In The Thick of It

I mean, everything that was created, even the character

that was built inside me, to be just more

prepared for any situation that comes next, I would

say that I'm ready for any challenge.

Welcome to In the Thick of It.

I'm your host Scott Hollrah.

On today's episode, you'll hear from Justin Smith,

founder and CEO of Redaway Medical Waste Solutions.

From his humble beginnings in Kentucky to his early

career in finance and real estate, Justin's path eventually

led him to launch Redaway, something he refers to

as the "happiest accident of his career."

Throughout our conversation, Justin shared challenges he faced

breaking into a highly regulated industry and how

he embraced unexpected opportunities along the way.

We discussed his passion for delivering exceptional

customer service and how Redaway's commitment to

meeting unique needs of their clients set

them apart from the competition.

Justin, thanks so much for making it over here today.

Welcome to In the Thick of It. We're glad to have you.

I'm glad to be here.

Thanks for inviting me. Absolutely.

Well, tell us just kind of a

little bit about yourself, your background.

You grew up in Kentucky, bourbon country.

We bonded over that a little bit when we

talked the first time a couple of weeks ago.

What was it like growing up there?

Yeah, I mean, Kentucky is a very

laid back, very slow pace of life. But?

Yeah, I grew up in Louisville.

Horse races and bourbon, hopefully.

Thankfully, I didn't experience those

till later in life.

But it's a very, again, just easy life.

People think of Kentucky, they think

know, farmland and things like that.

I grew up in Louisville, which is a big city,

so for me it was a pretty just simple.

It's funny, I want to go into my testimony just

from church, but it was just a great life.

I have a twin sister, I have an older

sister, and then my father and my mother and

I was kind of my father's right hand man.

We did a lot of hunting, a lot

of fishing, things you'd expect out of Kentucky.

But, yeah, it was great.

I mean, we did have farmland later

on down the road, but it was

just a good opportunity experience at bluegrass.

But, yeah, love Kentucky from there.

I went to university of Kentucky, got

a degree in finance and marketing.

After graduating, I was kind of that typical 20

something where I didn't know what I wanted to

do, so flipped houses for a year or two

while I was getting my master's degree.

That really kind of got my

eyes open to more corporate world.

So graduated with the master's degree, spent two years

as a financial advisor, 22 years old, selling stocks,

bonds, and mutual funds to your dad's friends.

They didn't necessarily trust me because they

knew the kid down the street, not

the man I was trying to become.

So after that, real estate was kind of a

passion for mine because that's what my father did.

So I was a real estate broker for a large company.

That was 2008, company went

bankrupt, I got into healthcare.

So from there I worked with

a company called Kindred Healthcare.

And I was an executive training program to

learn how to be a hospital administrator.

So I was a hospital administrator in Dayton, Ohio,

St. Louis, Missouri, and then came to

Dallas and then ran the market.

So long term acute care is

anything post short term acute care.

So post like your big hospitals like Baylor.

So I ran anything after that continuum.

And then after a couple years, I realized that that

wasn't necessarily the life that I wanted to know.

My wife and I were heavily involved in church.

We're a growing family.

I didn't like the nights being away

and potential to move to other cities.

And that's when I really started to network.

Found some investors through my church, and then

they were tracking my progress as a professional.

One day they called me and said, hey, we have an idea.

Why don't we sit down?

So we sat down for coffee and just

like people say, it started on a napkin.

We literally brainstormed over coffee and

the idea of redway was born.

And just to go into a little bit of

that, there's a large company, which is kind of

the gorilla out there that they do.

They're 12 billion worldwide, so they're

a very large corporation, and they

really treat the small customers poorly.

So our goal was to launch a service oriented business

where we specialize in the people that they didn't take

care of, and it's been very well for us.

And that was August 2013, is when I left

Kindred and then licenses and things like that.

First customers really started servicing

in that 2014 year.

So kind of backing up, thinking about your story.

You're flipping houses right out of

college and you're a financial advisor.

And that was actually a career that I had

considered early on and decided it wasn't for me.

With the financial advisor piece, that is very much,

you eat what you kill and there's no salary.

It's straight commission and flipping

houses, same thing, basically.

So it seems like you've really had a

risk tolerant personality from the get go.

Yeah, I desired those things.

They were kind of the opportunities that put

in front of me, and I wasn't afraid.

It was an opportunity for me to kind of rely on myself.

And not that I was one of those

people that wasn't relying on other people.

But I think my father, he started flipping houses.

He bought his first rental house when he

was in his 20s, married to my mom.

And we lived in, I don't know,

15 different houses in my early years.

Just because we'd buy a rental move, as soon as

that was ready, we'd move into the next one.

And that's just kind of what I saw growing up.

So I think that kind of built this desire

to kind of do things that required a little

bit more of self motivation, which was kind of

building that risk tolerance to do those things.

But yeah, financial advising, it was probably one of the

only jobs that they were hiring for in Louisville, Kentucky

at my age because I decided to go really broad

in my education and because of that I had to

go broad in that first job.

But it was a great eye opening experience that I was

not mentally or mature enough to go into that profession.

That came with a little bit more of, we'll

just say, overcoming roadblocks throughout those early careers.

How did those experiences early on

serve you, starting right away?

I don't reflect much on that.

I reflect a lot on the character build

of what they allowed me to do.

I overcame a lot of objections.

My first job as a financial advisor, it ended abruptly.

Let's just say that for my lack of understanding corporate world

and then flipping houses, I needed that to fulfill that desire

to do what my father was doing and to see if

that was the road I wanted to go.

And what I found is that I kind of

wanted to blaze my own trail, so to speak.

So you go to Kindred, where I was one of

30,000 and what desire continued to build up in me

is I wanted to do something on my own.

