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Speaker Identification

Speaker 1: Announcer / Promotional Voice
Speaker 2: Alan J. Cook, host of The Junk Refund Show and founder of 1-800-JUNK-REFUND

Speaker 1: Welcome to The Junk Refund Show, hosted by Alan J. Cook, founder of 1-800-JUNK-REFUND.

Have you ever paid 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 to not only save your 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: Hello, everybody, and welcome to The Junk Refund Show, which I rarely do from my apartment, sitting at a desk and ready to go. A lot of times I do this show from a truck, or while standing outside of a job that we're doing. Recently, because I've been so busy with different jobs, I haven't had the time to stop and do a show. So I'm kind of proud of the fact that I'm just doing this like a regular guy who is supposed to do it would do it. So that's kind of fun.

Anyway, happy July 2nd. I have to take a second to sing happy birthday to my sister Carolyn, whose birthday is today. She is, I think, in the middle of the family of 11 kids, which would make her kid number six. Today is her birthday.

I have a wonderful family group of siblings. We're all on a text chat. Because I'm on the East Coast and everybody else is west of me, most of them in Utah, when I wake up in the morning and remember that I have a sibling like Carolyn who has a birthday that day, I go on the text chat and wish her a happy birthday. Just because of the Eastern time zone, I'm usually the first one who gets on and is able to wish somebody a happy birthday. That was the case today as well.

We just have such a wonderful, harmonious group of siblings. You would think with 11 of us, one mom, one dad, and one stepfather, but basically a mom and a dad who raised 11 kids and did so, frankly, very successfully. They did a great job. Both of them have now passed on, and the 11 of us are very tight. Everybody is happy. We have challenges like anybody has, but by and large, it's a very happy group of people who enjoy texting each other and talking with each other.

I just think that's kind of a cool thing. There is happiness in big families. We're a living example of it, and we've had a great story, thanks to my parents, I think. My mother was always very quick to say, "I just had great kids." Well, okay, thank you, but we were raised by somebody other than us, right? So we're just trying to live up to what was laid out in front of us as an example.

Anyway, I'm going to sing happy birthday to my sister Carolyn just for fun because it is her birthday. Here we go. I'm telling you, she's not listening, but maybe she'll pick this up on the podcast later or something.

Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Carolyn. Happy birthday to you.

There you go. A little shout-out to my sister on her wonderful birthday.

So we're coming to you from the vicinity of Maryland, and as you know, it's the 250th celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence this year. Here we are in Washington, D.C., with all kinds of things happening. I thought I'd just give you a little glance of what's up in Washington.

First of all, it's about 102 degrees out there right now, which for a junk removal guy is kind of serious, right? But when you think about it, we go into an air-conditioned home, haul a bunch of stuff out to the truck, and then we go back into the air-conditioned home. When we're done filling up the truck, we get into the air-conditioned truck with our waters and sodas, or whatever, and drive someplace to empty the truck.

So you go out there and you do some work in the junk removal business, and then you get a break. You get to ride in the truck to wherever it is you need to go to get rid of the stuff. If we were out laying asphalt all day and got a one-hour break for lunch under a shade tree, or maybe in the truck, that would be brutal. But in our business, we do get a little bit of a break, and that's always nice and enjoyed by us.

So it's 102 degrees out there. I heard last night from a good friend of mine, who would know this, that they have moved back the start of the fireworks this Saturday on the National Mall, which is one of the biggest fireworks shows in the country every year, to 11 o'clock. It usually starts around 9 o'clock. They pushed it back to 10:30. I think, according to my friend, President Trump is involved in some kind of a - I don't know what it is - something. But they pushed it back to 10:30, and then the Secret Service came in and apparently said, "No, we've got to start it at 11."

So starting fireworks at 11 o'clock, my buddy is concerned that all the kids in the families are going to be asleep by 11 o'clock. He's got a good point. Apparently, going by what I've heard - I haven't verified this - the national fireworks from Washington, D.C., are going to start about two hours later than they normally start. So there you go. That's what's going on in Washington.

There are a lot of people here. We have a parking lot out behind our facility where I usually park two or three vehicles. For the next 60 days, I think through sometime in September, they're going to have 25 buses parking out behind us. They've shut the parking lot down to the regulars like me. We have to park on the sides and stuff like that, but a boatload of buses are coming through for the rest of the summer.

