From Credit Card Affiliate Blog to Dumpster Rental

Bodhi got into SEO from the good old days when you could do affiliate blogs. That's how he originally got into SEO when he was 17. He was infatuated with personal finance, credit cards, investing in the stock market.

He wrote a blog post on best credit cards for college students and made about $2,000 to $3,000 in affiliate credit card signups without even knowing what SEO was at the time.

"I was like, wow, I can really do something with this."

He studied marketing in college and had two internships. One at a national agency. The second at Benjamin Moore, the paint company. That's where he learned local marketing.

Then he had an opportunity to buy a dumpster rental business right at the end of college, pretty much his senior year. The business had one dumpster, 20 trucks, no Google Business Profile, no website, no Facebook. Just had a list of customers.

He took a total gamble. "But as a lot of people say, when you're a young person, take gambles like that. Because if you do screw up three to five years later, it's no problem. You can always recover."

He bought that business and threw his marketing system into it and started to grow it pretty rapidly.

How to Scale from $100K to $750K

I asked Bodhi how he went from about $100K to $750K.

His answer was simple: "Google ads and local SEO."

What's interesting is at the time you were able to stand up like three Google Business Profiles with a postcard. The good old days. They had a Google Business Profile at their yard or shop. One at his residential address. And one at his business partner's residential address.

So they had three Google profiles with all keyword stuffed names and started getting reviews to all those profiles. "When people would search up dumpster rental near me, we showed up three times and no one else did in our market."

On top of that, they were spending more on ads than everyone else was spending on ads. At the time, Performance Max campaigns just came out. So you could spend a little bit of money on ads and get a huge return.

"Any time someone wanted a dumpster, you couldn't get away from us on the internet."

Local service ads weren't a category for dumpsters then and still aren't. Only junk removal. So dumpster rental ads still rip more than local service ads to this day.

The split between client acquisition from SEO and ads? At the time Bodhi's tracking wasn't like it is now. Everything was tracked on a spreadsheet. It depended. A lot from local SEO, a lot from ads.

The trouble with the dumpster business is high capex. If you have 50 dumpsters and all 50 are sold out and you have to drop off five the next day, it's a logistical nightmare.

During the summertime it was all local SEO. Wintertime it was Google ads. And here's a great nugget: "The key behind running ads in the wintertime is no one else is, so the CPA is way lower."

Anytime it's the off season, people are typically running less ads and that's when you should be running them. Bodhi got his biggest jobs in the winter time from running ads.

Why He Sold the Business

Bodhi sold the business because he got to the point where he was on podcasts and meeting people from Twitter. He'd be getting a phone call for someone looking for a $400 or $500 dumpster and they'd be blowing up his phone.

"I was just making way more connections online. The whole online world was not new to me, but being known on there was new to me."

As every successful business owner says, pick one thing and do really good at it. The dumpster business was great but his time was only so big.

Blowing Up on Twitter

I told Bodhi I've seen him blow up on Twitter. He has over 18K followers now and I'd argue he's probably the most well-known person in local SEO, at least in terms of posting and engagement.

He started on Twitter as everyone else did. Anon. Then he was on a podcast with Paul Schiffbauer, a money Twitter guy. Paul told him, "Dude, you got to create the dumpster rental guy on Twitter." At the time anon accounts were huge. Dumpster rental guy, self storage guy, all these different guy accounts.

Bodhi left that podcast and started creating content around marketing his dumpster business, running ads for his dumpster business, doing SEO for his dumpster business. Then people started coming to him inbound and it went crazy.

People were relating to his story. They're dealing with the same bottlenecks and they're also not doing a lot of good local SEO or Google ads.

He made the account "I rent dumpsters," the dumpster rental guy. He was an anon at the time and the business just kind of blew up at that point.

What was interesting is at that time on Twitter, local SEO content, you could put the most simplest stuff. Like now he has to put way more effort into it, but you could put the most simplest stuff like "post on your profile three times a week" and it would go insane. You'd get 15K views.