Now, I know that I have investors and I know that

I have financial backing, but I wanted to see if my

future person was this guy who could start a business, get

it to profitability and ultimately make that successful.

I think that was the deep seated desire that I got.

And was it from childhood?

Was it from this God given character that he gave me?

I think it was a combination of

all those things but learned a lot.

And I'm thankful for those early years and

those careers, even if they were unsuccessful.

So talk to us about kind of the early days

of right away and one of the things you mentioned

was going through the licensing process or forget what term

you used, but sounds like it's very regulated and there

were hurdles you had to jump through.

What were those 1st, 612, 18 months like for you?

It was difficult in the fact that

I didn't know anything about the industry.

So I became a student again.

I had to go back and learn

everything there was about medical waste.

All I knew from before I started was that I paid a

really large bill to a service provider who I never saw.

So I had to go and I had to learn everything about it.

And what I learned is it is very highly

regulated on a federal and a state level and

the costs associated with it were astronomical insurance.

You couldn't get insurance to do this type of business.

So there was a lot of those hurdles that I

had to figure out, and that forced me to rely

on not only industry professionals, but people within a network

that I was building to tell me, hey, this is

how you go about getting insurance.

Here's how you go about making sure

you have the right banking relationships.

Those early years would have been a lot smoother if I had

the right people in my corner, but I was figuring this all

out, and I would say that the figuring it out is what

gave us a lot of thick skin for the five, six year

grind that was the start of the business.

And I take it that none of your

investors really had experience in this space.

No, they knew the financials of these big organizations

and they knew the way that these acquisitions happened,

and that's what attracted them to the business.

And I think they were wise in the

fact that they saw a loophole in the

service that we would eventually provide.

And that being, if you were to look online,

99% of people were complaining about these big organizations.

So it was like, man, let's get somebody

who was passionate about people and passionate about

taking care of individuals who has business acumen,

and then let's build a platform around that.

So we didn't know anything.

We didn't know anything about

what regulated medical waste was.

We didn't know that when we started servicing for

needles that it would lead to specimens and then

it would lead to drugs and eventually chemicals.

And the whole world opened up for us.

In those first couple of months, we thought

it was taking needles out of a hospital

and gauze pads and things like that.

But the world of medical waste goes from your local

labs to a barber shop because they use needles.

So we've kind of uncovered in our niche

a way to service these people that didn't

know they actually needed a service.

So it was very eye opening in those early years.

That's interesting.

I'm going to put some words out

there and see if this resonates.

In the very early days of starting my

business, I call it the happiest accident of

my run with the company, completely stumbled into

something that changed the trajectory of the organization.

It kind of sounds like you had

some happy accidents along the way.

You found some opportunities that you

didn't really know were there.

Is that the right way to look at it?

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

And the accidents themselves, I think because we had this

desire to succeed and to figure it all out, we'd

get a call about something, didn't know what it is,

but we're like, yes, we'll handle that.

But we wanted to make sure we did it right

by the letter of the law, and we wanted to

make sure we did it right by the customer.

So when you put those two things together,

you're not going to do it wrong.

Then it was figuring out the easy things, the

rates and the contracts and things like that.

But then it goes back to who are those people

that were in our corner and we had those right

people that we were figuring out along the way.

I think it's so important to listen to what the market

is telling you and what they want and what they need.

When I was in high school, I worked at a retail shop

and there was a rule, there was a piece of paper that

got set out next to the cash register every day.

And if somebody came in and asked for something

that we didn't have, not that we were out

of stock, but something that we just didn't carry,

we had to write it down on the sheet.

And if my boss heard somebody ask and he didn't

see you go write it down, he was on you.

I think that was a good early lesson as

a youth of, hey, it's really important to listen

to what your customers are telling you they want.

Yeah, and we weren't afraid early on to say we don't

know the answer, but let us find it for know.

And when you're dealing with a fed level and

state level, you have resources that you can use.

But the truth is it was so gray in

a lot of those areas that we were just

really listening to how we service best.

And that really got us to the point where

we were able to answer questions based off the

needs of the customer instead of just regulation.

We were following the regulation, but because of those

gray areas it was like, man, how do we

really meet the needs of the individual?

It was good for us because

we're contrary to the industry.

And by that I mean it's a very contract heavy industry.

The reason I'm not retiring today is

because every single individual has a contract

and these contracts are five years locked.

If you want to get out,

you're paying 50% of the remainder.

We don't do that.

And the reason we don't do that is because we want

people to choose to stay with us every single day.

We're earning the trust of our customers.

So in those early years when we were

trying to take these customers away, I mean,

that was a huge selling point for us.

So us figuring these things out and servicing

the customer and giving them a rate that's

competitive, that also has foresight into what is

going to be the geopolitical climate going forward.

It was all of us

thinking forward that's really interesting.

No contracts month to month.

Well, we have contracts for liability reasons and

to set rates and things like that.

But in those earlier years it was you

can get out 30, 60, 90 days.

And we used that as leverage to negotiate now bigger

contracts and we bought people out, like at and T,

we'd buy out their contract, but then it would be

unwise of us to not put a 50% buyout in

there because we could front the money, they could leave.

So there was a lot of those things that

we did in the beginning to present well as

the market leader in service, and that included contracts

that included the way that we build.

So a lot of those things we did, contrary

to these big organizations, is your business pretty capital

intensive, like when you spin up a new customer,

is there significant investment that goes into that?

Yeah.

Outside of just the time, yes,

especially in those early years.

And obviously with unit economics, we

got really good at it.

But yes, to put our first truck on the

road, I think the first time we serviced a

customer, it cost me $5,000 and we made 50.

