CALENDAR

Speaker Identification

Speaker 1 – Announcer / Prerecorded Promo Voice
Basis: This voice delivers the opening show introduction, repeated promotional spots, and closing show identification in a polished third-person format that is distinct from the host's live monologue.

Speaker 2 – Alan J. Cook, Host
Basis: The transcript explicitly introduces Alan J. Cook as the host, and the live portions consistently identify him in the first person as the person running 1-800-JUNK-REFUND and hosting the program.

Speaker 1 – Announcer / Prerecorded Promo Voice:
Welcome to the Junk Refund Show, hosted by Alan J. Cook, founder of 1-800-JUNK-REFUND. Have you ever paid one of those expensive junk removal companies to take away some of your stuff, only to say to yourself as the truck drives off down the street, “Some of that stuff wasn't junk”? Did they try to sell it for you and give you some money back? No.

Well, now there is a company that can do just that. Listen to our weekly Junk Refund Show on BBS Radio TV to learn how one lady spent $375 on junk removal and got $3,200 back. 1-800-JUNK-REFUND represents the next generation of junk removal. Learn how not only to save money on junk removal, but also how to get some money coming back. Plus, purchase one of our radio vouchers during the show to save even more on your junk removal. Let's get the junk out of your home and out of your life. Now, with your host, Alan J. Cook.

Speaker 2 – Alan J. Cook, Host:
Hello, everybody, and welcome to my favorite time of the week, Thursday at 3 o'clock Eastern, when we do the Junk Refund Show, which is the world's longest-running junk removal radio show. We have a claim to that one, and we're quite proud of it.

We're doing it here from Rockville, Maryland, before I take some gas money and head north to Philadelphia to fly to Salt Lake City to do some other stuff, which we'll talk about. Anyway, we're happy to be here on the BBS Radio Network. It's a wonderful thing that we do, and we enjoy it, and I'm quite excited. I've got a lot going on right this very minute, but that's okay because that's the way life is, and that's what makes it so great.

So let me talk to you a little bit about what we do. 1-800-JUNK-REFUND is a junk removal business where you can actually get a refund for some of the junk you have us haul away if we end up selling it after we remove it from your place.

Some people mistakenly think, because the word “refund” is in the name, that we buy your stuff when we show up at your door. We don't do that. We get calls from around the country asking us if we're interested in buying people's used furniture and whatever. No, we're not. We love your furniture. We love you, but we're not interested in buying it.

However, if you pay us to haul it away and we decide it should not go to a landfill, and that there's somebody who could probably use it and pay decent money for it, we'll put it up for sale. If it sells, you get 35% of the sales price. You do none of the work. That's a good deal, and that's one of the things that separates us.

We also like to give out Ben & Jerry's ice cream when we do jobs for people. We used to actually deliver the ice cream to people when we did their job. Now we do Ben & Jerry's gift cards. A shout-out to Ben & Jerry's. They have a great business and a great product, and we particularly enjoy the fact that we can go on their website, order a gift card, personalize it, and send it electronically to somebody. Then they can go out and do whatever they want with it at their local Ben & Jerry's shop. We're having some fun with that.

This particular show is kind of dedicated to The Lord of the Rings trilogy because I am headed to Utah tonight. I get there tomorrow morning, and my son-in-law has been teaching a class out there this week about the spiritual connections between the teachings of Jesus and The Lord of the Rings. That's not his actual title, but we'll call it that so we can make sense of what we're doing.

He started teaching the class Tuesday night. It's at about 7:10 p.m., and I wanted to get out there to be able to sit in on one of his classes. He has taught for many years at a private school in American Fork, Utah. I think it's called American Heritage School, where they have everything from, I think, K through 12, and they love him as a teacher.

That was evident when, about three or four years ago, he married my oldest daughter. At their reception, a boatload of students were there. My daughter has taught middle school drama and music for about 10 years, also out in Utah, and I thought it was a joy to be there. I went around as the proud father of the bride, introducing myself to people. It was always a toss-up whether a group of kids was there because my daughter had taught them or because her husband had taught them, and it was really fun to watch.

This wonderful couple now has two cute little girls they're raising, and they're doing a great job. He is the bishop of his church congregation. That's something they ask you to do, not something you campaign for or anything like that. These guys are in their mid-to-upper thirties, and they've got this wonderful young family going on. He is teaching a class this week at BYU, Brigham Young University Education Week.

