The Contractors Network Event LIVE

This is The Homeowner Show, live from Rowdy's. How's everybody doing tonight? Good. That good? Thank you, thank you. So we got a really special show for you guys. We're super excited to be here to network with all of these beautiful business owners. Hope everybody's having a good time. We got a special guest host. If you're joining us live online, I'm gonna bring the video up. There we go. Got a special guest host, John. If you don't know him, your kids do. He's also known as Cowboy Jack. How you doing, John? Excellent, doing fantastic. Dude, thank you so much for joining in this conversation. Thanks for having me, man. No, dude. So we got, we got Sarah, who is a public accountant.

I'm a CPA. Yeah, the most exciting job on the planet. I think it's extremely exciting. Yeah, just pull it up a little bit closer right there. Oh, got it. Okay. Yeah, yeah, you're good. So, so if someone comes to you and says, I need to cheat on my taxes, this is not, this is not going to be a good client for you at this point, right? Correct. So CPAs are licensed to do things to follow Circular 230 of IRS and under the AICPA, but you can do things to your advantages, and a good CPA will tell you what those are. Right. And so if you're, if you're a business owner right now and you're like, I need to start preparing to take

care of my taxes, when is going to be the best time to start having that conversation with you? Probably not in April. Well, I will tell you that most clients wait until December to reach out to their CPA or to think about planning, and that is probably the most inefficient way. Okay. You really want a CPA, especially if you're a business owner, to work with you throughout the year and really make sure your books are clean, make sure you're getting every tax advantage you can, but also be proactive in your planning. So it starts a lot earlier than December. If you're waiting till December, you're, you're overpaying in tax and you can't take advantage of those strategies. Right, right. Well, and then in

that, so I need to spend the whole year working with you. One of the issues I've had in the past with different CPAs is just the lack of education. You know, they passed their exam, you know, back in 1982, and they're still using the same ideas from then that they got out of school. How do you continue to educate yourself to help your clients out? Well, one, all CPAs are required to. We have certain hours of continuing education that all CPAs have to do. I will tell you inherently that's what I see is that the number 2 complaints is, I never hear from my CPA, and when I do, I have no idea of what they're talking about. Right. I feel like most CPAs are not great

people people, and then you take that person and they start a business, they're probably a really good CPA, they probably just don't communicate well. So I feel like partnering with somebody that does communicate and can take sometimes a complex issue or, you know, tax situation and break it down so that everyday people can understand it Communication is really important. Yeah, it sounds like you need to expand so that you can be their boss, because you're very much a people person, seems like. Well, one of the things that's unique about it, right, is that you're helping all these people that are self-employed. There's nobody that fits into the same box, right? So you're constantly having to educate yourself about the business that these folks are in. And a lot of people, like you said earlier a minute ago, people think of it as

an expense, you know, oh, I've got to pay my CPA to do this. But you're actually in the business of saving us money and making us more money. Absolutely. I have a lot of our business owners that love FERC's For example, and I get it, they love to spend on marketing. It's how much can I throw at this to grow my revenue? And they see an accountant as a sunk cost because it's, oh, I have to go do my books. And I feel like they just don't have the right accountant. A good accountant will help you grow your business, drive your business, and save you money and really educate you and be a long-term partner. That's what I mean, even like, you know, massive growth. You know, a lot of contractors had

fantastic luck over the last couple of years of people doing amazing things to their houses and and things like that. So you get this exponential growth out of nowhere and you don't know how to handle it. That's when I feel like one of the most important times to have a good CPA in your corner is. Absolutely, and it's twofold. They don't know how to trend how income is doing because it's all over the place. Maybe their books are a mess. They've been going a mile a minute, but most importantly, if they've had a really good strong year, they don't have tax planning in place. They have no idea of what they should be paying, or maybe they didn't hold the money back, and then a CPA says, oh, you owe X, and they're just dumbfounded 'cause they're not prepared

for it. And a lot of, I mean, the tax is what it is, but there's a lot that you can do to help to circumvent that and be as strategic as you can. Hmm. Is there anything that's really common amongst business owners that you're always surprised that they are unaware of with their taxes? I would say, oh well, specific to business owners, I don't even know if I could pinpoint that down to one. You could go broad and go people, that's fine. I would say most of them don't, I would say they don't feel like bookkeeping is important. I will tell you by far, there's tons of strategies But if you do not have clean books, I can guarantee that you're overpaying in tax for sure. Okay. Because maybe, you know, you're— maybe if you're using