So there was a lot of things, and I know it was just

kind of a bad story, and I'll give it to you real quick.

So service to customer, our first

customer was actually in Houston, Texas.

So we used a little transit vehicle.

So it was just me at the time.

I drove down, serviced the customer, I got a hotel

room, spent the gas, had the truck, one box of

medical waste netted us probably, let's just say $50.

But I had to pay minimums at the processor.

I had to pay extra for

these supplies and all that stuff.

And I think when I look back, it

was about $5,000 to service one customer.

And it's like, man, we really need to scale quickly.

So every single person that ever came

in our organization, especially in those early

years, we were all salesmen. We had to be.

I mean, the only way for us to

succeed was to be able to cover all

those startup costs, which were significant.

I think, like most business owners, your first few

customers, your first few projects, if you're in a

project oriented business, you kind of have to almost

give away a couple of them because you need

the reps, you need the experience.

And I think it's so cool for you that

you actually did that first job because it gives

you a perspective that you wouldn't have had sitting

back in the office in Dallas.

Yeah, we hire a driver today, which they are

our most important employee that we have, because if

we don't service customer well, they leave, right?

And if we are the easiest contracts,

it's important for us to maintain that.

So they're super important.

And it's important for me to be able to go

to them and say, hey, I know what you're feeling. Right.

I've done this.

I know what the customers are going to say.

I know how it feels when you're on

the truck and you get a flat tire.

I know how it feels when you're running up

against pickups that have you know, there's going to

be closures or when you're stuck in traffic.

All of the variables that make our job difficult,

we've all experienced myself, my number two, everybody that

we've promoted, we kind of promote through the ranks.

So a driver is ultimately we're priming those

individuals to be leaders in the organization.

Talk a little bit more about that.

It's a very tight labor market right now.

Labor is in short supply and high demand, and

so many organizations are suffering because of that.

How are you finding people?

And it sounds like you don't just need somebody that

can get behind the wheel and drive a truck.

There's a personality.

There's a gifting that they have to have to be

able to live up to your level of service.

How are you finding those people and

how are you keeping those people?

Yeah, so finding them, we've been very fortunate

in finding the right folks, and I believe

that it is God's sovereignty that we have

this just incredible team of individuals.

But we ask our folks first, like, hey, do

you know anybody that's looking for a job?

And our first five or six hires,

these were college graduates, four year degree.

They have experience, whether it was in ministry

or in some kind of post college job.

And they were looking for something different.

And what we did was we paid really well.

We are $5 more than the market.

We provide full benefits and we pay

the premiums on a high deductible plan.

We give a lot of other benefits.

I mean, we pay bonuses even during pandemics.

So there were things we did to show

our folks that we really cared for them.

But I think it also went to the

character of the individual that we are hiring.

On the beginning, we hire for character, and that

has really served us well, because these people believe

in the mission that we are working towards.

They believe us when we say, hey,

look, we want to train you.

You have plenty of opportunity down the road.

So it was myself and then the now COO, who

is my friend and partner, our first hire, that guy

ended up being a market lead in Austin.

When we launched the Austin market because he

knew the system, he knew what we were

all about, we put him down there.

We gave him a great opportunity.

That individual eventually became a

compliance officer for us.

So we were helping these people grow within

this, and I think they saw a future.

And it's hard to say that when you're a driver.

We call them customer service reps.

It was hard for them to see that.

But as the organization grew and more opportunities came,

we wanted the people that were already there to

be the ones to fill those spots.

So you started essentially as a one man shop.

Talk to us about your size and

kind of what you've grown to today.

Geographically, you're not just here in Texas.

Talk a little bit more about that. Yeah.

So we are 22 employees today.

Started with just me on a truck.

It was a small transit van that you

see, and then we've grown to fleet size.

We have about eleven trucks on the road, and I'm

talking about all organizations, which we can get into later.

But we also have man, I think we're projected on

a run rate to do over $5 million this year.

That's fantastic. Yeah.

And it's really cool to see.

And I think what's great is you have our

customer service reps who are excited when they see

growth numbers or when we open new clients because

they know that creates opportunity for them.

And they know that that's what we need to

be able to pay these bonuses that we want

to pay and to pay for the premiums.

It would break my heart if one day we're like,

hey, inflation has gotten too high, guys, I'm sorry, we

have to stop paying the premiums on these insurance.

Those were things we set in the beginning.

We said, this is what we're about.

We can't be about God and people and family and not

do the things that we said we wanted to do.

So we are fighting every day.

And every customer means something.

One customer that we make $100 a month

versus one where we make $100,000 a month,

they all mean something because they pay for

something that's important to our employees.

One of the things that we talk about around

here, especially in our sales group, is that nickels

and dimes add up to dollars over time.

So you can't overlook the small ones.

And we're in the professional services

industry, you're in the service business.

I think there's some correlation.

And I also think that it's important to have a

number of small, a number of medium and a few

large customers or projects going at any time.

Sometimes you need some of that smaller business

to kind of help even things out.

And it's important to treat those customers

just as well as the big ones. Yeah.

If we lost our biggest customer today, maybe 5%

of our revenue, so we are very sustainable.

And again, it is so important

that we treat everybody the same.

Now, let's be honest.

If my largest customer calls and they have

an issue, we're going to jump quickly and

it's going to be all hands on deck.

But my hope is that as big as we

get, that if the small person, the small customer

calls, we're still giving them the same attention.

Now, of course we know that that can't always be the

case and we have resources that we need to deploy.

But yeah, we do care about every single one.

I remember in the very early years, we'd get what's

called a PRN business, which is as needed, which means

we may drop supplies off and they may call us

two years later for their only pickup.

