Alex Shapiro scaled CanMonkey to 18 states, 85 cities

Quick Summary

Trash is the instruction guests skip. Jeremy figures maybe half to 60% of guests manage it, and a miss turns into an overflowing can, a neighbor on the phone to the city, and a non compliance notice. What Alex sells is a runner who takes the cans out and brings them back, plus a timestamped photo of every stop, and those photos have pulled about two dozen clients out of erroneous fines. A vendor line item like that only pencils if the property earns, so check what a market actually does on BNBCalc Markets.

Key Points

• The idea wasn't Alex's. His business partner brought it to him while Alex was working a W2 job with a background in title and escrow, and Alex put in a couple thousand dollars to keep the lights on and sold it on the side. Losing that job during the pandemic is what pushed him full time, and he now calls the shutdown a blessing, since he says Arizona bookings held up while he was deciding whether to find another title job.
• He and his partner ran the first 100 properties in Scottsdale themselves, charging $35 a month, which he says came to about three grand a month. Getting to those 100 in Arizona took roughly two years. The next 100 came from a single phone call to a client who already used them in Arizona and had properties somewhere else, and that's the moment expanding stopped being hypothetical.
• A route needs 15 to 25 properties inside a 10 to 15 mile radius, which is why the service opens market by market instead of everywhere at once. The properties don't have to belong to one owner. Alex describes stitching a market together from a management company with 10 and another with 15. The outlier five or eight miles off the route is the one runners refuse, so it costs more.
• Runners come out of the gig economy, and Alex says the afternoon dead time between the Uber Eats and Instacart rush hours is what he's filling. He puts the hiring ratio at about six applications for every one runner they need, and says the hard part isn't finding people, it's finding consistent ones. His example of a route offer in the app is 18 stops, an hour and 12 minutes, 3.2 miles, $29.55, and if you finish early you still get the full amount.
• Every stop gets a timestamped, geolocated photo. That started as a way to check the runners were doing the job, then became a client dashboard. Alex says about two dozen clients have used those photos against erroneous fines, with all of those charges reversed, and he's blunt that compliance was never the plan. They only worked out that trash ordinances were the thing neighbors could actually report after they'd been doing this a while.
• Neither founder took a salary for the first four years, and the revenue went into building their own application instead of running the business off Excel files and third party apps. Homeowner churn sits under one percent, since Alex reckons nobody who stops handling their own cans goes back to it. He started 2023 at 2,300 properties and characterizes the pattern as doubling once a year, though he admits he can't tell you his vacation rental churn rate, partly because moving a client's properties onto one invoice reads like a cancellation in Stripe.
• The most interesting money may not be the trash. State Farm asked to buy photos of an insured property taken in the days before a hailstorm, offering to pay per photo, and Alex sent them and never heard back, but he says that's when it clicked that the data has a buyer. Instacart called separately to ask how CanMonkey was pulling drivers away from them. Clients already ask runners to bring a package into the garage while they're there.

Full Transcript

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Jeremy: We are live with the Short-Term Rental Pros podcast. Today, we are here with one of my, honestly, maybe my favorite service provider in the short-term rental space. Alex is solving a need that I didn't even know I was going to have when I got into short-term rentals, but very quickly, it became very evident.

Alex, man, thank you so much for coming today. Tell us about yourself. How did you get into short-term rentals and what does CanMonkey do?

Alex: Jeremy, thank you so much for having me. This is awesome. Thank you for the introduction. It surprised me too what I do every day, taking cans to the curb and back. I pinched myself that this turned into a job, let alone a career, let alone a business that I get to work with some of my best friends and provide a service across the country of an issue that everyone needs.

My background is in real estate, working with title and escrow with real estate companies and individuals. It wasn't until 2018 when my business partner came to me with the CanMonkey idea of helping homeowners with their can to curb that I saw from my background a need in the Airbnb short-term rental industry. I started really going after that industry, that niche, in 2018, all of 2019.

In 2020, the pandemic happened, as everyone knows. For us, our business propelled forward. I took that as a sign that I'm going to go all in on CanMonkey during that pandemic. No one really knew what the world was going to happen, but we did know in that April, May, June, that people were staying in short-term rentals and that was picking up. Some of the worst crazy times actually was a blessing for us in this business and really helped us see the need and focus in growing it.

Now where we're at is in 18 states, 85 cities, helping hosts and owners with the weekly tedious task of taking the trash recycling cans to the curb and back again once emptied.

Jeremy: I love that. For those of you who aren't familiar with your service, correct me if I'm wrong, but what you do is you are not a trash service in essence, where you pick up the trash and take it to the dump. You are a service in the sense where you get the trash cans from the property to the curb. The city or whatever the service provider, the actual trash company, will come and get them. Is that correct?

Alex: That is correct. Our bread and butter, what we have coined and what they created a category for us, is the can to curb category. The Uber for can to curb. Uber Trash. We automate trash day. Trash day, we're usually the youngest person in the family has dealt with that responsibility to take the cans to the curb. That's what we've automated.

We are not a junk removal company. We're not a waste management company. We are the gap. We are the in-between of getting your property's cans from the side of the yard or in the garage, wherever they're stored, to the curb on the designated day that the city needs to come and pick it up and remove it. Once the city empties those cans out, we come and return them back to the original location.

We take photos. They're time stamped. We have geolocation from the application, from the apps that our can runners are using. You see the last location where the can was at. What we were talking about before this conversation, we have some rural houses, so it shows our clients where exactly in the property the can was located, making sure it's right where we need to know. We're really good instruction takers. As long as our clients tell us where the cans are at and how to get there, we follow those rules and do what we need to do.

Jeremy: What I want to get into is, why is this important? Why is not having excess trash or having the guests to have to take the trash to the curb important? I'm going to speak from my personal experiences. I'm going to talk about the properties that you do service. I've got 25 listings, North Carolina, Florida, Smoky Mountains. You service the properties in Florida. Unfortunately, I was trying to get Alex earlier before we started going live here. I'm trying to convince him to come to my other locations, but he does service the ones in Florida.

I think it was someone tweeted about you or whatever. I saw it. I was like, bingo. This is what we need. Even for those properties in particular, they're in Florida. We have a neighbor who just complains about anything that they can possibly complain about. We have directions to our guests. The trash day is two days a week there, to take the trash, make sure that the lid's on, bring it out to the curb, take it back. You would think that they would do that and you'd think that that was an easy process and that automated messages could solve that issue, but it's just not the reality. I would say maybe half to 60% of guests can actually follow the written directions about trash day.

Our neighbors complained about anything that they could complain about with our property. We have two houses and it was just one of the houses, frankly, where we were getting complaints was the whole trash situation. Every time there was an issue with trash where our cans were messed up, maybe at the curb, the wrong things were in the wrong trash can, or maybe it wasn't put back in the right place because it technically needs to be hidden from the street. If it wasn't hidden, they would complain about that anytime and the city would come by after they probably called them a thousand times and would give us a pink sheet for our trash non-compliance issue.

That being said, you solved that. I think since we found your service, pay you the 50 bucks a month. Have not had to deal with that particular headache. Frankly, I haven't even looked at the app, honestly, but good to know that I could actually check if I needed to. We've been in compliance, at least for trash. We don't have to get into other things later.

Thank you. Thank you for relieving a stress there. I want you to help relieve that stress in other places as well. For any of you guys listening with properties where I have properties, let's all make sure to hound Alex later and tell him to get his runners running up to our cans. Thank you, Alex. It's a long-winded way to say thank you.

Alex: Well, thank you, man. It wouldn't be possible without support from our clients like yourself. What we found is exactly what you said. It's dead on. Everyone has a system or solution. And what we found, it's 50% to 75% at best. If it's your cleaners, if it's your guests, if it's your maintenance guy, one way or another, you can get the can to the curb, then who's going back the next day?

Then now say you have trash twice a week and recycling. We could be at your property sometimes four days a week. That's 16 times a month that you have to schedule and coordinate with someone on your team, or a cleaner, or a guest, if they're on there on the right day, to make sure you get the can back and forth. And you're really just crossing fingers and really it's like no news is good news. You're just hoping you don't get a call from the client or the guest or the neighbor or whatever it is that there's an issue.

And what we're finding out now, and you made another good point, is that these neighbors next to these Airbnbs, they're not happy that they're next to an Airbnb, right? They're not happy that there's...

Jeremy: Hey, some actually are happy. I think that's a mischaracterization that all neighbors aren't happy. We have neighbors who actually kind of like it. Honestly, I'd say we have as many who uniquely like it as those who uniquely don't like it.

Alex: I would agree with you. And for the most part, I would have said, maybe I'm being a little bit more generalized. I wouldn't say everyone. We do find that there are more vocal people who don't like the Airbnb next door. They're more animated. They're the ones yelling.

Jeremy: More animated, right.