It's a special thing they do every year and have done for decades. They take one week in August and bring in about, I think, 250 to 300 different speakers who give classes throughout the week. I think this is the first time they've done anything involving The Lord of the Rings. My son-in-law is an avid fan and student of The Lord of the Rings. “Fanatic” is not the right word, but he is an enthusiastic observer of The Lord of the Rings, and he's having a great time.

If you are a Lord of the Rings fan out there, you're listening to this show, and you want to call in and talk about any spiritual type of life lessons, guidance, or parallels you see in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, you're welcome to do that at 888-627-6008. Again, it's 888-627-6008. You won't be talking to a professional Lord of the Rings guy, because that's not what I am, but I am an interested student and want to do something to support my son-in-law and what he's doing in teaching this class.

So I'm here in Rockville, Maryland. As soon as I do this radio show, I hop in the car and head two and a half hours north to Philadelphia. I'm going to Philadelphia to fly out to Denver, where I will get there about midnight. Somewhere around six in the morning, I fly on to Utah, so I arrive at about 7:30 in the morning.

I'm one of these crazy guys who doesn't mind sleeping in a corner of an airport or on a bench or whatever. Any place I can find to stretch out a little bit is actually kind of therapeutic for me and quite relaxing, to be honest with you, which probably surprises a lot of people.

I know Denver Airport well because I fly on Frontier. The reason I'm going to Philadelphia is because my airfare to Utah is about $90, and normally it's about $25 or $30. I'm a participant in the GoWild! Pass, the annual pass, which means you pay about $600 a year and then you fly for a year except that you still have to pay airport taxes and fees. So my airfare to Utah, if you look on the ticket, is actually one penny, and the rest of it is airport taxes and fees. The trick is that normally you can't book the flights until 24 hours in advance.

So I'm going out there tonight. I'll be in Utah tomorrow. I have a date with a girl I'm excited about named Chrissy, whom I met online a couple of weeks ago. She's out in the Utah area, and I'm going to go to lunch with her.

Then I was supposed to sit in on my brother-in-law's presentation about mental illness and how to deal with various types of mental illness in your family, relatives, associates, et cetera, everything from anxiety to OCD to some other things. He is a Ph.D. professor at BYU-Hawaii and a psychologist with a private practice as well.

He was supposed to be speaking at 4:30 in the afternoon all week long, but he was on a trip in Sweden with my sister and his parents, and his mom took ill in Stockholm and has been in the hospital for three weeks. So he had to cancel his speaking appointment, which really bummed him out, but he has stayed with his mom, which is the right thing to do, and is helping to take care of her.

My plan was to see my brother-in-law speak at 4:30 and my son-in-law speak at 7:00, then stay out there either with family or at a hotel. I'm a Diamond member with Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, and Diamond is the highest level. So I can stay at La Quinta and other hotel brands for free, pretty much, as long as they've got open rooms as I travel.

I fly cheap, I stay even cheaper, and it reminds me of something I've mentioned on the show in the past. For a number of years, every Christmas I have sent Warren Buffett, who is a friend of mine, $3 so he can go buy his beloved sausage-and-egg McMuffin at McDonald's on his way to work. I had read that his wife traditionally put, I think it was $2.87, in his car so that on his five-minute commute to work every morning, he could stop at McDonald's and get a sausage-and-egg McMuffin. It's probably gone up in the last few years, but I think $2.87 was the amount when I first read about it.

When I read that, I thought, “You know what? I'm going to send him a Christmas card and give his wife the day off.” So I put $3 in there. He wrote me back about two weeks later that first year and said, “Thank you very much for the $3, which I spent this morning at McDonald's,” which I thought was great.

So every year I send him $3 for Christmas, and we've had a handwritten-note thing going back and forth. One year, a couple of years after I started doing this, I had bought and sold a stock and made a pretty good amount of money on it. I thought, “Well, I'm going to double up this year.” So I sent him $6 and said, “The $3 is for you to get your breakfast. The other $3 is to send your wife on a shopping spree.” I said, “Knowing that she is married to you, I'm sure she'll probably buy $10 worth of stuff for $3.”

He wrote me back, “Thank you very much for the $6. It was greatly needed this year.” That's brilliant. It showed his sense of humor. He also said, “And don't worry about my wife's ability to find good deals. She's even cheaper than I am.”