And those were wins.

Those were big wins for us.

I remember in the first month, we walked into

a customer, we sold them right there, and they're

like, we need you to take it today.

And we were so excited to walk away with

that $150 100 and $5175 for that one pickup.

I mean, those were wins for

us, and they still are today. That's great.

You talked about how your drivers or your

customer service reps, they get excited when you

bring on that next new account.

And it sounds like you've got

pretty good visibility throughout the organization

into how you all are performing.

Is there a cadence that you

guys have with the whole company?

How do you go about sharing that kind of information?

Yeah, this is kind of a plank in my ideal.

The busier I get, the more I rely on

word of mouth instead of this big global message.

Our desire as an organization

is to get together quarterly.

Unfortunately, with a trucking company, you can't

pull guys off the road, right?

So we do zoom meetings and we do

email updates, and that's where I just need

to be tighter on getting that stuff out.

But the good thing about us operating as a

family is we are in constant communication, so everybody

knows what's going on all the time.

Now, there's some people in remote markets, which

is very hard for us because we don't

see them and they don't feel the vibe

of what's going on at the corporate office.

And sometimes those people feel

like they're isolated on island.

And that's probably our hardest individual to

feel a part of the culture.

But they're also so important to us that they

get what they need when they need it.

So you've expanded beyond just the medical waste,

and I say just the medical waste.

Obviously, there was a lot more to it than that.

But what are the other businesses

that y'all have expanded out into?

Sure, so the medical waste business,

we service nationally now through subcontractors.

So we're not just the state of Texas.

In fact, we're in New York,

California, Atlanta, Florida, you name it.

So we are very large on

a national scale for right away.

What we found is that our customers really liked our

secret sauce, let's say, and they wanted us to handle

other things that they couldn't rely on their provider.

So they would call us like, hey,

can you handle our document destruction?

So eventually we had enough interest.

We launched a company called Texas Shred.

We do confidential document destruction.

That was profitable day one because we had

so much interest from our current customers.

Also, when you get into labs into certain

specialties within healthcare, they have hazardous waste.

Now, hazardous think chemicals, think

hazardous, being flammable, ignitable, Corrosive,

radioactive, things like that.

So we would come across these customers,

and we outsource that as a service.

Eventually we found that we had enough business to

be able to bring that in house as well.

So that was Red Arc, that was

the launching of our hazardous waste division.

That's just a different animal all in itself

but we have a good lead in that

business and we're also very nimble.

And when COVID hit and some of those

things dried up, we started a COVID cleaning

business under that because the license allowed it.

So there are a lot of things that we're

able to do with these three organizations and then

our most recent company is called Haven Pest Control

or Haven Pest Solutions and people are like well

why would you do pest control?

The answer is we feel like we do a

really good job at servicing at B to B

and we have this character first hiring the right

individual to run these businesses mentality.

So let's bring this direct to consumer.

So we launched Haven in January of last

year and we are now servicing homes.

So that's been really fun for us.

We have a good team there and that's

the fourth business under what we've done.

So you've scaled through kind of a subcontractor

arrangement which is not uncommon at all.

How do you ensure that the level of service, that the

quality is up to your standard when you're now sending work

out to people that don't get a w two from you?

Yeah, that was why we waited so long to do

subcontractors and there were many discussions at the board level

that said hey, is this really a good idea?

We are going to lose a little bit of our brand.

I believe that our brand is synonymous with the

best service in the fields that we're in and

that was the risk that we took.

Now, the reason we went national

is because our customers asked us.

They say we don't like what we have, we are

going national, we want you to go national with us.

So we took that risk one to service the

customer because that was always something that we were

about let's do what the customer needs.

So we did that for these customers and what

we decided was we need to have the right

person handling that role within our organization.

And thankfully we've had individuals that

are always quick to respond.

They are always the one that goes to

bat between the customer and the subcontractor.

Do we have the best subcontractors?

No, but we always have somebody waiting, we have

backups upon backups but really it is the communication

that we have direct to our customer and it's

our back office that we built that allows the

customer to see all of the things that we

give our local customers on a national scale.

And really from that point it's just

managing the relationship of the subs.

Now, are they perfect? No.

But our team is doing a great job of making

sure that the brand stays intact and I think.

You can ask any one of our national customers

and we haven't skipped too much of a beat.

And honestly, there's more screw ups dealing with subcontractors

but our reaction time is immediate and the answer

is always what we even did in the beginning.

Which is I don't know, but let me figure that out.

And if we have to go to the

subs and wait a day or two, we're

constantly communicating with our customer what we're doing.

So medical waste, hazardous waste, pest control,

you're dealing with regulated substances for lack

of better term and there's compliance that

goes with each of these things.

Have you been able to take the things that you've learned

in the compliance of one and apply it to others?

And are there other areas that you look at and go

hey, that's the next hill that we need to climb? Yes.

So in hazardous waste, that's

probably the most regulated.

When I was in hospitals they said for

a nursing center it's the most highly regulated

so let's focus time and attention there.

But I think when you become good about

compliance, the whole organization becomes good about compliance.

So we've been good about being students of the

game which allows us to know how to tackle

any of these compliance issues that come along.

And it has opened up doors because we

are so quick to respond to a customer.

It's kind of been reactionary in the

businesses that we've started minus haven.

But we have a long list of compliance related and or

service issues of things that we eventually want to do.

Now, is it going to be wise? We don't know.

Is it going to be something that we're going

to embark on and put time and resources in?

We don't know yet.

But when the operational time and then the capital

is there, we do explore new things and compliance

is one of the main barriers to entry.

Compliance is one of the main things

that attracts us to a business.