Tourism, I'm assuming, people coming into town and celebrating the 250th anniversary. So there are some traffic issues going on, and roads are closing in various places. I have a good friend who lives down in the middle of D.C., only a few blocks from the Mall, where the Smithsonian is and the Capitol building and all that kind of stuff. They are shutting off some of the roads down there and rerouting people so that even if you want to walk a couple of blocks from where you live over to the National Mall to go to a museum or to watch the World Cup soccer matches, which they have on a big screen down there - that's been a lot of fun to watch those - you can't just take your regular route.

So D.C. is an interesting city, especially now with the 250th anniversary and the nation's capital. You had better believe there's a lot of security going on, and they're trying to make it as safe as possible for everyone. This is a great time to come to the nation's capital if you can put up with the crowds. So that's what's going on in D.C.

Elsewhere, a shout-out to my friend Robert, who for years has spent the Fourth of July at his very nice second home up in Deep Creek Lake in the western part of Maryland. He is up there this week, and I think this is a great tradition. This is a real success story for a family because he has done this for a couple of decades. I think now he's got 42 people, just family members, up there this weekend.

I called him because he's such a good friend of mine, and I was looking for something fun to do for a couple of us in the D.C. area where it's not quite as hot. We could escape the heat, get around some water, and cool off. So I sent him a text and said, "Hey, are you in Deep Creek this weekend?" He said yes.

Then I said - I don't remember how I tried to tactfully say it. I probably wasn't very good at it - but I basically said, "Hey, if you've got room for more people and you want a whole bunch of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, let me know and I'll bring it up to you."

Well, that's when he told me he's got 42 people up there, and they're going to have a blast, jet skiing, going out on the boat, and doing the stuff you do. But most importantly, it's a great success story that he and his wonderful wife have put together over the years: a tradition of getting his family together up there to just party and have a good time.

That's real success in my book, when you can gather your family all together and just have a great time as a family, regardless of where it is. It doesn't have to be on jet skis or boats or anything like that. That's a real success story, and I tip my hat to him and his wonderful wife and the great work they've done over the years in creating such a fun family event up at Deep Creek Lake in Maryland over the Fourth of July weekend. I think they kind of draw it out for about a week. It's a week-long celebration kind of thing. Good for them. I think that's noteworthy.

Also noteworthy is that I am about three weeks off now. Let me do the math real quick. Yes, three weeks ago tomorrow I was at my 50-year high school reunion out in Utah. I want to tell you what I learned, what I experienced, and, for those of you who might have high school reunions coming up, what I thought about mine and how it went.

First of all, the senior class officers, we'll call them, came out about six months ago and said, "Hey, we need some volunteers to help with this and this and this." One of the things on the list was a person to head up the entertainment part of the Friday night big bash after dinner. That's kind of down my alley. I do a radio show and a couple of podcasts, and I'm not exactly an introvert, right? So I emailed them back and said, "Hey, I'd be happy to do this." Man, they were quick to jump on that one.

Now, I want to tell you what I learned from this because it was such a great experience. Your 50-year reunion gives you one shot in life at that. The last one I went to was five years ago. I guess because, at the age of 68 now, I'm out doing what I did this morning - physical labor, pulling stuff to a truck and throwing it off the truck, and walking a lot - it tends to keep you somewhat in shape. Not like some of these Tai Chi guys you see on the internet these days who transform their bodies in 30 days, but I'm in decent shape. Let's just put it that way.

Five years ago at our reunion, a girl walked up to me, one of my classmates, and said, "Hey, we've been talking over here. Some of us girls have been talking, and we think you are the least changed." Now, when you go to a high school reunion 45 years after you graduated and some people randomly come up to you and say, "You are the least changed," that's probably the best compliment you can get at a high school reunion, right?

So, at my 50th-year reunion, I had been planning this now for about five months. When I thought about it, I thought, "Okay, I'm going to entertain these people for about an hour, and I want to make it fun. I want to make it rewarding, but more than anything else, I want to make it memorable."

I started to do a little research. We graduated in 1976. Well, that's a bicentennial year. So I reached out to President Trump's office, Senator John Curtis's office, Senator Mike Lee's office, and Governor Spencer Cox's office. I sent emails saying, "Hey, we're doing our 50-year bicentennial graduating class reunion in June. Would you like to give us a short video congratulating the class, given that we're a bicentennial class?"

To his credit, Senator John Curtis put a video together and sent it back to us within about two weeks of me originally asking for it. I did not hear back from any of the other three. That's not a criticism. That's just the fact. But Senator Curtis's office jumped all over this and sent us a video congratulating us on our achievement and reminiscing briefly about what those days were like because he remembered it. He graduated two years after us from a different school up in Salt Lake City.