Alex: Is it everyone? I'm sure not. I mean, I've seen some really nice Airbnbs that look beautiful and I would love for that place to be next to my house. Oh, that's your neighbor's house? It looks great. So sometimes, for the most part, these Airbnbs look great from the curb side. So why wouldn't you want that in your neighborhood?

But back, say we're talking about these neighbors that are mad. What we found is that the number one thing that they can complain about is the trash cans, right? It's right there at the curb. They know that there's rules or regulations in place. I think that's the key point, that there are rules and regulations about trash. And that is a citywide thing in almost every place where you do get fined if you're not following trash ordinances.

And that was something that we didn't know starting CanMonkey. We didn't get into CanMonkey to say, no, we're going to go out there and save the vacation rental industry from trash ordinances and rules and different fines from the HOA. That wasn't a thought process. It was after us doing this, we realized that this is what was happening, that this is where else we can help our clients with staying in compliance with the regulations, staying in compliance with different rules that are going on in their city. And for the most part, some of these issues are regarding trash. And so that's where we come in play.

And so now we've gotten about two dozen of our clients out of erroneous fines, where they got a fine because the can was at the curb when it shouldn't have been, or wherever it was, because the neighbor called. And what we were able to do was go onto their client dashboard, take the photo, timestamp of when we were there and say, hey, actually, here's your can at the curb, or here's your can back at a certain time. It doesn't look like you were breaking any rules. See if you can send this to your HOA and get out of that.

And as of right now, knock on wood, we've been able to reverse all those charges because we have those photos. It comes down to like a civil suit. So if your neighbors call in complaining and you have a little bit more evidence, you're able to show it and get out of that charge.

So it's something that now, it wasn't built for that, but we had this application in the background that we built for ourselves to make sure our can runners were doing a good job. We have all this data on our end and we're like, hey, why can't we share this with our clients? And so now we open it up to where there's a client dashboard for our clients, to where now you can log in and see all the data saved for if you ever do need it. And hopefully you never do need it. You never have to look at it. But maybe there's one time that you have to get a call, or you get a call and you want to look into it. It's there now.

Jeremy: Yeah. And I think that's awesome. I haven't had that specific situation happen yet, just because we haven't had issues, frankly, or Christmas everywhere, no matter what. There's just way too much trash and there's only physically so many cans. So yeah, I guess I'm curious. This is more of a personal question. What do you tell your guys to do if there's so much trash next to the trash?

Alex: Absolutely. Yeah. We take photos of every single service stop. So when we're at a property and say we're taking the cans to the curb and there's trash on the ground, we take a photo that says, it's called excess trash. You get real-time notifications. So in a real-time notification, whether it's an SMS or an email, whatever you signed up with your account will go to you from the can owner saying can at the curb, excess trash.

And now we're even implementing it now to where we're going to send you almost like a questionnaire almost. One, for us to remove for you. Two, you got it. So now it's almost we're getting confirmation from our clients that you acknowledge that you've seen the excess trash. So we have been sending the excess trash notes and real-time notifications to some of the emails and sometimes they don't check their emails to the next day. So now we're going even...

Jeremy: What happens if there's excess trash? Is it like, hey, we'll deal with it for X amount of money, or is it, you should probably call somebody? I guess what's the solution to the, or it's like sometimes it's like the wrong people put the wrong things in the wrong cans. I'm sure that's, I mean, you probably know better than me. So that's something that happens. Like how do these situations get remedied?

Alex: Yeah. So we are a can to curb service, but we're also a vacation rental trash solutions. We are a plural, right? So as much as our bread and butter is the can to curb, we also have an on-demand trash removal service that we offer to our clients if they need excess trash removal. Especially right now with the holidays.

There's an example I have right now where we got a call from a client recently that said, hey, you guys missed trash day this week. We go into their account. We saw we brought the cans back on Tuesday, emptied. They're calling now on Thursday. The cans are full. We said, hey, did your guests leave yesterday or today? Or you're like, oh yeah, they left yesterday. The cleaners just came today and they're saying the cans are full. We're like, oh, well they're full because they just cleaned and they must be from the guests that just left. Like, oh, what do we do? We have new guests coming in and we just missed trash day. We said, hey, we can send our on-demand trash removal team out there to remove all the trash for you at an extra charge. So we scheduled for them and now our clients don't have to worry about anything.

So what we think about is being a stakeholder in our client's business and all we want to do is handle the trash. We want to give you solutions. There's times we'll say, hey, we can remove this for you at this cost. And you might say, no, I got my maintenance guy stopping by that property and he's just going to remove it for free. Don't worry about it. Or, no, hey, thank you. I'm like an hour away from that property. Yeah, can you help me with that? I really appreciate it.

So we give our clients the option. If there is excess trash on the ground, we let them know. Sometimes they say just put the trash back in the bags or back in the cans and we'll deal with it later. Some say just remove that when you can, as soon as possible. Like I said, we're really good instruction takers. So our job is to let our clients know if we see anything on the side of the house or in regards to the trash and recycling cans. And then you guys let us know how you would like us to dispose of that. If you guys want us to dispose of it, if you guys are going to handle it. Some people are very P&L conscious and some people will tell us after every departure to remove all the trash. So we really just kind of figure out what our clients want and then move accordingly.

Jeremy: Guys, you are in for... Who thought that today we'd be talking about trash? But guys, what I'm trying to say is figuring out all the logistics that go into one of these operations is crucial. Whether it be guest communication, whether it be having your vendors, your pool guy, your landscapers all set up and automated. So it's not a guessing game which day pool day is, or which day the lawn is going to get mowed. And the guest is going to be completely caught off guard when your landscapers come at 6pm on a Friday night. So you got to have your ducks in the row.

And to be completely frank, I will honestly say that that biggest or most annoying duck for us is the trash. That is the one thing. So we have properties in places where Alex is not. Western North Carolina, for example, there is not even a... Alex takes the can to the curb. There is no curb there. The curb would get flushed out by any rainstorm coming in because it's a mountain. It's the side of a cliff, pretty much.

So we have a service who comes up and they'll drive their truck up the road. They'll pick up like 2 cans and throw it in their truck. But if there's more than 2, there's 20 cans there or 20 bags, like extra bags, they're not telling us that. Our cleaners have to be the ones who tell us that. But what if our cleaners aren't there? Then the guests have to be the one to tell us that. So for those properties, we've installed cameras. We have literally installed cameras directly to face the trash because of how big of a pain in the butt that is.

So that being said, where are you, Alex? Where are you located? What cities? What states?

Alex: We're in 18 states, 85 cities currently, and we are growing. And we try to stay in urban areas, areas that we're able to get a route going with 15, 20 properties. There are markets that we're in that are not very urban. I mean, we're in some of the park cities, Sedona. We're not in Smoky Mountains yet, but we have some interest in some of these areas that are not so much.

Jeremy: So you're telling me, not to cut you off, but if I can get how many properties in one of the cities I'm in to get on board, will you come out to me?

Alex: We need anywhere from 15 to 25 properties, depending on how close they are, in about a 10 to 15 mile radius. But if you're able, and it doesn't have to be all from you. We've gotten to markets where we've met with a property management company that has 10, and they knew another company that had 15, and we got there together, and that's 25, and we were able to start with those together.

Jeremy: I've got one location. So the lake that I'm at, I just don't think logistically, because there isn't a service to come to the road to get it. So that wouldn't really work out there. But I am in a more urban environment in North Carolina, where either myself or my mentees in that city, we have, I think, like eight or nine properties. So I think we would get you almost most of the way there.

Alex: Yeah, a thousand percent. And this is where also, like I said, we're a Vacational Trash Solutions. So there are some markets where, like you said, they're a little bit different. They don't have trash to curb. We'll just partner with a local vendor who will go and remove all the trash at your properties. And what we do is we take all the volume, and all of our markets negotiate a price where I don't want to lose money on any deal.

But if I know I can get in with eight properties from Jeremy and his crew, I know that I have some other people in that area, I can get another 10, 15 properties. In three months, I can have 25 properties. And now if I'm doing this deal, I can... So we have our own algorithm back end that we can run numbers on, that I'm never looking at just from your portfolio, but I'm looking at from who else I know in the market.

So that's the thing. There's some markets where I'm not in yet right now, but I could be in because I have four separate clients that need us. But at the same time, it doesn't make sense. If I got one more person in the middle, I can connect all three. And so it's kind of like a game. But once you get that route going, then I can add on onesies, twosies from there.

Jeremy: And how do you... So let's say you have the demand. Let's call it three different people have 15 properties combined. They've all committed to working with you. Let's just say it's a service where the city comes and gets it, but you've got to bring it to the curb. How do you... I'm curious. This is kind of more from a startup than an STR path. How do you convince, or how do you get people then to go do that for you, to get the trash to the curb?

Alex: That was one of the biggest hurdles we thought that we were going to go into starting this company. When you're starting off CanMonkey and you have 10, 15 properties and you're doing those 10, 15 properties yourself, it's easy to know the job's getting done because you're doing it yourself. I think that's the point that now you're going to ask...

