Making Trash Fun (Again!) with CanMonkey CEO, Alex Shapiro

Alex Husner  
Welcome to Alex & Annie: The real Women of Vacation Rentals. I'm Alex, 

Annie Holcombe  
and I'm Annie, 

Alex Husner  
and we are joined today with Alex Shapiro. We've got another Alex on the show, who is the CEO and co founder of Can Monkey. And it's so great to have you back again, Alex.

Alex Shapiro  
Thank you. I love being on the show. I love talking to you guys. We talk all day long. So I'm really excited to dive into this this podcast in the new year, new year 2025, and in uh, in chat

Alex Husner  
might be a Joe Rogan style episode here.

Annie Holcombe  
This might be completely off the cuff, but before we get started, why don't you give everybody just a little background of who Alex is and how can monkey came to be absolutely

Alex Shapiro  
so I'm Alexander Shapiro. I'm the CEO co founder of cam monkey. I started this idea with business partner of a partner of mine in Scottsdale, Arizona in 2018 just going after homeowners. Little do we know there's a whole industry of vacation rental homeowners that had trash issues, that were looking for solution, and the pandemic happened, and it really helped us kind of see that more clear, and also helped us expand now into 28 states, over 350 cities servicing over 5000 properties for candy curb services.

Alex Husner  
That's exciting. Yeah, yeah, and very succinct things here, because there's so much that you guys do. And personally, for me, in the last six months since I came on as a advisory board member for can monkey, I've gotten to see kind of behind the scenes more of what you do, and I think just what you guys have built is amazing, and you're kind of in your own lane. I mean, there's some competition out there, but it's not like, you know, vacation rental companies, where we've got tons and tons of competition amongst each other, but I think how you've grown. It has been quite interesting, and we're excited to dive into more of the story. But one of the things that I wanted to ask about, just because I get this this question quite a bit, is if a company is already there, they're handling trash one way or another, right? Like they're either they've got their maintenance team going out, they've got, you know, field workers that are taking care of the cans. But how does can monkey come in and solve a problem or save them money on the way that you're servicing that same need, absolutely.

Alex Shapiro  
And so you know when, when people do ask us about competition, I say, you know, our competition is whoever's doing it right now. It's not necessarily another company. It's whoever their system or solution is internally that is either working for them 50% of the time or 75% of time. They don't know, but that's our competition. Is whatever they're doing internally, because now what we're doing is we're really showing them a new solution, which is essentially just taking the trash cans to the curb day before pickup and then returning them. But we're giving them now a documented cost, which maybe they didn't have before. So now if they're having 10 properties, sign up at $50 a month and they'll get $500 that's $6,000 a year. I never had to pay that before. But then when they really start breaking it down, and they're giving, you know, they're calling one 800 junk, you know, for $200 one pickup, and then they're, you know, getting one star reviews because the trash was full for the new guests coming on. Or they're giving back money to the guests, like, that's all money that is going toward trash they just don't see in their P and L, because they just never had it before. So with us, like, we really just asked some open ended questions, like, how are they currently doing it right now? What are their issues? And they basically give you all the answers. You know, they'll say, we're not doing it. My cleaners are doing it. If they do it, then no someone takes it out to the curb, no one's bringing it back. So I just listened to all that and say, Here, here's our solution. We're going to add your properties onto our existing routes, which we probably already have in that market, where we're already doing it operational. So we're just taking that proven concept that we have, adding their properties onto that route, and then now we give them our client dashboard. We call it trash currency, where we're giving you all the information on all your trash with their client dashboard. So now you have access to your photos, which a big thing is photo verification. People don't know if it's actually getting it done, if their cleaners are doing it, or the guests are doing it, they're just hoping and praying that they don't get a call from a neighbor or a city violation. And with us, though, we give you all that information. We're doing all of it every week, and putting it into your client dashboard, where it's there for you to see, or maybe a guest does call or neighbor calls, and now you have proof that the job was done, and you can show that, and it's just more of a little bit more evidence to just prove your point that it was done. And also peace of mind that when the guests are arriving to these properties, that the trash is empty and that these new guests are not seeing the old guests trash. So you

Annie Holcombe  
identified the problem. And, you know, like, literally, trash is something that everybody needs help with. How do you get in front of, you know, it's easy to get in front of the guest who's frustrated about having to take the trash out, but how do you get in front of either the individual owner that owns that rental or the management company to say, like, we can be removing this friction between you and your guest for you, what is that about?

