Adam Torres and John Conway discuss Sparkling Bins.
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Show Notes:
Sparkling Bins Business is creating new opportunities for entrepreneurs. In this episode, Adam Torres and John Conway, CEO at Sparkling Bins Business, explore John’s journey as an entrepreneur and how Sparkling Bins Business was created.
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About John Conway
John Conway is the founder and CEO of Sparkling Bins Business, the world’s largest manufacturer of trash bin cleaning systems for solid waste, recycling, and compost containers. He brought the concept to our nation and has helped over 800 entrepreneurs start their own trash bin cleaning business.
About Sparkling Bins Business
Sparkling Bins Business is the world’s largest residential and commercial bin cleaning system and trash can cleaning truck manufacturer for solid waste, recycling, and compost containers. Not only are we the pioneers in the industry, having brought the concept of cleaning our nation’s trash bins and dumpsters to this country, but they are also the industry leader in helping others start their own trash bin cleaning business! With this unparalleled emerging business opportunity, they have helped over 400 entrepreneurs start their own highly successful bin and dumpster cleaning business across 4 continents! With our expertise, they can make owning your own garbage can cleaning business a reality for you as well!
Being one of the first organizations to solve our nation’s growing problem of managing the sanitary challenges of unclean trash cans, bins, and dumpsters in both the private and commercial sectors, Sparkling Bins Business is uniquely qualified to help ensure that you have the right Garbage Can Cleaning Trucks, tools, training, and business plan to help you own your own successful business. They continue to service their own loyal client base consisting of over 2700 trash and recycle bins (cans) and dumpsters per week in the residential and commercial sector of southern Florida. We ensure you learn from our 11 years of experience in this emerging business and offer you a turnkey solution to becoming your own boss.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of mission matters. My name is Adam Torres. And if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today’s guest is John Conway and he is the CEO over at sparkling bins business.
John, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I certainly appreciate it. Excited to talk about the industry and whatever questions come my way. All right, John. So we got a lot to talk about. I want, we’re definitely going to get into Sparkling Bins, the opportunity, really the story behind it. Since we did kind of like our warm up and our pre session, I’ve been hearing more.
It’s kind of like one of those things. Once you hear about it once, now you start hearing about it all over the place. I got some stories for you too. But before we get started with that, we’re going to start this episode the way that we start them all. With what we like to call our mission matters minute.
So John at mission matters, our aim and our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission, John, what mission matters to you? Helping entrepreneurs, right? So this is a very niche business being able to provide the most efficient. sanitizing trucks, the clean dumpsters and trash bins in the industry and help entrepreneurs get into the business and help them get started with our turnkey package.
It’s great. Love bringing mission based entrepreneurs on the line to share, you know, why they do what they do, how they’re doing it, and really what we can all learn from that. So we all grow together. So great, great to have you on. And I guess just to get us kicked off here, John, like sparkling bins, like how’d you come up with this idea?
Like what, what sucked you into the industry? So I was working for a fortune 100 company for 25 years. I got laid off during the housing market crash in 2009. I’d worked with them, same company worked my way up the corporate ladder, did very well, relocated many times. And after 25 years, I got laid off and I’m like, okay, I have always had this, this desire to own my own business.
They might be my own boss. Having worked for corporate America, having to report numbers weekly and daily to corporate in terms of, I was done with that. So I didn’t know what business I wanted to get into. And it happened by accident. You know, my wife was chasing after me two days before us hosting a fourth of July party saying we had three trash bins full of maggots and I had to clean them.
My response to her was. bins are meant to be dirty. We just put them inside of the house, you know, and she’s more of a clean freak than I am. So fast forward, I probably use 150 gallons of water from a, from a garden hose, bleach. And I was cleaning those trash bins and all that gunk was going down the storm drains, which we know is illegal.
And fast forward, I go inside, take a shower because I was filthy and started Google searching online to find chemicals to prevent maggots. I find out that there was some sites popping up over in Europe. So this concept started 45 years ago in Europe. And I’m like, so I’m trying to Google search a company in Miami to come clean my bins.
