Why Small Businesses Fail

This week's listener of the week is Berkeley Baring Gamble Schwide. Shout out, wife, wife. Berkeley, thank you so much for leaving us a five star review. And for those of you listening, if you leave us a five star review below, you might be next week's listener of the week. She left the junk trunk a one star review. Not cool. Wife, Berkeley. So today we are here with Nathan Schwide.

Nathan Tride is the owner of a very successful local junk removal company that I've been very lucky to watch on the literal come up. Nathan, tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and your come up to success. Okay, Aviva. Well, for starters, I had a Ford Ranger pickup truck. I was going to school at CU Boulder and wanted to go on a trip with

With some friends after graduation, I was not on track to graduate, but they, they all were. So my parents weren't going to pay for me because I wasn't on track to graduate. So I had to find the cash to pay for the flights at least to, to Asia. And I started going to all my neighbors houses, asking if I could haul away their junk. A few of them said, yes, saved up some cash. Sometimes they would call back and I would do it again and saved up enough money to.

to go on the trip and here we are like eight years later, still hauling junk in a lot of different ways in Denver and we're also in Nashville, Tennessee now. Shout out Buffs, I just started at CU. Dion. Prime time, baby. So how many trucks and how many employees do you have right now? I've got nine trucks. We've got like 27 employees right now. We've got like five of us.

full time in the office, a couple of dispatchers, operations. We got a CFO raised. We're in the middle of a, like a seed round, raising a million point, 1.2 million dollars to really just take over trash, maybe.

Aviva Sonenreich (02:17.874)

Okay, before I get into the commercial real estate portion of this, what have you learned about junk removal eight years in that you never would have expected when you had your truck and you were going to your neighbor's house? Nice. That's a tough one. Man, I wish at the beginning I would have taken a step back and put more systems and processes in place for when I wasn't in the truck. And instead of doing that, I was just putting my head down and

grinding and not really thinking about what I was doing, just, you know, trying to make a buck and just not focused on, on the two, three, four, five year plan. I was like, just so in the weeds of the customer service and, and the day to day operations that I didn't take a week off for two weeks off just to focus on, okay, what do we need to do to get this business from, from where we are now to get me out of the truck, to get me to managing sales reps.

How do we get there? And I should have put more time into that early on. So you were in the truck in the beginning. Now you're not. How long did it take you to get out of the truck? I was in the truck full time, 40, 50 hours a week for about two years. Been in business for about eight years now. So it's been a while, but

Yeah. Okay. And just because I know you so well, can you share the story about when your truck got stolen and how you wound up finding, getting the truck back? Great question. This is a great example of things that you got to do as a business owner to think big picture and not small mom and pop shop. We didn't have trackers or GPS monitors or cameras in our trucks at one point. And

Our crew was at a job. They were finishing up and they had left the keys in the cab of the truck. The truck was on and they were finishing up with the customer on the front porch. And, um, the two back doors were open. The truck is full of junk exercise equipment. And this, who knows who speeds up on a bike sees that the truck is on flings his bike off to the side jumps in the cab.

Aviva Sonenreich (04:37.954)

takes off, trucks gone missing. I think it was missing for like three, four days. And tough, tough few days for us. But how did you guys end up recovering? Something magical happened. Yeah, we were searching like night and day. And I don't know exactly what you're referencing, but oh, I, it was really actually social media. Is that what you're referencing? Yeah.

Yeah, we were posting everywhere on social media that our truck was stolen and we've got our logo, you know, the junk trunk, put your junk in my trunk. Really trying to get everyone involved to keep their eyes out because we knew it was around because we also had credit cards in the truck that we were tracking their purchases. And it was spotted by people, friends on social media gave us clues. We would go out because the police are no help. And eventually Josh, who I was working with at the time was.

driving around looking for it, saw it in an alleyway. Okay, I remember social media lit up and everybody was looking for the junk trunk and then eventually you found it. So was it messed up on the inside? Yeah, it was not in great shape. It could have been a lot worse, but at the end of it, the cops said that they were starting the truck with a screwdriver in the ignition twisting it and that's how they were.

getting out and about, but they think it was in the hands of four or five different people the whole time, probably. Wow. Did they at least get any of the junk out of the trunk? No, junk was still in there, but they left us some Burger King and the cab, which we appreciated. That was very generous of them. Extremely. I hope you told that to the insurance company. Yes, yes. So, fun fact about Nathan. Nathan is the first person in the history of the internet.

that I posted a warehouse listing in an Instagram story and Nathan leased the property. That was my first post and immediate lease. What made you realize that you needed a warehouse space or just a commercial space in general? Wait, I just wanna set the record straight. So are you thanking me for all the success you've had in your career? Yes, this is, so thank you. No, thank you.

Aviva Sonenreich (07:03.886)

Uh, what was the question? What, when did you know it was time to get a space? Uh, yeah. Yeah. Great question. Should have done it earlier. Honestly, it's, it's huge for a business, especially like ours, when you've got a team that comes to a meeting point every single day, gotta have some sort of community, you know, that you build some, some company culture that you try and establish and we should have started that earlier, but, um,

I would say by year three we absolutely needed one. I don't think we ended up actually getting one to like year four and a half, five. But yeah, I mean Aviva's our resource, right hand woman with all things, the commercial real estate and got us into a spot immediately and yeah. Well, you made it very easy.

