Announcer: 0:00

The following programming is sponsored by Marc J Bernstein. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of this station, its management or Beasley Media Group. Entrepreneur, author and financial consultant, Marc Bernstein helps high-performing entrepreneurial business owners create a vision for the future and follow through on their goals and intentions. Ang O Honorato is a business growth strategist who blends psychology and business together to create conscious leaders and business owners who impact the world. Founders Forum is a radio show podcast sharing the real stories behind entrepreneurship as founders discover more about themselves, while providing valuable lessons and some fun and entertainment for you. Now here's Marc and Ang.

Marc Bernstein: 0:42

Good morning America. How are you? I can't help it, Ang. I was singing last night. I had to do that.

Ang Onorato: 0:48

You haven't done that in a while.

Marc Bernstein: 0:50

Good morning America. How are you? We are here on Founders Forum and like to try to get a little music in there every once in a while and we were playing that song last night actually a wonderful version of it A song called Should I actually a wonderful version of it Song called Should I Frets, bridges and Skins. I never talk about it, never plug my music, but it's on all the streaming services. Go check it out. Anyway, we have a great guest this morning. He's got a great story and on the way in this morning, Ang.

Marc Bernstein: 1:18

We started talking about it, but I was thinking about an experience my son has who's in the junk business, as is our guest today, jake, who's also Jake, my son's Jake. He's Jake and he told me a story about a couple weeks ago that he was in a woman's house who had passed away and nobody had really attended to her stuff for a long time and the landlord was having the place cleaned out. First thing they found was an urn with ashes. And my son and I say this with lots of love, but he's not really known for his compassion, but he kind of surprised me because he said this poor woman never had a proper sendoff. You know, her ashes are sitting here. So my me and my friends were going to go up on a mountain and we're going to scatter her ashes. I almost cried. It was very sweet, but there's more to the story. So he starts looking through the boxes there and one of his guys said he already checked this box and he goes in and he feels that it's really heavy and he starts digging below the surface. My son is like she should be a detective is really because he doesn't miss a trick about anything and he finds some rare coins that are worth money. And, as our guest Jake today will tell you that if you're in the junk business and you find stuff and it doesn't belong to anybody or there are no heirs and then there's no charity designated, it's finders, keepers, it turns out one of the coins at least is worth a lot of money. So it reminded me of the story Acres of Diamonds, which is by Russell Conwell, who were in Philadelphia, and the story is known throughout the world. There's millions and millions of copies sold of the book and it was based on lectures that he did way back early in the 1900s and his lectures about Acres of Diamonds were his most favorite lectures. He did it thousands of times. His lectures about Acres of Diamonds were his most favorite lectures. He did it thousands of times and the end result of those lectures is that he took all the money and he put like over 1,600 young men through college. He founded Temple University and became its first president, and it created quite a legacy. This story and it was about an Arab gentleman, a business owner, who was doing some things in Baghdad. He was from Baghdad and he, um he, he decided that he wanted to go diamond hunting around the world, and I won't tell you the whole story, but the bottom line is there's acres of diamonds in your own backyard and you can take that both, um, um, you know, literally, as it would happen with my son, who always believes that he always believes he's going to find riches, and every once in a while he does and or it could be, you know, more metaphorical Ang. What do you have thoughts? I think you have a story that's maybe a little more literal.

Ang Onorato: 3:58

Yeah. So I love the story because I have a. I also have a friend who has a business doing the junk cleanouts and they've got 25 years of amazing stories like this. But we were chatting offline about a story that I love that is kind of similar, which is where do you find hidden treasures? And they might be right in front of you with known things. So I love the story about and I forget the guy's name. So a legend has it, we'll say.

Ang Onorato: 4:20

But you know, we're all familiar with the glow sticks, right? Maybe those of us of a certain age. There used to be just one kind of glow stick. Well, apparently the patent had expired on that and there was this enterprising young 28-year-old guy, supposedly from Philadelphia as well, that went into the patent you know catalog and found this expired patent and turned it into, you know an exponentially scalable business to the glow sticks that we now see the wristbands and the. You know business to the glow sticks that we now see the wristbands and the. You know all over the glow sticks and the key chains and the big fad that rave parties and all of that. So now he took something that existed and nobody paid attention to the fact that it had just expired and there's gold inside. You know expired patents. Even so, who knew right? Very similar to what I know Jake's going to talk to us a little bit about, so I'd love to hear any thoughts you have on this too, jake.

