Making Dollars from Dookie: From Porta Pots to Throne Rooms ft David Sauers

[00:00:00] Entertainment Insights Don't Take Life Too Seriously Welcome to Brainsky Unleashed David, believe it or not, cares more about my shit than even I do. Because David is the co-founder of Royal Restrooms. Now, why would I get excited about that?

[00:00:46] Well, if you know me, you know that this is some seriously exciting crap, pun intended. So, David, welcome to the program. Thank you so much, Thomas. I appreciate it. And, you know, yeah, I collect people's crap for a living. Literally what we do.

[00:01:01] That is like, that is disgusting and yet a dream come true because, you know, many years ago, before I bought a business I shouldn't have gotten into in the dental field, I was looking at a company that could haul waste, right?

[00:01:16] I mean, you know, it could suck out of a septic peak. And I thought, man, you know, poop is, it doesn't matter whether there's a recession or not, people are going to excrete. And you have like an ideal business.

[00:01:30] And I think I read somewhere it's like a $1.5 billion industry. It's a huge industry now. You know, COVID really brought a lot of awareness. But really, I mean, it's one of the most private things we still do. I mean, we want to do it in comfort, anxiety-free.

[00:01:52] You know, you want something that is normal, that is, that doesn't create an obstruction, I guess you can say. You know, you want to do it for you. Hey, I mean, you want to be able to let it all out, right? Absolutely. You know, just a push.

[00:02:12] So you obviously must have started out somewhere. Did you start with just like a single porta pot or did you buy a couple of porta pot? Did somebody like Kanya and say, listen, you got to get into this business?

[00:02:24] Or did you always have a passion for cleaning crap? No, you know, it fell upon me. It was by complete accident. My girls were potty training and we went to a local festival here in Savannah. And the experience was just traumatic.

[00:02:45] It was really overwhelming for the girls to use a porta potty and explain to them what this was, how it worked. And it really made for an uncomfortable situation. And, you know, believe it or not, like you said, you know, I got peed on, which completely upset me.

[00:03:05] And so I saw it out of an alternative solution and went home and drew out kind of a restroom on a trailer. And it wasn't for about a year, but I took it to my business partner, Robert Glissner.

[00:03:21] And he was really the catalyst that jumped started the business. He was like, let's do this. This is a great idea. There is definitely a need. And so we built a couple restroom trailers and just, you know, pitched it out to our friends

[00:03:35] for oyster roast and Super Bowl parties and weddings. And before you knew it, you know, everybody wanted one. You had to have it. I mean, listen, I have in my past, I have unloaded in nicer portable restrooms,

[00:03:55] trailers with a sink and a toilet and a little bit more privacy and cleanliness and all that. And I mean, you know, if I'm going to be somewhere out in public and a regular conventional crapper is not available. I'm having fun with this. I'm just telling you.

[00:04:10] And, you know, to me what you have is like the next best thing. And so, you know, as I was doing my homework and realizing just who you were and what you did,

[00:04:20] you are not simply dropping off porta pots for people to, you know, do their business in. You are delivering throne rooms for people to really unwind, let it all go and have a clean, more comfortable experience. God bless you for that. I mean, that is a great idea.

[00:04:40] Hey, you know, like I said earlier, we all like to be comfortable. We all like to go somewhere nice. And the fact of the matter is, is that all too many times, a bit planners, you know, they put on this festival.

[00:04:53] They've got this big push to get everybody there. And, you know, if you don't complete it, you know, a restroom is really a main focus point and focal point for a lot of people.

[00:05:06] And if it's not up to the standard, people will leave, you know, nobody wants to go to the restroom that is that's not clean, that is not functioning. So, you know, when you don't have that alternative and you use a traditional porta potty, you know, quite simply,

[00:05:25] people are just, you know, they're they're unfulfilled. They're not they're not satisfied with with that alternative. They want something more. They demand something more. And, you know, when you put all that effort into putting on an event, doing everything that's done, you want to keep people there.

[00:05:45] You want to keep people happy. You don't want it to be, you know, tarnished by, you know, some poop. By better. Yeah, I mean, look, you're not wrong. You know, let's just think for a moment.

[00:05:59] I want every one of my audience because I'm just this disgusting freak and decide I want to just do this to you.

[00:06:04] I want you to just close your eyes for a moment and just think about what you see when you walk into a conventional blue or green porta pot.

[00:06:12] I mean, the first thing you're going to do is you naturally look down and you are now looking down at a tank of blue water completely marred with everyone else's artwork. And that is artwork that nobody wants to look at for your product. Do you have that experience?