Jeremy: Did you start doing that yourself? Were you the day one monkey?

Alex: Yeah. Actually, my business partner was. He was the first... We did the first 100 ourselves between me and him. The first 100 properties here in Scottsdale.

Jeremy: And that would be 100 times 50 bucks a month. So the first 5,000 in revenue.

Alex: And I think at the time, we were charging $35 a month at the time. I think we were bringing in three grand a month for 100 properties. And our thought process, it wasn't scaling this across the country. It was like, look, if we can get 1,000 properties in Arizona, that'd be awesome. That was our thought process. And it was like, look, I can have my brother do it. I can have a family member do it. We can just outsource this. So when you start thinking, at $35,000 a month, have three or four people doing it. That's what the thought process was, a very small linear. Well, small business.

Jeremy: Small business.

Alex: Then you start scaling. Now you go to another market. It's like you're going to Park City. We can't pay someone a little bit of money in Park. So you start figuring out what you have to do. But we always thought it was going to be a hard thing, getting these can runners.

But what we found out is, as much as I'm talking about the short-term rental industry with you right now, those are the clients that pay us for our services. My other clients are my can runners. They're my number one client. Without my can runners, I wouldn't be able to do your... You would be talking about my service really great right now if I didn't have really good can runners, right?

What we found out is that there's this whole other industry called the gig economy. The gig economy, which is Uber Eats, Instacart, all that, that's already there. That's already a whole industry. I didn't know that. Even a couple of years ago, I didn't know that. I just stumbled into this, right? So I was like, how am I going to find people who are going to want to work one to two, three hours a day doing an odd job? And it's like the gig economy. I was like, oh, wait, what? That's so crazy.

Jeremy: Yeah, you're right. People do that. They have one job and they want to fill in the gaps over here.

Alex: Yes. So I'm a big believer in not recreating the wheel. Copy from all, steal from none. So it's like, okay, how can I figure out what other companies are doing? To me, the thought process of Uber is mind boggling. How the hell... CanMonkey is a little bit more easy, right? I mean, take the can to the curb. It's like, if they can create Uber, I can create it.

So then you get to a point like, okay, I got to find someone in this market that doesn't mind working this many hours doing this job. It's the beginning. You're just like reaching out to people. I was calling people like, hey, you want to take some trash cans to the curb and I'll pay you $20 an hour. They're like, okay. And my thought process, okay, I'm going to have you try to do at least 10 stops in an hour. And then you do 10 stops an hour, I'll pay you $20 an hour. And now I got to make that work within the money I'm making. So that was a thought process. How do I get them to do like 20 stops an hour? Now I'm paying them $1 a stop. I was trying to get my routes really tight to where they can do 20 stops. So that was a thought process in the beginning.

Jeremy: It's really the math and like, what is the calculus here? And then you probably learn that, yeah, if you have properties that are so far away, it doesn't really make sense. But if you cluster them in a specific area, that it becomes especially lucrative.

Alex: Yes. And the better the routes are, the closer they are, the better the can runners like them. If you have one property that's like five, eight miles away from all the other ones, the can runners will say, screw that property. I'm not going to do it. So you got to pay them a little bit more for that one off one. So you start learning those little idiosyncrasies. But what we have found is that finding can runners, finding individuals that want to make some extra income, is not hard.

Jeremy: So it's really just paying them, we'll just call it, I don't know, $20 an hour, but also like the minimum. These are hours that work for them.

Alex: And so, yes. And this is the other thing. So in the gig economy, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Instacart, they all kind of have peak hours, right? There's rush hour in the morning. There's rush hour in the evening. But with CanMonkey, what we do is we fill that dead time in the afternoon.

Jeremy: That's what I was thinking.

Alex: Yep. Yep. Exactly.

Jeremy: Because you don't have to bring, there's not like the strictest timeline of when you have to bring the can to the curb. I mean, you can bring it at 2 a.m. I mean, you probably don't want to.

Alex: We don't like that. But yeah, you're right. There's a certain time frame.

Jeremy: There's nothing like illegal about it. You just need it there by 6 a.m. and you don't want to have it out two days prior.

Alex: Yes. There are some different HOA rules and timelines that go in place in some cities that we have to follow by. But at the same time, you're right. It's like a time frame, right? And we give them the consistency and persistency of the same route.

So now I know about giving Jeremy the same route that he's been doing the last three weeks and he's getting really good at it. And when you accept the route, it's going to say, Jeremy, this has 18 stops. It should take you an hour and 12 minutes. You're going to drive 3.2 miles and you'll get paid $29.55. Do you agree? And you're saying, yeah, I'll get paid $30 for an hour and whatever. So you accept it. So if you do that now and you do it really quickly and you get done within 45 minutes, you're still getting paid for an hour and 10 minutes.

Jeremy: It's incentivized to be efficient.

Alex: Yes.

Jeremy: It's called capitalism, baby. That's how we get people to work hard.

Alex: Yes. And then now we give you like extra money. Like, hey, if you take a photo of any excess trash that you see on the ground, you get extra dollars. Now I incentivize them to take pictures of trash on the ground, that if there is trash on the ground, now I get to give that to my client and get money for that.

Jeremy: So regeneration for the excess trash removal service.

Alex: Yes. And so now I'm getting extra data from my end and incentivizing them to take photos. But now if a client actually wants to take that photo and do something with it, I'm making more money on the back end. But also I'm doing a job. I'm making sure I'm finding out by also incentivizing.

So they might make, you might say, hey, you're making $28 an hour and 10 minutes, but they could also leave that route, we'll make an extra $5 because I took some pictures. Then maybe they did an extra stop that was a little bit further away. That was a bonus stop and made an extra $2. It is their third route for the week. So they make an extra $5. So now they just made $35 in one hour, and they get paid three days a week. And then they go back.

Jeremy: Uber surge timing hits again. Would you say a lot of your drivers are also Uber drivers?

Alex: I would agree. I would say a lot of them. I don't have the actual data. But I would say a lot of them are coming from that gig economy.

And what's cool now is, three years ago, like now I have an app that's proprietary to CanMonkey. It's on the Apple store. It's on Google Play. If you go on your phone right now and type in, you'll see it. You can download it and become a can runner. So like three years ago, I had like Craigslist ads out there and Facebook ads. So I'm like calling people. Hey, you want to take trash cans to the curb? Like, what are you talking about? What the hell is this sh*t? Like, no, I'm not doing that. Like, I've got an app now and they're like, yeah, I'm being real. You're paying $20. Hang up.

And then now they find us from like looking at Uber Eats or Grubhub. And then they go on the app. They find us on the app now. So like now we look even more legitimate because now we're on the Apple store. So now it's like what was hard is a lot easier now. And I think the ratio is like six to one. We get six applications for like every one can runner we actually need.

Jeremy: So finding can runners, we have a left. That's not the pain point.

Alex: No, the pain point would be finding the right can runner. Finding someone in that neighborhood that has like five routes that ends their day and starts their day right there. Finding someone that is consistent. Finding someone that's persistent. Finding someone that takes good photos. Finding someone that cares a little bit.

But then once you find that, I've had some can runners that have been with us for like three, two years that run the same routes. We're all creatures of habit, right? And we all want to know what we're going to be making. And we go on from this world of, I need to make $60,000 to $75,000 a year, to how do I make $300 to $400 a day? And if CanMonkey can help you make $75 to $120 a day and you can also add some other gigs in there to make an extra $200, $300, there's your money right there.

And we're just a little bit more persistent, consistent, that you just know what you're making with us three days a week. You can fit it in your schedule, whether on your way home, whether on the way to the office, whatever it is. And I think that's what they really like about us.

Jeremy: Reliable. You guys are trusted. And I think it's funny. So on this podcast, we talk about a lot of times short-term rentals, how to be a short-term rental pro. I am personally interested in startups. My background, prior to short-term rentals I actually came from a startup where COVID hit and we were having a little bit of trouble fundraising. And I was like, you know what? I don't want to ever have to fundraise again. I want to do a cashflow business that A, makes it so I just don't need a job. But also, I know that it's consistent, it's coming in. And that's what I liked about having my own business and short-term rentals.

So I'm curious for you, initially, it seems like that was the idea for you. I want to have a small cashflow business. But then it was like, hey, there's actually opportunity here to really rent. What was the point where it was like, d*mn, there's opportunity to ramp this up? And then, I guess, what do you see moving forward for CanMonkey?

Alex: When I got into CanMonkey, like I said, my business partner had started originally. I was working W2 with Fortune 500 companies. I was a corporate guy all the way in. So when I invested in CanMonkey, it was really like, here's a couple thousand dollars. Let's keep the lights on for a couple more months. And I'll do the marketing and sales. You make sure the routes keep going on. But my main thing is like, I'm growing this business over here. So that was like all of 2019. I was W2.