Alex Shapiro  
Yeah, in the beginning, it was very hard, because we had, we were a bootstrap company. We had no brand recognition. No one even knew that this even service existed. So a lot of it was just individual contact, where I'm just reaching out to people, whether it's on Facebook, LinkedIn, Googling companies in certain areas, and just doing old school sales. We've evolved now to where we attended a lot of conferences. I. I do? I make sure we market or we post on social media once a day, at least, to where now the brand recognition is out there. So now it's a lot easier, because now people are just reaching out to us, because they now know that there is a company out there, whether it's they call it trash monkey or monkey can or can monkey, they understand the brand of the monkey and what we are doing in this industry. And a lot of people, they already at your point, Annie, they already have these problems, and they used to know there's a solution. So when they do hear about this, it's like a light bulb goes off, and then they reach out. And now, with being in over 300 cities, the chances of us being able to add a property on in one of these markets is very high, and we're able to add that on, whether it's a onesie twosie property or 100 properties, we can add them right onto our routes and start them as soon as the next week or the same day, but now it's really just being methodical on our marketing, how we're targeting them, and really going after like the low hanging fruit. And that's why the vacation rental industry for us was what I call the low hanging fruit, where I could go after maybe 100 individual homeowners, but maybe you only get five to sign up, but then I can go after one property manager and get 100 properties and be able to add those on. But as of right now, we're going after those onesie twosies to fill in the gaps of the properties that we already have in the routes, to make our routes a little bit more efficient and more effective. Yeah.

Alex Husner  
And I think that's what's so unique and special about your business model, though, is you have a market on both sides right, and it's like just perfecting that of getting the larger managers. That gives you an anchor within a market. But then you know that that process to get the individual homeowners to sign up to, I mean, it's, it's this, it's essentially the same process for the work that you're doing, but you're able to service the entire STR addressable market with your business, that not many, you know, the technology or service providers in our space can do that, but not even just that. I mean, HOAs and apartment complexes and, you know, there's so many different ways that you can, you know, skin the monkey here, so to speak. No,

Alex Shapiro  
it's so true. When you look at it like that, it's very overwhelming. It's like, where do you start at when you can go after all these different avenues? And that's why, really, the vacation rental is what we just kind of geared on to and honed into. But as of right now, you're exactly right going after this. Hoa, so it's 55 and older communities, the cities that have regulations in place right now about trash, all this is public record. I mean, you can go on to different cities and find this information to people who got violations, and I can send mailers to them. I can send a mailer to someone that maybe has a vacation rental, but maybe they're like, Hey, I actually missed my home as well. So you're right. I don't know. Really, I didn't know who I'm marketing to, but I don't because at the same time, I could send something to Annie, and Annie could be like, Hey, I don't need this service, but my parents do, and that's where we've gotten people that reached out to us, where they are paying for the service, but not for their own house, but for a family member. So after doing this now for almost seven years, we've seen a lot of different variables, a lot of different case studies of who actually needs our service. At first we just thought, you know, homeowners, but now we have it really geared into who is that homeowner, who is that avatar? And now we're starting the marketing effort, efforts after them as well.

Annie Holcombe  
I think last time you were on we talked about because it like sparked my my thought process, I was like, all the Margaritaville retirement communities that are being won by Alex. There's one in Hilton Head. There's one here in Panama City, and they've almost completely sold all the lots. And I think there's like 8000 lots there. My neighborhood gets gives us trash violations constantly. We get violated for, like, our being able to see our trash can, like all kinds of stuff. So it's just, you know, it is one of those things. There's just, like a tedious part of home ownership, whether it's you're using it as a rental, or you're using it as your first home. So it is a problem that everybody has. It seems to just keep growing. But I think one of the things, like, we've, we've kind of like touched on, like the monkey, and the monkey is the mascot. And I know I I had one point and found some crazy monkeys on Amazon and sent them to you, because I was like, just needed them in your office, right? But one of the things that I love about your brand and your marketing is how you've just really leaned into the humor of trash and how you know you it's it's trash talk, and it's fun. And so I just look forward to your posts every day. And so I wanted to, like, go back to that, like, what made you decide, or was it just sort of an organic thing that happened over time, that just the humor was the way you were going to speak and talk about your brand? So