I mean, look, we are in waste and pest and the

most unattractive businesses but I think there's a lot that can

be desired because so few people actually explore these and the

people that do, it's archaic and there's a lot of things

that we can do to improve it.

Our technology package is better than any company I've

seen and a lot of people buy stuff off

the shelves and tuck it into their organization.

Ours is all proprietary and this allows us to really

speak to the customer because we came from their seat,

not from a trash world or we came from the

place of how do we service the customer, not how

do we make the most money.

And I think all of those things really gives

us this nice branded package of service first.

Culture matters.

People are really what's going to

move the needle for us.

Did I understand you right in that

you guys actually have built your own

technology stack to support the business.

You haven't picked up off the

shelf tools and integrated them together.

Yeah, our primary back office that

we've built, we call it Portal.

It is kind of the heartbeat of our organization.

We enter a customer with their rates and stuff, but it

does talk to QuickBooks and it does talk to HubSpot and

a few other of the products that we use.

But everything is the heartbeat from

this portal system that we built. Really interesting.

Yeah, it was a large investment for us and

I think it was one of those where we

wanted to build something that had value, but value

for us because if we start using everybody else's,

we're no different than the next medical waste company.

This really does set us apart and I think

all the other companies out there that are using

these similar products, they're no different from each other.

So the way that we look, the way

that we dress, we're a swag heavy company.

We make sure everybody's clean cut and they

have nice hats and you name it.

That portal system that we built really does that too.

Interesting.

Yeah, very interesting.

So you've been at this since 2013.

So at this .8 years almost. Yeah. Nine years. Yeah.

What has changed for you in your day to day?

From back in 2013, 2014 to here in 2022?

Yeah, I'm more of a spreadsheet guy and dealing

with banks and legal than I was back then.

I mean, that was all important.

It's just more now and it's funny, I think I'd get

more enjoyment on days when I get to go help service

a customer or load a truck or go to a warehouse.

I mean, those are the things that kind of made

it fun and that's where all the stories are.

But yeah, I've become more office oriented.

I deal with those customers that are on

the national level, just making sure that subs

are good or relationships are good.

So as we've grown, obviously there's going to be more

layers, but we prefer to put money at the people

that are direct and face to our customer.

So that's where a lot of those resources go.

So myself and then the management team, we take a

lot of the complaints or a lot of the issues.

We are the ones take the monkey pox outbreak.

We have to make sure that we and all of

our partners know how to deal with that specific type

of outbreak so we're the ones communicating so that it's

not bogged down on people that are below us.

So like a lot of founders, you started being

the one doing the work and sounds like you

don't do a whole lot of that today.

And my story is very similar, was a

one man consulting firm and over time I've

kind of shed things and taken on others.

When you look at the next few years to come, how do

you think your job is going to change as the CEO?

I don't know.

I will say that I dislike being uninvolved.

I like being involved in every single decision.

Not from a micromanagement aspect, from a man.

I didn't know we did that.

In fact, recently we were doing an audit on some

of our customers, and I noticed that there was this

large customer I didn't even know we had.

And maybe it was timing or I just

didn't celebrate it like we used to, but

I was like, Man, I didn't know that.

And that really kind of affected me from Man,

I get out of the day to day and

I forget kind of how we were created.

So I hope that there's a good cadence that is

created on just understanding the day to day of the

business that I feel naturally will get away from.

And we are not a meeting heavy company.

We will have meetings.

We have sales meetings every Monday.

We have operational meetings, more impromptu.

But we left corporate world because

it was nothing but meetings.

And now we are constantly in communication with

each other, so it's not as necessary.

But there's a part of me that hopes

we get into this better rhythm of communicating.

The big wins, the small wins, the big

needs, the small needs, so that everybody is

in the know, including myself, because I don't

want to get away from what created us.

I think you already kind of answered the question of what

are the parts of the job you enjoy the most?

It sounds like being in the action, being at

the customer level is that thing for you.

What are the parts of the job that you enjoy the least?

I mean, I think I've heard that 20% of your

employees or customers take up 80% of your time.

Those are the things that I don't like to handle.

I care deeply, and so does

our team about each individual.

But every once in a while you make a

bad hire or an employee is we'll just say

wayward for a better lack of a better word.

And dealing with that is never fun, it's never easy.

And my job and my role is

all about risk mitigation at this point.

So I got to make sure that everything is done in

a way to protect the company and protect the other employees.

So those things are really what make my skin crawl.

What did I miss?

Did I miss something in this contract?

Did I miss something in this hire?

Did I miss something in this partnership that we have?

Because if it creates a potential conflict or problem down

the road, that was a miss on my part, and

those are the things that I really hate dealing with.

And partially because I blame myself, like, man,

I missed it on this individual, but now

I got to deal with it.

Are you still involved with all? Yes.

Yeah, I think it's important for all

of us because take Haven for example.

We just hired a couple of techs.

I'm not going to interview them for their technical

knowledge, but absolutely every single manager should be interviewing

them for cultural to see if they fit.

And we had an interview a couple of days ago and the

first thing that I said to the person who runs Haven, I

was like, do you see him as part of our team?

And he's like, no.

I was like, well, then he's not the right person.

Did he meet all the technical skills?

Yes, but he didn't meet the, hey, this

is somebody I can sit in the airport

with for 4 hours and be perfectly fine.

The old airport test, man, we're very

much on the same page with that.

So as you look back over these years, what are

three or four things that you look back and go,

man, this was a key to our success and growing

to this point, man, that was all hires.

My first hire was my business partner.

Again, I'm Caleb Maguire.

He was a friend.

We'd worked together outside when I was with

Kendra and he proposed something for me where

he was working at the time.

And if I didn't hire him, we wouldn't be here.