And why I even invested in CanMonkey was in March of 2018. I was on The Bachelor. And we were going to Tahoe. And the guy next to me on the plane was watching the show Billions with Axelrod. And I was like, what are you watching? He goes, it's a show, Billions, about this billionaire. And that was the first time I had heard about it. And I started watching it. And I was like, that's really cool. You can manipulate these businesses. CanMonkey was like my first opportunity that I thought would be like a Bobby Axelrod.

Jeremy: I love that.

Alex: So that was like why I invested. I'm like, oh, I can manipulate this. I have sales and marketing. I know clients that I'm dealing with.

Jeremy: And you started like playing that music, playing that theme song in your head.

Alex: A thousand percent. So that was like the thought process in the beginning. Like, hey, I can manipulate this business a little bit. I have clients that I'm already working with on title and escrow. I can sell them this CanMonkey business on the side. I don't need the income right now because I'm making income from W2. It's just a side hustle. And then that was all 2019.

2020, I'm still doing W2. And the world shuts down. It was like middle of May. And I lost my job. And I was like, whatever. Not whatever, but I was like, okay, screw this. I'm going to go find another job in title and escrow. Then I kind of had this moment of like CanMonkey was... And I was in this moment of, before I even lost my job, the world was shut down. I was focusing a lot on CanMonkey because it was kind of creating some momentum because the world was shut down in all of April. But Airbnbs were picking up still. People were still traveling. People were still doing things on the low, especially here in Arizona. And that's where we were, only in Arizona at the time.

So in May, when I lost my job, I was just kind of contemplating, look, I can go into another title company and put as much effort as I can during this uncertainty of this pandemic and grow another company. Or I have enough money saved for the rest of the year to see, like, you know what, what can I do with CanMonkey? I'm going to take a shot here. But I'll take a shot. Worst case scenario, I can get an extra $2,000 a month from passive income from CanMonkey maybe. Maybe I grow it to like 1,000 clients in six months. That was my thought. Maybe I can get enough money that if I need to get a job in January 2021, I'm making some money now. That even was still a thought process.

But it wasn't until I went full in in 2020 when we were like, we can expand into another market. If we're doing it here and I'm not doing the routes anymore, why can't we do this in Park City? And that was like the first thought process of, let's try to expand this with no technology, with nothing. But we're like, hey, let's just try it. So we reached out to a counterpart that was using us in this market and said, hey, if you guys like us in this market, try us in this market. And they said, okay, here's 100 properties. So it took us like two years to get to 100 properties in Arizona. It took us one phone call and a new market. And then we're like, okay, we've got to scale. And that was 2021. And then just kept grinding.

Jeremy: And what I love about that and about your story, and I'm thinking about relating it to my story, but also just the story of so many people in the short-term rental space, is you were like, your back was against the wall. You were literally laid off from your job. And initially you're thinking of this as just additional cash flow. But once you actually gave it your all, you were able to scale it. Once you actually just went all in, and it seems like you didn't even know what you were capable of. But once you gave something your all, it woke up and it was like the sole focus of your life. You exceeded expectations. And first of all, just bravo for that.

I'd say I quit my day job in May of 2020, I think. And if I look back at my growth of my short-term rentals, it was going up, it was going up, it was going up and hit there. And then it just shot up like crazy. Just once you give something your all and you're determined and I'm going to make something out of this. And maybe a little bit of, I don't know for you, maybe a little bit of, you know, screw that message I got getting fired from my boss. That left a sour taste, or getting salary reduced, or whatever it may have been. But getting that sour taste in your mouth gave you fuel to create something really meaningful.

It sounds like so cliche, I don't know if that's the right word, but it's silly, right? Like you got to go all in and then it works out. But that's literally what everyone says. You hear these stories of everyone that's, I don't want to say I'm successful, but you hear these stories of everyone that's successful of what they're doing. And it's all around the same story of, back against the wall, you had no other options.

Alex: Hey, it's a real thing. I think the saying is like, you forget the battle. Actually, my mentor, John, used this expression and I love it. And I need to like get it down pat.

Essentially, there was like an army fighting another army and they had crossed over on ships and they were really outnumbered and screwed. And the captain or the general told his infantryman to fire upon their own ships and burn them. And to burn their own ships, because once their ships were burned, they had no choice. They had to succeed in the fight.

Jeremy: Yeah, that's true. I didn't hear that story, but I've heard the burning the ship theory and it's exactly true. Probably a much more cohesive way of saying that story. But I like your story. What I've heard about burning the ship is like, you found this island and you're on the ship and you want to, it's like burn the ship and swim to the island. And then you have no way that you can't go back. There's no...

Alex: Yeah, you got it. You got to make it to land. And that's your thought. It's the same thing. You have no plan B. There's no other what ifs.

And that's where I look at the pandemic now as like a blessing. It's like, would I've ever quit my job before? No, I was comfortable. I was getting W2 money. I was making great money. I would never quit. If I've never quit, if I've never went full time, would CanMonkey be where it's at now? Probably not. I'm just the differentiator. Like, I had to make it work. I have four kids now. I'm married. I did all this during the pandemic. I had to provide. I had to figure out a way. I also told my business partner I was going to help him. Like, I really had no other choice. So back against the wall is completely true.

But I also, in my mindset, there's nothing in my life that I've done that I've failed at. And that's more of like how you look at things. I've succeeded in everything I've actually wanted to do. There's things I haven't done. So maybe I didn't necessarily fail. But it's also how you look at it, right? Like, is it failure or is it lesson learned? So if you look at it like that, if you've ever done everything in your life that you've always succeeded, then why not try something else? And that's where I was just like a delusionally optimistic person. It's like, no, I'm going to make this work. And I found enough of a niche for it in this aspect. And all I needed was enough, a little bit of people to gas me up a little bit.

Jeremy: I want to gas you up.

Alex: That's it. So once it confirmed my thought process, I'm like, hey, we're going to expand another market. And my business partner, like, we can't expand. And unless someone's like, okay, here, you can do it, like, f*ck yes, I told you, like get holy back. Let's go. On the same team.

And the definition of an entrepreneurship is jumping off the cliff and building the plane while you're falling. And my business partner and I, I'm that guy jumping off the ship, jumping off the cliff, building the airplane while I'm falling. And we're attached and he's still up there like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, like I got to find this bolt. I'm like, f*ck the bolt, like we're going. And so you need to flap our wings. Let's figure it out.

You need both those people. You need the person that's going to dot the I's, cross the T's. And you also need that person that is just going to run through the wall and figure it out later. Because you can always sit back and be like, well, what if this doesn't work? And you can poke holes in all day long and probably be right. But then it's like, but what if it does? And that's where I always come in with the, but what if it does? And I will make it right, because if it doesn't work the way I wanted it to, I'll pivot and then I'll pivot and then I'll pivot and then something's going to stick. And then because that's my only option, it has to.

Jeremy: And I love to just kind of, again, putting that startup hat on, is I always hear, if anyone's talking about their company, they're like, oh, we're the Uber for mail salons. Like, we're the Uber for jumping off of air. There's an Uber for like everything. And it's always like, frankly, 99.9% of the time, they never actually create any gig economy thing. That's a two-sided marketplace that actually succeeds at anything you have. Like you actually have created a two-sided marketplace. You are literally the Uber for can to curb.

And specifically, I actually have a question. Is the idea to like start with vacation markets? But let's say I own a home somewhere and I just want, I'm lazy as crap. Like I don't even want to get off my couch. People are just getting, well, hey, America's getting older and older, but also people are frankly in a way, and we can talk about this another time, maybe getting lazier and lazier. So do people who aren't vacation rental hosts employ your services?

Alex: Yes. We are going in through the age of do it for me age, and that's kind of like why.

Jeremy: It's cold outside.

Alex: It's cold outside. It is. And that's why we fit in perfectly with this.

And so I talk about short-term rentals. I go after a hundred percent short-term rentals because we're a bootstrap company and I work harder, not smarter. And it's easy for me to reach after one Jeremy with 25 listings is for me to reach out to 25 people and maybe get one. So it's always been like that thought process, but how our portfolio is now, it's 80, 20, it's 8% short-term rentals, 20% homeowners.

Jeremy: And are you seeing that homeowner segment increase? Are there other companies who do this for the homeowner in the world?

Alex: No, I mean, we are the first can to curb service provider. So look, our biggest competitor is Johnny next door.

Jeremy: And there's companies, you know, The Neighbor, that's the name of a company, or it's a guy named John next door?

Alex: I'm talking about like the neighbor kid next door.

Jeremy: I was like, that's a sick name for a business. Low key.

Alex: Oh, sure. I mean, I get an LLC for that.

Jeremy: Johnny Next Door, it's like the neighbor next door. It's the nice guy next door. It's the neighbor. He just takes your can out to the curb for you.

Alex: Yeah, which is our biggest competitor, right? Like, I can't beat him, especially if you're paying him $10 a week. But then it's like, oh, you're paying someone $40 a week, but you won't pay someone, a real company, $49, that's also giving you photos. And what if Johnny goes on vacation? What if Johnny gets sick? What if Johnny has to go visit his mom? So there's all these different scenarios that with CanMonkey, there is no Johnny goes on vacation. It's Johnny goes on vacation, we have another Johnny. So that's our biggest competitor.

