Trash Can Empire

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🔥 FRESH IDEA

Your neighbors’ trash cans are quietly turning into biology experiments, and someone is getting paid to fix it.

Casey Evertsen didn’t invent trash cans. He just noticed everyone hated them. Dirty bins stink, attract bugs, and sit right next to people’s garage doors all week. So he started a trash can cleaning service, filmed the work, and rode that “gross but satisfying” content loop into a real business (and eventually a franchise system). Forbes even flagged Bin Blasters as one of the creator-driven businesses that benefited from TikTok’s viral wave of “watch me do this dirty job” content. Here’s the proof that this is a real category, not a theory:

The business model is simple: recurring routes. You follow the trash schedule, show up after pickup, and clean bins in minutes. Customers pay monthly because bins don’t stay clean on their own. That recurring cadence is what makes it a business instead of a one-time gig.

What Casey’s story teaches (the “secrets” to copy)

🎙 BUILD THIS

Starting a podcast from zero is hard. Starting by borrowing other people’s audiences is not.

It’s possible to skip the “build a show for a year” grind and instead go on a focused guest run: 100+ podcast appearances, reaching well over 2 million ideal customers in a year. The downstream effect isn’t just awareness; it creates demand for your content.

That’s the secret: you don’t need listeners first if you can show up where listeners already exist. Guesting compresses time. It also stacks credibility, because the host’s brand becomes a trust bridge. And it builds SEO, because every appearance creates backlinks and mentions.

So the best “start a podcast” move might be this: don’t start one yet. Become the most prepared guest in your niche. Pitch 20 shows. Build one clean landing page for new listeners. Give one specific freebie they can grab in 10 seconds.

Once you’ve got momentum, then launch your show using your new network as your first guest list.

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🧠 CASE STUDY

Sam Parr didn’t sell The Hustle for $27M because of “news.” He sold it because he built distribution that HubSpot couldn’t replicate quickly.

HubSpot acquired The Hustle in 2021, and multiple deal breakdowns point to the same asset: a daily email with over 1.5 million subscribers sitting directly on HubSpot’s target customers. That list became a flywheel because it wasn’t passive. It was engineered to spread.

The mechanics were aggressive: daily publishing cadence, a voice that felt like a friend texting you business gossip, and constant share prompts. Then the real monetization layer showed up: premium research, community, and partnerships that turned the free newsletter into an acquisition engine.

A behind-the-scenes deal explainer frames it simply: SaaS companies want audiences because an audience is cheaper than ads and stickier than SEO.

If you want to copy the playbook as a small operator: don’t copy “daily news.” Copy the distribution physics. Build one recurring reason to open, one referral incentive, and one premium offer that turns attention into revenue.

🥷 MINDSET

Dropbox is the cleanest example of why “good enough” beats perfect, because their first real product was basically a video.

Before the platform was ready, Dropbox published a simple demo explaining the idea. Drew Houston later said that beta waiting list went from 5,000 people to 75,000 literally overnight after that video hit.

That’s the whole lesson: perfect software didn’t create demand. A clear explanation of the value created demand. The mechanism is speed-to-learning. If you wait until everything’s polished, you only learn once. If you ship early, you learn every week. Dropbox used discomfort as a strategy: show the concept, see if people care, then build the real thing after demand is proven.

Your version doesn’t have to be a video. It can be a landing page, a Notion template, a manual service, even a Google Sheet. The goal is the same: collect real customer behavior before you waste months guessing.

Next step: ship the smallest version that can get a “yes” today.

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