Jake Still: 5:06

Yeah, and I just want to say like thanks for having me guys Excited to be here.

Marc Bernstein: 5:10

I haven't introduced you, but I will in a minute.

Jake Still: 5:12

Yeah, so I mean, I think, 100 percent. So, on the literal sense, like you know, we do jobs all the time and they vary and we found you know incredible things right, and that's the perk of the job. We're either going to donate it or let the guys keep it. Again, the main goal was to keep it out of the landfill and you find stuff all the time that has value, but it's value to. You know it's different. Everybody values different things, so that can be very variable. And then, on a metaphorical sense, like especially with business, I think there's so much more. Yeah, you're always trying to get new clients, new revenue. Well, you know, can you re-engage? You know your previous clients, can you just improve? You know your marketing efforts, your conversion on your website by 1% or your conversion over the phone by 1%, like those cumulative things are a lot more attainable and a lot more within reach than trying something brand new and keep trying to even do a approach and trying so many different things instead of just doing a few things really well.

Ang Onorato: 6:09

Absolutely love it.

Marc Bernstein: 6:11

Have you ever had that happen, Jake? You gave an example actually in your business right now. Why don't you tell us about that and then I'll do your formal introduction?

Jake Still: 6:18

Example on for which one the finding items or In the business.

Marc Bernstein: 6:24

In the business the acres of diamonds that you just found um in your business, which is your five percent increases.

Jake Still: 6:30

I think how you were approaching that yeah, I mean and you could just do really basic math on it and everything stuff too but like so for us approaching right now.

Jake Still: 6:37

You know we were constantly trying to, especially in marketing, you know, find new clients, find new rev right.

Jake Still: 6:42

We grew to two million really fast in the first two years and since then we've always grown, but it's been a lot slower, a lot harder and a lot of things, especially in marketing, like there's also compounding value in saturation, right, getting more exposure to the same clients, right, and building brand loyalty. So for a while we were really trying a bunch of new marketing efforts and wasting a lot of money that wasn't leading anywhere, when we can just you know, on our website conversion, which is like 20%, can we get that to 23%? And if we have the impressions on the ads and everything else, you get like 20,000 impressions. You get a couple hundred clicks weekly, right. That can easily turn into 10 clients a week, 20 clients, 30 clients a week, and then you re-engage those same clients with new marketing efforts. They already know your brand, they're already educated, there's already a trust factor. So I think that's where a lot of people just don't put enough emphasis on their current clientele and their current relationships, and they try to do too much.

Marc Bernstein: 7:38

Thanks for expanding on that. So Jake Still is our guest today. He's founder and CEO of Junk Rescue and a very brief bio, and I love it. He's a New Jersey native, Ang.

Jake Still: 7:50

My homeboy when are you from North Jersey.

Ang Onorato: 7:55

We might as well be two different states, but hey we're all in Philly now, so it's okay.

Marc Bernstein: 7:58

Yeah, but she spends her time in South Jersey these days.

Ang Onorato: 8:01

Well, the Jersey Shore is all just. That's a third region of the state.

Marc Bernstein: 8:05

Well, it's still South Shore is all just. That's a whole, that's a third region of the state.

Ang Onorato: 8:07

Well, it's still South, you're right it is.

Marc Bernstein: 8:08

It's not really South Jersey, anyway and he's also graduated from Westchester University. He sold medical devices out of colleges to plastic surgeons and ditched that job to become a trash man, and he says it's the best decision he ever made. So welcome, jake, officially. Thanks for having me. So tell us a little bit about your story. Growing up, how you? I know you worked a little bit doing junk in business which implanted that idea. Tell us how you founded the business and how that came about.

Jake Still: 8:38

Yeah, so I grew up in a cinnamon city, new Jersey, so right across the bridge, and you know, always growing up I always did physical labor type of jobs because I always just like the fast paced environment, feeling like, yeah, I can turn everything into a game, you know, get a workout at the same time. You know I played sports. You know, growing up, all through college and you know I just always, you know, did that. So I got very used to it and very good with that type of work. But then I did go to college and I graduated from Westchester by bounce around.