But it's funny that you're saying that, because for four years, I put my head in the ground about this platform that we built. And it wasn't until recently that I realized that I even have a logistical technology company.

Jeremy: You got Amazon, man. You've got the Amazon for last mile delivery instead of.

Alex: I just didn't realize, we didn't realize. It just wasn't one of those things that we were saying about ourselves. It was just something like, you know what, here's a service that we provided manually. We realized that there's no technology built for us and what we needed. So we needed to build our own technology for us. So this was all built for our own needs. And then I was like, whoa, why don't we open this up for our clients? And now it's turning into like, sh*t, we're a platform. Like, it wasn't like...

Jeremy: Think about it too. I mean, so it makes sense that you started with that. And I always forget the name, the word, but it's like the tip of the needle or something. Like the tip of the needle for you was vacation rentals. Once you get the needle in, you can do more. So now just normal properties. Fine.

Alex: Yeah, sorry. So to your point, yeah. So right now we go after 100% short-term rentals. 20% though is homeowners. But I believe in five, 10 years, it'll be 80% homeowners, 20% short-term. Because in the long grand scheme of things, homeowners, there's like 18 million single family housing in the country. So it's like out of 18 million properties that we could go technically service. So we could go service those homes. We don't service apartments or condos.

But even the Airbnbs and short-term rentals, I think there's like a million listings, and out of a million listings, or say two million listings, I think a million we just say we couldn't do anyways. And out of the other 500,000, or out of the other million, say 500,000 we couldn't do. So we say maybe 500,000 of properties that we think we could really go get in the short-term rental space, which is huge, right?

Jeremy: That's a big TAM.

Alex: Yeah, it's big. But then again, the long run would be the elderlies, the disabled, the HOAs, the home builders, it's like this whole other realm of things. But when you're a bootstrap company and you're one sales guy, you're very limited on the teams that you have.

Jeremy: Yeah. Not to cut you off, but there's like an increasing, I'm just, my idea, I mean, I love this. This is so interesting to me, this conversation, and also just kind of small bootstrap businesses. And I'm gonna get into later, I'm curious about your whole fundraising situation, if you've gone that route or not.

But there's so many designer communities now. Like America's becoming a renter's nation. That's just a fact. There's a lot of these big institutions who are creating these suburbs of rental properties. Whereas 50 years ago, they would probably build a suburb of houses to buy. Now they build a suburbs of rentals. But they wanna offer their renters amenities. It's really important to them to attract people. And I'm curious if one of those amenities is just put the trash next to the front, whatever. You can just reach your arm out, drop the trash, and don't worry about it. Someone else is gonna take care of it. It's a touch-free, smart-free.

Alex: Yeah, yeah, that's what we're, so we had some conversations in the new home build companies where they're gonna present their new subdivision.

Jeremy: Exactly, yep. That's what I would think. That would be like something that they could advertise to their...

Alex: And they are. Yeah, and they are, and they add it into the HOA right away, right? So like now you add in your HOA that you never have to touch trash cans and never take it to the curb and back. It sounds like it's futuristic. And so that's what they're providing in these expensive subdivisions. So you buy a home for a million dollars, and then now you never have to take your trash cans to the curb and back.

Jeremy: Are you kidding me? You have a trash butler?

Alex: That's what they're selling. You'd think that it was hundreds of dollars a month, but it's really like a platform that we already have for $49. And then now it gets to a point that a company like that will say, all right, CanMonkey, we wanna leverage your technology, your workforce, everything you have, but instead of $49 a month, we want you to charge us $25, but we're gonna bill our homeowners 50.

So now they're giving us 1,000 properties. They're making $25 a property. They're making $25,000 a month. Now they turn it into a profit center. And then we get every single property in that neighborhood all condensed. And we don't care if they use it or not, because no matter what, we're already getting paid. And that's how they use it in the valet trash within the apartments and condos. So like I said earlier, we copy from all, steal from none. And what some people are doing in other industries, like apartments and complexes, with the valet trash, we would do in the single-family housing aspect.

Jeremy: Yeah, I think that's an incredible, incredible opportunity. So fundraising, have you raised money at this point, maybe to build the app, or have you just completely bootstrapped?

Alex: Yeah, it's been completely bootstrapped. For the first four, I mean, five years in this business, first four years, I never took a salary, my business partner and I. And all that money went back right into the application. And having a monthly recurring revenue business has been great, because you get to make some money and get to see how much you're making, and you run your P&L. But all the money that we were making went right back into the technology, which we knew that we would need to have if we wanted to scale the business the way we've scaled it. We wouldn't be able to do what we're doing right now, onboarding hundreds of properties a week, through Excel files.

Jeremy: And obviously, you have to get to a point where you build out the systems and processes in a way that you can now replicate it in a way where it's getting easier and easier. And you can see, like you said, when you're an MRR business, you can kind of see what is our churn? What can we expect?

Actually, I'm curious about so many d*mn things here. I guess, just quick question, and this would probably be like an overall macro of the short-term rental market as a whole, but what have you seen? So churn is like when you lose a customer, which I'm assuming for the most part is probably when they just stopped doing Airbnb. But what have you seen with churn over the last four years?

Alex: On the homeowner side, it's like less than a percent. We've found on the homeowners, and that's why, back again, like on the long-term side, we want the homeowners. Because once you go and have someone else take the trash cans for yourself, you never go back to do it yourself.

Jeremy: Yeah, you get a little complacent, they're comfortable.

Alex: You get complacent. I mean, we've had clients, we've had a client pass away, and we've had them obviously cancel service. But besides that, we haven't had any homeowners. Even the ones that sold their houses, the people who bought the house end up keeping our service because the homeowners told them about our service.

And then on the other side, on the vacation rental side, it's hard to say what our churn rate really is because, to your point, sometimes they cancel and maybe the management company loses it. But what we've found is that that property comes back on with another management company, that we get that property back on. So we lost it, but we gained it back. Or we lost it because the vacation rental company doesn't own or manage it anymore, but then the owner uses our service.

But on the vacation rental side, it's a little bit more high, especially this past year when a lot of our properties were in the Phoenix area. We onboarded a lot of properties from the Super Bowl and a lot of properties said it ended off. So if you look at our churn rate on that aspect, it's a little bit higher than like the homeowner side, but also at the same time, it's hard to actually justify because there are properties that came back on. And that happens...

Jeremy: So it's hard to really, so your reactivation, I think that's what that's called, is like when something comes back. It's like too early to really tell what the reactivation rate is.

Alex: Yes, or on our, if you look at the churn rate through our Stripe platform that we use for our billing, Jeremy might have 15 properties on with me and then we cancel them and then put them on all in one invoice. But then now our churn rate looks like we just lost 15 properties and then we just added it on. So from our end, we don't really just have that data because we haven't really needed it. Now, if we're looking to raise funds and we're talking to potential VCs...

Jeremy: And they're gonna be like, what is your churn, what is your churn, yeah.

Alex: Right, and so for us, a lot of running a business, we've always ran the business like a business and we're smart in what we're doing, you know?

Jeremy: Totally.

Alex: But there's certain things that like my churn rate, I don't know, right? Like, I guess I could really figure it out and come down to it. But at the end of the day, it's just not something that I lose sleep over at night. But then again, if I'm talking to the right person, they're not gonna like that answer.

Jeremy: Yeah, and I love your way of thinking about things because if you were gonna go out and pitch this idea five years ago, maybe in the last few years, and you would have initially told some Silicon Valley venture capitalist and frankly said, like, oh, we're taking your trash to the curb, they would have rolled their eyes and, like, whatever, given you a condescending look just by saying that. But if you would have said, oh, we are a last mile logistics service, and we are starting with the, if you played that BS game of like, or we're the Uber for XYZ, but you haven't had to care about any of that.

You've literally just been purely focused on, like, how do we get customers? What do they want? What do they care about? What are the troubles they're facing? How do we get people to service the customers? What do they care about? What are the issues that they're facing? How do we combine the two and make some money? That's what you've been laser focused on instead of playing the whole VC fundraise, kind of paint the picture.

Alex: No, and you're right, and I feel like that's what I'm learning. I forget the movie, but it was with Brandon Fraser, where he was in a bomb shelter for like 50 years, and he comes, it was like a Disney movie, like a long time ago. But I feel like that's how I've been. I feel like I've been in a bomb shelter for 20 years. I don't really know what I've built. I come out of this bomb shelter, and everyone's like, you know what you've built? And I'm like, what are we talking about? Dude, this is a...

Jeremy: It's because you've been building, and you haven't been thinking about, yeah, you've just been laser focused.