Alex Shapiro  
coming into 2023 I knew that was my year of getting the brand awareness out there before 2023 the brand of can monkey was Alex Shapiro, and I didn't like that. I didn't like that. If we made a mistake, it was Alex, you didn't take my can of the curb. It's like, I don't even live there, like it wasn't me, you know, like I wanted, I really wanted, to become a brand. You know, we were going from that side hustle start up to turning into a business. And so 2023 I was like, No, it needs to stop being me talking about the business and and I need someone else to talk about the business. But I don't know who else could talk about. Could talk about the business. So I'm a very creative person, and I would see memes of other things on Instagram or Facebook about something completely different, and my brain would just instantly go to, oh, I could make it this. And so I would just start creating these screen work. Board these videos and just add my own little taglines in there and and start just pushing them out there. And then slowly but surely, just kind of kept doing it and, and they got a lot of momentum. And again, like, trash is not sexy. I don't know how else to talk about, like, trash cans that we got really lucky about is that trash happens every week, no matter, no matter if you need it or not. So my thing is, okay. How do I stay top of mind, like, top of mind advertising? How do I just stay top of mind so that maybe you don't need it now, but maybe you need it in three weeks, three you know, three months, three years. So my thought process is, okay, be consistent with your marketing, and just put out there that whatever it is about trash, or whatever I can do about trash, every time I see trash cans I will, how can I make this something about can monkey to where, if I put it out there enough times, to what your point is right now, eventually you just start kind of seeing can monkey when you see trash cans down. And just recently, Scott the heart of the hospitality podcast, he had put out a post about missing trash day and how my advertising marketing really helped them think about kam monkey right away. So it's it's crazy to me at the same time that I feel like, why am I doing these videos? These are so silly, like no one even likes these. But then you just keep doing them, and you go these conferences, and people tell you that they love it, and people sign up and they say, I saw it on Instagram and I love that video. And you just get enough that you just know that, just because maybe someone doesn't sign up, or you don't hear anything about it, you just gotta keep doing it, just like working out. Just gotta stay consistent at it, build up, you know, muscle memory. And now doing this almost like over a year. Now, I don't miss a day of posting. Before it was hard to post. But now for business, I can post every day. I might not post about my kids and my wife, but every day I'm posting about my business, because now I know that if I do it enough times that it's getting out there. And now when I'm sitting back and seeing all these orders come in, whether it's onesie Tuesdays, I know we're not doing marketing, really. The marketing is from conferences. The marketing is from social media, and I'm doing the social media. So it's like, you know, Alex knows this from our last advisory board, but you know, we're looking at some of our numbers in the business, and our cost of acquisition is extremely low, but that's not sustainable, but it's extremely low because I'm posting so much, getting the name out there. So that's not like you can't do that forever, but as of right now, it's helped our business. And being a bootstrap, small company, I just have this mentality that I just had to get the name out there, even if you know about I just want you to stay top of mind, because one day you're going to need that trash.

Annie Holcombe  
You're doing a phenomenal job. And I have to say, like, I have to admit, like, when I go through, like, my tick tock or my Instagram, and ever I see anything about a trash can, I like, scroll back and I look at him, like, Can Alex uses. And I know I've sent you a couple of them. I don't know if I'm sure I'm not the only person that does that, but it's like, I to me, like, humor is the best way to connect with me. So I or pets, but yeah, so you're doing a phenomenal job with that, so I appreciate it. Yeah. And

Alex Shapiro  
that's a good point, because that's what happens now, is that people send me these videos and like, Hey, can you use this? I'm like, Yeah, and so I love it, like, I love that now that that's what the not like, what the thought process is, and and people will send me ideas, and I'll put my own little spin on it, and like, Oh, I love that. So it's cool that now I've gotten the industry into this, you know, marketing with me to where even if they see something that I didn't create, they still think about cam monkey. And that's a good feeling to be in.

Annie Holcombe  
Yep, you built an army of people supporting you. So that's, yeah, thank

Alex Husner  
you. Yeah, they they associate your name with trash and

Annie Holcombe  
everybody. But

Alex Husner  
it is true. And I know you and I prescribe and watch and read and listen to a lot of the same type of, like, entrepreneurial business coaches and the grant cardones of the world and stuff. And that's like, just kind of the core tenet of like you have to be talking about what you do. You can never be you can never show too much when you can never be out there too much. Like your goal is to be to be visible, and for them to associate your name with the trash. And someday, if you're ever not involved in this business, they're still going to associate with them, because you make it, you made an imprint, an imprint on them. But I think too, what's, what's really interesting about your journey was that when you first started this, you didn't know, and I don't think anybody did yet, but like, I mean, what was going to happen with COVID, and, I mean, all the regulations in cities and can monkey is providing an answer to a lot of these municipalities that are dealing, you know, with short term rental bans. And so it's like, you've kind of come in, you've solved a problem, but then you're also you're also following it up with an answer for for these different areas, but maybe just tell us a little bit about, like, what you've done with, maybe rent responsibly and some of those other groups. Yeah, you