Now, folks, I'm not making this up. This is true stuff. When I sent him his first $3 the first year, I'm told he gets 300 letters a day, which wouldn't surprise me a bit. Mine are getting answered. I don't know if he answers all of them. He probably doesn't have time, but I was impressed that he took the time to answer mine, and I was quite thrilled about it.

It blossomed into a really fun friendship with someone who arguably is one of the world's richest and best men, in my opinion. I've really enjoyed it. So anyway, there's a little Warren Buffett story for you.

The real message behind this is that the very first year I sent it to him, he wrote me a letter back and said, “Thank you for the $3, which I spent this morning at McDonald's.” Then get this next line. He said, “It was great of you to think of me.”

Now, you would think that if your net worth is tens of billions of dollars, you wouldn't really care who thought of you, right? But it just goes to show you that even the wealthiest people out there love to be remembered, and they love to have a friend. They love to get more and more friends. I was really impressed with the way he handled it, and I've had a lot of fun doing it over the years.

A couple of years into this, he started sending me handwritten notes on his private stationery. I would write him a handwritten Christmas card telling him how great he is and how much I appreciate what he's taught me over the years about investing. One time, he told me in a handwritten note, “Thank you for your nice Christmas card. It made my day.”

Now, that's kind of cool. I've only met him personally once, but you can send something to one of the world's richest people and he turns around, with such class, and tells you that you made his day.

I showed the first letter I got back from him on Facebook. It was on special letterhead, and a realtor in this area commented that the letter might be worth $50,000 because that's probably what the value of his time was to dictate that letter, have it written, sign it, send it off, and all that other good stuff.

But just remember, as part of what we do on this show, the Junk Refund Show, we're not only trying to teach you how to get the junk out of your homes, garages, et cetera. We're also trying to teach you how to get it out of your life.

One of the things that's possible is to make friends all over the world without ever meeting them. My friendship with Warren Buffett is a prime example of that. Regardless of the net worth that is or isn't there, frankly, what you have, what you own, and how well you're known is nice. But having a personal connection with another person who brings you joy and happiness trumps it all. I just think that's a great lesson from him.

So anyway, we'll take a break here for about a minute, and we'll be back on the Junk Refund Show. I'll tell you about some of the latest adventures we've had. They're always happening, including a four-foot-by-eight-foot trailer that we got possession of yesterday, which we're going to put to work in our business.

You're listening to the Junk Refund Show. I'm your host, Alan Cook, coming to you from Rockville, Maryland, on the BBS Radio Network. We'll be back in about a minute.

Speaker 1 – Announcer / Prerecorded Promo Voice:
Have you ever hired one of those expensive junk removal companies, then wondered what they did with the stuff, especially the good stuff? At 1-800-JUNK-REFUND, we junk the junk, recycle stuff like metal and wire, donate items and get you receipts, and put the good stuff up for sale. If it sells, you get some money back.

Cynthia paid $375 for junk removal and got $3,200 back. Would you like to know how she did it? Tune in to the Junk Refund Show with your host, Alan J. Cook, every Thursday at 3 p.m. Eastern Time to get the junk not only out of your home, but also out of your life.

Speaker 2 – Alan J. Cook, Host:
Hey, welcome back to the Junk Refund Show. I'm your host, Alan Cook, coming to you from Rockville, Maryland, where we're having a lot of fun doing junk removal for people and seeing what kind of stuff other people throw away. You'd be surprised.

We pretty much finished up a job today for a gentleman in Arlington, Virginia, who has a number of growing health concerns: back injuries, diabetes, and some other things. He is moving down to Florida, and bless his little engineer heart. He took a home in Arlington, Virginia, and basically doubled the size of it by adding onto it and building it himself.

The home has been sold now. He's got to be out of there today. Technically, I think he's got until tomorrow, but I think the documents say today. It was our job to get all this stuff out of there and have him out by the end of business today.

The problem is that he still has some of his personal stuff there: his computers, TVs, technology, and a bunch of other things. I guess he negotiated with the buyer to give him an extra 24 hours to wrap some of that stuff up.

We were facing that situation when we went back today after already hauling nine and a half box-truck loads of stuff out of there. We went back to try to finish it off, but he's simply not ready yet. It's basically down to his personal office things and the personal items he's still using. He's sleeping on a single mattress on the floor in one of the rooms where everything else has been taken out.