Alex: And I've just been minding my own business, and I've had people tell me stuff like what you're saying early on, where they're like, ha, ha, ha, let me know when you get to 500 properties. Ha, ha, ha, let me know when you get to 1,000. Ha, ha, ha, you'll never get to 1,000. You'll never scale. So I've had people along the way say things where I'm kind of like, oh, f*ck you. Like, just watch, you know?

So I had these chips on my shoulder, and I'd known benchmarks of what I needed to hit. It's not that I've ever talked to a VC, but just sometimes people come to me, and they'll reach out throughout the years, and they've been VCs. And they're like, oh, you need to hit this to be this. I'm like, cool, I never asked you, but thank you.

So I had some idea of what we needed. I definitely know what we're sitting on now, and I've talked to some individuals. They've approached me at different conferences, and we've sat down with them, and I tell them what our numbers are, candidly, and I'm transparent. Like, oh, wow, when you guys get to 5 million ARR, you guys will be this big, and cool. And they're really shocked at where we're at now, if I say that.

Jeremy: So you guys are at 5,000 properties currently?

Alex: Yeah, we just finished the year. Yeah, just going into this year now. So we're trying to finish this year doubling. We're trying to finish this year at 10,000 properties.

Jeremy: 9,116. 2024.

Alex: Yes.

Jeremy: And what were you, start of 2023?

Alex: 2300.

Jeremy: 23, so you doubled, you doubled. So you're trying to double-double.

Alex: Yeah, we've been doubling once every year. And this year of doubling has actually been even better than doubling, because this is a year that we essentially went from our old application, which was all third-party apps off the App Store, Excel files, Slack applications, and converted all of that onto our own application. So this year was really a growth year of inputting our own technology, and putting everything into place, and still growing.

Which, when I really think about it, I pinch myself every day, because it's like, what the f*ck? I don't know how we do it. I know how we're doing, because we're grinding every day. But to really look back on the whole year, and say, this is how we started, this is where we ended, it's crazy to me.

And we're just getting started. I mean, we're having partnerships now in place that are gonna make us grow even more. I think being conservative, finishing under 10,000 for this year, but I'll take it. We have a three-year model plan of where we wanna be. And if we keep following it, it's gonna look really good.

And so, at that point, I think we'll definitely look to raise some capital. At the same time, I'm not looking to raise capital and give up a lot of equity, because now, there's things about pre-revenue companies and whatnot. It could be pre-revenue and get $5 million. Get super high valuation just with an idea. Right, and then I can actually show actual revenue and numbers, and they're like, oh, wow, this is really risky.

Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. The thing with VCs is they want massive. They're like, if this doesn't sell for $3 billion, or at minimum like $3 billion, then this isn't worth doing. If you're telling me that this is a business that can grow to like a $100 million business, that's not gonna cut it for us.

Alex: And that's it. That's exactly what we found, and what we've heard from other people. And it's just one of those things where it's like, I have the vision in my head. I know where they will see the vision at. I know how many numbers I would need if I would ever wanna entertain that. And then, again, if I wanna hit that numbers where I can entertain that, it's now I'm bringing enough revenue in every month on my own.

I was asked once by someone, and not that I'm either one, but he goes, do you wanna be rich, or do you wanna be a king? And it's like, do you wanna go the VC route and be rich, or do you wanna be a king and own what you have? And I've thought about that often. Do I wanna be rich, or do I wanna be a king? So I essentially...

Jeremy: You're like, I'll put on my crown.

Alex: I'm wearing my hat right now.

Jeremy: He's wearing his CanMonkey hat, his CanMonkey hat.

Alex: And that's my thing. As long as I can keep doing this with people that help me do it, and help me get to this point, and we feel like we can keep doing what we're doing. Because if I were to listen to a lot of people from the very beginning, I wouldn't be where I'm at right now. Not that I know more than other people. I just haven't really listened to the naysayers. I haven't listened to people and their advice. I've had a good feeling, good intuition. I followed it. So it's helped us get to this point.

But I also know what helps you get you here doesn't help you get you there. And I've never ran a business with hundreds of employees. I've never done that before. So there's gonna get to a point where I'm gonna need to bring on some advisors and people along the way that have seen things that I haven't seen.

Alex: And we've done that. We just brought on Jen Ford, who was the CFO of Turnkey, who got bought out by LaCosta, and they're acquiring them. So she's phenomenal. She's really known in the industry. That helps us give even more validity to our business, and makes us even more of a hot commodity. It's not just two guys that created a business by accident. Now it's two guys that created a business by accident, but now attracting people who...

Jeremy: Yeah, you've got the names associated with it, which add the instant credibility.

Alex: Yeah.

Jeremy: And I guess a question, because while we're talking, I'm trying to think of like another just service. I mean, Amazon comes to your house to deliver packages, whatever, maybe comes seven days a week if you're that much of a shopaholic.

Alex: Right.

Jeremy: But other than that, your landscaper maybe comes once a week or once every other week or something. You are probably, you're there the most. Your can runners are there more than anybody else. So I guess I'm curious, what else can they do while they're there? Or is there something else that they can do that is unique to them that Amazon isn't doing?

Alex: I love that you're thinking about this, because that's something exactly what we're looking for right now. And I believe, not believe, but when we turn into the logistical technology company, that's where it opened the door for everything that you're saying right now.

It's the fact that we're at your property sometimes 16 times a month, that we already get asked from our clients, hey, Alex, I know you'll be at the property today. Take the can to the curb. Can you go get that package at my front door and take it in the garage? They already know that we're gonna be there. They already trust us. They know that they're gonna have basically someone at the property. And they leverage that. We now need to get to the point where we leverage that too. Where it's like...

Jeremy: What are the common things that are asked? And how can you put that into your workflow and have it in a way where the runner can open their app and see, oh, I need to do this. Oh, maybe mail. I don't know. Mail.

Alex: That's it. It's mail. It's inspections in the property from the property managers, making sure the Wi-Fi works, making sure the lockbox code works, making sure the lights are turned on. It's making sure the propane tanks are filled. It's making sure that the pool heater's on. It's making sure that they want Snow Monkey. They want the snow plow during the winter time. It's all those things. And it's not even just being the Angie's List where we're like another company. It's the fact that we're actually providing the vendors.

And so it's what we're doing even with the on-demand trash removal. You asked earlier, yeah, we have that service for our clients that they need the junk removal gone. And what we're doing is we're outsourcing it to a third-party vendor that's in our network that we've already background checked, that we've already gone through, that we already negotiated the pricing. So if you would call 1-800-JUNK to remove a can, they're gonna charge you $200. You now do it with CanMonkey, we're gonna get down within our pricing of like $49 for the first trash.

Jeremy: Yeah, and that's actually, frankly, I'm so happy I know that, because I think in Florida when we had issues and my buddy set it up. So actually I've never seen the app because my business partner, I told him, I was like, yeah, we need to use CanMonkey. And he's in charge of, he does like dealing with the payment. So he put the card in and I guess got the app account. So I didn't know you guys did the actual removal as well. So that's, for my individual purposes, that's really good to hear.

But yeah, I feel like just things that are like easy to do. While you're at the house, just make sure that, maintenance checks, stuff that you can just do in a couple minutes.

Alex: The only thing that we need to do a little bit differently is maybe just do a little bit more of different background checks on those individuals, those can runners. I mean, I don't know if that'd be the same can runner that's taking the cans to the curb. Maybe it's someone differently that we're able to leverage.

And once again, we're able to leverage our connection. So I'm going to Jeremy that has two properties, plus I'm going to Joe that has 15. I'm going to Michelle who has 20. So now I got 27, 37 properties. Now I'm doing all the same thing. And then now I can make a route out of that.

It's the same thing with like the departure dates. It's, hey, Alex, these 20 properties have departure dates. On this day, can you make sure that all the properties have trash can removed the next day? So now I go to all those 20 properties and remove all the trash at every single property, just regardless, so that way the new arriving guests don't see anything.

So once again, we're really good instruction takers. We've gotten the workforce, we've gotten the logistics down, we have the application in place. And how we see this going down is like a platform for all services for vacation rental clients. And not just vacation rentals, even homeowners as well. To your point, it's like, what else can we do when we're at your property? If you know we're going to be there and you want the packages in the garage because it's raining outside, let's do it for you. Maybe it's an extra $10, or whatever it is. But at least you know you trust the CanMonkey brand. You trust the fact that we're at your property. We're already there. But yeah, you're a million percent on it. And that's what we're looking to do next, is implement these other services onto our platform so we can help our clients with other stuff.

Jeremy: Yeah, and I really think, again, not that you asked at all.

Alex: You did not ask at all.

Jeremy: I know earlier, you're like the VC people who came in and told you, oh, you've got to hit 25,000 properties in order for me to even consider, like I need to see your projections right now. Why do you not have the charts and everything built out perfectly? So not to be that guy.

But I just think that the trend that you really have in your favor, and this is like a trend that I think about, like, how do we, I don't want to say the word capitalized, but there's going to be issues that our country faces, and our world faces, and already a large swath of the world is already facing this issue. But then how do we provide solutions that remedy these issues?