QuickBooks or something and you have— you're doing AR, sometimes your deposits can be double booked and they're reporting double their sales. So of course your tax implication can be larger. Sometimes they might not have their credit card synced up and their Amex charges aren't coming through or something like that. I know bookkeeping is not fun and it's not sexy, And I mean, we think it's fun, and marketing, for example, is so much more funner. But if you had a good CPA to do that and have those monthly reports to be able to say, hey, I actually grew this month, this is our percentage of gross, hey, what are our costs doing, can we look, where can we be leaner? There's so much

strategy that goes into that that a good CPA will do. Awesome. Is there anything else you want everybody to know before we, we bring up the next guest? That's it. I'm happy to be here. We're really big on educating and find a good CPA. It really is. From the infancy of your business all the way to an exit, there's so much strategy that can be done and it's really important to find a good CPA. What's your favorite day of the year? April 16th. That's what I thought it was going to be. Yeah, for sure. But if anybody listening wants to reach out to you and hire a phenomenal CPA, how do they get a hold of you? Sure. So you can visit us. Our website is sarahjonescpa.com. And it's Sarah with an H,

and you can book. We offer a free tax analysis. We have a secure portal that you, if you will upload your prior year tax returns, we'll look at it for free and tell you if there's strategy, and if so, what the real-time savings are. Anybody that's interested in anything like that, they can go to the website and book on my calendar link, and my website, our email's there, and also our office number. Awesome. Thank you so much for sitting down with us. Yeah, absolutely. It's good to meet you. Yeah, you guys too. Awesome, guys. We'll be ready for the next guest here in just a minute. I don't know who we've got next. Christian, who we got, buddy? Ready for

next person, victim, whatever you want to call it. Yeah, thanks. Really good to meet you, sir. I appreciate it. Yeah. All right, and we are back and we've got Tina, right? And could you tell us the name of your company? Because I can't see that far. It's Arc Electric and Lighting, and that's S-A-R-C Electric and Lighting. Okay, tell us a little, what do you guys specialize in? Like, what's your bread and butter? So, uh, we do the— our bread and butter, like our favorite things to do, is new construction generators and then high-end lighting systems. So it's all electrical? It's all electrical and lighting. That is shocking. Yeah, shocking. That's a good way, that's a good way. That's my thing. Wait, John was telling me he thinks he's seen you guys around because you do a lot of generator installs, right? We do.

Yeah, I know I've seen you guys. You guys are crazy busy in my area where I live. Spring Trails. Oh yeah, we're out there all the time. That's what I thought. I knew it, I knew it. And we're highly referred there. So yeah, but what a great time of year to be thinking about a home generator, right? Yes, for sure. We learned that lesson the hard way just a couple years ago. Yeah, with the freeze. Exactly. And honestly, that was— the freeze was a game changer for us because there's a lot of generator specialty companies that have kind of dominated the market, and the freeze, as unfortunate as it was, it gave us some market share. In that regard,

right? So we're able to get generators faster than anyone in Texas right now. If I've got you down right, which I'm sure I do, you guys are pretty open-minded about the kind of solutions you can provide folks, right? Yes, yes. Y'all do everything from the actual standby generators to working with, you know, transfer switches and things like that. Even portables, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's a huge market within itself because those, you know, big Generac generators aren't always available. Right. And they're not the most cost efficient. Not everyone can afford one. Right. And so we don't have salespeople. So every customer that calls us for an estimate or a project, they meet my husband. His name's Armando. I don't think we'll ever have salespeople because

when people call us, they're really calling for him. And then having them trust us to let our team do the install, it's a hard sell. But we've built a name for ourselves. The reason I brought up that we don't have salespeople is not to knock people that do because there's a need for them. Sure. But we have solutions in mind when we meet our customers. We're not trying to meet a quota or make a commission. We're just trying to solve their problem. And it's a beautiful part of business to be in. Yeah. I mean, how awesome is that? You go from being employed by another company to, you know, this, this whole pandemic thing kind

of— it's a blessing in disguise, right? It was. And the pivotal point for us was He worked for a really cool company that we loved. And so, like, electricians job hop. They just— it's part of the trade. Whoever's going to give them a dollar raise, that's where they're going to go. And my husband's no different, right? Sure. But he was with a really great company, really great benefits. And we decided that's where he was going to retire from because it was like, I need stability. We don't need a dollar. We need 401, things like that. Yeah. Well, when he got laid off, our benefits were cut the same day. And we have 4 kids. And so that was kind of like an eye-opener for us. And we, at that moment, we were like, we're gonna try