[00:06:28] Do you walk into that? No, absolutely not. You know, we do not have any kind of mounting, you know, TP there in the bottom of our of our tanks, you know, we have real functioning. Flushing toilets, you know.

[00:06:43] So when you sit down, you sit down on, well, sit down on a throne. You sit down on something that that's normal that, you know, you can sit there for a second if you need to pull out your phone, you can pull out your phone.

[00:06:55] You can do your business and go about your day. Wash your hands, clean up after yourself, check your hair, look at your makeup, walk out the door like that.

[00:07:05] Like the like, like the the current front runner in the election, former president, you can literally go to your facility and poop tweet in privacy and comfort. Again, these are all just excellent features to your and benefits to your product. So let's get into that for a second.

[00:07:25] Your franchise, right? So how would people get involved? And are you do you generally look for certain regions, certain markets? What do you look for as far as a franchisee to say, I think you're a really good fit for our shit? You know, that's a great question.

[00:07:42] You know, I think, you know, we're very fortunate and blessed. We don't have a huge sales team. We don't really go out and market our franchise to sell. But I mean, it's an absolute credit to all of our business owners.

[00:07:55] The majority of requests that we get are already in territories. I would say probably 85 percent of our franchise requests are from someone's done a great job in their area and they want to own the business.

[00:08:10] They want to do this business because it's made such an impression on them. So a large part of birds leads have come from, you know, our areas that we've serviced. And we really like to branch out a little bit more.

[00:08:25] And we need to be up in the northeast is where we're, you know, we've really need to focus on. Interesting. I happen to live in the northeast. Now are the people that you mainly franchise with are these current Port-a-Potty and poop hauling providers?

[00:08:45] Or do you generally get people off the street who go, you know what, I crap in my life and I'd like to remove other people's crap? Well, no, none of our operators have any prior experience in this annotation business.

[00:08:59] Most all of our people are, you know, their startups are entrepreneurs. They've seen a great idea. They want to do something a little bit different. This has got a really good work life balance.

[00:09:09] So, you know, as much as you put into it as much as you're going to get out of it, you know, we do a lot of lead generation through the website and.

[00:09:21] And proposals from a marketing and brand awareness side, but really it's the boots on the ground and who's going to go out there and find the business and talk to people.

[00:09:32] You know, we're very community based and community oriented and we're looking for people that want to have an impact in their community and give back to that community that provides for them.

[00:09:46] We each of our franchise offices are required to do an in kind donation to area nonprofits and of $25,000 each so that we can help the buddy walks the leukemia foundation. The, you know, the March of Dimes, we want people to be involved in their community and give back.

[00:10:09] So that's really one of the first steps is we want people who are involved in the community and want to leave a legacy, you know, want to be an owner operator in a business.

[00:10:20] So when you say $25,000 in kind, are we talking about handing out check or multiple checks, a cash? Or are you talking about providing the service at no charge as a donation?

[00:10:31] So when we say in kind, we want to provide, we want to be a part of that event. We want to be a part of that organization. So we're not actually handing out cash.

[00:10:39] We're donating our product to these events to help them raise the money and help them achieve their success. And we found that best fosters that relationship within the community as well.

[00:10:54] So I mean, you're very heavily seated within, it looks like the some of the West Northwest and Southeast of the United States. I would agree just based on what I was looking at from your website.

[00:11:07] It looks like you don't have much of anything going on in the Northeast, which is where are all the actions at unintended. But what would someone expect to look for as far as maybe an annual take home and net profit on a business like this?

[00:11:23] There's got to be some sort of average. Now, is it an average per region? Is it average per state? You know, it's usually the number of trailers that you have kind of indicate what the value is.

[00:11:35] A typical franchise that has somewhere around 25 trailers or so, 20 to 25 trailers, their annual revenue is usually somewhere between 900 and 1.2 million. Okay. But where are they net? Well, that depends upon when they've how where they are in that franchise process.

[00:11:59] It usually takes us somewhere around two to three years to pay off a trailer.

[00:12:04] So if you're looking at when you have debt on the trailers because it's like buying a new car every time you buy a trailer, you know, you're looking sometimes from a 30% return on investment to later on closer to that 55-60%.

[00:12:20] Okay. So what is what is a typical cat-back expenditure if you are in one of these businesses? You know, your capital expenditure is a trailer. I mean, that is obviously a big thing.

[00:12:32] So, I mean, would you expect that adding 1, 2, 3, what would the number be per year that you would more or less expect to see? Well, typically in your in your first year, we typically range similar around that $300,000 cat mark.