I went to Orem High School in Orem, Utah. I had a graduating class of close to 800 people, I think. John sent this video to us, and it was just fabulous. I rapidly became a big fan of Senator John Curtis just because he took the time to do this, and I thought it was terrific.

He talked about the music that came out in the '70s, including an album by the Eagles called Greatest Hits, which was one of the top-selling albums of that 20-year period. I think it's still the top-selling album for that time period, depending on Michael Jackson's Thriller album and who has bought that recently. Senator Curtis commented in his video that we had great music, we had bell-bottom pants, and we had lots of fun with our styles and everything going on. It was terrific.

I also learned, when I did a little searching on trivia for 1976, that the show Family Feud debuted on July 12, 1976. I didn't know that. So I decided to use a Family Feud-type game format for the hour of entertainment I was going to provide.

The other thought that came into my mind was, "Hey, that would be really cool if I could pull that off." Given that it's our 50th reunion, wouldn't it be cool if I went out and bought 50 gift cards to give out to people who played Family Feud with us, and made each card worth $50?

Now, that's just a cool idea. To make it happen, you need $2,500. But I thought, "That's a darn good idea." I could get a couple of little tables and a couple of little bells, and we could have people come up one-on-one, Family Feud style, one question, winner takes all, and you walk off with a $50 gift card.

That idea just stuck with me for the next few months. I thought, "Yeah, that would be a kick-butt awesome thing to do." I didn't want to go out and raise money for it. I just wanted to do it myself and not tell anybody where these gift cards came from.

So my buddy Scotty, who did a great job and is one of the class officers, was in charge of everything that happened on Friday night, from the dinner to the launching of the balloons in memory of our 88 class members who have passed away, to my hour of entertainment and stuff. I told him about it, and he loved the idea. I said, "Okay, but don't tell anybody else. I want this to be a surprise to everybody." And it was. It was a smashing success.

In just a minute here, we're going to take a break for about a minute, and I'm going to come back and pick up the story where we left off. One of the funnest things I've ever done is to walk into a Safeway store on Thursday night before our reunion and buy 50 gift cards, all in one shot. I'm going to tell you what that's like when we come back because that was one part of it that was fun. The second part that was fun was just giving them out to people that night and seeing their reaction. The third part that was fun is the thank-yous that continue to come in, and will continue to come in, on our reunion Facebook page from people who received one of the cards and are thanking me for making the cards available to them.

So we'll pick up where we left off in about a minute. We'll take a break right now. You're listening to The Junk Refund Show. I'm your host, Alan Cook, coming to you from the Washington, D.C., area. We'll be back in about a minute.

Speaker 1: 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 up for sale the good stuff. 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: Thanks to our producer, Don Newsom, for his great radio voice. That was him you just heard. And for him and his brother Doug, who do a great job at BBSRadio.com, the station and network - really, network, actually. They're doing a terrific job. Shout-out to them for all the good stuff they do.

So I'm going to suggest to you that there are not a lot of people on the planet who have walked into a Safeway store, or any other store, and purchased 50 gift cards, each with a value of $50, and did it with cash. Let me tell you what happens and how this was so much fun.

First of all, I went in and looked for somebody. I didn't just walk up to the teller and say, "Hey, I'd like to do this," because I hadn't selected the cards yet. There are these folks who kind of oversee the self-checkout area. I went up to that guy and said, "Hey, I'm doing a high school reunion thing tomorrow night, and I need to buy 50 gift cards for 50 bucks each. That's $2,500. Is that cool? Is there anything I should know about this, or a certain way we should do it? I'm going to pay for it in cash."

He said, "Just a minute," and he went over to another employee, the senior manager, I guess, and explained what I was going to do. I just heard her say, "Fifty cards?" He said, "Yeah, 50 cards, 50 bucks each." She goes, "Yeah, that's okay."

That was fun, just kind of stunning the employees. Then the second thing I did was go over to the wall. There's this three-sided wall where they have all the gift cards on display, and it's like Christmas come early, man. I just went, "Oh, Chipotle. Yeah, that would be a good one. Five Guys? Yeah, let's do that one. Amazon? Yeah, we've got to get one of those." Then McDonald's, Burger King, gaming cards, Microsoft, and some others were on there. Cheesecake Factory was a big one.