Alex Shapiro  
know, it's funny, because people usually start a business for a specific reason, or maybe they're going into knowing that, like, this is something that they're going to solve, and camel key was a complete opposite. But that's why sometimes, like when you hear these different business owners talk about just stay consistent and keep you know, stay true to your mission things online for you. And that's exactly I didn't I didn't start this to help with city regulations and trash ordinances, but that's now the play that we're going after, and that's what. Itself. And what better like opportunity to already have a company that's helping with that, and then now just kind of pivoting into that situation is the same thing with us just going after homeowners in Scottsdale, Arizona, and then, unbeknownst to us, getting some vacation rental clients, and then realizing, Oh wow, they're all over the country like so we just got really lucky doing this. And so while we did that, we found these other companies like gov OS and rent responsibly and and these, these organ, VR nation, and VR Ma, like all these different, you know, industry, corporations or associations that are helping our industry stay compliant and get the right information out there. So, you know, at first it was just cam monkey was the only one. And now there's other companies that are doing it. And I love it, you know, you know, competition is good. It's good for, you know, any business, but at the same time, it's good for our industry. You know, if there's if I can't help someone and someone else can, then awesome. It's better for the industry. It's better that we're all following the same rules and guidelines and making sure that we keep a good name of our industry and not, you know, bad things happening, and that we don't want that. So there's more vendors out there that are helping with making the streamlined process better. I see it as a good thing. And so like, here comes rent responsibly, helping in their aspect of making sure that these different cities are following the rules and people know about it, and then the homeowners that are using their properties for different revenue generating assets or staying protected. Like, that's huge. And so it's awesome that people are out there finding their own little niche and making sure that our industry is moving in the right direction. And I'm just blessed that our business is one of those industries or one of those vendors in our industry that can help leave a good imprint and help people stay compliant and keep their asset and help them create more revenue. When we talked to go OS, they were showing us an example in Sedona where one neighbor next to a property had called like 200 times about trash issues, and it wasn't even a trash issue. It's just that the neighbor of the the neighbor was complained about the property next time, which, which, uh, which was an Airbnb. And in Sedona, they have these regulations, these trash ordinances, that the can has to be back by 6pm so this neighbor would just call it 601602603604 just to, like, make a point. So, like, but the city, the city, doesn't see that. They see, oh my gosh, there's a lot of trash issues. But it's not a trash issue. It's a Mitch issue. The the neighbor next door, who's calling all these, you know, this one property, so now if that neighbor of the Airbnb property had can monkey to go out there, take the can back in a timely neighborhood, had nothing to complain about. But what we found now is that these neighbors that are maybe not happy that the property next time is the Airbnb, the easiest thing for them to complain about is the trash, whether it's piling up on the side of the house, whether it's staying at the curb two days before or two days after, whatever it is. That's the easiest thing that they can call and complain and get that you know person in trouble, and then with can monkey with the timestamp, photos and the geolocation of the all that information we're giving that all to you to where. Now, if this neighbor does call, it's more like a civil case. Now you have a little bit more information on your side and some proof that, where you can say, hey, actually the can was back at four o'clock, and we've gotten tons of clients out of these erroneous fines, because it's just He Said, She Said, and it's just having photos. Not many people have photos of their trash cans at the curb and back.

Annie Holcombe  
That's really, that's really smart, and I and it was funny, because I think you shared one, or you shared a story that a similar situation where you had had somebody who was saying, like, the trash has never taken out. Trash never taken out. You're like, your team had those pictures to fall back, and I never would have thought of that as an issue. But you know, you know you're in your own home, and you do have people that they just sit around and they're just looking for something to complain about. So it's nice to be able to have that, because I think that that's where a lot of these regulations sort of fall into place. Is to your point, is that the government, the municipality, is seeing, we had 200 calls, and they're not looking to the root of, like, what's the cause of this call? Well, it's just this one guy who's just triggering me, and has to call all the time, and they mass it into, like, all the Airbnbs have all these big problems, and therefore this guy shows up at a meeting, and then they're like, you're right. We have to, like, regulate everybody now.

Alex Husner  
So, I mean, I was like, five people, I

Annie Holcombe  
think it's just, it's just, it's super helpful, and it's unfortunate that we're in a state of society that we have to, like, double dot eyes and double cross T's to make sure that you're taken care of. But I think that that's a smart, smart tool to offer. And you're to your earlier point about, like, the other competition, or Alex and I talk about the co opetition, which is, I think, you know, someone in the industry coined that phrase, but I think the competition breeds innovation, and so it's just there's just more creative ways to be able to service not only the guests but the managers. And let's face it, I mean, being a property manager is a really hard role to be in. That's why so many of us sort of left and went out onto the other side to be more supportive of it, because we know and so what you're doing is removing some just giant piece of things that it's easy to forget about from day to

Alex Shapiro  
day. You're 1,000,000% right. And those photos, you know, people you know, say that's like, awesome you created. That those photos really for us. You know, when I started expanding can monkey and I wasn't the can runner anymore, I had to make sure that some. One else was actually doing it. So the only way I knew someone else was doing it was the photos. So that photos were really just for me to know that the job was getting done. And I realized later, like, hey, my clients would probably like this too, and that's where the whole client dashboard came in play. So sometimes, like, you build things just for ourselves, but then, like, I am the client as well. Like I have cam monkey service, like I would like to know what's going on. So it's nice to be able to implement our own things that maybe I like, but also I know if I like it, everyone else would like it, and that's where now, like, that's how this whole photo thing came in play. It wasn't like I need to prove it to anyone. Is really I need to make sure the job was over myself.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, exactly, yeah. And I think, to me, just even how you get the staff to be able to do this? So, I mean, it's essentially a, like a gig economy type role, right? So, I mean, very similar to, like a an Uber or Lyft, where these drivers, they they have the opportunity to come on, and they did, they typically stay with a route, or are they picking up different routes? Maybe speak to that a little bit. What

