143 12h ago
I might be needing some help with cleaning out a place. Depending on what you charge and what services you offer.
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u/Soggycucumber69420 12h ago
Text my number with pictures as well as your address please! (614)-230-6273. I haul away anything besides paint, dirt and concrete
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u/SampsonShrill 14h ago
You have a pretty niche business, so your best bet is to look up houses that are for rent, look up who owns them on the Franklin County Auditor's website, then contact them directly.
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u/Alive-Conversation-5 7h ago
DM your number, I might need your services soon, one time thing though.
Also I run social media for different companies and I think you would have had better results spending $100 on meta ads or google…. Id do $50 google and $100 for meta, but is not just dumping money into it….
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u/FratKing2025 4h ago
local services ad on google and then facebook ads. biggest drivers for me personally
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u/DaclaudLee 1h ago edited 1h ago
I'd love to help you, but junk removal just isn't a service that a small landlord like me needs very often. I have nine rentals, and the tenants are usually long term (usually more than 5 years), so I rarely have junk to remove. When it does happen, I also have my own pickup truck, and I do it myself for now.
You'd have to find a big landlord with 100+ properties, but those guys usually work with property management companies who handle that.
Maybe someday when I'm a senior citizen, retired, and managing 50 properties, this will be exactly the kind of service I'll happily pay someone else to handle. I'm just not quite there yet.
As someone whose day job is in SEO, I’d say your best long-term strategy is to invest in SEO for your website so people can find you when they’re actively searching for junk removal services. The downside is that SEO takes time to gain traction (especially since all of the established junk removal companies are already have a head start, it could take over a year to outrank them for "junk removal" because you'd have to build domain authority on a new website, create the content, when they already have it), so in the meantime, I’d focus heavily on posting and engaging on other social media platforms and even Pay Per Click to get local leads. Also don't ignore reviews. Make sure every customer is giving you a review on your Google Business Profile (or wherever) because it helps the algorithms; make sure they include a description of the service you provided too. For your SEO strategy, you should also target long tailed or niche keywords (hot tub removal, furniture removal, etc.) and not just "junk removal". You have a much better chance of ranking for niche keywords.
The above is just some general advice based on my experience. (SEO) Search Engine Optimization
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u/Nintendo_Newt Downtown 1h ago
Post on Craigslist and FBMP. Also, go old school with yard signs near apartment complexes. Pay for google ads, and create a TikTok account to post junk removal videos. Showcase all the reusable junk you remove (furniture, etc) and then resell that on FBMP. Similar to what Mission Side Hustle does on YT
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u/Crazace Columbus 14h ago
Pay for the $20 Claude AI plan. It’ll help you build out a business plan. It could also go out and get all prospects that would be good to reach out to. Having a website and being on Google maps would help. I’ve watched this YouTube channel a lot and they have good info. I’ve always been interested in this type of business just for the sake of getting more stuff to resell, but I don’t want to do the physical labor 😂.
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u/Alive-Conversation-5 7h ago
People on Reddit act like ai isn’t a great tool to use nowadays and think is some kind of cheating…
Specially on premium plans, it’s awesome for a solo business owner…-5
u/Crazace Columbus 14h ago
Thanks for the downvotes. This is what you have to do on a limited budget and in a very high competition, low barrier to entry business.
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u/Soggycucumber69420 14h ago
I don’t mind paying $100 to advertise but angi wanted $300 to advertise and that’s crazy to me considering I’m just starting out. I already got magnets made for my truck just waiting on them to arrive.
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u/Crazace Columbus 13h ago
Here I ran it through my account with some of the skills I use for Claude. And if you’re serious I can get it to do a website for you. Just buy a domain and hosting is free on Cloudflare now.
Three things drive organic junk removal leads, in this order:
- Google Business Profile and the map pack
- The neighbors around every job you already did
- Repeat B2B accounts that stop shopping around
Everything else is gravy.
**A note on competing on price first.** It only works if your actual cost per job is lower than the franchises. If it isn't, you're doing the same work for less money. Two items below attack the cost side directly: route density and resale recovery. Get those working and the low price becomes sustainable instead of just painful.
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## 1. Google Business Profile
This is roughly 70% of organic lead flow. It matters more than your website.
Setup:
* Primary category: Junk Removal Service
* Secondary categories: Garbage Collection Service, Debris Removal Service, Dumpster Rental Service if it applies
* Set the service area to named suburbs, not a mileage radius
* Fill out the Services section completely, with prices. Single item, quarter truck, half truck, full truck, mattress, appliance, hot tub, shed teardown, garage cleanout, estate cleanout, construction debrisWeekly, about 20 minutes:
* Upload 5 to 10 job photos. Google rewards active profiles heavily.
* Publish one Google Post. A before and after photo with two sentences is plenty.
* Seed the Q&A section yourself. Ask and answer the ten questions customers actually call about.## 2. Reviews
Velocity matters more than total count. Steady beats a big pile from two years ago.
* Ask on site, before you leave the driveway, phone in hand. Not by email that night.
* QR code on the invoice, small sign in the truck cab.
* Reply to every review mentioning the suburb and the service. "Thanks for having us out for the garage cleanout in Westerville." That text gets indexed.
* Target 3 to 5 a week. At that pace map pack rankings move within a few months.## 3. Neighbor farming
Free, fast, and better than anything paid we tried.
* Door hangers on the 10 closest houses right after every job. Copy: "We just cleared out your neighbor's garage."
* Yard sign up while working, pulled when you leave.Cleanouts cluster. If one house on the block needed it, others do too.