I started picking these off. It's like picking them off a Christmas tree. I'm picking them off the wall and throwing them into a bag and counting as I went. I learned pretty quickly that I had grabbed a Mastercard and a Visa card, but then I saw that they have six- or seven-dollar activation fees for those. These other cards did not have the activation fee. If I had bought 50 cards with a seven-dollar activation fee, I would have paid $350 extra just to get the cards. I didn't want to do that. So I put the Mastercard, Visa, and American Express gift cards back on the rack and stayed away from those so I could avoid the fees.

I ended up getting 50 various gift cards. I also wanted to not have any of them repetitive, which was also fun. This was like Christmas in reverse, where you get to go to the place and start pulling off gift cards that you're buying to give to somebody else. You have to take 50 of those things off the racks. That takes longer than a minute, and it's just really fun to pick out, "Let's do one of these and one of these. Here's an AMC theater card, and here's a Starbucks gift card," and all kinds of stuff.

Anyway, I ended up getting 50 of them. I went through and double-checked that none of them had activation fees. Then I walked over, and the same gentleman I approached originally came over to the checkout counter with nobody else there. He started ringing them up as I took the cards out of my little bag.

What's fun is to watch the cash register because every time he rings another one up, the purchase price goes up by 50 bucks. Pretty soon he was up to about $800, and I thought, "Hey, he's about a third of the way done. That's good." Then he's up to $1,600, and I go, "Oh, he's two-thirds of the way." Finally, he is at $2,500.

I had taken this money out of a petty cash fund that I have at work, just cash that I keep around in case of an emergency, something like this, or whatever I want to use it for. So I take that out, and now on the counter to the left of the teller is a pile of 50 gift cards. I'm standing on his right, the gift cards are on his left, and I start shelling out $100 bills, $20 bills, and $50 bills on the counter to pay for these gift cards. Pretty soon, there's $2,500 sitting on the counter. He's got to double-count it and make sure it's accurate.

The gift cards are sitting three or four feet away. All of a sudden, I start to look around the store and think, "Man, I'm a sitting duck. This is now a security issue. I've got $2,500 in cash sitting in front of me on a counter. Anybody could come up from behind me and start grabbing cash and run out of the store, or they could see this pile of gift cards and run up and grab the gift cards." But I guess the security part is that the gift cards had not been activated yet.

The employee is safe. We counted up all the money a couple of times. He goes, "Yep, $2,500. That's great." Then he hits this button on the cash register, which begins the process of activating each of these cards. Now, you've got to activate 50 of these babies. So that thing starts, and this low-pitched bell starts ringing in the background, just kind of saying, "Okay, we're in process. We're in process. We're in process."

That was fun. Just watching him activate 50 gift cards at once was a blast. He got it done, then he pulls out a receipt that was like six feet long. It had all these cards on it, folded up about six times. He hands me the receipt. I had also bought, for about five bucks, a little tiny gift bag to put all the gift cards in so that the next night at the reunion I would just have those sitting next to me, reach in, pull another one out of the bag, and give it to somebody.

Anyway, it all worked out fabulously. I walked out of there with $2,500 worth of gift cards. I took them the next day to Utah, where we had the class reunion at Thanksgiving Point, a really nice resort there in Lehi, Utah. It was terrific.

I had put together about a 40-slide PowerPoint presentation that had trivia questions from 1976, such as, "Who was our homecoming queen?" or "What was the name of our principal?" or "What computer company started in 1976?" Apple Computer started in 1976. Charlie's Angels, the TV series, started in 1976. I had a lot of fun with all these trivia questions. I put about 40 slides together, bought a clicker to run off my laptop so I could do it remotely, and they had a big drop-down screen there.

Then, on the musical side, we have a guy who graduated in our class named Kurt Bestor. He is the most talented guy I know personally. For 38 years, he's been doing sold-out Christmas concerts at Abravanel Hall or some of the concert halls, the main ones in downtown Salt Lake City. He does three nights of concerts back to back, and they sell out every year. That's one of our classmates.

So I had called him and said, "Hey, would you perform a couple of numbers for us?" He came back and said, "Yeah, I'll be there. I'll do that."

I think the irony of this is that when they were planning this reunion, the senior class committee was concerned that they might not get more than 100 people there, especially when the barbecue dinner you were going to pay for was around 55 bucks a person. But for whatever reason, 250 people signed up. We sold it out. We didn't have any more room, and that was fabulous.

I also got to talk about Abe Lincoln, President Lincoln, also known as Brian Jenkins from Orem, Utah, who walked into one of our church services in Washington, D.C., about six months ago, dressed as Abraham Lincoln. He is the spitting image of Abraham Lincoln. He was in Washington to do a personal appearance for some organization. I didn't know him. He just walked in off the street because he's a member of our church, and he came to the congregation that I go to.