Alex Shapiro  
we found, again, like the vacation rental industry, in the gig economy, I had no idea either of those even existed. And the gig economy is this economy where, I mean, think about gigs, you know, where people used to play in bands, that it's just a gig, right? Like you have a full time job, you do something on the side. That's what, you know, a bartender could be a gig. So there's all these gigs that were already existing, and now in our generation of like, do it for me apps and the instacarts, like there, it's just, it's now huge, and so we just fit in that economy of this, you know, do it for me, kind of service where. But what's different with us, with Uber, is that with your driving for Uber, you know, maybe you're going to airport, hoping to get a good ride to someone's house and getting another good ride. Like, you don't really know what you're making that day with can monkey. We're more of a consistent persistency. So you know how many routes you're running, because you accept the routes. You know how much you're gonna make before you take that route. And then once you do that route, if you like it, you want it again. So we're, you know, we're all creatures of habit, so we really want the same can run around the same route because they understand little idiosyncrasies of each property at the end of the day, like people say, like, oh, it's really easy to take trash cans to curb, maybe at your house when you're when you know about it, but if you're going to a property for the first time, you don't know how that gate opens, or you don't know you have to lift it up. And those little things they get to figure out. So once a camera goes that property, once or twice, it gets a lot easier for them, and they really love doing it, because now they know that they're getting paid for a route that takes them an hour and 30 minutes, but they're getting it done in an hour because they're beating the system now, because they know it's not that long, we're giving them more time than they actually need. And so they actually want those routes. And event again, they'll take that route and say, Do you have another one? And so some of them really will start building on this. And it's not a full time thing, like we really try to sell them out of it. It's like, Hey, you're looking for eight hours a day. This is not for you. You know, you're looking, you're looking for five days a week. This is not for you, like we're, you know, some people are, you know, are putting the in their schedule where they like, hey, I want to route Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. That's it. Give me two to three hours. And our average can runner across the country is making $150 a week. So roughly what $600 a month is, on average. Some are making a lot more than that. Some are making a little bit less. But on average, our can runners making 150 a week. So it's not like again, it's just implement. It's just supplementing the income of they already have. And we've had can runners have been one of those for three and a half, four years. The camera, the individuals that are in our our office right now, or HQ that are running our whole market, across the whole country. They were all can runners. They were can runners that I said they were amazing at do you want to come to the office, and they have an office job now? And they said yes, and they came in, and now they're helping us manage the whole country. So I have three individuals that were all can runners that are now in our office, that are helping managing 1000s of routes every week across the country, making sure they're getting done. And who else would know better than a can runner already? And so it's been awesome to be able to hire within bring them into an opportunity. They love it, and then we love it as well, because they understand it better than I do, and that's what's cool now, but the business is that I know the business really well, but there's people on my team that know the business better than I do, and that's kind of what I'm seeing now as being the CEO, is that that's what you want. You want you want to surround yourself with people who know more than you, and then are you know that care, obviously, and and they do care, because they were can runners, and they did a great job. So it's been really easy to kind of pull from that. And then on the can runner side, they're already on the Apple store, like we're on the Apple Store on Google Play right now our app is so they're already on the app looking for other gigs, and they come across can monkey like I can take trash cans to the curb. I've been doing that my whole life, and you're paying me for sign me up. And so that's it's an easy sell. And what we thought would be the hardest thing would be, who's going to want to do it? That's the easiest thing. It once they're on our system, they want more properties. They want to do this more often, because it's easy money. They know exactly what they're going to make. They know exactly what they do. They don't have anywhere in their car. They don't have to go for restaurants. They don't have food in their car. They don't to go to Target and pick up like whatever other these other gigs are. They don't have to do any of that stuff. They just have a route to take the properties. Cans the curtain back, rinse and repeat every week. Right? And that's it. So wanted to

Annie Holcombe  
ask you, like, logistics, like, so I assume that the idea is that you go into a market and you're looking to get mass territory, but when you're assigning people like, I mean, obviously you start out, I mean, is there a minimum number of can runs that you have to have to be able to be in a market? And then for a can runner, like, what is their typical territory look like? Is it covering 20 miles, 10 miles, three blocks? I mean, I'm assuming it probably varies by destination. But how does that work out? You know, it's funny,