this. It was pretty crazy to try it in the middle of a pandemic. Yes. But it worked because everybody was stuck in their homes and, you know, they didn't like their ceiling fans or— it was just, it was meant to be, right? That's awesome. No, that thing, you know, some things happen by accident. This doesn't sound like it was an accident. Sounds divine. Yeah, it does. It really does. I'm super happy to meet you because electricity scares the bejesus out of me. As it should. Yeah, yeah, I don't like messing with it at all. Yeah, you can do ceiling fans and stuff. You don't need us. I don't want to do that either. You should ask my wife if I can do ceiling fans. So like a year ago, I did a

marketing campaign that said, call us to fix it when your husband fixes it. Yeah, it wasn't received very well. That was, that was aimed at me, and I appreciate the humor in it. That's good, that's good. Well, my husband's not allowed to do I was gonna ask on the generators, are you guys doing a lot of like natural gas ones? Yes. So you're having to partner with a plumber? Yes, we partner with plumbers and we're always looking for new partnerships. It's lucrative for plumbers. For sure. It is definitely a niche type of install, but we partner with plumbers and HVAC companies all the time and sheetrock guys to fix what we mess up. Because we make a lot of holes. Yeah. You know, so we're always partnering with other trades and we're pretty loyal and our

customers are too. So we're 99% referral-based, which means when they come from another customer. So, right. Yeah, it's, it's amazing. We don't do a lot of advertising or anything like that. So, and you mentioned earlier that there's more cost-efficient or cost-effective generator brands and things like that. I know Generac's one of the big ones. What are some of the other ones that are like more cost efficient? So Kohler is a good brand. There was a time where Kohler was more expensive than Generac, and they're pretty neck and neck now because of the freeze. Everybody's pretty competitive on their pricing. But some of the portable generators, the larger ones, there's a huge difference in investment levels. So for sure, you can get a decent

portable generator for about $2,000 versus $15,000 and over. And you can still stay pretty comfortable in your house. You don't need a full home generator, and those are easily accessible. And so, I mean, when you think about investment from $2,000 to $15,000, those are 2 different markets we're serving, right? Yeah. And so we sell a lot of portables, but if we have to mark it up, we'll tell you where to go to get it with no markup, you know, because we're in the business of relationships and not getting rich off of Well, I'd say you don't get to 99% referral rate without being in the relationship business. That's pretty impressive. Yeah, it is. It's amazing, but it's also scary because there's no room to

fail, right? The moment you're late or something, it's because your customers speak so highly, right, of you, and you can't let them down. It's a burden, but it's a beautiful thing, and we're so thankful for it. We're so thankful for it. Awesome. Well, anything else you want to let everybody know before we No, just, um, you know, we are licensed and insured and there's no project that's too large or too small for us. We want to be able to do everything. And, um, in May, we'll— I get emotional— we'll be in our 3rd year of business. Oh wow, congratulations. Very, very grateful. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Oh, thank you, and congratulations on everything. That's so cool. If people want to reach

out to you and get a hold of you, They can go to yourfavoriteelectricians.com or call our office at 281-909-4299. And on all social media, we're Arc Electric and Lighting. So, okay, very cool. Thank you so much. All right guys, we're ready for the, the next guest. We're so— we're having a good time so far, man, aren't you? It's— I mean, I'm having fun. Yeah, we've had some laughs. Yeah, we'll be right back. We are back with Mr. Christian Scott. Step right up there and put that microphone really close to your mouth so people can hear you. What's up? There you go. Alright, so tell us about— tell us about this group you've put together. Like, what is the— what's the origin story? Nobody killed your uncle

or anything, right? What? Nobody killed your uncle or anything? No. Okay. So I actually started this group, um, I started this group 3 years ago, and it was me and my wife. We were the first 2 members, and I started this group because I wanted more business. And once I saw the community take a hold of it, I just let it go all the way public, and here we are. Right. So it's really grown. We have like 46,000 people on there, and that's been unbelievable. Yeah. And I've really been able to meet some really great people, other people that are doing really great things in the community. And I'm really excited to continue to work with everybody, everybody here. But

kudos to you for talking your wife into joining. I mean, like, getting your wife on board's half the battle right there. Once you got her, the other 46,999 was just cake. Yeah, man, and it takes a lot of time away from her, but she's really supportive, and I, I'm very thankful for that. She sees what we're doing, and she believes in it. That's awesome. So what was your initial— what's your business? I do a lot of general contracting. The past 6 years, I've done a lot of work with my own hands. I've tied rebar, I've painted, I've done everything there is to do with a house, and I've worked for investors only so that I've been able to just do one project after