[00:12:49] And each year after that, depending upon your growth and how quickly you decide that you, you know, you move and you put into it, you're looking at about four to six trailers every year until you kind of, you know, level off a little bit.

[00:13:05] And a typical operating company that's got 25 trailers, you might have maybe three employees and a couple part-time people. So as long as you're working that by yourself, you know, you've got a pretty good managed day to day stuff.

[00:13:23] And the great thing is, is you just continue to produce, you know, because festivals and and events are typically annual. So it's repeat business.

[00:13:38] And as long as you continue to do a good job and, you know, don't kind of just level out and just I feel like I've got it. I don't need to show any more.

[00:13:49] You continue to get that business and you continue to grow and more and more people, you know, start to realize the benefit of what a sanitary restroom is like.

[00:14:00] You know, you're kind of you've kind of set the bar high for everyone else and others want to follow that. What is the maintenance reliability on these trailers? When do they generally start to break down after how many years or how many uses?

[00:14:15] That is again one of those questions that really deals in how much you use it. A trailer for just events or weddings only, you know, you may use it 30 to 40 times a year.

[00:14:28] However, that same trailer, if you put it on a long term rental, you know, 30 or 40 uses it. It's used the same amount in one month. So it really depends upon how you've dictated your usage.

[00:14:42] So your newer trailers, you know, you usually go a couple of years without having to do a major maintenance.

[00:14:48] Now, if you once those trailers are used, your new trailers are now used for your weddings and your your more VIP events and the other ones go to your longer term facilities.

[00:14:58] And, you know, with those it's it's your typical maintenance, you know, you have faucets at break, you have stairs at break, you have doors at break, you, you know, air conditioner repairs.

[00:15:11] So it's it's not something that is out of budget is just as long as you stay up with it, you know, you stay out in front of it and you do the proper prep and maintenance. You shouldn't have any major cost incurred. Okay.

[00:15:28] Now, as far as that net profit goes, I mean, it sounds to me like you're not really going to be looking at any real true profitability in those first maybe, you know, a couple of years because you're putting so much

[00:15:40] you know, so much money into it, albeit, you know, depending on how you're financed, you may have some sort of cash flow that allows you to make some money in the process, which would be great.

[00:15:49] But once trailers are paid off, obviously now, you know, the more you use these things, the more money they make you. So is it fair to say that you may be looking at at at a bottom net profit of 30% or is it less than that?

[00:16:07] No, you're, you know, usually most of our offices start turning some type of, you know, their breakeven point is somewhere between six and eight months from a from a cash standpoint.

[00:16:22] So yeah, you're not receiving your full revenue from from those sources because you're reinvesting the money but you're you're producing a solid, you know, 30% on what your on what you're doing as long as you're operating correctly.

[00:16:39] Now, as far as expenditures capital expenditures, you know, those are those are assets so you can't, you know, you don't want to write those off necessarily as expenses. Right. No, right, of course.

[00:16:51] So, you know, I'm just thinking in terms of, you know, what is what is the resale value of business if a business owner wanted to get into this and you know, if you have a five year agreement with the franchise, but they wanted to sell they had something

[00:17:05] maybe they wanted to do something else in their lives they didn't fall in love with poop.

[00:17:11] You know, how is that value that's obviously I assume has to go through you as far as permission goes with that then trigger an event where the next buyer would be, you know, locked into five years from his point like how would that work if somebody wanted to

[00:17:25] Yes, we're, we usually start a whole new franchise agreement over when we've when we've sold within the organization. And the, the, well, one of the beauty things is we've actually only had a few people sell but that's because they've retired.

[00:17:43] You know, they've been in the business for 1512 years and they've they've exited because they've retired and sold their business and in a lot of ways it's it's really nice to have new blood and an older market like that because they they bring that new energy that is is so vital to the success you

[00:18:02] know, so many times us as entrepreneurs you know, we're 150 200% gun hoe but then once we grab a little success and we, you know, have something that we feel like we can lose we kind of settle in and hold back and we're not as aggressive as we once were.

[00:18:21] We tend to want to, you know, we start to have that fear of losing stuff or things being taken away and instead of that all balls out let me go. And so it's, it's, it's been nice to see new blood in the in the organization.

[00:18:40] But as far as dance your question about franchise you know, the FDD changes every year we we grow we we see new things we have to keep up with the law so we make new offices on a new franchise agreement and we basically just kind of start over but the overall general terms they they have not changed since our reception.

[00:19:01] You know, we still do it.