Alex Shapiro  
because in the beginning we were just throwing like spaghetti at the wall and just trying to see what would stick, and giving them four hour routes and five hour routes, and then we realized they would drop off after an hour and a half. So like, after like, six years of doing this, we figured out like a good algorithm and a good like, you know, like distance and stops, and so we have it down now where, like, a route, would be anywhere from 15 to 20 stops that they can complete within an hour, an hour and a half. Now that's ideally, you know, if we get into a new market, it might not be that, per se, but, you know, but we can build into it. And now we're really saying no to certain, you know, markets. If it doesn't make sense, we're not going to do it. And then we'll figure out, you know, that way, but anywhere from 10 to 15 properties that we can do in an hour. If we can make that work, we'll start a route. Yeah. I

Alex Husner  
mean, gosh, the logistics and the operations behind the technology is fascinating too, because it's like, I'm sure in different markets. I mean, they have different trash days too. So it's like aligning that matrix of, like, where the location is, like, if it's going to be close for the driver to be able to get there, and how long it takes them to service them. Like, it's just, it's fascinating. Would you say that you are more of a technology or an operations company, or is that kind of a hybrid of both? Right?

Alex Shapiro  
Now, we're a logistical technology company, and in the beginning we were just a candid curb service provider, but now we are a logistical technology company, and that's what we're doing. We build routes around the country. We're adding properties onto these routes, and once the route is built, Annie, it's the same, right? So it's it's only hard in the beginning, and then it's only hard because we maybe don't have enough properties. But then now it's like, we add those properties on. It just gets easier for the can runner and gets easier for our systems as well. So we have our profit margins like, we know what we're making. Now, in the beginning, we didn't know any of that, but now we can figure it out. And now, like, if we're looking at like, we can look at our 20 worst markets, or, you know, routes. And then now if we add 246, properties to those routes, we're doing better. Now it's like more gamified. In the beginning, it was just, we're just hoping that we could add a property on next to another property, or we're just hope. It was just all hope and strategy and or hope and praying. And now it's more strategy being a little bit more methodical.

Annie Holcombe  
Did your do your can runners do? They help you on the business development side? So like, if they're doing a route and they see new properties, come on for rental, or they are they making contact? Do they just send that back to your office and say, like, hey, reach out. Or how does that work out for you? Yeah,

Alex Shapiro  
I mean, sometimes just kind of by accident, you know, if you're a neighbor and you see someone stopping at your neighbor's house and taking the can the curb and taking the photo and then leaving. And you see that, you know, four times a week, 16 times a month. Eventually, sometimes people just go up and ask them questions. So sometimes it just happens, you know, organically, where someone will go up to them, Hey, what are you doing? Oh, I work for can monkey, and we'll know. Now, if we add a property on that who the can runner is, some can runners will ask that they can be a little bit more active, and we give them different like, referral codes, and they'll go out in their area and help us get new, you know, properties, because we basically have like, a workforce with us, you know, like, but sometimes they don't want to do anything else. They just want to take the cans of curb and that's it. They don't want to sell it. That's all they want to do. Sometimes we've asked them here locally, do you want to come to office and work with us in the house? Like, no, I just want to take cancer curve. So not, not everyone wants to do extra things, and that's what I had to realize. I can't put a square peg in a round hole. Sometimes you just got to figure out, like, what works best and then go that route. But you know, it's when we can figure out who they are, and if they want to do extra things, then we're definitely going to do it.

Alex Husner  
And you guys have expanded too into other things besides the Canada curb too, right? So you've got the can cleaning and some of the home services. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that?

Alex Shapiro  
Yeah, so we, you know, our clients will tell us what they want. And so what they're looking for, we found out, is they're looking for can cleaning, they're looking for on demand trash removal. They're looking for a lot of things that are helping outside the exterior of the property. And so if we're able to, I mean, and now we build out the on demand trash removal, which is in every market we have, and the can cleaning, which is every market that we have, and we now just add these other services on once they sign up for Canada curb. So my brain, my bread and butter is, can occur. I don't really try to sell anything else. It's that. But once you're in our system, and we have you on our routes, and I have the property address, now it's like, okay, you want to go on the you know, can clean? Do you want to go on demand? Because now we can really optimize that, because we already have those going on. And

Alex Husner  
I mean, grill, certain grill cleaning, all that stuff, and then

Alex Shapiro  
grill, and then grill cleaning, and then we have pool monkey here in Arizona. So there have been things that have been brought to us that if it makes sense, within right amount properties, we'll do it. Our clients will tell us what they want and what they need, and and again, it's, I take the same concepts of cam monkey. It's like. A client had 50 properties that they're doing barbecue cleans. They said, Hey, this is what our budget is. Every month. Can do it for less than that. Let me see what I can do. You know? Hey, have all these can runners. Hey, can run. You know, who wants to do barbecue cleans, who can do barbecue cleans, who hasn't? And then you kind of figure out who would like to do some extra work. And you just kind of mirror those together, and you just have a great partnership with our can runners, because now it's like we are a logistical, logistical technology company with all these routes. And if I have a camera that finishes a route but then has five more stops after they clean some barbecues, they can just add it on, and they're making some extra, extra money. And for us, it helps out as well, because he's already there on site.