What advice do you have to any small businesses who might be on the fence about getting a space? Yeah, yeah, good question. I mean, one, entrepreneurs suffer from us, it's like paranoia, right? The best entrepreneurs, like I love the sayings that I've heard from successful entrepreneurs, that the best entrepreneurs live in like a constant state of paranoia, paranoia about like,

You know, what they can afford when they need to take risk, when they need to take a step back. And I think there's a lot to that, especially with a big real estate transaction. You know, it's like, can you afford this, this new overhead all of a sudden? Um, but I think if, if you commit to a space and, and you're in a business like mine, where, you know, customer service is so pivotal. Uh, if, if you have customer facing employees, then you need to have an established.

culture in order to establish any sort of company culture, but you need a home base. I think that is crucial. And it's translated into employee retention. It's translated into better training, which leads to increased sales and revenue. So it's been a direct impact on.

Aviva Sonenreich (09:28.686)

sales, revenue, profit, all that good stuff. Okay. Yeah. That's awesome. You know, what's funny is I know you're, you will buy a property one day. Brokishem. And I think what's funny is maybe you got to take a little bit of your own advice here, which is you probably should have started sooner. And even though it's scary and it might keep you up at night, when you lease a building, even if you're the boss, you still have a boss.

because you don't own the property. The landlord is your boss. And unfortunately, in this scenario, it's me. No, I'm just kidding. She's not kidding. I'm sitting next to her now so that she could tell everyone that she's my boss. I was honestly just waiting for you to say that. Aviva's my boss. So, okay, one more thing before we get to the speed round. Do you mind talking about your new

business, the rolloff business and how that relates to real estate. I think the whole business model is really interesting and I'm curious if you're open to speak to it. Sure, like specifically commercial real estate? The way that the rolloff business needs or doesn't need space to be stored. Gotcha.

The industry standard in the roll-off business is to have the amount of yard space, whether that be a big gravel field, whatever it might be, for 10 to 20% of your inventory or fleet. For us, right now, we've got the trucks, we've got 25 dumpster bins.

10, 20% of that, you know, the square footage, the breakdown, you know, is, I don't know what the yardage would be or square footage exactly, but that's kind of the industry standard, like in terms of what we would be looking for at our current, um, like operational scale. But I think you'll, you'll want to buy something that you can grow into. So hopefully we're like Aviva, let's, let's get something.

Aviva Sonenreich (11:51.986)

uh, four or five, six times where we're at now so that we can grow into it and we can own the building on the real estate and fire you ultimately for, you know, us to grow into 20, 30 years down the road. You'll get there. I look forward to the day. Me too. Now, do you have any last things you want to say about your commercial adventure, your junk removal adventure? You want to give your company a plug?

before we head into the speed round? I would say that we are full service junk removal in Denver in the surrounding areas, also in Nashville, Tennessee. I know there's a lot of people watching there today. And we haul your junk full service, roll off dumpsters, and I'm ready for the speed round. Junk emergencies. Wee-wee-wee-wee. Okay, speed round, you can answer one question, or excuse me, you can answer the question with one word, or as long as you want.

Okay. First question, what's the craziest thing anybody in your company has ever found in a junk removal situation? $5,000 cash on a job, on one job. What's the least crazy, most common thing you see in your junk removal endeavors? Couches, big bulky furniture that people don't wanna deal with. If you could be any fictional character, who would it be?

Harry Potter. Damn. I'd be Hermione if you were Harry. Deal. What's your weirdest skill or talent?

Aviva Sonenreich (13:41.57)

wearing three pairs of socks. It's very rare. If you could only watch one movie the rest of your life, what movie would it be?

Step brothers. That's a good one. What's the most adventurous thing you've ever done?

Aviva Sonenreich (14:04.014)

I went on a trip my senior year of high school that my parents didn't want me to go on at all. They really discouraged me, but looking back on it, like 12 years later, I'm happy that I did it and didn't do what they told me to. Joe, don't come after me. And what is your favorite thing about your sister Leah and your least favorite thing about your sister Leah? The least favorite thing is so much easier.

So I'll start with that. I have a laundry list. But I think the one that tops them all is her driving. She's not a good driver. I don't know if you've ever been behind her. You definitely know it if you have. She's that one. It's just like. But favorite thing, Leah is a good residential realtor. I have a couple close friends right now using her and.

I can't stop complimenting her when she's not around and it kind of annoys me, but she's a good residential realtor. Leah's a closer. She is a closer. Puts the hammer down. Nathan, thank you so much for being on the Commercial Real Estate Secrets podcast. Everybody, go follow Nathan at the Junk Trunk Co. And the email address for the junk trunk is, or not the email website is... TheJunkTrunkCo.com

And ready break. Thanks, Aviva. And if you have any questions, DM me at Aviva Real Estate. If you want to learn more about commercial real estate, head to the show notes in my free guide. And thank you for being on the show, Nathan. Good Shabbos. See you in the warehouse. Anytime, Aviva. Thank you.