[00:19:03] It's a little gross. Okay, and if somebody did want to get out and they come to the end of their term they they they of course they could keep all the equipment they just have to take your name off of it and then they market themselves their own thing.

[00:19:14] It's their equipment and everything right. That's correct basically. All right. So just a couple of basic questions and wrap it up.

[00:19:22] You've got 20 trailers you're doing great business is good your loving life it's a completely different lifestyle than the nine to five job that made you just hate life you get to spend more time in your family even go to some concerts.

[00:19:35] And it's just an overall amazing lifestyle even though you're the guy that holds the crap. But you got to store these trailers somewhere. Is that something that you help set up? I mean there's obviously most people don't they can't store 20 20 trailers in their in their yard.

[00:19:49] You know, no we've got, you know, a lot of people buy store stores they buy land.

[00:19:57] Some people have even set up, you know, from an investment standpoint you know they purchase land and then they've because it's not like you really need an infrastructure so as long as they've got some bays.

[00:20:13] And you've got land to put the trailers to clean and keep everything tidy. It's it's not well a lot of people use it as a secondary source of income later on, you know, as an investment they're using these assets to pay for this investment.

[00:20:29] And they kind of they control that a few of the other places like Atlanta. They have three different office locations or three different, I guess, storage yards around Atlanta to kind of combat the traffic situation.

[00:20:47] So it all depends but we don't help facilitate that a lot of people you know they're entrepreneurs they have their own mind of what they want to do and and we don't prohibit that we encourage that we want you to be you know an entrepreneur.

[00:21:03] Okay. And then finally, you fill the tanks. You've had a great concert or you know corporate event or you know the bride and groom have flushed everything away.

[00:21:15] And all their guests are leaving empty and satisfied. What do you do with all that? Where does that go? I mean is there a local porta pot a porta pot pooby dumping center?

[00:21:27] I mean, how do you do just call the service to come out? Like how does that work?

[00:21:32] Yeah, actually we a lot of times in the beginning we partner with a local septic tank company or local Port of John company where their primary service is the pumping of the trailers or the pumping of units.

[00:21:48] So that there whereas our primary service is the renting of the trailer. So a lot of these porta potty companies don't have restroom trailers and you know you've got a different level of service that you're trying to keep things up on.

[00:22:04] You know a porta potty is is you know hey we wash it out with a hose whereas a restroom trailer you get down on your hands and knees sometimes.

[00:22:12] Yeah. So you know in the beginning we partner with local porta potty companies and septic tank companies and as we grow and we develop markets and we have more long term rentals.

[00:22:26] We may buy our own pulp trucks like my local office here in Savannah. I mean we have 2000 gallon pulp trucks that we use to service those and then we take it to the local municipality waste station.

[00:22:40] Well there's one thing for sure as we wrap this up. I would love for Mike Rowe to come visit you. I think that would be a really great episode of dirty jobs.

[00:22:49] I don't think he's doing anymore but man what a great fit that one. So Mike if you're hearing this, if you're seeing this as you should because it is just one of the greatest podcasts that's out there.

[00:22:58] All right so with that do you have anything anything else that maybe a sage advice anything you want to tell the audience anything that we should know about the life of the man on a throne and what it is that we should know.

[00:23:12] You know like I said Thomas we're looking for franchise owners we're looking to grow the business. We have a need in the northeast bad we just we did thankfully we just opened one in Marietta Ohio Brian Waller.

[00:23:26] We're really excited about him open up there in that Ohio Valley but you know we've really need some people up in the northeast. We just have tremendous amount of leads that that we really don't don't do anything with.

[00:23:42] I mean we sent it one of our new vintage style trailers all the way up to Maine they we delivered it from Savannah Georgia all the way up to Maine and that that's just that's ridiculous.

[00:23:55] It was like $7000 just in delivery alone. That's dumb. I mean that's crazy so yeah I'd love for y'all to reach out to us at RoyalRestrooms.com inquire about franchising needs or you know if we can service you in any capacity we would love to be a part of your event.

[00:24:17] Well as he said it as David put it they are having an urge their their gut is churning for more franchisees in the in the northeast of the United States. So if you have that desire if you feel the pull the urge to get into a business like this I highly recommend that you do get in contact.

[00:24:41] And I thank you all for watching the program. Thank you all for listening. Thank you all for remembering to hit the subscribe button. Give us a five star review because anything less than that is completely unacceptable anyway.

[00:24:52] And we look forward to talking to you on the next episode. Thank you so much and David thanks for joining us. Thank you. Appreciate it. You bet.