I mean, not only did he have my back

on everything, but he was a sounding board.

He was a friend.

I think over time when we joke about it, we

had four arguments and it was one of those where

it's like, man, this is in fact our employees joke.

Mom and dad are fighting again.

But it was one of those that we needed to

have because we needed to have this back to equilibrium

moment and those were good for us in our relationship.

But if it wasn't for him, if it wasn't

for those moments, we wouldn't have gotten here.

We are yin and Yang to each other.

He watches expenses where I'm a little more

loose on that because let's go spend money

and have fun with the team on Friday.

It's like, well, it wasn't as good of a month as

we thought, so there's a good yin and Yang there.

So I'd say because we've trusted in our

process of character first hiring has been the

main thing that has launched us.

I think the other is instinctually.

We made some decisions that at the time we didn't know were

right, but in the end it ended up being very wise.

And I'll give you an example.

So disposal is something like we're a

trucking, we're A to B company.

The B part is disposal, where you

have to literally render the waste harmless.

So we haven't gone down that road.

We've attempted a couple of times, we've looked

at the numbers like it makes sense.

But at the end of the day, this gets us out

of our core and it creates more risk for the organization.

So those types of things, whether it was God's sovereignty

or if it was just us making the right decision

at the right time, it has proven to be the

right move, not doing some of those things.

So in terms of other things that I've

learned, just go back to your original question.

I've learned to rely on

collaboration of those around us.

There's a saying that's like go

to scripture, pray, seek wise counsel.

And that's kind of how I make any decision.

So if one of those boxes aren't

checked, it's not wise for me.

So that's how we've made some of these things.

And wise counsel.

We have a great board of directors who advise us very

well in some of the strategic decisions that we make.

But most of the day to day, 99% of all the

decisions are our leadership team, who we all trust sitting in

a room and making decisions which best for the company.

And we always think about how it's going

to impact the customer and the employee.

And if we handle those, then

we're handling the people element.

That's important.

We've talked to some people that have financial

backing and we've talked to other people that

have started it with $2 in their pocket

and just funded things out of cash flow.

How do you think it's different having an organization

that has investors versus funding things out of pocket?

And what advice would you have for people

that are actually looking to raise money?

So the risk for me to do this in the

beginning was minimized by the fact that I had investors.

I didn't have a ton of money

to my name when we started it.

And the wise thing that we did as an investor group was

each one of us had to put skin in the game.

So we all put money up.

I put what little money I had in my early thirty

s and that allowed us all to be on equal footing.

And I think that was really

important for us from the beginning.

I would say, knowing what I know now, I would

have sold everything to do this on my own.

So what I would say to anybody that's starting a

business is if you have the means and you believe

in yourself, take the risk because it's worth it.

Especially if you see from the 30,000 foot

view a clear path to being successful.

I didn't have the foresight then.

I also didn't take the risk on myself.

And that's one of the regrets I have.

I don't regret my investors, I

don't regret starting the business.

I regret not putting everything I had into this opportunity because

now it's proven to be what I hoped it had.

Raising money is not the difficult part.

And I sit in investor groups and things like

that and we don't look at deals and think,

man, this is a really good idea.

We look at the person who's running

it and say, is the person capable?

So if you're the person sitting in that seat

and you're capable, I'd say invest in yourself.

If you are in a different situation, investors can

be very important to the success of the business.

They can also lead you astray.

And what I would say is that some

investors, at least in my limited experience, they

don't necessarily have the best interest at heart

of you as the individual you do.

So that's why if you have the means, I'd say

bet on yourself, but also think very clearly about 3510

years down the road how you want it to look.

Because those decisions that are made on the

very, very beginning are going to pave the

way that you get compensated down the road.

I think that's a very good word there, compensated.

No, just thinking about in the early days what you want

it to look like down the know, to borrow from covey.

It's the whole begin with the end in mind and

that really kind of sets the path for you. Yeah.

What kinds of things have surprised you along the way?

I would say the times when mistakes

turned into opportunities, they're just clear instances

where we didn't do something right.

And I'm trying to think of a specific example,

but I'll just kind of make it broad where

we mishandle a customer, but those mishandlings create opportunity

in how we service somebody on the back end.

We mess up, we own it, we're going to be

the first to own it and we're going to work

as hard as we can to make up the mistake.

And what that's done for us is

created loyalty from the customer and ultimately

that's created more business for us.

I would also say that those times when we

didn't stick to our core philosophies, we have plenty

of them, but we have five main core competencies.

And if we stray from those, we get off.

And in a startup there are a lot of

things that you have to be reactionary on.

You have a driver that quits or has

to leave for a death in the family.

Now we have strain on the organization.

We have to go out there and we have

to put the COO on the road and then

I get on the road for a holiday weekend.

Because we didn't think

forward about holiday schedules.

Those kind of missteps force us to

make better decisions for the next time.

So I would say that those types of lessons are

vitally important, but we were learning them as we went

and next holiday season is going to be better.

When you were talking about straying from your

core principles, I saw that smirk, man.

There are a couple of things that on a

couple of occasions I've strayed and immediately regretted.

So I decided a long time ago

that we weren't going to do RFPs.

We're just not going to respond to them.

And on a couple of occasions, due to some kind

of extenuating circumstance, I went ahead and said, okay, we're

going to go ahead and participate in this RFP.

And every time I've reminded myself why I made the

decision not to do it in the first place.

We've had two of them where we were actually selected.

And either the project, they decided not to do it

after they'd gone through the whole selection process, or in

one case, it was going to be, yeah, we're going

to do it and we're going to use you, but

it's actually going to be like, three years from now.

It's like, okay, I remember why I

made this decision a long time ago.

