We recently connected with Xavier Figueroa and have shared our conversation below.

Xavier, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you tell us a bit about who your hero is and the influence they’ve had on you?

My hero is my brother Gabriel Figueroa. I am the oldest of five siblings. Gabriel was the second born. He’s my hero because of who he was as a person. He had a tenacity to always do what he wanted. He would make up his mind on something and then go 100% into it. He and I used to work at UPS together. He was on the morning shift and I was on the evening shift loading the trailers. One day I came into work, and a co-worker came to me and told me that my brother had quit UPS. My brother had said aloud to his coworkers, ‘forget this job, I’m going to join the Army,” and that is exactly what he did. He went to the recruiter and signed up as a combat medic. This was in 2005 when the insurgency in Iraq was beginning to escalate. He went to bootcamp and then completed his Medic training. My family was very proud of him joining. We tried to talk him out of it, but it was something that he wanted to do. Unfortunately, my brother was killed in Iraq by a sniper on April 3, 2007.

My brother has influenced my journey tremendously. I joined the Marine Corps in Nov 2008. I wanted to see and maybe get an understanding of what he experienced. I never saw combat, but I was able to understand the brotherhood that he experienced with his unit. It gave me comfort knowing that he was with his Army buddies and that he was not alone when he died. I now strive to live my life in a way that would make him proud. His death was the worse pain I had ever felt. That pain though has been replaced with a feeling to help other people and to strive to be a better person.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I stumbled upon junk removal as a business in 2021. I had used a junk removal service in 2018 when my wife and I had first moved into our new home. I didn’t think to much about junk removal other than how convenient it was to call someone to remove my junk items and trash. During this time I was working as an aerospace technician. I had finished my service with the Marine Corps in 2013 and luckily I had gained a new skill set as an aircraft mechanic. This experience allowed me to work on F/A-18’s as a civilian doing depot level repairs. I then moved on and learned how to rebuild aircraft valves and components at Parker aerospace. This job was the stepping stone for me to become an ECLSS Technician at SpaceX. I helped to build the oxygen system that was used on the astronaut demo flight for the Crew Dragon. My final role was for Northrop Grumman where I worked as a Composite Test Technician. All of these jobs were great, but I realized that I cannot be happy if I was working for someone else.

I could not go on working for someone else so I had a talk with my wife. I am lucky to have Maegan. She supports me 100% and I am grateful for her support. We discussed our situation and she agreed that I would never be happy if I did not quit and start my own business. We then put our house on the market and used the proceeds to buy our dump truck. The great thing about our business is that we get to work alongside each other every day. All of this time together makes up for the days that were missed when I was on deployment.

I am happy now. I am happy waking up each day and helping our customers to reclaim their space. We provide Property Cleanout and Junk Removal services. When hired for a cleanout, we remove all personal property from homes, garages, businesses and storage units. Our junk removal services are top notch. We provide a full service junk removal experience. We do all of the lifting and loading of junk items onto our truck. We even sweep up the work area when we are finished with the junk removal job. We pride ourselves in making sure that our clients are happy with our service. We have many 5 star reviews on Google and Yelp from our fantastic customers.

I used to work at UPS loading trailers. This is the reason that I am able to build efficient walls out of junk. This means that we are able to maximize the items we can load and haul away on our dump truck. I see it as a challenge to load as many items as safely possible onto the dump truck. I enjoy seeing the happiness on their faces when they see all of their items loaded onto the truck.

Our customers have told us that they feel a sense of relief once the unwanted items are removed. We are non-judgmental and professional when doing our job. Seeing the relief on their faces has become one of the best parts of the job. I am filled with joy knowing that my customers are able to reclaim their space.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

There are many different things that have influenced my management and entrepreneurial thinking. I absolutely adore listening to the How I Built This podcast from NPR. It brings me comfort knowing that I am not alone in my experience as a business owner. The stories of other well known brands and entrepreneurs has motivated me to keep moving forward with my business.

Think and Grow Rich and How to Win Friends and Influence People have helped me greatly. I want to always be learning so please let me know if there’s a resource that I should check out.

I also joined a BNI Chapter which has helped a lot. BNI has a podcast that I listen to when I am driving around in my truck. The lessons on networking and growing your network have been excellent for me.

Have you ever had to pivot?

We self funded our business with the sale of our home. We used the proceeds to buy our truck and for working capital. I knew that a business would take time to grow, but I under estimated how slow growth can be in the beginning. There came a point when I had less than $100 dollars in my bank account. I had a sinking feeling in my gut when I saw that. I just kept thinking to myself, what have I done. I sold my house and moved into my parents house, and now I had less than $100 dollars to show for it. I knew at that moment that I would have to make some drastic changes. The first thing I did was to change the way I was advertising and prospecting. I injected $5000 into the business and hired a company to write and manage my google ads. I was thinking to myself that this has to work out or I would have been forced to get a night job to help make ends meet. Thankfully, it worked out. My phone began to ring and I saw traffic to my website begin to steadily grow. I don’t want to ever be in the position again of staring at an empty bank account. I can say though that a fire was lit inside of me from being in that situation.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.LAtrashjunkers.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latrashjunkers/?hl=en
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/la-trash-junkers-baldwin-park

Image Credits
Esther Fernandez Chan of Esther Sees Love Photography