another over and over and over and over. And so it all kind of blends in after a while. And I'm able to now step back out of the field and use my management skills with all of the customers, and I'm able to just give a seamless, you know, good smooth process for their investments. Awesome. And I'm trying to branch out and do investing myself as well. Okay. Trying to pick up some property? Yep. There you go. I've done a lot. I've done the contracting side. I've done the investing side, partnered with other partners, and I've done wholesaling as well. So I know, I've always said it's kind of like a triangle, and I know every point, so I know what somebody wants. Awesome. And I have the network. If I don't know

something, somebody else does. That's what I was curious. So what makes a good member of the network? How can somebody get the best use out of this group? I think the best thing is, is just be reliable. The biggest thing that I see people, and that I even have problems with sometimes, is people don't want to show up to work. So, you know, these— look at all these people. I guarantee you all these people are showing up to work, and they're all coming here and they're hustling and they want to make that money, and so does everybody else. So it all comes together. Step 1 is do what you say you're going to do, right? Pretty basic principle, and it applies to almost every

business in the world. Yep. If you do that, you're going to have that referral. You're going to have that customer that wants to keep coming back over and over again. And it spreads. Yeah, it's really great. And there's so much knowledge in this room. And one thing that I've seen is all these people that are at the top of their game, they're willing to give back all the education that they've learned. Everything that I learn, I try to— if somebody asks me a question, if I don't know it, I'm going to find the answer. Hmm. And like, most good people are willing to share that information with you. Like, it's not— they're not being selfish with it. Yeah, dude, there's— how many people are in this city? Like

millions. There ain't no competition. No, look how many people are here. We couldn't service the whole city here. No, there's plenty of work. Yeah, there's enough to do. We can only just grow together, collaborate. That's something that took me a long time to learn. When I, when I was young and ambitious, I thought everybody was against me, right? And then once I realized, like, you know, in a perfect world, there's not— there's no means to scale to service everyone. Yeah. And you can't be a jack of all trades because you'll be a master of none. That old saying didn't come up by accident. So these types of events, you get to network. Like, say Like she was talking about, you're a really good electrician,

but you're cutting holes in drywall. Well, you have no business doing drywall work. Exactly. Get a guy. This is a great place to find a guy. Yeah, and I think it's great. And we have a lot of things that we're rolling out, more tools for people to use. Yeah. And I'm really excited, and I think it's gonna take hold. So hopefully we can— In your mind, what's next? Like, what's next for this group? I think making sure that these type of settings happen consistently. One of the biggest things that we're trying to do is put together groups of contractors that are trustworthy and reliable so that you don't have to go out there and guess who you're hiring. You already know that you're hiring somebody trustworthy because that's the biggest thing. I don't want to trust

somebody with $20,000 and then run away with it. That's not okay. Yeah. Yeah, no, I know, I think that's good, man. And then before, before we let you go, you guys had everybody bring some toys tonight. Yeah. And what's that— what's all that for? So I— one of my really, really close friends, he had a daughter that passed away to cancer, and they went through— and that really, that really took hold of me because I have kids the same age, and our kids were supposed to grow up together. Yeah. And, um, I know that during Christmas time, those families don't need to be worried about toys. Uh, they should just be worried about what they're going through. Yeah. And so I wanted to at least

try to help out a little bit. And, uh, even a couple weeks ago, I had to take my daughter to the Texas Children's Hospital, uh, for about a week. And, you know, The toys there definitely helped. Oh, really? So I was able to, while we were there, I figured it was a good opportunity to talk to some of the managers in the hospital. And we talked to them and we got— I was able to get something worked out to where I could bring the toys there and they go directly to the playrooms and to the— So these are all going to Texas Children's? Yes, I'm gonna take them there tomorrow. So I'm excited. I love it, that's awesome. That's awesome. You know, the hospital, there's no differentiation in a

hospital setting, right? Everybody from all walks of life comes. Yes. And, you know, even I ended up there last Friday and Saturday with my own daughter. And it's not a lot of fun when you're there. You grab kind of— it doesn't matter. I mean, you may be there for a long-term treatment plan of some sort of chronic, you know, medical situation, but it could be just an emergency room visit. Yeah. Like I was fortunate enough to have. But, you know, you grab a couple things and you're out the door, and then you realize you're sitting in a waiting room for 7 hours. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Nothing to do. Nothing to do. And when you have a toddler,

that's— Yeah, that's the worst. That's the worst. She was in so much pain. I had a 2-year-old on me for 7 hours, and she was great. When you have those toys there, that's something they can kind of remember from home. It kind of— I think it kind of comforts them. Make it, make it human. It's an unnatural experience. Yeah, they're doing great things at those hospitals, and I couldn't— I can only try as hard as I can. That's, that's, I mean, it's not a small dowry. No, you have quite a significant gathering of toys. That's really awesome what you guys are doing. Yeah, so kudos to everybody that brought toys tonight. So that's just an awesome gesture to take care of some, you know, kids that aren't feeling great. Yeah, yeah, I'm hoping Every