Annie Holcombe  
So I wanted to share some hot off the press news that just came in my email, congratulations to can monkey for being recognized by the City of Phoenix as the fastest growing startup in Arizona. Yeah,

Alex Shapiro  
that was Thank you. Well, that was from the Inc 5000 and we, we were the region southwest, regional number 21 in our Southwest Region, number three in Arizona, for fastest growing company. Thank you.

Annie Holcombe  
Email, and I was like, well, we're talking to him right now. Well, you're gonna

Alex Shapiro  
get you're gonna get another one. We just got invited to the CES in Vegas. Which

Annie Holcombe  
one is, yeah, but it's totally got invited to go hang out with can monkey in Vegas,

Alex Husner  
because I don't have it yet.

Alex Shapiro  
We'll get you on there. Probably

Annie Holcombe  
Alex, so many emails, and

Alex Shapiro  
we'll get you on there. But yeah, it was cool. The mayor of Phoenix actually, um, they reached out to us and said, Would you be a guest of ours to attend their booth at the CES, representing Arizona and the startup company? So it's really cool to see how we evolved from a Canada curb service provider to an actual technology company to where now we're representing Arizona as one of their tech companies, our companies here in the Tempe area providing good just not in our market of providing jobs and helping individuals with their candy curb services. But across the country,

Annie Holcombe  
well, CES, I mean, you can't get asked to be at a bigger show. I mean, that's that's pretty incredible. So congratulations about that. And actually, on the technology side, I wanted to ask you, did you outsource the app, or did you have somebody that was on staff that was able to do that for you? We

Alex Shapiro  
got really lucky, one of my best friends, other best friends, older brother, literally left a job of 20 years building applications for Fortune 500 companies like famously, like the McDonald's Monopoly app and the safe subway. So he was he knows how to build apps. His first day of unemployment, we reached out and said, Hey, can you help us build an app? So we got really lucky with someone in house, in our state building an application from the ground up. And again, a lot of this just got really lucky in the connections we had. The timing of it. I had no idea how to build an app or anything, but, you know, my CTO does. And so we just got really lucky in the partnerships and the connections that we had that helped us get to where we're at right now.

Alex Husner  
Oh, that's incredible. It's very, very cool. Essentially, you can be in so many different parts of the industry. You can be in so many different parts of the country. But where are you focused for 2025 like, are you trying to grow more within those core markets that you're already in? Or you're trying to focus on maybe some, some markets that you really feel that you'd get a lot of traction in, maybe on the east coast. So this is what's

Alex Shapiro  
kind of confusing, not confusing. It's hard when you have 300 cities that you're growing and it's like, how do you focus on the ones that you know you want to grow in? And you know, honestly, I could just focus on Florida alone. Like Florida as a state is just so huge that we could just focus on Florida alone and get enough properties. What we're really doing is focusing on the markets that we have operational routes in, that we have a good footprint in, and adding onto those, because we know now from when we add five properties onto a route, our profit margins are going from maybe 40% to 60% so we'd rather focus on those and then increase all of our profit margins to where we're making more money on our dollar. And also we can keep our prices low for our clients and not have to raise prices, because we're, you know, being more efficient with those it's really, that's going to be really what we're focusing on right now is like, what are those maybe two three markets that we're focusing on? We're still going to say yes to everything that comes in that makes sense. But what are those two three markets that we're really putting our dollars into, our rural marketing efforts? Because, again, like our cost acquisition is very low, but we're not really doing real marketing now. Now we really do real marketing, and I call it real marketing, like a billboard or TV ad or radio ad or our mailers or something along those lines. What is that going to look like? We don't know yet, but we do know that we can increase our cost of acquisition a little bit higher, because our clients stay on for so long. And, you know, our numbers look great, but at the same time, like, what helps you get you here won't help you get you there. So this is the year that we really kind of figure out what's going to help us get to 10,000 properties, 15, 25,000, properties. And then once we figure that out in those two, three markets, then we double down on all the other ones. Do

Annie Holcombe  
you see yourself by any chance? And I just dumb thought that popped in my head, off the monkey, going into, like, larger trash removal, like for businesses, for like, small dumpsters, like those type of things that I'm just thinking like, all of a sudden that becomes, like the gorilla, you know, like it's, you've just moved into the, the next size up, of the of the the ape world. Like I don't, I mean, I don't know, just there's so many ways to market that. But is, do you think that there? You think that you think that? I mean, I feel like there's just too much growth, yeah, or too much opportunity in the cans. But do you see yourself maybe in some market, if somebody said, look, we've got small dumpsters, not looking at, like, obviously, these large ones, where you need a fleet of trucks to remove them, but smaller dumpsters, you know, like,