There are people involved who want you to just go in there, get him out, and get everything onto the truck. But as I found myself talking to him this morning, with three of us there to do some work after having been there Monday, Tuesday, and yesterday, it came down to the fact that it's his stuff and it's his dignity.

What you don't do in our business is walk in, ride over the top of people, grab their stuff, throw it on the truck, and leave them to live with it. People's stuff is their stuff. Many times they collect too much of it, and sometimes they don't seem to have much of it at all. You get both sides of the spectrum and everything in between.

But even if you've been paid to get everything out of there, you don't run in at the last minute, say, “Hey, excuse me,” start grabbing somebody's personal laptops, desktops, television screens, files, and other belongings, and throw them into a truck so you can take them to another place while the person wraps up his affairs over the next couple of weeks.

That topic of people's dignity is something I wanted to talk about today because we've run into it recently. I felt strongly about it this morning while I was there. You've got some people saying, “Get his stuff out of there,” and others saying, “Give me an extra day.” It's coming to a head, but respecting somebody's dignity, respecting his belongings, and recognizing that they're his scored higher than anything else today. I will stand behind that decision forever.

I think you've got to respect each other, and you've got to respect what somebody wants to do with his own stuff. That's what it came down to. So there's a little plug for respecting people's dignity and not trying to ride over the top of them or impose your own will on them in their home with their belongings. I think doing that is a big mistake and does not show very much respect.

Let the chips fall where they fall. If you run a business where you respect people's dignity and try to treat them the way you would like to be treated, I'll take the consequences any day of the week.

One of the things we hauled away yesterday was a four-foot-by-eight-foot trailer. It didn't have any sides. It was rusty and was sitting outside his garage in the driveway. Basically, it had become a mobile table with a bunch of boxes and crates stacked on top of it.

That trailer is significant to me. We ended up loading it on the truck, securing it, driving it from Arlington back to Rockville, Maryland, and putting it in my storage unit. He gave us the title to the trailer. With a little bit of TLC, a cordless drill to get the rust off the frame, some wood to give it walls, and maybe a little tailgate-type ramp that folds down so you can drive something onto it, like a motorcycle or riding lawnmower, you end up with an eight-foot-by-four-foot trailer that can be used in the junk removal business.

Ideally, it will be pulled by an SUV that is sitting out in my parking lot right now. That SUV was thrown away by somebody who wanted us to take it to the scrap metal yard. When we looked at the car, we thought, “Hey, this thing might have some life in it.”

What we'll do is figure out how much the owner would have received from the scrap metal yard, give him his percentage of what he would have gotten had we taken it there, then hang onto the car and use it as a vehicle in our business if it looks like the thing will run. I've had some problems with it, but that vehicle, with a newly remodeled trailer being pulled behind it, both of which were thrown away from hauling jobs, can now make us money. That combination just warms my soul. I love to see that kind of thing happening.

I'm driving an SUV right now that was thrown away about three or four years ago and runs like a top. I used it this morning to haul some scrap metal over to the scrap metal yard.

I was driving down the street last night, and you know that when somebody gets evicted from an apartment complex, their stuff can end up out on the curb. Once stuff has been put out on the curb, it's fair game for anybody driving by who wants to pick through it and grab something.

As I was coming home last night from picking up a check from a lady named Leslie Sandler, who has been a guest on this show and is a jeweler in our area, I passed this 20- or 30-foot line of junk sitting out next to the highway on the curb. She had sold some more jewelry for us, and I had gone over to pick up the check from her.

Well, I've got my SUV with me, and there's probably some metal in that stuff. So I drove past it the first time, did a U-turn, came back around, did another U-turn, put the flashers on, and stopped. This was about nine o'clock at night. I walked through the stuff and grabbed anything that was metal or had a cord on it and threw it in the back of the SUV.

Ten dollars. It was not a big amount of money. I took it over to the scrap metal yard this morning, emptied it, and made $10. But $10 a day in my business is almost $300 a month, and $300 a month buys an awful lot of gas, right?

So it's one of those things where you're driving a car somebody threw away, then you're picking up stuff that was put on the curb after somebody was evicted, you're helping clean up that stuff, and you're getting paid for it. To me, that's just kind of fun all the way around. That was one of the things that happened this morning that I thought was great.

This trailer is in our storage now, and I can't wait to attack it. I'll use tools to get the rust off and repaint it. I'll have to buy some Rust-Oleum spray paint; that's no big deal. I'll buy some plywood to put on it. I think we're going to take an old trailer that was an eyesore sitting in his driveway and turn it into something that can be used over and over again to make money. It's going to put a smile on my face every job we send it on.

You should know that the back of the Dodge Ram pickup truck I have is six feet by five feet wide by four feet high. This trailer is eight by four, and the sides are up in the air right now because it doesn't have any sides. But once we put together what we need to build it, we'll end up with a trailer that can be used for carting around all kinds of stuff. It's eight feet long, so it'll hold a couch, a sofa, and some other things.

We've had a lot of fun with Groupon over the years doing smaller jobs like this, and this SUV pulling around a discarded trailer is now going to start making money for us. I'm quite excited about that. I'm excited to go over and start working on the trailer, improve it, give it a facelift, and see if we can put this sucker to work. I think we can, and it will be a lot of fun to do.

Another thing: in business, sometimes it's hard to find good workers. On our way to the scrap metal yard, there are some people on strike right now who appear to be with the Teamsters. I don't know what company they work for. For the last number of weeks, I think they're in their fifth week now if I remember reading their signs correctly, they've been on strike wanting higher wages.

There are about 15 or 20 of them out on a street corner holding up their signs, basically camping out, so to speak, on a busy roadway in Rockville and expressing concern over what they're being paid for their work.

In the meantime, I'm driving past them with a couple of guys who have worked with us for years. They're really good workers, really smart workers, and really strong workers. I think the last thing in the world they would do is go on strike. I think they like the work, they like the opportunity to go to work, and they enjoy the situation. Finding good workers and treating them, ideally, the way you would like to be treated is critical. We've got good workers who are doing a great job.

Let me tell you about a couple of things you can do. If you're in the Washington, D.C., area, we are on Groupon. You can look up 1-800-JUNK-REFUND on Groupon. I would invite you to read the reviews. We have somewhere around 500 reviews now with a 97% customer satisfaction rating.

Groupon has been a great company to work with. They've sent out millions of emails advertising our services. People buy the Groupons for basically a pickup truck of junk removal. Normally it's $229; we do it for $99 through Groupon. Groupon will take about half that money, so it's not a moneymaker for us, but it gets us known and gets us out there. We pick up more and more customers, and what we're hoping is that people have more than a pickup truck of stuff, then pay us the difference. We kind of upsell it and make some extra money, which frequently happens, and we like that.

If you're looking at the reviews, they told me at Groupon one day that when you're at 97% customer satisfaction, that's the highest in the United States for a junk removal business. They also said that for any business, if your Groupon reviews are in the 90th percentile, you're one of the best in your industry. We're at 97% and continue to try to keep it up there.

My whole goal was to get to 98%, and then I could tell GEICO that we're 1% better than they are in customer satisfaction. That hasn't quite happened yet, but we're right there. We're knocking on the door, and I hope that we can make something good happen pretty soon.

The reason I've mentioned the Groupon deal is that it's the lowest-priced junk-removal deal you can get from us except for two other things. One of them has to do with this radio show. If you call the show during the program and you're in the Washington, D.C., area, give your name and number to our producer, Don. He'll get with me after the show, give me your information, and I will send you a link that allows you to get that same quarter-truckload, or pickup-truckload, of junk removal for $79. That's a special available through the radio show.

The only thing that beats that during the whole year is my birthday, when I put the same quarter-truckload or pickup-truckload of junk removal on sale for whatever my age is that year. This year in May, I did about $5,000 worth of business selling somewhere around 70 vouchers for around $68 apiece. They're good throughout the year. You have to use them by the end of December or they expire and you kiss your money goodbye.

We've done this every year for a number of years. The good news is the birthday special is back. The bad news is it went up a dollar. But we can live with that, and we have a lot of fun with it.

This radio-show voucher, other than what we do in May, is the best deal we offer throughout the year to any of our clients. It's not good in Louisville, Kentucky. We can't travel there and do your job, or have a local affiliate do it, for that price. But it is good in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, and we're proud of that and happy to make it available through the radio show.

Again, if you're in the District of Columbia area, the DMV, and you're listening to the show and want to get a voucher for $79, you're going to save about $150 on the purchase price. Call 888-627-6008. Talk to our producer, Don, and give him your information. Again, the number is 888-627-6008.

We've had some fun anytime we sell stuff for people. That's really the thing that tends to set us apart, and we enjoy it. People always ask us, “What are some of the coolest things you've picked up or some of the coolest things you've sold?”

Some of the recent sales include bikes and jewelry, which we tend to sell to jewelers as opposed to individuals. We also take books that we get, box them up into a banker's-box-sized box, and take them to a company called Wonder Books in the Gaithersburg, Maryland, area. They will buy them from you either for cash or store credit.

They run a couple of used bookstores that have millions of titles of books, CDs, DVDs, audiobooks, and other things available. Now, they only buy a banker's box of books for about $2 for the whole box, so you're not going to get rich taking this stuff in. But it is something that's available and doable.

They can also give you store credit instead of cash. If you want store credit, you tend to get maybe $6 or $8 a box for this stuff. So I generally get the store credit. The store credit is wonderful because we can turn around and use it for gifts or whatever we want to buy, including audiobooks.

When people come into town and visit, I ask them if they want to go to a used bookstore. People like to do that. I give them one of my gift certificates, and they go in, spend it, and have a blast. We've had fun doing that kind of thing.

We sell furniture. We've sold sofa beds and sofa sets. We've sold dining-room chairs recently. We keep all kinds of things in storage units and put them up for sale electronically. People come by, check them out in the storage unit, and pick them up. They get a good deal. The people who had us haul the stuff away get some money back, which they always love, and it makes us extra money, which we love. The bottom line is that everybody wins. That's the way we like to run our business.

So there's a little bit about what goes on behind the scenes and some of the things that make 1-800-JUNK-REFUND a little different. We're going to take another break for about a minute. You're listening to the Junk Refund Show on the BBS Radio Network. We'll be back in about a minute and do the final segment of the show. I'm your host, Alan Cook.

Speaker 1 – Announcer / Prerecorded Promo Voice:
Have you ever hired one of those expensive junk removal companies, then wondered what they did with the stuff, especially the good stuff? At 1-800-JUNK-REFUND, we junk the junk, recycle stuff like metal and wire, donate items and get you receipts, and put the good stuff up for sale. If it sells, you get some money back.

Cynthia paid $375 for junk removal and got $3,200 back. Would you like to know how she did it? Tune in to the Junk Refund Show with your host, Alan J. Cook, every Thursday at 3 p.m. Eastern Time to get the junk not only out of your home, but also out of your life.

Speaker 2 – Alan J. Cook, Host:
Hey, welcome back to the Junk Refund Show. I'm your host, Alan Cook, coming to you from Rockville, Maryland, where we do this weekly radio show, the world's longest-running junk removal radio show. We're in our fourth year now. We're on the BBS Radio Network, and we have a lot of fun with that. I think the show goes to something like 49 countries, and I don't know how many people, but it's more than two or three. We talk about junk removal.

There are a couple of things to comment on, just observations from a junk removal guy, because we're going into people's homes every day and we see all kinds of stuff. People tend to get us involved in their lives when there's some kind of mild crisis going on, or maybe life is just unfolding in a natural way and people have to deal with their stuff.

If a divorce happens, for example, you have to decide what to do with the property. Then the house tends to get put up for sale, and they call us to come in and haul off the stuff that's left. Somebody passes away after a long, healthy life, the family gets together, and they call us to come in and haul stuff away.

We had a family from a gentleman who worked in the government. He did not pass away, but he did retire and was moving out to Wichita, Kansas. This was a number of years ago. He needed some stuff hauled away from his garage, front room, and some other areas.

The realtor had referred us, and when we went over and started talking to him, his kids had flown up from Fort Lauderdale to help get the process done. While we were there, they asked, “Hey, can you take the car too?” We get asked that every once in a while. You'd be surprised how many cars go through our hands in the course of a junk removal career.

This was a Chrysler Sebring Limited convertible. I forget how many miles it had on it, but he wasn't going to take it with him to Kansas. The kids didn't need it. They had tried to sell it in The Washington Post for around $10,000. I think they had it listed for $10,500, if I remember correctly, and they weren't getting any action on it.

They called us. We went over there, and they said, “Hey, can you handle the car?” I said, “Yeah, we can sell the car for you.” Typically, we get people 35% of anything we sell, but you can't do that with an automobile or we'll walk off with most of the money and people won't get enough.

So I went to the gentleman and said, “What's the bottom-line amount you need to get from this car that would make you happy?” He said, “$9,900.” I said, “Okay, we'll take anything above $9,900. Does that sound fair?” He said, “Sure, that's great.”

He signed the title, gave me the keys, and I drove home that afternoon in a Chrysler Sebring Limited convertible. We pulled it into the driveway. My daughter at the time, who I think was probably 11 or 12, was really excited when she saw the car. She came out and said, “Dad, I will work every weekend between now and when I'm 16 if you let me buy that car.”

I loved her enthusiasm and said, “Sorry, honey, I can't do that because we have to sell this for this gentleman, but we'll see what we can do about the future for you,” et cetera.

We put the ad online. I think we put the car on eBay. An attorney from Minneapolis who had previously owned a Chrysler Sebring Limited convertible saw the car. We put it out for $10,800. He saw it and said, “Yep, I want it.”

He flew to the Rockville/Washington, D.C., area, came by, picked up the car, received the keys and title, and drove off. So we made about $900 selling a car we didn't own. The customer got his $9,900 and moved to Kansas, and everybody won. The gentleman who flew here from Minnesota was thrilled and hopped in the car and drove it back home. Because he'd owned one before, he knew what he was buying and knew the car really well. Again, it's a perfect example of how everybody wins.

Now compare that with a typical junk removal business and tell me what probably would have happened. First, they probably wouldn't have gotten involved in selling the car. Second, if they had been asked to haul it away, they probably would have, but they probably wouldn't have put it up for sale and definitely wouldn't have given any money, including the majority of the money, back to the homeowner.

Somebody in the junk removal business might end up driving the car and counting his blessings. The guy who hired him to haul away the stuff might have no idea what happened to the car, even though it was his vehicle. We turned it into a positive thing where somebody makes money, everybody wins, and it's a good story for everybody. We think that's a good move.

So that's kind of what we do and how we get involved with it. We think that kind of thing is important. We tend to hold our heads high and try to do the right thing. We're not perfect. We screw up. There are times when we screw up. But we try to hold our heads high, do the right thing, and help people out in any way we can.

One of the things that sets us apart is that we don't just take the stuff to the dump, get rid of it, and go do the next job. That might be a great philosophy for a business that wants to keep the trucks busy, but it's a horrible philosophy if you're trying to be green and help the environment.

We pride ourselves on trying to do the right thing. There are junk removal businesses that will take stuff to the dump. They will recycle materials like metal and wire, and they will donate some items for you. But nobody except us takes the fourth step of trying to sell something and make some money for you. That's what really tends to set us apart, and we have a lot of fun doing it.

I do have to put in a plug, and this is kind of an update about AI. I started getting involved with AI a couple of months ago because of this radio show. Our producer, Don, and his brother, Doug, are doing a great job at the BBS Radio Network adding AI into their services for customers like me, adding even more to the services they offer and helping make our radio shows even better. That's how I first got involved with it.

At the time, I was going online trying to find real estate offices in the area so I could send out a postcard advertising one of our special deals and break into more real estate offices. Realtors are a good source of business for us.

I literally was going online and writing down the information. I was creating a spreadsheet, and then I would literally address the envelopes by hand. I told myself, “If I do 10 of these a day, that's good. That's approximately 300 in a month.”

Then the AI light went off. A few weeks ago I went into Microsoft Copilot and said, “Pull up all the real estate offices and create a spreadsheet for me with the real estate offices in this city.” And it does it. About three or four minutes later, it says, “Here's your spreadsheet,” and there are 30 or 40 offices in a spreadsheet, all ready to go.

The spreadsheet format is critical because if it's in a spreadsheet, I can go to Microsoft Word and print mailing labels from it. Lo and behold, my first experience was that we pulled up 800 real estate offices in the Washington area.

Now, if I asked you the average number of real estate professionals who work in a real estate office, the answer is 12 and a half. If you're mailing to 800 of those offices on a monthly basis, you're ideally getting the word out to about 10,000 real estate agents. If 1% of them had you clean out a house for them, you're doing more than a million dollars a year in business. That was the beauty of it.

So I now have a database of real estate offices that I can mail to month after month. It's right there, it's all done, and I didn't have to go search and research everything manually. AI did it all for me, and folks, it was free at first.