event I'll probably try to— I have a lot of people that I would say ask, are asking for help. And one thing that I try to do, and one thing I've always tried to do with this page, is make sure that the people that are asking for help is genuine. Yeah. You know, I've started this page to be homegrown, and I want to keep those roots strong. Yeah. And we've helped a lot of people, and I want to continue to help if Awesome. Anything else you want everybody to know before we kick you off the stage? I'm just very thankful for you all to show up. We put a lot of hard work into this and it's taken— I can't tell you

how many late nights I've spent on Facebook giving advice or trying to talk people through things and it's not easy and my wife's been very, very supportive and It's been great. It's been a great experience. Awesome. Well, it shows that you've been putting in a lot of hard work, man, because a lot of, a lot of hard-working people showed up tonight to support you. Yeah, and Christian Waldo and Chris Cinelli, oh my God, they, they, they are the best at what they do. So I'm very thankful, and I think these events are just going to get bigger over time, and we'll get more rooted into this community. I think the more people talk about it, the bigger these things will get

and the more opportunities will come for everybody. For sure. And if people want to work with you, got a question for you, want to get a hold of you, is there a good way to do that? Oh, just hit me up on Facebook. Facebook, that's the easiest way. I try to keep everything there. If you're, if you're left on read, just give me a couple minutes. I'll get to you, I promise. And we'll, and we'll get to, we'll We'll talk whatever you guys want to talk about. So awesome, man. Thank you so much for sitting down with us. Thank you. Very cool. Good to meet you guys. Nice to meet you. All right, and Christian will be up here in a minute to bring us our next guest. Thank you for sitting down with us. Picture. All

right, we got our next guest, Austin with A&W Dumpster Rentals, which I was just— yes sir, that's correct. Dumpster Rentals. Yes sir, that is correct. Okay, so This is like a pretty new business, right? Yes, sir. So we've actually been in, uh, it's been in the works for about 6 months. Okay. However, we've only been operational for about 7 weeks, but it's been going great. Okay. Yeah, so it's been in the works for a while. However, we finally, uh, you know, got it to fruition about 7 weeks ago. Okay. And if I'm familiar with the way that something like this works, you guys bring a dumpster to a property? Yes, sir. Of course. Leave it there, fill it up, And you guys come and pick it up? Yes, sir, of course. So we

do offer short-term rentals. That's kind of what we specialize in. And so we do offer 3-day and 7-day rentals as well. Okay. I mean, are you primarily targeting a certain market like residential, commercial, industrial? Like what's your— So contractors and homeowners. So contractors mainly remodelers, stuff like that. We're not biased to any other, you know, industries, stuff like that. However, for the homeowners, you know, there's a lot of, you know, garage cleanouts, you know, backyards, junk that you want to get rid of. I mean, just today alone, I had a lady call me about a 25-yarder. She's got like a 3,500-square-foot house and she wants to clean out a bunch of shit. So she's like, hey, I have this size house. I got a lot of rooms. I got a lot of stuff

in the garage. I got a lot of stuff in the backyard that I want to get rid of. Mm-hmm. And I was like, honestly, I think you'd be best set with our 25-yarders. So mainly we do focus with, you know, construction contractors, remodelers, However, we do work with a lot of homeowners that want to just, you know, get rid of stuff that's in their backyard. Oh, okay. You know, their garage, stuff like that. So I need, I need 3 at my house. You what? I need 3 at my house. Hey, we got you, we got you. When do you want them delivered? So, so, I mean, how many units do you got? Are you guys up to like— Yes, sir. So like I said, you know, we're just now kind of starting off. So we do

currently have 10 total dumpsters. So we do have 15-yard, 20-yard, and then 25-yarders. However, as we grow, I think honestly, I think next month we're gonna actually, you know, add another dumpster to our fleet. But right now we do have 10. We are always available and reliable and stuff like that, just depending on availability. However, you know, we have started to, you know, kind of get, I guess you could say, booked up. And so we are looking to expand in the near future. Well, that's a— I mean, somebody may hear that 10, but that's actually quite a bit. And you're turning those. It's not like these are staying on a job site. for 60, 90 days necessarily. It could be only there for a couple of