Alex Shapiro  
there's a book called by Gary Keller, called the one thing that I read when I was in real estate. He's the owner, one of the owners of Keller Williams, and he just talked about doing your one thing. And our one thing is to get in the cans as a curve. And that's why we have these other services that we do, like pull monkey and barbecue. I don't really like talking about them, per se, because I don't want to take away from the can monkey. And that's our one thing. And I know how I am if I start focusing on other things, and I, instead of 100% on can monkey, it goes to monkey, it goes to 50% or 33% so for us, it's just, I want to be the best at taking the cans of the curb and back. I don't want to be really good at multiple things. I want to be really good at that. But down, down the road, when we're at 1015, 20,000 properties on our platform, yeah, why not? As of right now, I feel like we still have a long way to go to where, you know, we want to be at. But what's really cool about what we're doing right now is that it's endless of what we want to add on. I mean, I could add on any service. I could do power washing, window cleaning, those, like you're saying, those dumpsters that we can, you know, take back and forth and try those. But if a client came to us and the right partner said, Hey, this is what we're looking for, maybe we would do it and try it out. But, you know, can occur camel key, that's our one thing right now that we just want to be experts at. And I think, again, in our industry, everyone is looking to outsource to those experts. And if the company is once outsourced to an expert of Canada, curb, I want them to be like, No, it came, okay, that's all they focus on, and that's why I want to partner with them, because that's what they're going to focus on, and that's what we need help with. We need help with. I don't want them to think, well, they're doing that and they're doing something else and they're doing something else. That's right now what I want to focus on, but now, like, 234, years on the road, when Al Shapiro is not, you know, nobody knows who I am anymore, because the brand's even bigger then. Yeah, we can definitely do some other things as well, if it, you know, behooves us.

Annie Holcombe  
Yeah, a lot of runway, a lot of runway, a lot of money.

Alex Husner  
Yeah, yeah, a ton of runway. Well, Alex, one thing that we always like to ask our guests as we're wrapping up is, what is one thing that you don't feel like is being talked about enough in the industry?

Alex Shapiro  
Oh, that's a good one. I think the one thing that we're not really talking a lot about, I mean, we are, we're not. Are these regulations? You know, even me, I'm talking about regulations. I don't really know what regulations you know. I know that they're coming. I don't know what states you know. You hear something about New York. You hear something about different cities that are having these regulations. I was in Denver last month, and I heard about all these regulations that Denver's had over the last I didn't even know that. And we have market their market there, I think doing a better job of actually, like labeling, what these, you know, issues are these regulations? Because it's a case study, right? If we're able to beat one in one market, then you can probably beat that in another market. But we just hear these regulations that it sounds a lot scarier than actually is. But again, I have no idea. And to your point, talking about rent responsibly and, and, you know, they just came up a couple years ago. You know, this is all fairly new about kind of, you know, making sure we protect our our market and our industry. But that would be something that I would, I would say, Yeah,

Alex Husner  
and I think it's, it's more about like, or right now, it just seems like everybody's kind of operating in a vacuum, in a bit that it's like, by the time you do find out it's too late, Dave and Alexa, they do an amazing job. And some of the other associations out there that are, you know, trying to get that more front and center. So people are thinking about it, but it's hard, because it's like, you know, a lot of people, unless it directly affects you, you're not going to pay attention to it. But the indirect effects of it of a neighboring city, if they see it work one place, then they might think, Okay, well, I'm going to go do that too, and then now it is going to affect you, because it happened where they were

Alex Shapiro  
1,000% that's the only thing that my point of view. Like, I just don't know what I hear about regulations. I hear about it, but I don't know what they really are, you know, and but maybe everyone does, except me. I think

Annie Holcombe  
it's, I think it's a moving target. I think that's the problem is trying to keep up to up to date on every market is, is just, it's just too much,

Alex Shapiro  
and that's where it'd be nice just kind of get that little bit more in tune. Well, Alex,

Alex Husner  
always a pleasure catching up with you and hearing what's going on. Of course, we're gonna wanna have you back later on in 2025 so we can hear an update on all the great things you guys accomplished this year. But in the meantime, if anybody's interested in hearing more about can monkey and getting in touch with you, what's the best way for them to reach out?

Alex Shapiro  
LinkedIn, Cap period. Alexander Shapiro, I'm on LinkedIn almost every day. Facebook, Instagram, alex@camelca.com is my email. I would love to help in any way, if anybody wants

Alex Husner  
to get in touch with Annie, and I you can go to alexandany podcast.com and until next time, thanks everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai