An exclusive interview with Reid Husmer with Gone for Good.
Stone Payton
Welcome to Franchise Marketing Radio. Today's episode is brought to you in part by the Business RadioX® studio partner program equipping franchisers to help franchisees dominate their local market. To learn more about serving your market and growing your business go to mybrxstudio.com Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you this morning. Lee, this is going to be a fantastic segment. Please join me in welcoming the broadcast owner with Gone for Good, Mr. Reid Husmer. Good morning, sir.
Reid Husmer
Good morning.
Lee Kantor
Well, Reid before we get too far into things tells us about Gone for Good. How you serving folks,
Reid Husmer
Well, Gone for Good is an eco-friendly hauling company, what we basically do is, is clean out all the junk out of houses and businesses. And our whole goal is to take that junk and find a new home whether it be in our thrift store, recycling, or donating to charities.
Lee Kantor
So it isn't just take it to the landfill.
Reid Husmer
Correct? Yep, we actually have a warehouse, where we sort through things and then do our best to find a new home.
Lee Kantor
And then how'd you get into this business.
Reid Husmer
You know, I got into this business because I was moving around a lot myself. And one weekend I just looked at my basement and I go I gotta do something with all this stuff. And instead of just getting the roll-off being done with it and about half a day, I took my time to find a good home for all the stuff whether it be my son's furniture, recycling or even selling on Craigslist or eBay.
Lee Kantor
And I just went through this myself personally, I had the same kind of feeling when I looked at the basement. I got kind of suffocating from seeing all this stuff that had been just accumulating and boxes and piles and stuff that we bought and never used or didn't use a lot. And I had my kid’s girlfriend. She said she was like an organizer and she thought she could do it. And then we had like we made piles of Okay, this is stuff we're gonna keep this is stuff we're not going to keep. And it was hard to get rid of this stuff that was perfectly functional.
So I felt that feeling that I think that you're trying to address in this that this stuff is you don't have to send it to a landfill. There's people that can use it. But I just didn't want to personally deal with, you know, going to Craigslist and figuring out how to do eBay and do the things. So how do so how does it work logistically for the customer,
Reid Husmer
for the customer, so they pay by how much we fill up the truck, whether it be a quarter truckload or all the way to our full truckload. And it can be anything from trash to furniture, it can be down in the basement, it can be up in the attic, wherever it's at, we'll go get it and then fill up the truck and they just pay us by the volume but they get a feeling of okay so that's all in the truck it's not going to go straight to the landfill it's going to either go to a person that has no furniture in their house we donate to a charity or someone that need you to know kitchen table and chairs for just 60 bucks instead of paying 300
Lee Kantor
And then so but so is the fee like less than I would pay it a normal kind of junk hauling company or is
Reid Husmer
We have very competitive rates. We were a little bit different because we have our box trucks so it's like a moving box truck 16 feet and typically the other junk hauling trucks, our little dumpster trucks that are about 10 feet long.
Lee Kantor
Right and they're just throwing stuff they don't care what kind of shape it's in you're trying to keep preserve the thing, right?
Reid Husmer
Correct. Correct.
Lee Kantor
Now, when you started this was it always with franchising in mind?
Reid Husmer
You know, it wasn't I didn't. I started about 11 years ago. And I always thought okay, I'll just continue to grow locations and open up new warehouses throughout. And then I came across the idea of franchising where this is going to work a lot better than me trying to grow up myself and own all these locations because It's better for that location to be ownership of the business rather than reporting to corporate if that makes sense.
Lee Kantor
Yeah, no it because it seems very localized because you're going to really serve that community and be the place where people gather to look at this stuff that you've collected, and that they know that you're the kind of the go-to people that handle this kind of work,
Reid Husmer
correct? Yes.
Lee Kantor
Now, how has it gone in terms of getting new franchisees going?
Reid Husmer
The franchisees are happy and we just got to continue to market that and find those owners that are into this type of industry.