days. Exactly. Come and get it. Yes, sir. So we definitely focus on short-term rentals, the 3 and 7 days. There's a lot of companies that will do those long-term rentals. However, you know, I kind of, you know, my bread and butter would be, you know, those short-term rentals, those contractors that are, you know, doing remodels on a house. They don't want to spend, you know, 3 months on it. They're just remodeling a kitchen. Yeah, they want to do a demo. They fill it up, we take it out. Yeah, which is a good deal for them. I mean, because nobody likes hauling garbage, but it's like it slows them down to have to run to the dump site or whatever it is. Exactly, it is really expensive. When's the last time you took something to

the dump yourself? Don't ask me that. It's crazy expensive. Then I'd have to tell you what I took to the dump. And so that brings me to, uh, you just talked about price. And so with us, we're very competitive. We've seen rates that are double than ours for the same amount of dumpster and for the same rental days. So with us, we definitely wanted to stay competitive. Obviously, we're in business to make profit. However, you know, we always want to stay— our business model wants to be underneath, you know, most of our competition. Very nice. Do you have a specific service area in mind? Have y'all set up how far you're willing to go? Yes, sir. So we typically We do stay in Montgomery County area.

However, we will go to Harris County, we'll go to Humble, we'll go to other counties. It will be a service charge for those miles just depending on if you're over that 25-mile radius that we operate in Montgomery County. Yeah, I mean, that's something that everybody's accustomed to these days with the, the, you know, gas is actually— diesel is actually somewhat affordable right now. Yeah, it's going down. Thank God. Y'all start shopping at Kroger for your groceries and you'll be fine. Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly. And then on the dumpster itself, I mean, I've worked with some of these different companies in the past, like you can't go over the edge at the top, right? I mean, like you guys have the same kind of— Say that

louder for the people in back. Thank you, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, when you get one, you get in there and you stomp it down because, you know, you want to get as much out of it as you can. Exactly. There's, there's safety reasons for that, right? Yes, sir, there is, of course. Um, we've actually just ran into this yesterday with someone overfilled it to where it was, you know, toppling over. Unfortunately, we obviously cannot haul that because we have to, you know, obviously look out for, you know, we have to travel probably 20 miles to take it to the dump, and we don't want any, you know, things falling off, hurting people and stuff like that. And I, I appreciate that. Yes, of course, of course. You know, if you're following behind a dumpster, you don't want shit falling

off, you know. But, um, we, uh, we definitely will, um, either if it's a swap out or we'll try to put the stuff that's over, you know, the allowed, you know, line into their new dumpster. If not, we're gonna have to just throw it to the, you know, to the side and then go dump it and then come pick it back up. But I'm sure all those terms of service are disclosed at the time of rental. Yes, sir. It's not like they're— you're showing up and being like, oh hey, you stacked it too high. No, they already, they already knew that. They knew exactly what they were doing. I mean, I'm not saying I wouldn't try to pull a fast one. They're just standing over there with their fingers crossed. He's not

gonna say anything. I think they'll take it. I think they'll take it. Even though some people would be like, oh, I don't know, I didn't know that that was in the service contract. Well, sir, you did sign that before we dropped it off. It's not my fault you didn't read it. Exactly, exactly. I mean, we definitely do try to accommodate because we know that, you know, it's— you got a dumpster for a reason and you want to put as much stuff as you can. So we will try to tarp it down, you know, strap it down as much as we can. However, there is a certain, you know, limit to what we can take, right? Yeah. Yes. All right, so moment of honesty. Do a moment of honesty. Okay. Have you ever

looked in the dump and gone, they're throwing that away, and gotten it out? Okay, there has been interesting— I'll say there has been interesting stuff that we have found in dumpsters, but we definitely don't go diving in and seeing what's in there. But if there's something on top, we're like, what is that? Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna go take a look. I mean, might as well, right? Yeah. Real quick for my dad, if you're listening, it's the code word. Exactly. Pet Ritz, Dad. Exactly. He'll know what it means. I'm not explaining it to you guys. All right, so if people— well, anything else you want everybody to know before we Boot you off of here. Um, we're your family-owned dumpster rental company. We're always competitive for

pricing. We're the most professional company you'll ever get in Montgomery County, and you know, we're very reliable. I've never picked up— I've never not picked up a phone call, whether it's at 9 o'clock or at 5 AM. I always make sure our customers are taken care of. Awesome. And if people want to hire you, work with you, how do they get a hold of you? Do what? If they want to hire you, work with you, how do they get a hold of you? All right, so you guys can either order online at amwdumpsters.com. Super easy process. I think it takes like 3 minutes total to book online. Or you guys can give me a call if you want to talk to the guy

himself at 936-438-2328. Fantastic. Thank you so much for jumping up here. Thank you guys. Thanks for joining us. Good to meet you. We'll be back. You know, I always— real quick, I always told my mom I'd end up on stage in a honky-tonk. I finally did. Finally happened. Got me there. I hope my mom's not watching because she always told me, don't you ever. Come on. Be back. All right, and we're back. Tell us your name so that the people at home can hear. Lupe Vasquez. Lupe Vasquez. I have to tell you, you win the prize for best group of boots on the stage. Oh, thank you! There's no actual prize. It's just, you know, heartfelt feelings. Thank you, thank you, thank

you. You know, sometimes when you work in construction, you don't even get a chance to wear your dance boots. Right? Yeah, so I love the whole, you know, who cares about the hotels and the conferences over there? Like, this is what we're about. This is real. I love it. Congratulations. You also, you also, you know, gave us like a little bit of a chill. You brought a whole pit bull. posse up here. Of course, I'm Hispanic. What do you think? And we all came in one car. That's right. So tell us about the organization. So organically, I've been in the industry for almost 10 years in concrete, selling concrete for, you know, a very— I don't know, y'all might charge me for the commercial, right? But

a global supplier. And this is how I started my journey in construction out in the field, interacting with our contractors, understanding that they are pretty much building our community, but we need to build them too. Right. Right? So organically, you know, in construction, we're very— we're awesome people in construction. I mean, we share contacts. We help out our, you know, our partner, safety, you name it, everything. We're always laughing. We have a really tough job, But there's always laughter and companionship and everything. And I said, but who's thinking about them? So thinking about the niche, Hispanics in construction, we found that there is a need. There is a need because we got so— well, personally, I got very tired of hearing stories of no pay.

Yeah. Hearing stories of, you know, I've done so much work and I'm getting the runaround, and I found this guy on Facebook and now he's not showing up. I mean, who hasn't seen those ads, right? Oh yeah. But I think that you can take advantage of this tool to make sure that it doesn't happen to the next person. What we did was pretty much organically, we do it all the time, but I think if you come together and work together, that's when you really make a difference. Also culturally, you know, you need to share the information. Sometimes we keep it to ourselves, and the industry needs to keep growing. The need is there. So if you talk to me about,

you know, data and business, I love business. Demographically, and there's data to prove it, we are a majority, right? Hispanics. So especially here in Houston. That's right. So thinking 2044, you know, a lot of the growth will depend a lot on a Hispanic Oh, absolutely. So, but we want to make sure they're ready for that because we understand the bridge that we need to make sure that we're taking care of, the gap, and that comes from education. So we offer workshops to show our guys, you know, how to be— first of all, keep them safe and sound. I can show you how to make the big bucks, but first I got to show you to stay safe. Exactly. You got to come home at the end of the day. You got to come home. Enjoy

the fruits of your labor by being That's right. So one of our pillars is health and safety of Hispanics in construction, and we cater to the employee, we cater to the contractor, and we cater to our future generation. Yeah. So, I mean, we have a campaign going on nationwide where we're putting out safety vests out there and making sure that everybody knows that we need to keep them safe and sound. And then after that, obviously, education. Education is a big piece of it. A lot of the journey of a Hispanic in construction, you start as an employee and you say, you know what, I can do this on my own, because there's an entrepreneurial spirit there. Yeah. But when you do that, you might not do it the best way, you know, the right way. You

kind of just do it. And, you know, I give a lot of credit to our contractors for doing that because it takes a lot. You might have all the papers in line, you might have all the certificates in line, but sometimes it takes guts. to say, I'm gonna go on my own. You know that. And so we have to respect that. These guys go on their own. They have their crews. They're leaders, but we just need to make sure that they have the resources, the information, and everything out there to keep growing because the industry needs it. Like I said earlier, at the end of the day, we need from each other. Yeah. And we all play a role on this, and we just want to make sure that,

you know, even our future generation understands How rewarding it is to work in construction, and we're we're the voice. We call it la voz de la construcción, and we're just pretty much screaming it out loud and proud. That's I mean a little off topic, but you know I make a children's educational show, and one of my favorite things to do is to show kids skilled trades. Right. That these are actual incredible career paths that you can take. You can make a lot a lot of money. Oh yeah, tons of it, tons of it. Self. employed and be the, you know, the master of your own destiny. That's right, and you don't even, you know, construction has

a perception of dirty, you know, dust and hard work. Everybody starts somewhere, right? Yeah, of course. Yeah, but no, we're even doing grants and scholarships for the guys that do not want to go to high school to go ahead and learn how to be a good estimator, good project manager, and I'm not sure if she's around here, but she's my partner. She's the only Hispanic Latina that has a trade school here in Houston, and we're partnered up so that the kids of our members do not have to go through the learning experience of losing money and time and all that good stuff. No, let's just put them where they need to be. So our mission at USCON is for our future generation to have that information from the