Jake Still: 9:09

So I went to Rowan university first, was kind of lost, didn't know what I wanted to do, went to Brown and County college. I had friends that played baseball there. So then I ended up playing baseball there for two years and then I realized, all right, I'm, I'm kind of done with sports, I want to go, you know, just go to school. And, uh, I was a business admin major at bcc marketing at rowan and then I finished with a degree in marketing at westchester. Um, while I was at westchester, my friends, um, my roommate was on the football team and yeah, he got a, uh, the football team got a recruitment call from 1-800-GOT-JUNK and he was like, yeah, do you want a job? I was like, all right, sure, I'll get a job. And yeah, it was good because I could work Friday, saturday, Sunday and to many college kids that probably doesn't sound good to work that. But you know, we'd go out all night and then, you know, sweat it out in the morning and we did that for about a year and then, you know, I was having trouble with you know, hey, I gotta focus on school. And then at the same time we had other friends that worked at college hunks hauling junk. So I was like it was, it was actually in Westchester and it was more local. So I was like, all right, let me do that for a little bit. I did that. And then, um, a lot more younger guys I was, you know, both were great marketing companies, um, and their, their national franchises ran well. But then, um, you know I, it was a much different culture at both of them.

Jake Still: 10:31

And then when I was at westchester, I was like, hey, like I gotta, you know, I told my boss like I gotta move on, do something else. He's like what do you have, you know, your career lined up kind of you know familiar, very similar to what your son was kind of figuring out right now and he's like like, well, you don't have a job yet lined up. Do marketing for me. So I did and I ended up doing a little bit more of that franchise, like hiring guys and learning all the ins and outs, still making $9 an hour at the time. And then, yeah, I had friends in medical sales and I was like, ooh, that looks fancy and luxurious and you make a lot of money and you make a lot of money. So he worked in orthopedic devices and it's really hard to get in. So I actually used my background selling junk on the trucks in college to become the youngest medical sales rep at this company and I did that and that company actually went bankrupt. But I made a connection with the manufacturer and they hired me to run their rental program.

Jake Still: 11:23

For again, I was selling aesthetic lasers to dermatologists and plastic surgeons. And you know I did that for two years and my one boss was in Boston, the other one was in Vegas. I never met them. I had no anatomy, physics, all these other things and there was no education. So medical devices is much different than like pharmaceutical, so it's much more cold calling and not as much relationship based for what I was doing, because I was in the aesthetic industry. So I was just knocking door, knocking on plastic surgeons, dermatologists. So since I didn't have a strong education, I got really good at just being able to show up and do sales Right. But it was lonely and I wasn't happy. So me and my brother-in-law were driving up to a Yankees game one day and I'm a Phillies fan, he's a Yankees fan, he's from the North Jersey, central Jersey.

Ang Onorato: 12:16

Still a Phillies fan, though, yeah, I am.

Jake Still: 12:19

So you know we were driving up there and yeah, you make those small talks Like and yeah, you make those small talks like what would you do if you could do anything? And I really just like I always liked doing physical kind of labor and getting involved with that. But when I worked at these two other companies I was a college kid and they brought a very good white glove service, white collar approach to a typical blue collar industry, and at the time I'm selling medical devices to plastic surgeons and it's much different. It's a very hard sell. They were $100,000 know, they were a hundred thousand dollar lasers, right, um, and I had no training. You know my training was just go out and do it trial by fire.

Jake Still: 12:52

So you know he's like what's stopping you? And I'm like you know all the typical, you know BS excuses, like you know really it just comes down to you're scared to take the first step and how to do that. And really you know there's a lot of fear there. So a couple of weeks later we're on vacation and he's like, surprise, we're business partners. I'm like what are you talking about? And he took out a license for South Jersey junk removal. I was like that was stupid, like I don't know why, I don't know why he did that. You know, and again, I'm also telling myself. You know, I'm than me making 500k a year.

Marc Bernstein: 13:26

You know selling, and I was like that's my future this is starting to sound like an acres of diamonds story.