Afterwards that day, we had a little luncheon for everybody after church, and he invited him to stay for it. I got to know him better. I asked him if he would come make a personal appearance at the reunion and read a customized Gettysburg Address that I would write for him, a takeoff on our high school that sounded an awful lot like the Gettysburg Address. He said he would.

So that night, as people were showing up, and you had all these friends you hadn't seen in years, all of a sudden, as you're in line to get some food, in walks Abraham Lincoln. I mean, he was the spitting image of him, dressed in the long black tailcoat and everything, and the stovepipe hat that Abe Lincoln would have worn. He looked fabulous, and he sat at the table next to me. He was part of the program because we're a bicentennial class.

I had told people about a month earlier on the Facebook page that a "U.S. president" looked like he was going to be making an appearance at our event. I also told them that musician Kurt Bestor would be performing. If you came to the reunion, you would get a free mini Kurt Bestor concert. I think the tickets doubled when we said that was going to happen.

It was just a fabulous thing. Then we started giving out the gift cards.

Here's the other thing that I learned. When you haven't seen your classmates for 50 years, people have changed. I think, carrying over from my 45th reunion, I still probably looked like one of the guys most people could recognize.

When you check in to get your packet of stuff, they give you a name badge with your name on it, or you can write your name on it. There's also a picture from the yearbook, from when we graduated, of what you looked like in high school, and it's got your name there. That's cool.

What I found myself doing is that as I saw people, almost without exception, I had to look at their name badge as quickly as I could to see who they were. Almost without exception, I couldn't remember, and I couldn't put the names together. People looked different. It's been 50 years, and I couldn't tell who they were.

But in my case, throughout the night, many people from 20 feet away would say to me, "Hey, Alan, how are you?" They would call out to me. So apparently I was a little bit recognizable compared to 50 years earlier. But by and large, without exception, I had to look at people's name badges to know who they were most of the time.

If you go to a high school reunion and it's been a few years, and people are calling out your name without looking at your name badge, that's a good sign. That's what happened. It was such a fun night.

There are people who will stay away from those reunions because maybe they put on a bunch of weight, maybe they have aged rather quickly, maybe they've had a tough life, or maybe they just don't want to have to explain to people what's happening in their life, or whatever it might be. But I'm telling you, this was, in my opinion, one of the most successful 50-year reunions that has ever been held. It literally sold out. We had no more room for people that night.

We did a cool thing afterward where we went outside on the grass and let off 88 balloons in honor of our classmates who had died before us. The blue balloons were for the boys. The yellow balloons were for the girls. That was a great thing, to just let these things go and sail up into the sky.

The other thing that was cool is that as I was giving out gift cards, somebody answered one of the trivia questions and was sitting down in the crowd. So I walked down there to give him the gift card, and I immediately looked at his name badge. It said Tyler. I won't give you his last name, but it said Tyler. I went, "Oh my gosh, it's my best friend from the ninth grade." I hadn't seen this guy in 50 years. I just gave him a big hug and was thrilled to see him. It was so much fun.

My ninth-grade girlfriend, a girl named Lori, was there from California with her husband. I hadn't seen her in 50 years. She still looks fabulous, and it was great to see her. You have all these wonderful, fun mini-reunions with people at the bigger high school reunion, and that is such a great thing to do: to reunite with people.

Some people had aged very quickly. Some people I didn't recognize at all. They just looked completely different. Some of the men were bald, right? A lot of them were gray-haired. I'm not bald, and I still have my brown hair, right?

One of the trivia questions was, "Who has been married the longest?" Remember, we graduated in 1976. We had three couples there who married fellow students at Orem High School in 1976. One of them got married in the latter part of May, before school was out. They got married as seniors in high school, and consequently, they've been married 50 years. We had one couple that got married in December, one couple that got married in August, and one couple that got married in May. I gave a $50 gift card to the couple that got married in May.

We asked who had the most grandchildren. Somebody had, I think, 13 or 15 grandkids now, something like that. All kinds of fun, wonderful trivia questions that I put together on a PowerPoint presentation. Then, using a Family Feud format, we gave out $2,500 in gift cards in about 50 minutes. It was fabulous.