get-go. They don't have to go learn the hard way. They could be estimating tomorrow and making some good money and contribute to our industry. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what you're doing is you're providing a community, you're providing education, you're providing resources. I mean, I think it's such a valuable thing no matter what community you're in, but it very much reminds me— are you familiar with, I think it's Paul Bet-David? What is it? Paul Bet-David. Okay. But he, I mean, he's a Hispanic guy that just recognized within that community there was a lack of education around life insurance. A lot. And he built an empire on educating and then providing them with the product. That's right. And then the financial resources as, you know, as

an investment tool. And so you're kind of doing the same thing where it's like, look, there's a different way to do this business. There's a way to go about it where you're not shortchanging yourself and you can actually compete with everybody and probably do a better job. No, exactly. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I mean, the most important thing is we need to understand it doesn't matter what race you are. You need to understand the value we bring to our industry. We're building our communities. And that's very valuable. We're worth a whole lot, and in our council, what we do is, so if you understand how much you're worth, you better be charging right too. Yeah, absolutely.

So what we do is we educate people to charge correctly. You know, why settle to be the guy that just gets whatever someone else wants to pay? No, no, no. We're teaching our guys to understand they are very valuable. All it takes is to invest in yourself because there's something someone cannot take away from you, and that is your self-investment, right? You can invest in real property, you can invest in real estate, you can invest in whatever you want, but something that no one will ever take away from you, doesn't matter what race it is, is if you invest in your own self. And we want to make sure that our contractors and future generation understand that

When you invest in yourself, I mean, your return of investment is, you know what I'm saying? So yeah, no, we're here building Houston. How do people get plugged in with you? I mean, how do they, do they find you like on Facebook or anything? Yeah, so if you go to Facebook, you can find me how it all started about 10 years ago in the industry, La Reina del Concreto, which is the Concrete Queen. And from there, I turned around and just made sure I love sales, I love marketing, I like bringing people together. I consider myself myself more like a— and you guys are too. We're all Cupid of construction. Yeah. Yeah, we just bring people together, and I don't have to

be the pro at anything. You have to understand these guys are the pros at what they do, and you got to respect them for that. I'm sure I would never even come close to know what they do, but that's not my role. My role is just to make sure that that guy and that guy connect. And what I love about events like this, you know, culturally, we need to teach everyone to do that. You know, I met someone at the booth over here, and then I went to the bar, and the guy I just met over here went and told the other guy, hey, I have someone you need to meet. Yeah. Right? And that's what it takes. That's what we need to do.

Sometimes we want to keep it all to ourselves, but sometimes we don't understand when you share the knowledge, you share everything, these are the things that happen, and then the real deal happens. Right? There's always gonna be people that are gonna stay in their role, but we have to be leaders. We have to be leaders. We gotta, you know, somebody has to be ahead and making sure we're pushing, because construction, I mean, come on, it's, it's one of the top 6 industries in the economy. If it's moving, we're essential, right? That's what they said. So we need to know what we're worth. Yeah, so I'm excited for what you guys are doing. I'm I had no idea it's been going on for 10 years. That's amazing. Yeah, it's been— it doesn't feel like

it. I guess when you're having fun, you know, a lot of people say, how can you work? How can you post that? Talking about Facebook and how all this happened. Do you sleep? You post at 2 in the morning and you post at 11. I'm sure y'all know what I'm talking about. But who was the one who posted the whole thing about momentum? It's so addicting. Who was that today? One of the Chris. I think that was Christian. Yeah, that was Christian. Yeah, you get addicted. When you see that people are having success and, you know, you were a little piece of it, you know that it's working and you just want to keep going. Oh, well, I appreciate you sitting down with us. Thanks for coming. It's really good to meet you. Yeah, no problem. But

thank you to everyone that's here. That's what we need. And I really look forward to one day this place is too small for us to handle this business. So I'll make sure I'll bring more, uh, more cars full of Hispanics next time. With the boots. With the boots. That's what we need. We need the sparkly boots. Thank you. Thank you so much. Hey, we need to invite you to our little club one of these days. Bring me. I gotta show you how to dance. You ready? I'm ready. All right. Craig's ready. We'll sign Kevin up so he can— Yeah, that's right. Kevin will be great. Kevin's gonna be awesome. Okay, we're ready. Thank you guys. Thank you very much for the time here and the opportunity for

being here. I appreciate it. Thank you. Good to meet you.