Lee Kantor
Have you gotten the profile of what a franchisee looks like or demographics? Are they older and retired? Are they young people that are trying to do good for the environment? Have you kind of got a persona,
Reid Husmer
you know, we're still on the research for that, it's, I guess it's finding that certain person we do think it's more of the younger generation that is not necessarily the eight to five, and they can do what they need to do as jobs and resell and, and really care about the environment. So we do think that the generation that's into recycling is going to be those future franchise owners.
Lee Kantor
Now, in your time doing this, have you kind of had one of these kinds of treasure hunt moments where you're like, wow, this thing's worth a lot of money.
Reid Husmer
You know, it's always surprising what we find. There was one time we did a clean-out of the garage. And the person says, my uncle collected all these old metal toys, I just need to get this garage cleaned out. And I had a feeling I'm like, Huh, that'll toys. Let's just take a double look at this. And then before we know it, it's a gold mine. And we're just, we sent it to our eBay person. And that really helped out especially during our slow months, at the end of the year, there was one toy that sold for like, $400 on eBay.
Lee Kantor
Wow. And that's the thing like that a person does, you don't know you've just accumulated this stuff over time. And it's just sitting there and you could be sitting on something of value. Now So you said you have an eBay guy? Is that something a franchisee would benefit from that your eBay guy so I don't have to be an eBay guy?
Reid Husmer
Correct? Yeah, I mean, we can train them there's, we have that in our operations manual of training that person to become an eBay. But we highly recommend finding a local eBay person in your city. Because it takes a lot of time to do that. And while you're trying to grow the business, you don't want to be messing around with eBay.
Lee Kantor
Right? Because that seems like that's a job unto itself. You know, you got to pack it, you got to you know, send it and deal with all the returns or it just seemed like a hassle.
Reid Husmer
I mean, I first started doing it myself. I wasn't like I can't do this. Find someone that's really good at it.
Lee Kantor
And but is that one of the revenue streams that kind of are viable for a franchisee is just kind of eBay money?
Reid Husmer
Yeah, eBay money is definitely a big help. There'll be times that eBay will be slow. There are times like right now eBay is hot. And if, as you start working in the business, you start to find and learn what's really good on eBay. It took me a while to figure that out.
Lee Kantor
What about things like books or like record albums or CDs or things that people have, like hundreds of
Reid Husmer
That's a difficult one. We do connect with a book guy that's honest and gives us some decent pricing for our books. albums are coming back. A lot of people do like to buy albums, but we rarely run into the 70s albums that are worth some money. What about all the Christmas albums?
Lee Kantor
Right? What about like, like, baseball cards or football cards or that that one point that was super hot collectible?
Reid Husmer
That was super hot, it seemed to die down a little bit. Again, you have to with baseball cards and football cards, you have to get it authenticated. So there's a lot of steps before you can put it on eBay. And then it's not even worth the money. It's not really a big hot item right now.
Lee Kantor
Now, what about the senior market like I have an older father who moved out of his house, and then just you know kind of downsizing for him was a nightmare.
Reid Husmer
It is because this generation they kept everything I mean you're gonna find in their basement, a ton of Christmas, a ton of paperwork and books and records that you just talked about. So as far as the kids that are trying to help out, that can be a lot, it can be very overwhelming. And so there are some processes that you can do. There's the state sale, and then we come in after the state sale. Or if there's not an estate sale, we'll just come in clear out the whole house.
Lee Kantor
Because that part, if you're the kid doing it every year, it could take you a year because every piece you're like, there's this astonishing emotion around it. And you need to just get it done at some point, right?
Reid Husmer
Yeah, I recommend that to a lot of the clients and like go in and get the good stuff, the jewelry, anything else that's a value, and then the rest. We just need to get the house on the market and get-go on. On the next step.
Lee Kantor
Now, tell us about the book that you wrote.
Reid Husmer
Oh, yes. So my wife and I teamed up on writing a book called cleaning out grandma. And it is and it just talks about how much stuff is out there, how to help your parents down the road. And just trying to help people in the future be more clutter-free.
Lee Kantor
And clutter-free in terms of less stuff. But also, there's an emotional weight to this too, isn't there?
Reid Husmer
That is correct. A lot of people become attached to the items. And it just kind of talks through being detached from the items feeling like okay, so we haven't used this item in a long time. But if we donate it, we feel a lot better than this is not going to trash someone else is going to have some fun with that item that you did in the past.