The next day they had a picnic at 4 o'clock. I went to one of our church temples out there, a new temple in that area, which I like to do as a spiritual hobby, at 5 o'clock, so I missed the picnic. They did the reunion the same week as the Orem Summerfest, or Summer Festival Days, I think they call it, or something like that. So there was a parade, and we entered a couple of floats where our class sat on the float as the 50-year reunion class from Orem High School. A lot of people said that was the funnest part of the whole weekend. They did a golf tournament that Saturday morning. It was really well done. They did T-shirts for people. They had special mementos for people.

Twenty percent of the crowd Friday night went home with a $50 gift card. That's pretty good. If you had played Family Feud back in 1976 and won the whole thing at their inaugural show, July 12, 1976, Richard Dawson would have given you $5,000. That was the winning prize back in 1976. We gave out $2,500, plus had award-winning music, plus had trivia and fun and all kinds of things. It was just an absolute blast of a night.

Now here's the cool thing, and I'll wrap up this part of the show with this last little statement. Some people would say, "Why would you spend $2,500 individually on something like this when you don't have to?" I would say, "Because life is about the memories you create, not how much money you have in the bank."

What's kind of cool with this is that I spent the $2,500 on Thursday night, and out of the blue, the following Thursday, a week later, I got a call from somebody who needed some work done. I did an estimate for them. The honest-to-gosh estimate, with a discount for these people, was $2,500. They called me about an hour after I gave them the estimate and said, "Okay, let's do this. Can I just give you a credit card now?" I said, "Sure."

So literally less than a week after I spent the money to get these cards and give them away to people, I got the money right back. That's not why I did it, but that's what happened. People will tell you that you give away stuff and it tends to come back to you. Well, the best of both worlds now is that I have these fabulous memories of putting together a great program and having a lot of fun. They gave out all these cards to people. They really appreciated it. That was a blessing. I have all those memories, but I also have the money, right? I got the money right back.

Even if I didn't have the money, it would still be a great memory and a great move. But a nice little bonus is that I got the money right back within a week. So now I have the memories plus the money. That's a double win.

Anyway, you're listening to The Junk Refund Show. That's a little bit about my high school reunion and why you should go to yours. We'll be back here in about a minute to do the last thing with the show. You're listening to The Junk Refund Show on the BBS Radio Network. I'm your host, Alan Cook, coming to you from the nation's capital. We'll be right back.

Speaker 1: 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 up for sale the good stuff. 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: Welcome back to The Junk Refund Show. I'm your host, Alan Cook, coming to you from the nation's capital, where it is hot, and a boatload of people are coming into town to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. There's a lot of stuff going on in Washington.

They tell me that they're going to be doing some flyovers on July 4th, so they're closing the airspace over Reagan National Airport. On the one hand, that's a bummer. On the other hand, we have BWI Airport in Baltimore, Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia, and if you want to travel a couple of hours, we even have Philadelphia Airport available, which I have flown in and out of numerous times. Living in the D.C. area, one of the advantages is that you've got three different airports you can fly in and out of to accommodate your schedule, and that's, in its own mind, a great thing.

Let me tell you something else that happened recently. This was about a week ago. I walked into a 7-Eleven store, which I frequently do in the morning because they sell diesel gasoline at a 7-Eleven store here for normally about $4.69 a gallon, and that's really low in the D.C. area. But if you're a 7-Eleven Rewards member, which I am, they give you an extra seven cents off. So now it's $4.62 a gallon. I'll go in there and buy about $50 of gas in the morning and save money, and then we're good for the rest of the day or maybe longer.

Well, I was in there a week ago also buying my banana nut muffin and some orange juice, or something, in the morning, which I like to do. I went up to the checkout counter, and a gentleman saw my shirt. He said, "What's 1-800-JUNK-REFUND?"

I said, "It's a junk removal business where, if you have good stuff that really shouldn't be thrown away, we put it up for sale, and if it sells, then you get some money back."

He goes, "Oh, that's interesting." Then he pointed with his finger to his mind, his head, and said, "How do you get the junk out of here?"

Now, that's a brilliant question. That's one of the reasons we do this show. We talk about not only how to get the junk out of your homes and your garages and whatever, but also how to get it out of your life. Your life comes back to two things: what's in your heart and what's in your mind. This guy, a stranger to me, just said, "How do I get the junk out of here?" So I want to talk about that for a minute: how to get the junk out of your mind.

Number one, make sure what's in your mind is true. Make sure you've got true facts and true things going on in your head as much as possible. It is harder and harder with AI and how people can fake you out on the internet. It's harder and harder to make sure you're looking at something that's legitimately accurate and true. But I guess point number one would be seek for the truth. If two plus two is four, and in your mind you think it's five, you're going to have a problem with mathematics for a while. So make sure you get the truth up there so that you're focused on correct stuff.