What? So I said, bingo. This is a niche business that people are paying back, you know, 14 years ago. Now you’re paying 5 to have their bins cleaned. I would do it in a heartbeat. I didn’t even tell my wife, you know, I traded my car in. I bought a pickup truck, found a welder. And a month later I was out there cleaning trash bins.
Really? Wow. So, so first off your, so your wife got you into the business. It sounds like, and what’d she, what’d she say when you were like, all right, we’re out here and we’re going to clean bins. Like, what was she thinking? She’s like, great. Was she at first like, okay, maybe I shouldn’t ask them to do this.
Or like, how did that go? You know, I mean, like. I am a lot more of a risk taker. She’s very conservative. So to be honest with you, I didn’t even tell her I was getting into the business. I went in, traded my car in, bought a truck. She came home from having her nails done and said to me, what’s that truck doing in our driveway?
So I just found a welder. We’re going to look at the systems over in Europe where it started 45 years ago. I start cleaning trash bins. And at first she thought I was crazy. But, you know, soon after, after the first three or four weeks, she said, you know, I know that you’ve got a lot of passion for what you do and that you’re going to give this a hundred percent.
So it was, became very supportive. This is a local family owned business for 14 years and We’ve had a lot of people say to me, you know, what a great idea. Yeah. Concept, you know yes, it’s in retrospect though. Right. In retrospect, right. In the beginning, it’s like, ah, when you’re first getting started, like, cause you said it was new to the area.
So what was that like getting, I mean, what every entrepreneur struggles with, like getting that first customer other than yourself, of course, cause your wife had you hired, but other than that, what was that like? So, you know, I was probably the first to bring the concept over to the U. S. And I can tell you, I made a lot of mistakes our first year.
The biggest challenge we have with this industry is if you need a landscape or pest control company or pool service company, you know where to find one. Most people run out through google searching trash bin cleaning. So my first year I made a lot of mistakes. In terms of, you know, cleaning bins at 10 o’clock in the morning versus at five o’clock in the evening, when people were coming home from work, that’s exposure you’re going to get to help you scale a lot faster.
So it took a lot of, you know, doing things the wrong way to finally figure out my truck was a moving billboard, putting my truck in parades with two bins in the back of my hopper with the steam coming out, I drive my kids to school in the morning. And they were embarrassed as heck, but I get four or five calls from mom saying, what a great, you know, you steam clean bins.
So sign me up. That’s their, that’s their college education right there. Right. Come on. Well, what a great story. And so as you’re, as you’re growing this business, like, I still want to keep it in the early days a little bit longer, because the reason I want to do that too, is there’s other entrepreneurs that are going through it right now, right?
It’s easy to look at your business where it’s at right now and say, Oh my gosh, You were first and you had this advantage with that advantage, which again, that’s like one of those things that’s easier to look at, but in those early days, like so you’re selling your, your, your business or you’re, are you doing B2B in the beginning?
Are you doing B2C? Like, what does that piece of it look like? Are you going after the corporate accounts or just are the the community? Yeah. I mean, it’s all B2C. Yeah. Yeah. It’s all B2C and certainly. It was more so I had to find clients. They’re not going to find me cause they don’t know the service even exists.
Matter. We did a lot of creative stuff in terms of, you know, putting our trucks in these different trade shows and just driving around. Every time I went to Costco or Home Depot, I put two bins in the back of my truck and I drive it around and that was a moving billboard. That’s what got the attention.
And I soon realized that to grow this business and to scale it a lot faster, you have to keep your routes as tight as possible. Trying to cover an entire County of 4. 5 million people with one truck. Yeah. Yeah, we found out that wasn’t the answer. So I focused on an area of 10, 000 homes and bins late in the afternoon.
And that’s why I started the scale and okay, let’s get a number two. And then of course the manufacturing side kind of happened, you know. As I was posting videos to YouTube, people were calling me saying, can you build me a truck? Sure. Why not? What caused you? And that’s a great point there. When you started creating content, like what, what inspired that?