Jake Still: 13:31

Yeah, right, yeah. And then you know, a year later, um, it just so happens, I cut my division and yeah, they, they didn't want to do the rental program, they were. You know, their ultimate goal was to to capture more clients and then turn them, you know, into the sales side. And'm like all right, do I stay in the medical devices? Do I stay within this company? Go somewhere else? And it just so happened in New Jersey it takes a year to get your hauling license. So we got our license and I had to make a decision Do I become a trash man or do I stay with medical devices? And obviously I made the smart choice.

Marc Bernstein: 14:05

That's a great story. So and, as you said, best decision you ever made I don't know if I shared this with you when we first talked, but I got my training in college selling quality cookware, which was the best experience, you know. I built a whole financial planning company around that, you know, because everything you do you have to sell, you have to market and in fact I'm very excited because of the plug for the show In July we're having Ed Sattel, the founder of that company, who's founded other companies and who is a major philanthropist now with the Sattel Institute, who taught me a lot of what I needed to know at like 19 years old. Pretty amazing story. So that's really a great place to take a commercial break, because then we want to talk about your successes, your challenges you've had your future vision, et cetera. So, with that, here's our commercial and we'll talk to you shortly.

Announcer: 14:55

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Marc Bernstein: 15:47

Welcome back. We're with Jake Still of Junk Rescue co-founder and your president CEO your CEO, jake. So I know you've had a lot of success and I know a bit about that business. I know people in the business and I know they're not having a great year, and you mentioned your flat, which is very good, but you've had a lot of years of growth. I'm sure you had challenges along the way, so I want to hear about those challenges and then also, what were your keys to success? What are you guys doing right that put you where you are today?

Jake Still: 16:23

Yeah, absolutely so. It kind of comes full circle like this is what wisdom is right you learn going forward. When we actually started the company, that was in May of 2016, when we actually started building the brand, the first thing I ditched was South Jersey Junk Removal. I switched that. I was like we're going to rebrand. I really wanted something that implied action, implied feeling. That's why I went with Rescue and Junk Rescue. People always ask where the colors come from. I feeling so that's why I went with, you know, rescue and junk rescue. People always ask what the colors come from and, uh, I just saw a best buy sign and I like blue and yellow and then, we added superman and everything else and, you know, gave it some red so

Jake Still: 16:58

we spent three months building the company at first, and you know we, from day one, everyone asked like oh, you guys are a franchise, like how long you've been in business and everything, and it was was really cool to be like today's day one, right, like it was really cool to be able to talk about that. I would say, in the first two years, like because we had a solid foundation. You know our goal. There's a Kyle Chunks has a book called Effortless Entrepreneur, and I read that, and you know it outlines you know their journey, and I was like I want to beat that.

Jake Still: 17:28

They franchised in two years, and they did 2 million rev, and that's what our goals were, and I told my partner that, and he's like no way, we'll do 240,000 maybe the first year, and we did 700,000 the first year, and then we got to 2 million little over in two years, and we spent $100,000 for the FDD to franchise, and one of the things we didn't realize, though, is that that was very dependent on people and not systems, and what I mean by that is, like, all of our knowledge and training and everything left with either myself or anyone who left the company, and we didn't have good systems. We didn't have good pay structure. It was very hectic. So you know, there was a ton of burnout. We lost a lot of good guys early on, including myself, like if I wasn't the owner.

Jake Still: 18:15

I would have quit so many times because it was rough, right, and you know, I think probably as the owner, you thought about quitting it. Yeah, I fired myself a bunch of times. So you know we had some success there and you know, over time it really comes down to really you know systems and scaling. There's a good book called the E-Myth which really talks about, like you really you know systems and scaling. There's a good book called the E-Myth which really talks about, like you know, you really need to build your business out of high school. You know high school could run it.