Second, recognize you can't control the future. You can steer yourself in a certain direction, like, "I'm going to major in architecture in college, and then I'm going to be an architect later on." Okay, you can do that. Or you can go to medical school and then become a doctor, right? You can control the direction you're heading, but you can't control 100 percent what is going to happen in the future.

The only thing you can control 100 percent is what you're about to do next. Even then, that's not 100 percent true, come to think of it, because if you're driving down the road and you're saying to yourself, "I'm going to take a bite of this donut," and then some guy hits you broadside in an intersection, guess what? What you were about to do next just changed, right?

So technically, you can't even control 100 percent what you're about to do next, but the point is to focus on the next thing you're going to do and give that your best shot possible.

This has applications in sports. I'm thinking of golf particularly, where some of these championship golfers won't look at the leaderboard on the golf course because they don't want to get sidetracked from what their next task is. Their next task is really simple: the next shot. All you're doing as a pro golfer or amateur golfer is focusing on shot after shot after shot, one shot at a time, and playing the best shot you can, given where your ball is lying, where the green is, and where the bunkers and other things are.

All you can do is focus on your next shot. If you're playing in the U.S. Open or the Masters and you start focusing on all the media attention that's there, Augusta National Golf Club, and all this awesome stuff, you've just taken your mind off the task at hand, which means you're probably not going to play your best shot.

If you keep your mind focused on, "My next shot," that's all it is, shot after shot after shot. The score and where you end up on the leaderboard, or not on the leaderboard, take care of themselves automatically. It doesn't matter what the tournament is or what city it's in. All you're trying to do is focus on the next shot and make that shot the best shot you can make. Then everything else falls into place.

So I put down here that you can only control what you're about to do next. Focus on that. Make it successful. Do your job there, and don't worry so much about the future because you're doing your best in the meantime to make some good things happen.

In my business, I like to think of it as, "What can I do today from a marketing standpoint that makes me a better business?" I don't have to take eight hours out of my day to focus on marketing. I just need to take five or 10 minutes to stop by the post office to pick up the stamps for the postcards for the promotion that I'm doing right now, for example, for a 250-year celebration. We're doing half a truckload of junk removal, which is normally $395, for $250. That's a great deal. So I'm going to mail out 10 or 20 postcards to apartment complexes or to the managers of real estate offices in the area and let them know about our special. Simple, right?

So those kinds of things - just stay focused on the task at hand. Don't let your mind wander off into what's going to happen next, what the ramifications are, what am I going to do about this, or the fears that generally come along with it in your mind.

One of our church leaders one time said there are really only two things that can be in your mind, and they cannot coexist there at the same time. One is faith, where you believe good things are going to happen, and one is doubt, where you believe bad things are going to happen. Those two forces can't stay in your mind simultaneously. One is going to chase the other one out. So the question is, which one do you want in your mind?

We had another church leader who said, "If you're going to doubt something, doubt your doubt. Don't doubt your faith. Doubt your doubts." That's a good statement in itself, too.

But the idea of how to get the junk out of your mind, a question asked to me last week by a clerk at the 7-Eleven store, is to just focus on the next task at hand. Do your best job with that, then move on to the next thing and keep going from there.

Another trick I use a lot is that I'm a big believer in rewarding yourself. People need to reward themselves because everybody else is too busy doing other stuff to think about rewarding you, right? They'll think about you on your birthday. Some of them will think about you on your anniversary. They'll think about you on Christmas. They'll think about you on Father's Day. They're not going to think about you on Thursday, July 2nd, when there's no reason to.

But if you go out today and survive 102-degree heat - I did this a couple of days ago. I went out and had one of these days, and I worked on my own because I was clearing out a house an hour or so away from here. I didn't want to pay to have somebody else ride in the truck with me to come and help me out, and then pay him to ride back. I just thought, "I'm going to go by myself and do this."

At the end of that day, because I made it through the day, got a truckload of stuff loaded up, and made progress on the job, one of my things is to go to Chick-fil-A and get one of their peach shakes. That's my reward. I love doing that in the summer, and I will just go and say, "You know what? You did a great job today. Go get yourself a shake." The little thing costs about five bucks or something. That's my reward. I take that thing home, drink it, feel fabulous, pat myself on the back, and go, "Yep, you deserve that."

I think that's a very healthy thing to do, and I think it doesn't get done enough in life. Counterbalance that with how many times we get down on ourselves for something stupid we did or a mistake we made. How many times have you said to yourself, "You were so stupid. You were so dumb," like I do many, many times?