Now it's way more complicated and diverse. But he was just sharing local marketing tips, kind of like Alex Hormozi, give value.

How to Crack Twitter's Algorithm

I asked Bodhi how he cracked Twitter because I've grown on a lot of different platforms and I'd argue Twitter is probably the hardest.

His response surprised me: "I feel like it's the easiest."

The thing about Twitter is you have to speak to the algorithm. Bodhi lives in Boca Raton, Florida. He'll do a mixture of lifestyle content, marketing content, and business content.

When he talks about business or lifestyle content, he'll say he's eating at this steakhouse in Boca Raton. Then he'll talk about doing marketing for a roofing company in Boca Raton. Business owners who live in Boca Raton, it'll show up right in front of them.

"I've landed about 15 clients from living down here, speaking about local authority, living here, being here, meeting them for lunch, dinner, handshake deals, cool stuff like that."

On a national level, you've got to reach out to your target audience. Just like Facebook with the Andromeda update on Facebook ads.

You have to speak to your content. Yesterday he made a post about HVAC owners. "Like if you're an HVAC company and you're going into plumbing, you should create two separate profiles, one for AC, one for plumbing. And then my DMs are filled with AC and plumbing guys."

Just speaking to the algorithm and your target audience, you'll get in front of your target audience.

It's about having the keywords in your post. If you want to target the HVAC guys, you should put HVAC. Not just because they see HVAC on their feed, but because the algorithm will specifically push it to people more because it matches their interest.

He also does things like Steak Fridays. Every single Friday, him and his wife go to a steakhouse and he posts about it. People will come up to him and say they hope he's handing out steaks this week.

"You just get known for things that are outside of your niche. So it's all about being yourself and also posting about what you do and then becoming friends with people."

Growing to 600 Agency Clients

The last time I saw Bodhi on someone else's podcast, they mentioned he had 150 clients. Now he has over 600.

50% of client acquisition is Twitter. What's amazing about Twitter is he's built a great following where his own clients will sell for him on Twitter. He doesn't even have to sell for himself at this point because they get a lot of people results on Twitter.

25% is Facebook ads. This year they spent $300,000 on Facebook ads to make about a million in top line revenue with about $150K in recurring revenue on the back end. They got their ClickFunnels plaque coming.

The other 25% is just word of mouth referrals. He'll get at least three to five inbound leads each week from someone he works with from either Facebook or Twitter or a friend.

Before he was even on Twitter, they were in Facebook groups, believe it or not. Just grinding Facebook groups like any other agency. They did their first $10K MRR just grinding Facebook groups.

"I remember I would work the garbage company from like seven in the morning to six at night. I'd leave my phone upstairs. I was still living at my parents' house and I would just grind Facebook groups."

He would DM people. Do you have a website? Why don't you have a website? Are you currently doing SEO? Are you currently doing ads? It just kind of blew up from there.

They started with Facebook groups, then started posting on Twitter and got away from the Facebook groups because "Facebook guys are a little crazy."

The Team Behind the Growth

Bodhi now has about 42 team members. They hire a lot from Canada for customer facing. Canada has a lot of great marketers and SEOs. If you pay them an American salary, they're more than happy.

His front facing people are all Canadians, his account executives, most of them are Canadians. His backend people, a lot of them come from Australia, Eastern Europe like Moldova and Lithuania. Ukraine's another place. They have guys from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria with great WordPress experts.

From zero to $10K, him and his business partner Andy were doing everything. Then from $10K to $50K, they added Jerry, who's going to become a business partner of their company in the future. He's a really big part of their success.

"We picked him up at like 18 years old, which is pretty cool. He was still a senior in high school."

Jerry learned coding at 12 years old. He's an absolute whiz. He can automate and code anything. They picked him up from a Discord channel.

Now they're just hiring like crazy. They don't use any hiring agencies. They hire a lot of people through LinkedIn.

The Three Biggest Google Business Profile Ranking Factors

I asked Bodhi about the biggest movers on Google Business Profile.

"Three biggest movers, having a physical location."