Jake Still: 18:34

You need to build a franchise prototype, regardless of what you're doing, and I think that simplicity gets mixed. You know, because, especially for me, you know you want everything to be perfect, right, it's your baby and everything else, and that doesn't scale, right, you're never going to have perfection. No one's going to treat it exactly the way you did because they're not the owners, they're not the founders, they don't have the same vision, they don't have the same incentives and priorities. So you know, we really. There's another good book Buy Back your Time with Dan Martell and it's like 80% delegated is 100% awesome, right, and that is really where you have to work more towards instead of perfection, keeping things simple to scale, and that's really where we're trying to get to right now in our journey more than anything else, and delegate more, because you can only build the business so far by yourself. You need to bring on great people, develop them and grow them. Easier said than done, right, but that's kind of where we're at right now and I view it as the beginning part of the story is we spent three months building the business. The beginning part of the story is we spent three months building the business.

Jake Still: 19:30

The longer you can be patient in building your systems and processes and everything else, the more success. The higher the bigger building you can build right Like the bigger your foundation is. And we're finding it much harder now to fix holes on a moving ship and, as we're taking on water solving, it's hard. If you can be patient and slow and not pay yourself which, by the way, we didn't do for a very long time and we did that early on. If I could still live with my parents, my fiance would kill me, but I would like to do that. I could build so much more that way. But again, as you get older, you have new responsibilities and it goes down to be patient. How long can you be patient at the bottom, I think, and dump your money and time back into the business.

Marc Bernstein: 20:14

I want to ask you more about the challenges you face, but I think the good context for that is to ask you about your future vision, and you would like to talk about your 10-year vision. So if this were 2034 and we're looking back on the last 10 years, what would have to happen, jake, for you to feel that that was a successful period in your life? And it could be business, personal, financial, whatever that means.

Jake Still: 20:39

I mean, on a personal side, I would like to have a family and be at that part of my journey right now.

Jake Still: 20:47

So I'm engaged, thinking about kids, right, but the business is like a kid, right, and it takes a lot of time, a lot of late nights, but, again, I've always wanted to be a father.

Jake Still: 20:57

So I think, you know, that would be really cool to actually, you know, start that that part of my journey. On the business side of things, you know, in 10 years, like we have to grow, right. So we, the goal is we got to get into every major city, um, and we got to expand with systems, because, you know, if we don't have a big vision and we don't have, you know, uh, a career vision for our employees, you you can't retain them. Like, you have to grow and they have to see the growth and see the vision and you have to execute on that right. So I mean, our goal is to be, yeah, if you're driving down the highway, you know, in any major you city, you should be able to see our brand, whether it's a billboard, a truck employee out, well, it won't be a Wawa, but it might be a sheets or whatever else they have out there. Um, you know that needs to happen. Um cause again if, if you're not growing or dying kind of thing.

Marc Bernstein: 21:47

That's a whole other story. We talked about it on a different day.

Ang Onorato: 21:50

yeah, Don't dilute that brand.

Marc Bernstein: 21:52

That's great. So what challenges do you face? Because that's not going to be easy, as you know.

Jake Still: 21:55

Yeah. So I mean, the biggest challenges I face is usually myself. Right, and that's kind of what I talked back before about trying to be too perfect, right? You Again, it doesn't scale. So we talk about guys. They talk all the time like, oh you guys must get amazing stuff and you can sell it and all that kind of stuff. Cool, if you want to be small time and do that, you can. You can make some money that way. But that doesn't scale. Those systems don't scale. The business is built on speed and convenience and really investing back in the employees and growing them and expanding that way. It's a whole other model to try to flip and sell.

Marc Bernstein: 22:28

I think I hear you saying get out of your own way.

Jake Still: 22:31

Yeah, very much so for me, and just be okay with it. Doesn't have to be perfect, it needs to scale, and also, the easier it is to scale, the more simple it is, the easier it is to delegate and allow these guys to then have success. I can't expect them to do it exactly the way I do it, and the game is rigged. That I built because I built the game. So, again, it needs to be easier for them.

Marc Bernstein: 22:51

So from a business perspective. I love that. I know we haven't talked about this so I'm just guessing, but I but I feel like you feel like you're making an impact with what you're doing. It might be on your employees, it might be on your customers, it might be on their experience, it might be on the community at large. Do you see that side to your business?

Jake Still: 23:10

Yeah, a lot of guys will ask like and again I won't lie Like, are you passionate about junk removal? And and the answer is no, I'm passionate about having less stuff. Like, again, I like minimal, minimal minimalization minimalism, minimalism, yeah, I like that concept, right, but really I mean it's a vehicle.

