Bodhi Gallo went to college slinging lacrosse balls and ended his collegiate career slinging dumpsters. How does someone from a middle-class family with no entrepreneurial background become a multi-industry success story as an entrepreneur?
I have been following Bodhi, aka The Dumpster Rental Guy, for a while on X and have watched with interest as he moved from renting dumpsters to helping others learn how to gain their own financial freedom. I was happy to spend some time with him recently and learn more about his path to entrepreneurship, and also get some pointers on digital marketing for home-service businesses like MaidThis.
The New Generation of Entrepreneurs
It’s no secret that many business owners today have reached a point where they are looking to sell off their businesses and retire. This is a golden opportunity for young entrepreneurs looking to buy into an established business and scale up through their digital know-how and endless energy. When a like-minded teammate at Bodhi’s college came to him with a business opportunity to partner up and buy a dumpster rental business, he recognized the opportunity to grow the business through some very simple modernization to how the business was being marketed.
After performing his due diligence, Bodhi understood that they had an opportunity to take a business that depended on word-of-mouth advertising and quickly increase its revenue through smart digital marketing.
As luck would have it, marketing was what Bodhi wanted to do as a career. He recognized early on that he didn’t want to work a typical 9-to-5 job and his love of marketing was the perfect asset to help him start his own business. So, Bodhi sold off some of the investments he had been making since his teenage years, borrowed some money from his dad, and went into business by making a cash offer with his partner to purchase the dumpster rental company.
All he had to do after buying the business was figure out how to grow.
The A, B, H’s of Entrepreneurship
The movie Glengarry Glen Ross made the acronym “ABC” famous. It stands for Always Be Closing and is like canon for salespeople. While ABC may still be the law of sales forces everywhere, ABH is more appropriate for the entrepreneur. Always Be Hustling is the attitude that is required to be a successful business owner in today’s world, and Bodhi had that mentality from an early age.
Shaan Puri, co-host of the My First Million podcast believes that successful founders tend to have a background that includes some form of everyday hustle. Perhaps their entrepreneurial hustle is online gambling, or flipping goods on eBay. Whatever the hustle may be, it sets the foundation for being successful as a business founder because it teaches you that you must always be on offense. Bodhi agrees with this idea and notes that one of the biggest mistakes he sees from new business owners is the idea that they can simply sit at their desks and let leads come to them.
When his dumpster rental business was first starting to grow, it took some novel thinking to get things moving. One of the strategies that Bodhi used to succeed was looking at where his larger competitors were doing business, then taking advantage of the low overhead is business had to beat the pricing of the larger dumpster rental company. He would follow the competition’s trucks to job sites, then cold call the customer after the trucks left. He knew his flexibility on pricing could get him wins, but he needed to be out in the streets to see the opportunities.
Helping Others To Help You
As Bodhi’s entrepreneurial roots began to take hold, he realized that his business’s digital marketing wins could benefit others. He partnered up with another friend and started a digital marketing agency, focused on local market pursuits. His first case study was to use the agency’s skillset and grow the dumpster rental business he co-owned.
As business began to grow, Bodhi recognized an opportunity for a win-win scenario with some of his current recurring customers. He approached them and made them an offer. For a small monthly fee, Bodhi would use his digital marketing prowess to gain new leads for his roofing and bathroom remodeling customers. The upside to this was that the more leads his customers received, the more jobs they sold. And the more jobs they sold, the more dumpsters they needed to rent from Bodhi. Win-win.
Knowing When To Leave
Bodhi’s digital marketing agency was growing by leaps and bounds and provided the fun and excitement he hoped for as a college kid entering the workforce. Unfortunately, his dumpster business was no longer exciting, and Bodhi realized he couldn’t give 100% to the business any longer. He went to his business partner and told him what he was thinking, and they decided to sell.
When you own a business, at some point it will feel like it demands too much of your time and attention. Knowing when and how to get out of the business, isn’t easy. You are faced with three options at that point, which are selling, closing, or automating the business to remain profitable but demand less time and attention.
Closing wasn’t an option for the business, and revenue had grown to over $750,000. However, the business had hit the decision point of investing more to grow to the next level of service or stagnate.
Automating the business wasn’t a feasible option, as delegating the tasks of such a business and keeping it healthy was too difficult.
Luckily, Bodhi had someone in mind who had been pursuing the purchase of his dumpster rental business for some time, so selling the business was an easy decision to make. This allowed him to exit a successful business and grow the business he dreamed of.
Bodhi’s path to entrepreneurship is the best kind of path that you can take when starting your own business. He knew what he wanted to do with his life, he took a gamble on himself, and he used his experience to set himself up for financial freedom while helping others to do the same.
Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash
This article was written by Neel from MaidThis Franchise, a remote-local franchise opportunity for people looking to escape the rat race and reach financial freedom. Learn more here.