Because there’s a lot of business owners out there that in my opinion should be creating content and you wouldn’t necessarily like, to me, it’s not intuitive it will actually, it is intuitive, but to most, it might not be like, why create content? Right. What, what, what sparked that interest to start posting videos and start doing that?
Well, yeah, I mean. So certainly posting videos to raise your awareness. I started posting things on Facebook. Facebook was becoming very popular. This was now back in 2010. And as I was posting content more so for, for people that were following my group or my page to say that, you know, there’s a bin washing company in Miami.
And then from there, people were, you know, See my videos and the actual posting was really to gain attraction and to really try to educate the consumer that the service existed. And in this point, were you thinking of it on Facebook is kind of like building a community. I know we weren’t using that word back then too much when it came to online.
That is, I mean, we weren’t now, now you hear many people talking about building an online community or building a community around your brand. Or your business, whether it’s the consumers or the suppliers or the whole eco chain, were you kind of thinking along that line of, of building a community or was it like, Hey, we’re just going to create content to inform.
I’m just curious where your head was at. Yeah. So up front, it was more so the content and then. From there involved into, we have many different Facebook groups that we that are geared towards this industry that is very educational. So originally it was more so about the content and then, okay, let’s build this, this, the, let’s build a house that people can come to and share ideas and okay.
What’s working for you. What’s working for you. That’s not working for me. So it really has grown into. We’ve got groups of over 8, 000 people. Amazing. Did that surprise you? Like, has that started to take legs? Like, did that surprise you at all? I mean, I would say that every time you talk to someone, they’re saying, wow, you know, why don’t I think about this?
This is a great idea. And I think as it became more and more popular and more and more people wanted to follow these groups to learn more about the industry. And that really helps people understand is this the right business for them? We talked about transparency and being upfront. This is not a get rich overnight business.
You have to scale, you have to do things. And you know, when you’re buying from sparking veins, we give you an onboarding marketing call. That talks to you about all the things that worked for us and the things that didn’t work for us because we want to make sure you scale a lot faster than we did. And so let’s talk about that transition.
So you’re, you’re or I should say the addition because you’re still, you know, you’re still helping clients one on one, but at some point you’re, you’re building this community, you’re building this you’re building this track and you have this traction and now you’re also educating. And now people are like, Hey, can you, can you get me a truck, man?
I want in like, what was that like taking on those first like. Like okay, we’ll do it. Yeah. I, I mean, it’s funny because I go back and I talk to my daughter and to my wife and to my son and my son. Back in the day when people would fly in to meet with me, they, they’d come to my house, . Yeah. That was my, we’d have lunch and talk about that.
You know, and, and that was great because I, I really enjoyed helping people get into this industry. And you know, it’s, it’s come a long way in terms of where we, where we used to do training in our front yard of our house. That was way back in the day as, as people were kind of learning about this, but I can tell you that the first year was kind of slow.
And then, you know, I started doing some, some advertising on YouTube and what have you, and of course SEO helped us out a great deal. So, you know, we’ve helped start over 800 companies in 46 different States. It’s been a great run. I mean, it’s, it’s fun to work for yourself, your family. You don’t have to report it to your boss every single day, so yeah.
And one of the things that you, you did as you’re building the company is talk to me about the technology and like patenting and just kind of like that process you went through because since you were, you know, I mean, you kind of systematically created this so that, you know, you’re not only obviously helping yourself, but as you get other trucks out there and other things like you’re constantly improving, talk to me about like the technology and what that looks like.
Yes. So we have six patents already approved. We have two patents pending. And certainly I have a group of our top clients that we meet on a regular basis to talk about efficiency, what to do. So it’s not only John Conway. It’s a group of people. Yep. I try and surround myself with people that are smarter than I am.
And we have come a long way in terms of we have the most efficient cleaning system in the industry. We have patents that protect that, and it just when you’re adding something that’s more efficient, that means that you’re able to clean a lot more trash bins and make a lot more money and save on a lot of overhead.