Jake Still: 23:27

I'm passionate about business. I'm passionate about working with our employees and building them. We got a lot of young guys that we get to develop and a lot of guys that take a labor type of job at a young age, that aren't going to college and stuff like that. They haven't always been dealt a good hand, have the best role models or whatever, and they're really raw and you get to work with them.

Jake Still: 23:45

Going back to, like the whole diamonds you know diamonds in the rough kind of thing, acres of diamonds story there's a lot of people there with a lot of strong potential and I'm a firm believer in your environment, especially as a young age dictates a lot of. You know who you are as an older, as you get older and you know they say you know by 21, 25, it's hard to change but it's not impossible, right. And I think you know getting a chance to really develop the guys and teach them things that you know I always have, based on my friends and everything else. I think everyone thinks the same way. I'm like no, these guys have a completely different perspective. The stuff they follow on social media is completely different, right. So being able to surround them with new ways of thinking and and and really like their visions. I think sometimes are very low, and let them expand that they're capable of a lot more, and that's really what motivates me the most.

Ang Onorato: 24:35

You know, jake, I love that, you know. Typically, I like to ask people you know, tell me about your culture, and I think you just encapsulated that very, very well. What I hear is the intersection of a couple of different things. It's the diamonds in the rough. It's the fact that you're, you know, as a younger company, young entrepreneurial company. You're talking about the e-myth and I think for a lot of people that aren't familiar with that, what that really says is that you're looking at, yes, the systems and how do you scale it, but there's the other part of it about knowing when to let go and what things to let go, and I think you're talking about with the delegation.

Ang Onorato: 25:06

But I just want to highlight, too, that the fact that, at this stage of your company's growth, that you are paying such attention to the growth of the employees, because, at the end of the day, as good as your systems are, your product or your brand or your marketing, if you don't have higher attention and you don't have a way to attract that talent and develop them and give them purpose, which is everything that you just mentioned, and I think that's a really important message for people. A lot of times, people start companies with a. I just want to build it and scale it and sell it right. I don't care about the underneath part of it, and you know. So there's less of a question here that I have for you, because I think you encapsulate that well, but more of a highlighting the fact that I think you are really set it sounds like for really that exponential growth, because you're considering all the important factors that go into that, yeah, and I appreciate that.

Jake Still: 25:55

And the one thing you say, like it's much easier to talk about it than to do it right, and there's always a classic I don't know if you guys have seen School of Rock it's like those who can't do teach and those who can't teach teach gym right and it is easier to talk about. I gym right, like, and it always it is easier to talk about. I read a ton of books. It's hard to be disciplined and execute it. So that might be my vision and everything, but I'll be the first to tell you I don't do it all the time. I don't do a good enough job. I need to, you know, find ways to make that easy for me to execute on so I can live by that and really help our guys.

Marc Bernstein: 26:23

A lightning round, cause we only have a minute or two left. Favorite book you just mentioned books.

Jake Still: 26:28

I'm big on Extreme Ownership by Jocko, really big on accountability. Ah, I love it.

Marc Bernstein: 26:33

Love Jocko and you have a question.

Ang Onorato: 26:39

Yeah. So I mean it sounds odd to say because you're kind of still young in this, but if you were to look back now at your younger self, what would you say to yourself?

Jake Still: 26:45

Do less. I think honestly, yeah, focus on a few good books, key lessons, like the wisdom and principles. There's a lot of things that you can read the Bible. You don't have to be religious or not, but there's things in that that have stood the test of time and you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Follow your core principles and really just be tight on that. And I think again.

Ang Onorato: 27:10

Doing less, keeping it simple and investing in yourself is the best thing you can do. Couldn't agree more on that.

Marc Bernstein: 27:12

That's a great way to end Great closing words and I think that kind of wraps up our show for today on Founders Forum. Jake, pleasure having you here, great, and maybe we'll have you on again sometime as your business develops and follow your journey, because you're great at this. Hey, I appreciate it guys. Thanks all of you for listening today and we'll see you next week on Founders Forum.