They don't really take on a client unless they have a physical location at this point. The only people with service area profiles who do rank usually have an exact match name, something like bocaratonplumbing.com. That's really the only way these days to rank with a service area profile or having 500 to 1,000 reviews. Otherwise it's very difficult.

Second most important part is actually putting your service in the name. "For example, I've dealt with HVAC companies with like, they're called like Bodhi's mechanical services. And I've dealt with AC companies that are like Bodhi's AC repair. And the guy named Bodhi's AC repair is always going to outrank the mechanical."

He's not completely keyword stuffing the name. Obviously that's not a good idea. But you should put your primary service in the name.

The third thing is just filling out your Google Business Profile. Filling out all your products, all your services, your Q&A. Posting on it doesn't really do much. There's really no data behind people saying you need to post on your profile three days a week.

"What I really like to do is post on the profile three times just to increase CTR, click-through rate."

Another important part is your primary category. You shouldn't have HVAC contractor on your profile, it should say AC repair. "The only people calling it HVAC contractors are HVAC companies, where your customers, your consumer is searching AC repair near me, AC repair Boca Raton."

Primary category is really important.

Why You Need Multiple Google Business Profiles

I asked Bodhi about setting up multiple profiles because I've seen him talk about this a lot on Twitter.

"Key man risk. One way about it is key man risk."

For example, there's a moving company he works with. They have four profiles, all with physical locations. Big company doing $7 million a year. One of his profiles went down and it's like, all right, we'll get it back up. It's all good because you have three other profiles to get leads from.

"Google keeps every service business owner hostage pretty much. Everyone's searching on Google. And if one profile goes down, you could be screwed if your business is all on organic."

Your business can get cut in half in a month, especially if it's something like house cleaning where people are always searching it or pest control.

It's the key man risk game. You mitigate risk the more profiles you have. He usually likes to do four max.

When people have one profile and they get a top three and they have 150 reviews, he's like, "Hey, it does make sense to get you a second profile because the maps are all on radius. You can only get so far. So let's place it in this area and go from there."

Where business owners screw up all the time is short-term thinking. "You can pretty much get a profile for $500 a month. So you're a $6,000 a year investment that could gain you $500,000 a year."

How to Set Up Additional Locations

The strategy is get a coworking space or designated office and go from there.

A little trick: "People always talk about coworking spaces don't work, blah, blah, blah. I verified probably a hundred coworking spaces in the last two months. It's all about putting a unit on it."

So 1-2 Bodhi Street, Unit B, Unit C, Unit D, something like that is the best way to do it.

For signage, Bodhi has a Google rep on his team. Actually two Google reps. They work for Google Business. What's interesting about Google Business is they're all volunteers. None of them get paid. That's why Google Business support is terrible.

"All we really need is a sign and we can get people verified pretty much."

The sign gets denied right away, then they appeal it and can get verified there. It's a two to four week process, pain in the ass, but all they really need is a sign and they're good.

These coworking spaces can be rented part time. On average it's $500 a month, give or take. "Since everyone is going back into the office, they're not as used as they used to be. You can literally tell them what you're doing and they will assist you as much as possible because they need revenue."

When Physical Locations Are Necessary

I asked if you need to have a location to rank.

"It's super important. Depends on the market. Obviously depends on the market. If you're in middle of Missouri, it's way different game. But if you're in Austin, Texas, Dallas, Texas, Fort Worth, Miami, you need a physical or you're just not going to win. You're not going to be able to compete."

Website Impact on Google Business Profile Rankings

I asked Bodhi how much the website impacts Google Business Profile ranking.

"I think a ton. People could say yes. People could say no. I think a ton."

Your H1 tag is most important. Another cool tip is they like to change up the H1 tags every once in a while. "So it'll be like number one top rated roofing company in Austin, Texas. And then we'll change it up every month and be like the best roofing company in Austin, Texas."

Just changing your H1 tags every couple of months is very helpful. Service area pages are super important. Roof repair Austin, roof repair McKinney, that is very important for your website.

