Key Takeaways
- Junk Teenagers hit $3 million in income in 2025 and is projected to succeed in $5 million this 12 months.
- The brothers have applied a collection of techniques to develop the enterprise and eye future scale.
- Junk Teenagers additionally depends on an app vibe coded by one among its teenage workers.
In 2024, when Entrepreneur first linked with brothers Kirk McKinney, 22, and Jacob McKinney, 21, their Larger Boston-based junk-removal enterprise, Junk Teenagers, was nonetheless a facet hustle, albeit a $1.2 million one.
The then-teenaged brothers launched Junk Teenagers again in 2021 with a single pick-up truck. A pair of working audio system discovered at a dump grew into a set of resellable objects — $1,000 price — offered on Fb Market.
Now, the brothers’ largely student-run service, which additionally serves Cape Cod and Rhode Island, operates eight vehicles and has 25 full-time workers. The enterprise has dealt with an estimated 7.4 million kilos of things, sorting usable items for donation, resale or repurposing every time doable.
Junk Teenagers hit $3 million in income in 2025 and is projected to succeed in $5 million in income this 12 months, per the corporate.
The corporate additionally grew its group partnerships. A pc drive with Computer systems 4 Folks distributed refurbished laptops and desktops to under-resourced communities, and a partnership with WellStrong on the Cape raised funds for wellness and peer-support applications that support substance abuse restoration.
Right here’s how the McKinney brothers unlocked their blue-collar enterprise’s large progress — and what’s subsequent for Junk Teenagers.
Breaking out of the bottleneck
For a very long time, Jacob scheduled worker routes and found out the place to eliminate the objects they picked up. Managing all of it was difficult when the enterprise had a fleet of three to 4 vehicles, simply half of what it’s now.
“I used to be working 12 hours a day, nonstop,” Jacob recollects. “So I didn’t actually have any extra time to attempt to determine the best way to rent another person or something like that. Lengthy story brief, one of many largest first issues we did was delegate my job place.”
The brothers cut up Jacob’s position into a number of completely different ones, which helped streamline worker bookings and hiring.
“We promoted to supervisor one among our guys who had been with us for a pair years who was taking a niche 12 months from faculty,” Kirk provides, “and gave him a number of the tasks that Jake had, like calling within the workers on daily basis and reviewing the schedule.”
With that in place, Jacob broke out of the bottleneck; he had extra time to work with Kirk on constructing higher techniques and coaching, permitting the enterprise to scale.
Making the most of know-how and AI — together with vibe coding
When Junk Teenagers hit $1.2 million in income in 2024, everything of the enterprise’s day-to-day operations existed on Apple Notes.
“Then Jake would type these out and replica and paste these schedules to the fellows that had been going out on daily basis,” Kirk explains. “That was how we ran our enterprise. It was principally a $1 million facet hustle at that time.”
Now, Junk Teenagers is profiting from tech instruments. The corporate makes use of Jobber for buyer relationship administration, GoHighLevel for buyer information assortment and Connecteam for worker administration.
The enterprise can also be embracing AI in its many kinds, from the built-in “slight automation” that is sensible of knowledge throughout the software program applications it makes use of, to vibe coding its very personal app.
A Junk Teenagers worker who was on the group for a number of years and had fundamental tech abilities constructed the app, utilizing Base44 and ChatGPT for lots of the UI and UX referencing. The app includes a leaderboard and different statistics that assist monitor worker efficiency — for example, an worker’s income per hour or closing fee.
“Our whole app was developed by a youngster,” Kirk says. “That’s one other attention-grabbing factor — that know-how’s on the level the place highschool children can create full apps. And our whole firm makes use of that app each single day.”
Within the early days, Kirk edited content material and posted movies on social media when he had the time. However Junk Teenagers has since systemized its social media technique too. Now, Kirk collects footage when he’s out on the job, then outsources the enhancing to assist understand his imaginative and prescient.
About eight months in the past, Kirk introduced different Junk Teenagers group members on board too.
“ I began coaching different guys on our group to go on the market with Meta Glasses and GoPros and movie a few of their day-to-day operations and what they’re doing out within the discipline on daily basis,” Kirk explains. “So now I’ve all this nice content material to work with, after which I can type of be the translator between that footage and the group.”