What I learned is that, doing this city by city, you have a certain number of searches that are free on Microsoft Copilot. I'd never heard of Microsoft Copilot before. I didn't really know what I was doing, but it was working. Over the course of just a few nights, I assembled a database of 800 real estate offices.

A couple of nights ago, in the spirit of hauling away scrap metal for people in this area, we put together, using the same format, a list of 700 gas stations in the area that do repairs on people's brakes, mufflers, engines, tires, and other things. We now have a database of 700 gas stations we can mail to, and I'm in the process of creating a postcard to send out to them.

So I've got 800 real estate offices and 700 gas stations in the Washington, D.C., area. I did it county by county this time and found out that, in month two with Microsoft Copilot, they give you three free searches. I used those up pretty quickly. Then they said, “Would you like to upgrade so you can get a bunch more?” I said, “Yep, that's worth it.” So I now pay about $15 a month to Microsoft to do searches and create databases from which I can print mailing labels and send out postcards to grow my business.

Here's the other thing. While we're driving around in the trucks, I go by the post office and buy rolls of 100 postcard stamps. They used to be about 30 cents apiece. Now they're 65 cents apiece. I give the addressed postcards with my mailing labels on them, about 90 at a time, to one of the guys riding in the truck, and he stamps them for me while we're driving between job number one and job number two.

So I'm getting basically free addressing and stamping labor because I'm paying the guy anyway to ride in my truck. He might as well be doing something. We've got a little system going. As soon as I pull by a post office, we stop, throw them in, and send them off so more people hear about our business.

This whole thing, and the energy behind it, is coming because of the brilliant guys at BBS Radio who are using AI to expand their business and their network so guys like me can have an even more productive radio show, which turns into a podcast, et cetera.

The content that's created quickly, including what I want to call photos but are really illustrations added to the content, is done by AI and is remarkable. It starts to expand your mind, and pretty soon you go, “Oh my gosh, let's see what else I could do.”

We're having fun with this database-creation stuff because it's basically free except for what is now a roughly $15-a-month service. We're creating this database, which is amazing. We've sent out 700 to 800 real estate cards to offices all over the Washington, D.C., area. We have the home address here as the return address, and to this day, after about three weeks of mailing these, we haven't had one returned. To me, that indicates the addresses AI is coming up with are working.

So anyway, that's a blast, and I'm enjoying it. I think what I'll do is wrap this up about five minutes early just for fun so I can run a couple of quick errands, then head to Philadelphia, then Denver, then Salt Lake City, and spend a couple of days with family and friends. I'll let you know how that goes next week when I'm back here on the Junk Refund Show.

Just remember to put time on your side. If you have a cluttered home and you're trying to declutter it, go to Home Depot, buy for about $25 a box of roughly 32 contractor bags, around 30 gallons each, and fill up one bag a week, whether it's for donation, recycling, junk, or whatever you want to do. Just fill up one bag in a week. Anybody can do that.

You'll be surprised at how decluttered your home will become after just a few weeks. It adds up quickly. Don't overload yourself with the stress of, “How am I going to get this all done?” Just get the stuff out of your house the same way you brought it in, one piece at a time over time, and save yourself the cost of hiring a junk removal business to come and do it.

Do it on your own, start chipping away at it, and learn to let go of stuff so your life can be junk-free. That's kind of a good little motto to remember.

Anyway, thanks for listening to the Junk Refund Show. I'm off to Philadelphia. Have a great week. I'll be back to tell you about my adventures between now and then. Thanks again to the BBS Radio Network for all the great work they do. I'm your host, Alan Cook. Have a great week, and we'll see you next Thursday at three on the Junk Refund Show. Have a great week, everybody.

Speaker 1 – Announcer / Prerecorded Promo Voice:
Thank you for listening to the Junk Refund Show, the longest-running junk removal radio show on the air. Join us next week as we discuss innovative ways to declutter your home, your business, and your life using 20 years of junk removal experience.

Find out why we give out free ice cream gift cards to our clients, too. In upcoming shows, we will explore how to get the junk out of your relationships, your spiritual life, your waistline, even your travel life. Plus, call in with questions and situations you would like some help with.

At 1-800-JUNK-REFUND, we are committed to bringing the next generation of junk removal because not all junk is junk. See you next week on the Junk Refund Show, every Thursday afternoon at 3 p.m. Eastern Time, right here on BBS Radio TV.