Yeah, it's funny how you do that, and immediately you're

like, man, I know this is a bad idea, but

you've already started the process and you're down the road

and it's like, train has left the station.

If this is too personal, don't get into it.

But you talked about, like, sometimes as the guy at the

helm, when you're understaffed, you got to go hit the road

and you got to pick up where there's a gap.

What does that do to your family? Yeah.

Very early on, my wife knew the risk of this, and I

think we kind of stacked hands and said, this is what we

want to do and this is the future that we want.

My family, man, they're amazing.

They don't see the stress of work.

And I think it's because the way

that the nature of this business.

We don't take a ton of that on with us.

Does that mean that I'm not brainstorming

when I'm shaving in the morning? I don't shave.

I don't know why I said that

when I'm showering in the morning. Yeah.

I mean, I constantly have the burden of

having to help the organization stay afloat and

to make bills and to pay payroll.

Those were the things that I think affected the

family, is when I mentally wasn't there, but physically,

thankfully, the businesses that we serve doesn't require a

lot of attention outside of normal working hours.

In the early years, I was gone a lot, just selling

in other cities, but I had a supportive wife, and my

kids were always excited to see me when I got home,

which kind of makes it fun going and coming back.

But it was the mental game that it

played on me that made it really difficult.

I don't like to be unpresent, and there were times when

there was just a burden of, do I have to put

up more money to bridge this payroll until the bank loan

closes or before the next call from the investors?

Those were the harder parts for me

with the toll on the family.

Thanks for sharing that. Yeah.

Has there been something along the way that didn't

work out quite like you hoped it would? Yeah.

And I'm going to speak more globally on that.

I think when we started the business, we

believed that we'd be 25 million by now.

What we didn't know was that the people that

had done that successfully had done it only by

acquisition or only by subcontracting on a national level.

Granted, we got to some of those places, but

we wanted to be an organic growth, boots on

the ground, strap it up, and do the hard

work type of company because our P l.

Was supportive of that.

And at the end of the day, it was the right decision.

Now, do I wish we were worth more? I do.

But the road that got us here was the right decision.

I wish we'd have known more about this contract

heavy nature of the business that has made it

very difficult, and it's not like the competitors are

ever going to let up on it.

I mean, the nature of competition is

it's always going to be harder.

So with people coming in the market

and either selling out or dying, it

has always created opportunities for us.

But those were some of the things we just

weren't aware of, and then the regulation changes.

Man responding to COVID was tricky in the

beginning, but the resiliency of our team and

the desire to service the customer allowed us

to really excel during that time.

But those types of man roadblocks ultimately has

built this calloused, ready to take on any

challenge type of organization that I think is

going to make us very successful.

For a long time, you talked about you

would have liked to have been a $25

million company, and you've looked at others.

Man, if I'm being just real honest, I struggle

with comparison, and comparison is the thief of joy.

And, man, I talk with other business owners.

I look at friends that have started companies that

have gotten way bigger, way faster, and I go,

man, I'm kind of envious of that.

And then if I really kind of pause and step

back and look at it and go, you know what?

I've been able to provide a great life for my family.

I've gotten to enjoy the work that I'm doing most days.

I think I've been able to provide

a pretty good life for my team. You know what?

We'll get there when we get there, and I

just need to kind of enjoy this moment. Yeah.

I don't know if that resonates at all,

but it's good to have big dreams, but

sometimes it's important just to be content.

I think what you said resonates perfectly with me,

and the reason being is, I think if we

were worth $25 million, I wouldn't have the joys

of what we have today within the organization.

The team would be different.

Our customers would be different.

Even our location would be different.

And I don't look back and

regret the path that we've taken.

I mean, there are plenty of small steps that

were missteps, but I'm perfectly happy where we are.

And I think the fleshly side of me wants to be

someone who says, yeah, I created a $25 million company, or,

man, look at how many people we have, or, look at

the value that we've created for our investors.

And I think some of those,

maybe they get you off target.

I mean, we set out to be a good service business, and

if we were larger, that might not be as easy, or if

we grow too fast, we could lose sight of that.

So, to your point, I have to pray through

and remind myself daily that contentment is important and

remind myself of the truths of what I have.

Like you said, I provide a great living for my family.

We've hired some great employees and been able

to do the same for them, and we

provide a really good service to the market.

And, man, I'm surrounded by people

that I truly care about.

So all of those things remind me that

this is just a really fun adventure.

Glad I've had it.

And, yeah, my desires sometimes don't necessarily match

the reality that I need to live in.

Well, if somebody came to you today and

said, hey, I'm thinking about starting my own

business, what advice would you give them?

Do it.

I think the reason people

don't is because they're afraid.

And again, my situation was different because my risk

was mitigated because of the salary that I got

day one, and we had money behind us.

But, man, it's fulfilling to create something, and

I think we're designed to create things.

So I think it's important for people to take

that bet on themselves and just to do it.

The hardest part for any entrepreneur is having

an idea, but that's where it stops.

People get the idea, and then they're

like, I don't know what to do.

Now, if you bet on yourself and you just figure it

out I mean, I didn't know anything about medical waste.

We figured it out, and it's worked out for us.

So I would tell anybody that wants to

start their own business to do it.

I know that's not sexy in the way

that I said it, but do it.

You led into that with I think the

reason that most people don't do it is

because they're afraid, and I wholeheartedly agree.

Did you have any fears going into this, and

did any of them actually come to pass?

I think my biggest fear was fear of regret.

The fear of regret for not doing it was

outweighed the fear of regret for doing it.

So I don't regret the doing it.

Like, if I were to compare where I would be if

I'd have stayed in the corporate world, I would probably be

living in a bigger house, probably be living in a different

city, but maybe I wouldn't know my kids as well.