And so looking at your overall career as an entrepreneur and as a, and, and, and creating this portfolio of businesses that you hold in these different business lines, like what’s next, what’s your vision for sparkling bins, like long term what’s the big vision. So my big vision is to really. Bring national awareness to industry.
I think once we do that and we have some things that we’re working on behind the scenes, a national spokesperson, you know, once that really kind of national exposure, I think it’s going to help every single person out there that’s doing this by getting clients and having to buy more trucks. But my longterm vision, you know, when I retire, if I retire, whatever it is, is that, you know, We’re not going to let you retire first off, John, but continue.
Every 5, 000 miles, you have to change the oil in your car, right? And you have to change the AC filter every month or every two or three months. I’m not sure my wife does it. You have to do you know, Wash your windows every so often you clean your house every so often and guess what you have to have your trash bins cleaned every month So I’m trying to make it as common as having your oil change in your car filter In your AC.
Yeah, that’s that’s really gonna come more. So with more national exposure I think when kovat hit us this business exploded Loaded tremendously Why do you think that was, by the way, I’m just curious how that, why exploded was it because people were home more and they’re like, Oh, wait a minute. I was so, so there was two things.
I, I do remember the first month of COVID. I didn’t know how this would impact our business. Yeah. And then we found out that pressure washing was essential. So we’d have to shut down. So with people working from home, the exposure of people seeing our trucks was a lot greater. Oh, that makes sense. Okay.
You’re working from home. A lot of people were actually converting their, let’s say their, their garage into a workout room or gym or an office. And they didn’t want that smelly trash can in there anymore. They’re like, man, we want, they’re on their treadmill and they smell that bane. And of course, you know, and we kind of focus on areas that people have to put their bins in their garage.
Like these so I think with COVID the, the exposure of germs and bacteria really helped. I remember getting probably 10 phone calls from clients saying, John, I need, I need, I need a second truck, like right away. It just really, really took this business and exploded. It really did. Now, from the business opportunity side, like somebody that’s looking at getting into the business, and you mentioned before that you have trucks, that you do sell trucks and you, you do help other people get into the business.
Like, what does that look like, number one? And number two, what kind of entrepreneurs do you find are normally kind of the right fit for this? You mentioned it’s a long term, a long term play. Yeah, so obviously We try to be as transparent as possible with our clients. And I, you know, we get phone calls and they’ll say, listen, I’m going to quit my daytime job to do this.
I’m like, okay, do you have any passive income coming in? Well, this is not a right fit for you. So we try to screen people to make sure that we’re not, that we’re setting proper expectations. I can tell you that the most successful people are those that have, have other I’ve owned other businesses before.
Yeah. You know, they have maybe a landscaping business, a pressure washing business as control business. So also they might even have like complimentary clients that they already have or client lists. So that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. It’s more so people that are in the home service business already.
This is just an add on to that. So those are the entrepreneurs that we’re trying to attract because they’ve already run a business. They have a client list of three or 4, 000 clients that they can reach out to. And those are the clients that really are able to grow and scale and order a truck every single spring.
That’s interesting and grow year over year. Huh? Yeah, I get it. That makes, that makes a lot of sense. And as their neighbors see it, and then it kind of, it kind of, it spreads just like, I guess I’m from the Midwest originally, and I think about like, when I would see like a snow plow, you see the new snow plow guy or whatever.
And you’re like, ah, you see somebody like you’re out there doing it. You’re seeing it. And then your neighbor maybe didn’t and I’m thinking about when I’m a kid and my dad has me out there, right? And I just be looking at that other one like, man, why not? So at some point, you’re like, I don’t want to push this upon myself.
Let me do how much is this guy? Okay. It’s worth it. I’m in. So I feel like that. In a different way, it’s like you see somebody come, your, your beautiful truck comes, cleans the trash, everything else, the guy’s out there cleaning his trash by hand or with some brush. And he’s like, man, what am I doing? Let me pay for this thing.