Stone Payton
If you're just now joining us you're listening to franchise marketing radio. Our guest today is the owner who has gone for good Mr. Reid Husmer, Reid, Stone Payton here got a marketing question or two for you. And it may be a little early to ask this. But I think it might be good for our listeners to hear. Are you finding any particular marketing vehicles, email, direct mail, pay-per-click social, to be more effective than others in terms of getting your franchise opportunity out there and make people aware of that opportunity in the marketplace?
Reid Husmer
Yes, so we actually have a company called SEO Samba that does our website and they have a CRM package in the background that just does fantastic work. And it's something that I need to dig into some more. But it's a way to not only do newsletters. Also, we can send out social media videos. We've done a lot on YouTube. So that helps out on our marketing and we're starting to get some more attraction to
Stone Payton
So full transparency for our listeners, and I didn't realize it maybe I should have done more pre-show research but I'll just let you guys know, SEO Samba is actually the main underwriter of this show franchise marketing radio, but it sounds like rightly so sounds like they're doing a good job for you. So also I wanted to ask about so that's sort of at the franchisor level. What about at the franchisee level? Do you think there are some things that you're learning about some best practices for the local franchisee to use in their local marketing
Reid Husmer
into their local marketing is a lot of this business is built upon personal relationships when we connect with real estate agents and professional organizers and senior move managers. But also the get that reputation is again it goes back to that email, newsletters, social media, radio, TV, whatever we can get out there when a new franchisee is starting out.
Lee Kantor
So now for you What's been the most rewarding part of this adventure.
Reid Husmer
The most rewarding part of this I'd say well, at the end of the day when you see someone that has no furniture and you just cleared out a house and beds, couches, and you donate it to that person. You just feel really good about all the hard work that you did. And continue to do that.
Lee Kantor
And for your franchisees so they need to have some sort of a warehouse or some ability to have a storefront to showcase some of the stuff they've gathered when they're doing the cleanouts
Reid Husmer
Yeah, they do they have you know kind of a 5000 to 7000 square foot warehouse with a storefront type of space so they can unload the truck in the warehouse area and then bring out any of the good stuff in the thrift store for people to shop now I would have to say our thrift store here in Denver is the most unorganized strip store but you'd be amazed at how many people like that
Lee Kantor
Right? Because it's like a treasure hunt you don't know where you're gonna find
Reid Husmer
They love it and it's organized right now cuz we're a little slow November and our customers are not liking it. They want it to be held up with boxes and stuff.
Lee Kantor
And then is that part of what the franchisee gets is your kind of recommendation of this is the layout of a place this is what is kind of put that this kind of stuff in the front this kind of stuff in the back
Reid Husmer
right? Oh yeah it's kind of don't waste your time on that put this out in the store maybe let them dig a little bit but don't let them trash the place all types of where we help them out
Lee Kantor
and when you're training the franchisee has that been difficult for you, but you know going from I'm a business owner and I'm trying to grow this local store to now teaching other people how to grow their business in their market. That seems like different skill sets.
Reid Husmer
You know what it is you didn't win think it'd be such a challenge but it is because now it feels like almost all franchisees are your kids a little bit because now they're all excited but you got to get everything in your brain out to them Sure, there's manuals, there's videos and all that but it's something always different that you got to help them out with and but it's a fun part but then you also want to make sure that they do well because they're investing in this business and you want to make sure that they continue to grow and enjoy it. You don't want to be stressful all time.
Lee Kantor
Right? And this is you're doing kind of important work and you are having an impact in the community. So this is one of those things where you can do something that can be your livelihood, and also do good for the people in the community. So it's one of those feel-good kinds of opportunities. Right? Definitely. And if somebody wanted to learn more about the franchise, their website
Reid Husmer
Yes, they can go to the website, it's goneforgoodstore.com, and we have a tab up there on the franchise.
Lee Kantor
Well Reid, thank you so much for sharing your story today.
Reid Husmer
Thank you really appreciate it.
Lee Kantor
All right, this is Lee Kantor and Stone Payton. We will see you all next time on Franchise Marketing Radio.