And the issue I'm talking about is an aging demographic. So, for example, I heard this stat the other day, and it was crazy. But it was like, China, for example, they have 1.4 billion people right now. How many people are they going to have in the year? This is a little bit to do with aging, but also to do with the fact that they're not having children. So this is like a huge, just something we're going to see happen. And in the US, we're just, but how many people do you think China's going to have in 2100? 1.4 billion today.

Alex: 1.4 billion today. What are they gonna have in 2100? 2 billion.

Jeremy: 500 million.

Alex: Whoa!

Jeremy: It's going down. It's going down fast, too.

Alex: A lot.

Jeremy: Yep. And it's because it's an aging population. There's a lot of old people. There's people who are working right now, but they're going to be retiring soon. And for population to stay the same, each person needs to have 2.1 kids. China did the whole one child policy. So they're well below that 2.1. And if you're above 2.1, you're exponentially going up. If you're below, you're exponentially going down. So it only gets exacerbated. Japan's already having decreased population. The US, we have increasing population, largely thanks to immigration. But we're having an aging population.

Most of the wealth, as well as just most of the population in America is, the baby boomers are the biggest demographic. Currently, they're kind of working, they're reaching retirement. But what happens when the baby boomers are all 80? And they've got all the money. They've got all the money and they're all old. Like what are the type of services that are needed at that point?

Something I think about is they're gonna be selling their businesses. These people own all the businesses. They own all the services. Who's going to buy them? Who's going to run these businesses? I know you're watching Succession. Who's going to be the one who succeeds? But also, who's going to take care of them? They're 80, 90 years old. And that's where I think CanMonkey, they're at their house every day. They're at their house. I don't expect them to be caretakers. But I don't know, they check in on that, make sure that they're alive. What do they do?

Alex: No, you're right, man. I mean, we've just partnered with a company called HomeWash as well that does this for like second homes and property owners and elderly. And you're right, there's a whole slew of different services that we provide.

And even Instacart reached out to us about a year and a half ago, asking us how we're finding can runners because they knew that we were stealing drivers from them. I'm like, how do you even know who we are? So we're getting something along the lines within our community, which I think that, to your point, Amazon, Grubhub, Uber Eats, all those different gig economy jobs, those drivers don't know what they're driving that day. They don't know how much work they're going to get. They're just hoping. And even on the Amazon Flex routes, you don't know if you're doing the same route. Like, I'm not ordering anything from Amazon anytime soon. I did a lot. So they came to my house often, but now they're not, right?

So with us, we're staying consistent with that. So I think that's where in our workforce and what we have, I think that other companies will, other gig jobs or companies will come to us and use our workforce. So I think our workforce, as much as I'm talking about short-term rentals and that industry, I think our other clients, these gig drivers, will come into play in helping with these other services, like you're saying, because we have them on staff. Essentially, we don't, but we do, because we know we have the same routes for them. And if they don't want to work it, that's fine. We'll find someone else. But for the most part, they're always scheduling the same route. They're staying consistent. They're staying persistent. And I think that's where these other services will come in handy because they're looking for more jobs. And if they're already coming to a job, they're getting the most income, not the most income, but most consistent income from, they're going to want to know what else we have to offer.

Jeremy: Yeah. And I love that because, again, I love your approach and thinking about how you're servicing them too. And it's also, what services can you provide the runners as you get more and more of them? So yeah, man, I think you're really onto something great. I mean, just keep doing what you're doing. And I just think things are going in your direction. There's huge value of the fact that consistently being at houses every three, four times a week. Obviously, where that goes, or what trends and softwares and different life, world-changing events happen that lead to XYZ, who f*cking knows? But you don't have to know that today because you haven't raised any money from anybody. So you're not forced to do anything.

Alex: No, you're right. And it reminds me as well. I remember State Farm had reached out like three years ago, not even two years ago. And I don't even know how they heard about us, but they had heard that we take photos of properties. And they had reached out to see if they could get our photos that we take of the properties. It was like a hailstorm that had happened. And they said, hey, we understand you take photos of properties and you have a property on this neighborhood. Can you send us all the photos that you have taken of this property from this day on, so we can compare the hailstorm that happened on this day with the photos you have from the other days? And I was like, what? And they go, we'll pay per photo.

And that's when I realized that data is the next dollar. And that's when I realized that I have all this data, all these photos. Now, who would want to pay for this? Well, here's an example of a State Farm insurance company that want to compare the damage done from a hailstorm on a property that they're insuring and want to make sure that that damage was not there the last week, but was there this week. I don't know if they actually use our photos, never heard anything back from it. Didn't even know if I was supposed to send them the photos, but we sent them the photos and they looked at it.

So anyways, that's something where I could go after insurance companies and say, you guys want photos? You want photos of the garages? I mean, what if a garage company said, hey, I want photos of all the garages that you go to so I can see if I can sell them new garages, or new garage, whatever it is.

Jeremy: So we're like, hey, we want access to your sales vertical. Like, hey, can you drop off three samples of products? I'm trying to think while we're talking here, but you can, hey, we're going to send you like 400 XYZ, because most of the time, you'd send something in the mail, it's just in a UPS package. It's not like the gift out with the thing, the freaking note on it. That's something that UPS isn't doing, Amazon isn't doing, but you can do that. You could literally, they could send you 400, whatever. You got your centralized place, you take them all out, you whatever, maybe however it happens, you can drop things off right there and they have the note on that.

Alex: The cool thing from our dashboard is I can see all the routes that we're running and all the properties that are in the market. You look at a Google map, I basically have every single property that's on subscription. So I can even say to a company, hey, which property, what area would you like me to drop these off at? Here's all the properties that I will be at and here's the routes. The opportunities are limitless, and that's where I really think about.

Being in the real estate industry background, there's a couple of things that stayed with me in growing CanMonkey, and one of the main things that I stuck true to was Gary Keller's book, The One Thing. The one thing for me was CanMonkey, and it was so easy, especially in the beginning when you're selling a product for $35, $40, making no profit margins at it. It's strictly volume based.

Jeremy: Charity.

Alex: Yeah, you're basically getting to a point like, okay, what else do I need? You've got to do something else, bring all the revenue in. And it's so easy for me to just say, you know what, it wasn't CanMonkey, but I'm going to start doing Pool Monkey now because I'm making more money in Pool Monkey. It was so easy to dump sh*t.

Jeremy: Oh, you stayed focused on it.

Alex: I stayed focused on it, and that's where now it's like going through it. We stayed focused on this one thing, it built out, and now it feeds all the other services that we would want to add into, because CanMonkey is the one thing that's different than any other services. Can I do CanMonkey in any market right now? Yeah, because there's no one else really doing it.

Jeremy: Honestly, at first, I thought, just to be completely honest, I thought that there was someone who was doing something similar just for all houses and you were like, I'm just going to do what their model is, but focus on short-term rentals. What I've learned through this podcast is that was not the case at all. No one was doing this for the homes.

Alex: And that's our biggest issue. Our biggest issue, and that's why I don't go after the homeowners right away, because the biggest issue is that people don't know that this service exists, and that when they do hear about it initially, if they're a homeowner, it's like a negative connotation. I don't need to pay you to take my cans to curb. I can do that myself. Why would I do that?

And then it's like one of those drips. That's like, wait, that actually sounds nice. Wait, I actually forget my trash every week. Wait, I actually would love that. Wait, I'm actually going on vacation. Wait, no, I need that. The homeowner is a little bit longer of a sales process. When I talk to a vacation rental client, it's instantly, it's like, where have you been all my life?

Jeremy: Yeah, that was one for me. I saw that tweet and I was like, yes, holy sh*t. Like, yeah, sign up. What's the price? I don't care.

Alex: I don't care. And that's what it is. So that's what I'm saying. That's why vacation rentals, that's our foot in the door. And now that I have a route that's in that market, now if a homeowner wants to take a trip on one property, I'd gladly add you on a property on a route that I already have operational, and now it makes a little bit more condensed. Now I add you right in. I already know I can service it. Boom. Now that can runner has an extra stop, now it's a little bit better route. And then now I go get more people.

So that's where, if I raise capital, what I would do with that would be to make my routes I have right now more condensed by reaching out to the neighbors, marketing to them. And really, if I look at my whole CAC, my whole cost of acquisition of clients, it's very low. It's me as a sales guy. It's me going to conferences. It's fun spending money on conferences, but really that's all it is. I'm not spending money on marketing outside of Facebook ads, barely. But that would be the next thing, is going on a TV ad, billboard ad, radio ad, something along those lines.

Jeremy: I think honestly, I think two things. And again, not that you've asked, because you haven't. Two things. Facebook ads targeting age demographics of, I don't know, whatever, 65 and over. So targeted Facebook ads. Second, inside sales to these designer communities where they can offer that as an amenity. At least you would see what happens. I mean, Facebook ads, you don't have to hire someone to do. But inside sales, you'd probably want to train someone, go through the process, get them on your LinkedIn or whatever, because I know you've been building your LinkedIn juice. So getting them to go through your account and reach out to the right people for that.