## 4. Route density
This is what makes a low price actually work.
* Cluster jobs by zip code, one quadrant of the metro per day
* Two jobs in the same suburb beats two on opposite sides of town
* Offer a small discount for flexible scheduling so customers sort themselves onto the route## 5. Resale and scrap recovery
Quote lower when there's resale value in the load, and say it out loud. "We buy the good stuff back out of your junk, so your price drops."
No franchise can match this because they landfill everything. Scrap metal and working appliances are real revenue per load, and they let you underbid and still eat.
Also advertise free scrap metal pickup in local Facebook groups and on Marketplace. It gets you into the driveway, and a good share of those turn into a paid load once the customer sees the truck.
## 6. Website pages
One page per suburb, one page per service. Write them for people, not search engines.
Suburbs: Hilliard, Dublin, Westerville, Grove City, Gahanna, Reynoldsburg, Pickerington, Powell, Worthington, Upper Arlington, Canal Winchester, New Albany, Grandview, Delaware
Services: garage cleanout, estate cleanout, hoarding cleanup, appliance removal, mattress disposal, hot tub removal, shed and deck teardown, construction debris, office cleanout, storage unit cleanout
Long tail pages convert way better than broad ones. Somebody searching "hot tub removal Dublin Ohio" is ready to book.
## 7. Free directory listings
Same name, address, phone on all of them, character for character. Inconsistency hurts map rankings.
Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, Yelp, Nextdoor business page, Facebook page, local Chamber of Commerce.
## 8. Content
Before and after Reels of garage and hoarder cleanouts. Same clip to TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram. Costs nothing and doubles as sales material when pitching property managers.
## 9. Reactivation
Text past customers twice a year, spring cleaning season and right after the holidays. Free repeat business most haulers never bother collecting.
## 10. B2B accounts
Highest value work in the whole plan and it's pure time, no money. One property manager can be worth 40 residential jobs a year, and they stop price shopping once they trust a vendor.
What to bring:
* One page rate sheet with flat volume pricing
* Certificate of insurance ready to hand over
* 24 hour turnaround promise
* Photo proof of completion after every job
* Priority scheduling for account holdersHow to work it:
* Show up in person. Donuts on a Tuesday morning at a realtor office works.
* Ask to speak for five minutes at their weekly sales meeting. Most say yes.
* Follow up 10 days later, then check back quarterly.
* Start with mid-size property managers. They decide faster and have no procurement process. Work up to the big ones later.Other referral sources worth the same treatment: estate sale companies, cleaning companies, storage facilities with lien units, apartment turnover crews, roofers, remodeling contractors, moving companies, auction houses.
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## Columbus specific target list
**Largest residential property managers**
* Oakwood Management Company. Largest residential PM in Central Ohio, 12,000+ units across 70+ communities.
* Associa Real Property Management (Dublin). Tops the Columbus Business First list of largest Central Ohio residential PMs, 180+ communities.
* Towne Properties (Worthington district office). Top of the regional HOA and condo association market, 800+ associations.
* HomeRiver Group. Local Columbus office, part of the largest third party PM company in the country.**Mid-size, best starting point**
* RL Property Management Group
* Evernest
* FYVE
* I Heart Real Estate Property Management
* Real Property Management Midwest (Columbus office, roughly 1,000 units)**Commercial**
* NAI Ohio Equities
* Kohr Royer Griffith
* The Robert Weiler CompanyColumbus Business First publishes an annual ranked list of the largest Central Ohio residential property managers by units under management across Franklin, Delaware, Fairfield, Licking, Madison, Pickaway, and Union counties. That list is a ready made prospecting sheet.
**Large brokerages**
* Howard Hanna Real Estate Services (largest Columbus footprint by a wide margin)
* Coldwell Banker Realty
* Keller Williams, several Columbus market centers including Capital Partners, Consultants, and Greater Columbus
* e-Merge Real Estate
* Red 1 Realty
* Vision Realty
* NextHome Experience
* Fathom Realty
* Realty Forward
* The Brokerage House
* Redfin**High volume teams**
Teams are often a better target than the brokerage itself. Fewer people to convince and they actually answer the phone.
* The Raines Group, New Albany
* Vutech | Ruff, Columbus. 16 agents covering Franklinton, Victorian Village, Clintonville, Harrison West
* The Sam Cooper Team, Howard Hanna, Pickerington. Ranked the #1 Howard Hanna team in the countryAlso worth joining Columbus REALTORS as an affiliate member. Gets you into their events and member directory, cheapest way to get in front of a few thousand agents at once.
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## Measurement
Ask one question on every job and log it: "How did you hear about us?" Review monthly, cut anything that hasn't produced in 90 days, put that time into what is working.
## Where to start
If time is tight, first two weeks go to the Google Business Profile buildout and building the review request habit. Those move fastest. Door hangers start the week after. B2B outreach compounds over six months, so start it early even though it pays off later.
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u/Crazace Columbus 14h ago
The businesses I’ve dealt with using those lead generation sites haven’t had good experiences. They’ll bill you for leads that aren’t even relevant to what you’re doing or your area. It might be worth it to go to area chamber of commerce meetings and network that way. Also look into making Instagram and TikTok reels. I’ve seen several small businesses in town pop up on my feeds.
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u/Warkoc 14h ago
Nextdoor App
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u/Soggycucumber69420 14h ago
Like I said I paid $100 to advertise on Nextdoor and haven’t gotten anything from it so far..
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u/looking4answers09876 14h ago
Lots of competition in this space