How many times have you said to yourself, "You're one of the coolest guys on the planet. Let's go get you a piece of cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory to celebrate it"? That doesn't happen. It happens in my life. It doesn't happen, I think, in most other lives. You have the right to reward yourself for a job well done.

Some days you just try to make it through the day. You wake up in the morning and you've got six or seven major things on your mind, and you're going, "I don't know how I'm going to make it through the day." But you do. At 9 o'clock at night, you're going home to have something to eat, rest, or whatever you're going to do. Stop and reward yourself with something that puts a smile on your face, like a peach shake from Chick-fil-A. That does it for me. After a crappy day, give me a peach shake from Chick-fil-A and I'm feeling fabulous.

So don't overlook the right you have and the goodness that comes from rewarding yourself. You have the right to be happy. I believe that whether you're single, married, or whatever, you have the right to be happy, and you can control some of that happiness yourself by doing some of the stuff we talked about.

I put down here that a couple of years ago, July 4th was on a Thursday. On that day, when we recorded the show, I went down to Washington, D.C., on the Mall and randomly walked up to people and just said, "Is there anything you want to say about the Fourth of July?" I got people from around the world. I got fathers who had traveled from Indiana to D.C. with their sons to celebrate the Fourth of July. I got people who hated Europeans and didn't want them coming to America anymore. I mean, I got all kinds of different opinions.

Go back to the podcast on The Junk Refund Show from a couple of years ago. Look for the one recorded on July 4th and listen to what random people said about our country from Washington, D.C., when I walked up to them while taping the show live and asked them if there was anything they wanted to say about the Fourth of July. You'll get a good cross-section of what people are like, right? It's still one of the funnest shows I've ever done. It was July 4th, I think, from two years ago.

I also want to do a shout-out because of our 250th birthday in two days. We're still in the best country in the world. Regardless of when you were alive on the planet, there's always something to be concerned about. Always. Warren Buffett says that every time you have a presidential election, regardless of who wins, half the country is ticked off, right? That's the fact. But still, regardless, we still have the best country in the world, and that should be celebrated.

Shout-out to America's World Cup soccer team. They defeated Bosnia-Herzegovina yesterday by a score of 2 to 0. I will tell you that I am not the world's biggest soccer fan. I Googled this: the average number of goals scored in a World Cup soccer match historically is 2.8 goals, just under three goals. They play for an hour and a half, so on average, you're going to watch the match for 30 minutes before you see a goal, right?

Compare that with shooting three-pointers in an NBA contest, where each team is scoring 100 points in two and a half hours. That's more my kind of sport. But I'm gaining an appreciation for the sport of soccer because I see tens of thousands of people around the world watching these matches. I'm saying to myself, "That many people can't be wrong. There is something to this sport that I haven't appreciated yet."

This year, I'm catching on to it. I will tell you, I am rapidly becoming a fan of the Mexican soccer team just because their fans are so excited about this team, especially when they played in the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City. I think it was last night or the night before, and they went on to win. I think it's the first time in their history that they've made it into the round of, I think, 16 now, or something that they're in. Maybe it's 32, but I think it's 16 they made it into.

Anyway, it's just so much fun to watch people get so into this sport. I have also come to appreciate the strategy that allows you to win this sport because you have to know where the other members of your team are on the field, what they're about to do next, and what's the most spectacular move, the most correct move, the most advantageous move you can make with that soccer ball among 10 other players on your team on the field at the same time.

I'm amazed at how fast that ball moves. I'm amazed at how fast these guys can redirect it when the ball is coming at them, really cruising through the air. So I've gained an appreciation for this. And yes, I too am becoming a FIFA World Cup soccer fan, and frankly, I'm kind of proud of myself.

So enjoy this World Cup. Enjoy the next match that the USA has on Monday night from Seattle, which should be a blast. My friend Robert, who has been at Deep Creek, will keep cold drinks on tap with lots of ice. If you're in the D.C. area, or any other place that's really hot, be safe. Enjoy this wonderful country that we have.

Look for the good that's out there, and keep faith in your mind running the game, not doubts. I think you'll have a happier, more successful life filled with things you accomplished because you believed you could. That's the spirit of America, in my opinion.

Happy Fourth of July, everybody. Thanks to the BBS Radio Network for all that they do. Have a great Fourth of July. We'll see you next week on The Junk Refund Show, Thursdays at 3 o'clock Eastern. Take care.

Speaker 1: 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.