Alex: I would love it, inside sales. I mean, even the people who are interested in the service and they see the Facebook ads, they still want to talk to someone sometimes. Because once again, it's like, so wait, what are you guys doing? You guys come to my house when? Are you guys coming to my garage? They still don't understand the concept. So you still kind of need someone.

At one point, we do actually, I don't know the numbers, but we do have a lot of people that just sign on that we never talk to. And I love it. I love the fact that, not that I want to talk to them, but I just love the fact that they can log in. It's a true platform. They log in, the property goes right onto a route. They don't ever have to ask a question. It goes seamlessly. I love it. I love talking to people too, because I love how they hear about us, because we are a startup. Oh, the Facebook ad worked? F*ck yeah. I love learning that stuff.

Jeremy: One thing you could do with a Facebook ad too, that's just based off your situation, geographically. You're inserting zip codes, so you can just hammer those 65-year-olds in this zip code. So have you ran Facebook ads yet?

Alex: So we do Google ads and Facebook ads. I'm spending maybe $100 to $300 a month. I'm not doing anything. We've never done anything big. I mean, at one point, I didn't want to be too big, because I told you my head was in the ground. I didn't want to be too big, because I didn't want to fck up. I didn't want to say that I was going to do your can on the curb, and then we sht the bed. And then you're like, dude, this sucks.

You got to think about this. I have one first impression, but I'm also at your property 16 times a month. That's 200 times a year. I'm dealing with humans. We're not perfect. I might be 99%, 96% accurate, but there's going to be an issue every once in a while. It's just inevitable, whether it's my fault or our fault, or whether we didn't do anything wrong but you think we did something wrong, or whether a client, a guest took the wrong can, whatever it is. There's things that go wrong. And I was not paralyzed by that, but there was a point where I didn't want to be perfect, but it's like, look, I can't go out there and sell this if we're not providing the service that we're actually giving.

Jeremy: Totally. You didn't want to grow too quick.

Alex: Right.

Jeremy: And again, this is another situation where if you were a VC-backed company, they would have said, figure out how to provide that. Like what? You turned down a customer? Oh my goodness. They would have sent you that long email.

Alex: They would have sent you a terrible email. No. And you're 100% right. It's like when you talk to these companies, they're like, well, why did you turn down these companies? Well, I'm trying to show profit. And it's like, what? I'm trying to run a business like a business.

Jeremy: You're like a hockey stick. I don't see that.

Alex: Yeah. And it's like, look, I can get that if you guys want that, but then I got to take on everything. I got to lower my prices. Like, yeah, I got to do it. I'm like, no, I'm running a business. And then it's like, I do that. And it's like, oh, why don't you guys sell your prices higher? And it's like, you never win.

And so that's why at the end of the day, I'm just trying to run a good business, a solid business, sustainable business, profitable business, scalable business, and a business that people need, not just now, but for time to come. And trash is something that never sleeps, even on holidays. Maybe it changes the day, but it's always going. And it's just one of those, we found a niche and we're exploiting it.

Jeremy: Recession proof. Trash is recession proof.

Alex: And it was. I mean, it was even during the pandemic. I mean, we scaled during the pandemic. So now it's even pandemic proof. It's one of those things where, as long as people are renting the properties out and people are traveling in Airbnbs, and as long as that's a thing, and as long as people have second homes, and as long as people are going to their second homes and have trash and people have an easier life, we're going to keep being here. And I think if anything, we're just getting started.

Jeremy: Easier life. That's what I think is the trend. I'm curious, because you put mail in the mailbox. Do people then want that mail brought right next to their door? Where instead of in their mailbox, it's literally they can open the front door and the mail is there. Has that ever been anything you've seen?

Alex: Yeah. No, they want us to. Because you've got to think about, some of these people don't live there, right? So they want us to pick their mail and put it in the garage. They want us, we have the garage code. Some of these Airbnbs have lockbox codes on them so they can change the password or whatever they want. They're all like smart houses. So we have people tell us all the time, call us when you're there and we'll open the door for you. And it's like, it's a little, yeah.

Jeremy: What if you don't pick up, or waiting around for 10 minutes? You want the checklist. They can go on their app and when they show up, they see bang, bang, bang, bang. These are like what I need to do.

Alex: Yes. And I want to make sure it's like my good guy, Jeremy on it, not like the one that's kind of skeptical that I don't know. So I want to make sure that I have the right person doing it and making sure, and that's the thing. We have that. I just want to make sure that I got to know all the information in advance to make sure we can do it.

So stay away from certain liabilities is a million percent. And that's where we've been able to kind of like, not be under the radar, but what we do is just handle the cans. We take the cans to curb and back. Like we did our insurance policies. So we can't have you guys go in the backyard. Like why people do it and landscapers do it. Like, oh, I guess you're right. So everything we've done has been built specifically for us because there's no other company doing what we're doing. So everything has been custom built for our business.

Jeremy: No, I love it, man. I'm all about it. I would love to, I mean, I know we're still, this is actually probably the longest podcast I've ever had. I'm going to be completely honest. This is probably by 25 minutes the longest episode that I've ever done.

But I guess for folk here who are still with us, one thing I like to ask is, what is your pro tip? Whether it be short-term rentals or business, short-term rental parallel business. What is your pro tip?

Alex: What we alluded to earlier about it being cliche is, just do it. Whatever you're looking to do in your real estate business. If you're not sure if you should pivot, if you're not sure you should implement this new tool. If you're not sure that BNBCalc is going to work for you, whatever it is, just do it. You'd never be mad if trying something out and checking it off your list of something, it would work or not.

In our business, going after short-term rentals was a big fight between my business partner and I. And if we didn't just do it, we would never have known our whole, CanMonkey wouldn't be here. He was after homeowners. I was after everything. Everything we've done in our business has been a fight in some aspect. Not a fight, but I had to sell my point to him. He had to sell his point.

Jeremy: The yin and yang.

Alex: The yin and yang, you have to have that. So for me, it's like, I've never taken what people told me for what it is. I've always tried to make sure that I tried it. And if someone says I can't do it, that I want to do it. So just do it, whatever it is. And it's ambiguous, but that's just my best pro tip to anything is, if you have an inclination about doing something, just do it.

Jeremy: I love that. And also, so how can folk find you and follow your journey?

Alex: LinkedIn would be my best thing. I love LinkedIn. Last year I posted every day and it's something that I now found that I have my journey on there. I don't post something business every day, but something on there is every day about something along CanMonkey, entrepreneurship, journey, startup. Also on Instagram, Facebook. For business aspects, LinkedIn. Go to canmonkey.com, check out our website, see how we can help you, see if we're in your market. And we'd love an opportunity to learn about anyone's business. And if I can't help, maybe I have input of what someone else has done in the market. Like I said, I don't recreate the wheel. And even in a market that I'm not in, I can tell you what other people have done that's worked for them to maybe help mitigate some issues that someone has. I'd be open to helping out.

Jeremy: And guys, Alex's content on LinkedIn is gold. I knew of CanMonkey, but I didn't know of Alex. And then I saw someone liked his post and I've been following him. And I actually saw, I've been trying to be consistent. I wasn't one post a day on LinkedIn, but I was like, I've got to just start posting on LinkedIn. And then I think I saw your post showing kind of like your exponential growth on LinkedIn over the year. And I was like, holy crap. And now I haven't committed to every day of the week, but I've committed like Monday, Friday, I'm going to post something Monday, Friday. And I think that was thanks to seeing your post and being like, oh, that sounds like a good idea.

Alex: And how I kind of preface this before is that our biggest issue is that people didn't know that we exist. And like I said, I had put my head down in the ground for so long. Realized, not I kind of realized, but once I was like, you know what, maybe I have something. Why am I keeping this? Why am I hiding this? I need to start sharing this. I'm just going to put it out there. And if anything, it holds me accountable. It holds my team accountable. We said we're going to do something. We're doing it. We're in a new market. So you can't really hide from that. And I like that aspect of being transparent and holding us all accountable.

But yeah, I've done something now where I post on Monday, but you can schedule it for later.

Jeremy: I didn't know that. Thank you for that.

Alex: So I used to have to post every day. And then I was like, you know what? [inaudible]

Jeremy: Hey, that's why we're here. People are listening. We want cheat codes.

Alex: It saved me. It saved me a lot of time toward the end because I still wanted to post. Sometimes I forgot to post until like the night of. And I would have a lot of ideas, because once you're in that thought process, oh, this would be good. And then I would have five things. It's Monday through Friday. Done.

Jeremy: Beautiful. Well, that is a tangible pro tip as well. So, Alex, man, this has been a fun ride here. Thank you so much for coming. And for everybody listening, stay tuned to the next episode of the Short-Term Rental Pros podcast.