Maybe my relationship with my wife wouldn't

be as fruitful maybe I wouldn't have

these wonderful people around me.

Maybe I wouldn't like where I worked. I didn't.

So this has been a very right

decision for us and the family.

And I think that, man, the leap of

faith in the beginning was the right call.

I don't regret it at all.

And yeah, I kind of got off

track and I forgot your original question.

What fears did you have going into it

and have any of them come to pass?

Yeah, it was just the fear of

not doing it and also failure.

I was afraid that this was going to fail and

I remember at 1.1 of our investors said, man, I

didn't think you are going to get over the hump.

I was like, what does that mean?

I didn't think this was going to work.

But that was the kick in the pants we

needed to really grind through, get the right customers,

spend those longer hours and be as price or

as cost conscious as we were to get there.

I was severely afraid of failure.

Out of curiosity, was that failure?

The fear of failure was that I'm afraid

to fail because of what it's going to

do financially to me and my family.

Was it more of a failure to achieve success and more

from an external standpoint of how people would view you?

Yeah, I mean, I would say that's a

sin struggle of mine is pleasing people.

So that was probably where my failure

or my fear of failure rested was

on letting somebody down, including my wife.

I mean, that was a big gamble at

a very important time in our lives.

I just had my second child when we were starting

this, so there was a lot of risk taken there.

But yeah, sorry, I was reminiscing on how

that decision was just impactful at the time.

My career road was very bright and I'm starting it

all to take a risk and that's what I say.

Anybody wants to start it, that risk was worth it.

I mean, everything that was created, even the character

that was built inside me, to be just more

prepared for any situation that comes next, I would

say that I'm ready for any challenge.

I think under a corporate banner, you're a product of who

they want you to be, not who you want to be.

And I was able to create

that in myself, which was important.

That's awesome perspective.

Well, anything else that you came in wanting to say

that you haven't had a chance to get out yet?

No, I don't think so.

Yeah, I hope I described the journey that was

started eight years ago, nine years ago now.

Well, I want to make sure that everybody at least hears

from me that this was not me that did it.

This was by the grace of God and surrounding

myself with the right people from the investors that

we have to the people that we hired.

To even the partnerships that

we forged throughout the way.

I wasn't smart enough to write a contract or I

didn't have the right kind of motivation to make some

of these decisions that ultimately has led us here.

It was the people that were around us and a healthy prayer

life and home life that allowed me to balance the scales, so

to speak, so that I was able to do this.

And I'm thankful that we're here today.

On the other side of the

dips that so many entrepreneurs face.

It is daunting when you look at getting to profitability,

and it's daunting when you realize you have to pay

back your investors and you have banks to answer to

and you have employees that are relying upon you and

a family that needs your support.

But I would have regretted that day if

I didn't take that bet on myself.

And I'm so thankful that I had a wife that

supported me and that I had faith that no matter

what happened, it was going to be okay.

I should have asked this earlier.

I'm kind of bouncing around, but was there

a pivotal moment before you started it?

Or maybe I should say, what was that pivotal moment,

that spark that said, I'm going to do this?

How did the idea come about and what

made you go, yep, here we go?

It was really what was happening in

the organization that I was in.

So being with a large national

hospital group, they were trying to

position people that served the organization.

You know, I'd done a really good job here in Dallas

Fort Worth, and they wanted somebody to take on a new

market that was struggling, and it felt like I was being

pushed or positioned to be in that role.

And what I didn't like was

the future with that organization.

So that's where the networking started, and then it was

a lot of prayer and it was a lot of

again, going back to that GPS, I was talking to

the right people, and the signs were pretty clear that

this was the right time, that these were trustworthy individuals

that I was eventually going to work with.

And the idea seemed legitimate, so

I had no sign not to.

And I think that's what my prayers were at

the time, and I just don't remember well.

But it was probably one of those, god, if

this isn't right, just please close the door.

And he didn't.

So we went and, man, those

first three years were tough.

We didn't know if we were going to get

enough clients to be able to support our payroll

and pay back our investors and just handle our

operational burden, but we did it.

And I think that at the end, when I think

about the risk that we took, it was all worth

it, and it's going to be fun one day, whether

we're bred away still a company or not.

I can say, man, we achieved it.

What's next?

I don't know, but there's a lot

of ideas going on up here.

I don't know.

I love what we've created.

I don't know if the role for me is

going to always be the CEO of Redaway.

I don't know if the organization that owns all of

these is going to be broader, but somebody told me

once that you're as good as your number two.

And thankfully there's four or five people

within our organization that could run this

probably better than I have.

So I'm excited for whatever comes next for

me or for them, but I know that

what we've created is going to last.

That's great, man.

I don't know what's next, but we'll just be prayerful.

What owner, founder should I interview next?

I thought of a few for you, and I

guess you want people that have done it, blazed

their own trail, started their own thing.

We want to talk to people that are still in it.

The people that haven't had that mountaintop IPO, that mountaintop

sold to a larger firm or big PE buyout.

People that are still living it day in and day out.

Yeah, I'm going to have to dwell on that one for you.

I got a few names, but I'd want to get

their permission before I name drop them for you.

But there's a lot of faithful people

out there trying to do so. Very cool.

I got some ideas for you. Awesome.

Well, Justin, thanks so much for coming out.

This has been really great conversation.

I've learned a lot and you've got me

reflecting on a lot, so thanks so much. Yeah, thank you.

I've enjoyed it.

And hopefully very helpful for you.

That was Justin Smith, founder and CEO of Redaway.

To learn more, visit readaway.com.

If you or a founder you know would like

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email us at intro@founderstory.us.