Is that, am I off? So that you’re 100 percent correct in that regard. So that’s why. If you talk to my drivers, they’ll tell you that they pick up probably about 10 to 15 new clients on location as we’re cleaning bins and I’m saying, what’s my neighbor doing now? Keeping up with the challenges. Okay, let’s okay.
They’re doing that. I’m going to do it as well. So What you find, Adam, over time is that you may have one client on that one street. And then six months later, there’s 20 people because people are seeing you. That’s what we do. We first start. And it compounds, right? Cause then you’re there and then you’re there more often.
And now it’s like, Oh, this person, this person, this person, you’re like, why are we not using that yet? That, and we also encourage to offer a client referral program. They refer over to us, give them a free cleaning. I’d say at least 20 percent of our new clients come from referrals and there’s no need to convince them because a person who Had their been cleaned already is convincing them.
Yeah, I’m gonna call my sister my follow They’re gonna love the service. So that really helps us out as well I want to, I want to circle back to some of the content being created. Cause I understand your daughter, Victoria hosts a podcast. I’m a big fan of promoting and other podcasters as well. Trash chatter.
Talk to me about that. It’s an amazing idea. So a funny story. I went to go visit my son up in New Jersey. And he said to me, It was about two and a half years ago. He says, dad, have you ever watched the Joe Rogan podcast? I’m like, who’s Joe Rogan? What the heck’s a podcast? So he actually went onto YouTube TV and pulled up a podcast.
He was interviewing Elon Musk. I’m like, wow, this is pretty cool. Guy’s in a t shirt. Yeah. He knows he’s casual. You know, smoking a cigar and I make, wow, this is pretty cool. And my son said, you know, dad, he makes a lot of money, makes a lot of money. So I looked at Victoria said, let’s start a podcast about the bin washing industry.
So we called it trash. We actually tried getting trash talk, but that was already trademark. So yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense that that would be. So, I mean, we have over 50 episodes out there and we have, we have over eight to 12, 000 views. So we do encourage entrepreneurs as we’re looking into this business to go out there and spend, you know, it’s on, it’s on YouTube, it’s on Spotify, it’s on Apple music.
And I’ve had clients say, I’ve listened to every single one of my, of your podcasts and it’s really helped me prepare myself. A lot better to getting into this industry. So, so the podcast is really meant to help people make a decision. What business for them, what do they need to do to prepare themselves and hearing it, not from us, but hearing it from other people have one truck that have 12 trucks in their fleet, people are just getting started.
So it’s been very educational. It’s been a great hit. Well, John congrats on, on the success of sparkling bins and also on the, on the business opportunity that you’re providing other entrepreneurs. And what I like about this story, one of the things I like about it the most is that you found success.
And now, even through your trucks and allowing others to have the opportunity, you’ve allowed others into the business and you’ve shared it. Content and knowledge through thing on things like your podcast. You don’t have to do that. You choose to do that. Sure. It does drive business, but it’s not, it’s not one of those things that everybody does.
Some people keep all their secrets to themselves or with internally or otherwise the fact that you’re leading with content, leading with opportunity and leading with, you know, a good heart and bringing other people into the business. I think it’s amazing. John, last thing I’ll ask you, how do people follow up?
How do they learn about, about the opportunity? How do they learn about the service? Like how do people connect? Yeah. So basically all they have to do is just go to sparkling bins, business. com, go to our contact form, submit a request. We have a sales team that will call you and, and, and, you know, They’re more of a team that’s gonna be a acting as a consultant first, not just trying to sell you a piece of equipment, ask you questions, and try to fit the right equipment for you.
Yeah, so sparkling bins business.com, our contact formats for how you, you can reach us. And certainly I talk to, at le a lot of clients or prospects every single week as, as, as well as my sales team. Fantastic, John and everybody. I definitely want you to go check out Trash Chatter with Victoria Conway because we love supporting other podcasters out there.
And now we definitely want it. We definitely want to tune in there and see what’s going on. Speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or that follow button. This is a daily show each and every day. We’re releasing new episodes, new content, and hopefully Fully new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey.
John, man, really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your story. Thank you. I appreciate it. Take care