They like to link the Google Business Profile to the corresponding service page over the homepage. For example, a roofing company with four locations in Florida has a page that says "number one top rated roofing company in Tampa" that will be the service page to his Google profile. Number one top roofing company in Boca Raton will be the service page to his Boca profile.

"I think it's very important because his main website's H1 tag is number one top rating roofing company in Florida and then we build out from there."

The Real Purpose of Location Pages

I asked about location service pages because a lot of companies have them set up but almost none of them are actually ranking those pages and getting traffic.

Bodhi's take is interesting: "I think it's more about topical authority for those pages than getting leads. If you're communicating to Google that you have the master page and then all the money pages below it, it's like you're communicating to Google that you have topical authority within that area."

"I think it boosts your homepage more than it boosts those location pages. I'm not too worried about those location pages ranking. It's all about the homepage to me."

He doesn't even think about ranking those terms for your website. "I think about using those pages to help boost your Google Business Profile more than anything."

When to Set Up a Second Profile

Usually Bodhi likes to tell people: "We get you top three, you have about 150 plus reviews, now it makes sense to take us to another level, get a second profile."

But it's market dependent. Dallas Fort Worth is freaking huge. It's one of the hardest markets to compete in. They have a guy there with six Google profiles and you can only rank in a certain vicinity for all those profiles. "No one will ever rank number one in that market, especially for near me searches."

The Harsh Truth About Small Business Owners

As we wrapped up, I asked Bodhi what he's learned from working with over 600 clients.

"My highest performing clients communicate with you and tell you when they're going to make a change or have a question. My lowest performing clients will make changes without telling us. They'll watch some YouTube podcast, make a change and then suspend the profile."

Guys doing $3 million plus a year in top line revenue are doing that for a reason. Guys doing a million or less who've been in the business for five plus years, they blame everyone else for their issues.

"That's what I usually see. I can tell the difference between a $3 million plus operator and someone who's under a million. A lot of guys are their own worst enemies."

When people come on calls now and tell either him or his sales reps that they're on their 15th SEO agency, they're very wary about sending them a proposal.

"You gotta be careful who you work with, who you deal with, because a lot of these small businesses are crazy."

There's no reason why you shouldn't hit a million dollars after five years. Home services is a gold mine. "A million dollars is great in top line, but it's not amazing. There's way bigger businesses out there. And if you're constantly blaming everyone else for your issues, it's time to look yourself in the mirror."

He had a sales rep take a call with a guy he literally had a call with on November 4th of last year. The guy just took a call with them today and he's still in the same position he was a year ago. "He's like, I won't work with you guys until I get results and I won't pay you guys until I get results. And I'm like, it makes sense why you're still in the same position you were a year ago."

Bodhi's Message to Home Service Owners

I asked Bodhi for his final message to local SEOs and home service owners.

"Customer service is the most important part of any business. The reason why we grew so quickly, why my old business grew so quickly was customer service. Especially today with AI, customer service has never been easier."

"But you have to be willing to, at least to grow a business from zero to 1 million, eat shit as Gary Vee always says, and respond to your customers as quickly as possible and just be transparent with everyone, any business, no matter what it is."

My Main Takeaway

This conversation with Bodhi completely changed how I think about local SEO and scaling an agency. The biggest insight is that you need multiple Google Business Profiles to mitigate key man risk. If your entire business depends on one profile and it goes down, you're screwed.

The math makes sense too. $500 a month for a coworking space, $6,000 a year investment that could gain you $500,000 a year. Most business owners are just thinking too short-term.

And the harsh truth about small business owners resonated hard. The ones doing $3 million plus communicate and collaborate. The ones stuck under a million blame everyone else. If you've been in business for five years and haven't hit a million, it's time to look in the mirror.

Thanks for reading, and if you found this valuable, make sure to check out the full podcast episode. Bodhi drops even more tactical advice and strategies that I couldn't fit into this recap.

You can find Bodhi on Twitter at I Rent Dumpsters and check out Striker Digital on YouTube. He's also starting to build Instagram and TikTok pages under his name Bodhi Gallo.