At present, Junk Teenagers has surpassed 213,000 followers on TikTok, 269,000 followers on Instagram and 69,000 subscribers on YouTube.
Not solely has systemizing Junk Teenagers’ social media strategy helped market the enterprise, but it surely’s additionally served as a significant team-building device.
“An organization is only a group of individuals on the finish of the day, and if you see your self in these movies and the social media’s capturing it, you’re part of that, and it actually elevates the tradition,” Kirk says. “Then new individuals see what we now have happening right here, and it really attracts extra individuals who need to work with us.”
Cultivating a vibrant tradition round a younger group
Most of Junk Teenagers’ workers are highschool or faculty college students, and the corporate goals to pay them greater than its opponents to draw prime expertise.
On common, that pay works out to about $25 to $30 an hour, together with hourly charges, commissions and suggestions.
“Numerous the staff really feel like they’re constructing the corporate with us as a result of they’re additionally constructing their alternative as the corporate grows,” Kirk says. “Due to that, we now have quite a lot of forward-thinking individuals, and I feel that us all being younger is part of why that occurs.”
Though Junk Teenagers loses some workers when the varsity 12 months begins again up, the seasonality of junk elimination aligns effectively with the ebb and circulate, and the brothers all the time plan for it.
The enterprise’s quantity practically doubles in the summertime months; the brand new Cape Cod location alone booked $350,000 in companies throughout peak season final 12 months.
What’s extra, Junk Teenagers’ younger group members convey an open-mindedness and excessive vitality that make for a vibrant firm tradition, the co-founders notice.
“In that situation the place somebody had one thing occur of their life the place they could be slightly down coming within the subsequent day, they get picked proper again up as a result of there’s 10 or 15 different guys that every one have excessive vitality round them,” Jacob provides. “It’s inconceivable to nonetheless act unhappy or down if you’re in that kind of setting.”
Perfecting techniques for a nationwide scale
Now, the McKinney brothers are centered on perfecting their enterprise’s techniques as they eye a nationwide enlargement, ideally throughout the subsequent couple of years.
“ For me, essentially the most thrilling factor is empowering the youth,” Kirk says. “With know-how, there are such a lot of alternatives to earn money. However everybody’s all the time going to wish junk eliminated. There’s all the time going to be excessive schoolers on the lookout for after-school and summer time jobs. And younger persons are on the lookout for completely different profession paths apart from the standard faculty route.”
The co-founders obtain day by day DMs from younger individuals asking for recommendation on beginning a enterprise. They’d encourage anybody who’s contemplating it to cease procrastinating and go for it.
“I don’t suppose there’s ever an ideal roadmap until you have already got $1 million and are a enterprise knowledgeable, which we weren’t, and most individuals beginning companies are usually not,” Jacob says. “So begin, even when it’s not going to be the enterprise that you just retire with. We simply began with one thing that we thought was adventurous and entertaining, not even one thing that we thought would make us essentially the most cash.”
This text is a part of our ongoing Younger Entrepreneur® collection highlighting the tales, challenges and triumphs of being a younger enterprise proprietor.
Key Takeaways
- Junk Teenagers hit $3 million in income in 2025 and is projected to succeed in $5 million this 12 months.
- The brothers have applied a collection of techniques to develop the enterprise and eye future scale.
- Junk Teenagers additionally depends on an app vibe coded by one among its teenage workers.
In 2024, when Entrepreneur first linked with brothers Kirk McKinney, 22, and Jacob McKinney, 21, their Larger Boston-based junk-removal enterprise, Junk Teenagers, was nonetheless a facet hustle, albeit a $1.2 million one.
The then-teenaged brothers launched Junk Teenagers again in 2021 with a single pick-up truck. A pair of working audio system discovered at a dump grew into a set of resellable objects — $1,000 price — offered on Fb Market.
Now, the brothers’ largely student-run service, which additionally serves Cape Cod and Rhode Island, operates eight vehicles and has 25 full-time workers. The enterprise has dealt with an estimated 7.4 million kilos of things, sorting usable items for donation, resale or repurposing every time doable.
