🍦My Royal Flush story

Today is special. Case studies are usually reserved for Life of Scoop Plus members. They just read about Noah Scott using his local newsletter to start a permanent lights business. But today, everyone gets the case study.

Today’s big idea is the story of Royal Flush.

This story is an example of what I call the Paxton Philosophy, which is when local newsletter operators leverage their audience to start a separate business.

Those who have followed me for a while know this story is mine. Short version: I started a luxury toilet rental business with a friend in May 2024. It did about $80k in revenue in 12 months before my partner bought me out.

Every entrepreneur has heard this story: find a business where your competitors use fax machines (AKA are outdated), use modern tech and tactics, and you’ll be a millionaire before you know it.

Portable toilet rental is that business.

I discovered when my future business partner showed me a $7 million house his buddy was building for the owner of the largest toilet rental business in town. Then we dug deeper.

Only 1 local company had more than 50 Google reviews (the one I just mentioned). Quotes took days or even weeks. Prices were all over the place. And from personal experience, nobody’s equipment was in brilliant condition.

We chose luxury toilets (think air-conditioned trailers) over porta-johns (which I’ll call PJs) for these reasons:

I’d also seen the demand and experienced the competitors’ service firsthand at the many events I attended because of Naptown Scoop. Often, I even sponsored or knew the hosts. So I knew the demand and was pretty sure I could capture it.

Luxury toilet trailers aren’t cheap. Royal Flush’s first was $50,000. My partner and I each paid $2.5k in cash and $15k on zero-interest credit cards and got a conventional equipment loan for the rest.

Before we pulled the trigger, we took one competitor out to lunch who proved to be super helpful. Portable toilets are a weird business. Most folks are friendly to the competition.

If you can’t find someone in your town, see if you can get on the phone with an out of town company who won’t mind spilling some secret sauce. Or find someone who offers consulting. Just make sure they’ve actually done the business.

Once the trailer arrived, I spent an hour practicing maneuvering because I’ve never trailer anything in my life. I didn’t even own a truck until 2 months earlier. It’s not as hard as it looks. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

Just like I thought, our first customer came from Naptown Scoop, but now how I thought.

I had just parked my new truck for an advertising meeting when the prospect walked by and said they didn’t know I drove a truck. I said, “I never did. You’ll never believe why I bought it.”

Turns out, they were hosting an event in a few months and desperately needed additional restrooms. We collected the deposit that week. And they advertised in Naptown Scoop. Win win.

Our second booking came from someone who saw Royal Flush at that event and booked it for her wedding.

Our third came directly from our first Naptown Scoop ad (which got a 2.81% CTR).

Lots of local newsletter folks are posting online right now saying it’s such a good idea to start a business with your local newsletter. Most of them haven’t actually done it so they don’t even know to tell you this:

Local newsletters aren’t silver bullets for starting a business.

You still have to do all the other things a successful local business does.

Local newsletters are however, absolute cheat codes in the startup phase.

They let you start from square 1 or 2 instead of 0.

If I wanted to start a toilet business without Naptown Scoop, I’d have to pay for ads, park my branded trailers on high-traffic roads, and hustle my butt off to make sure people knew it existed.

With Naptown Scoop, I spent 7 minutes writing 141 words and told 18,839 people about Royal Flush (358 of whom clicked on our website) for $0. And then I advertised it for free every week after that. I still do.

As your other business grows, the local newsletter will become a secondary marketing channel to conventional tactics (SEO, postcards, door hangers, etc.). And that’s OK. Your newsletter advertising clients aren’t putting all their eggs in your local newsletter basket, either.

I love a good old-fashioned unfair advantage. It’s why I don’t gamble in casinos. I only make bets I know I can win. I’m not kidding. If I ever bet you $20 on something, don’t take the bet.

With Royal Flush, my unfair advantage wasn’t advertising in the newsletter (and preventing other toilet companies from advertising).

It was my relationships.

Because I knew many event organizers and often sponsored their events, Royal Flush served 6 big name events in its first year. Events no new company would be able to get without an “in.”

I always phrased my requests the same way.

“I’m not sure if you’ve secured toilets yet, but I recently started a luxury toilet rental business called Royal Flush and I’d love the opportunity to quote your event if you haven’t.”

We always got to quote it and closed 100% of the jobs.

Now let’s revisit an earlier idea: Your local newsletter isn’t a silver bullet.

Once you get the job, you must do excellent work .

Royal Flush took a job in April that was way out of our league – an annual off-the-grid party (no power, no water) with 1,600 guests and a challenging layout. We completely flopped and I’m not sure Royal Flush will get that job again next year.

After a year of Royal Flush, I sold my shares to my partner. I made my money back and then some and had a great time in that year. But I realized that I much prefer solving problems at my standing desk on a walking pad (like I am right now) rather than on all fours repairing a tiny pump in a tiny sink while water leaks everywhere.

Btw, I built Naptown Scoop for 4 years before starting Royal Flush. Guys like Noah Scott (ChesCo Buzz) and Jas Singh (Winnipeg Digest) started their businesses only about a year in.

I had to build a solid book of advertising business before I started because I’d quit my job and had no other income. Noah still has a job. Jas had a job for the first few months and quit after Winnipeg Digest’s early success.

Do it when the time is right for you. I believe your local newsletter income or W2 job income should cover 100% of your expenses before you start something new.

If you want to build a luxury portable toilet business, I can connect you with consultants and suppliers you should work with. Serious inquiries only.

Heavily rely on your local newsletter to get your first customers.

Go all-in on free conventional marketing tactics (SEO and Google reviews) from day 1.

Slowly add paid conventional marketing tactics (bandit signs, door hangars, paid ads) as you build cashflow to create a marketing machine with no weakness. If one channel disappears, your business should not collapse.

Don’t start a new business until your local newsletter is stable. Nail your systems and team for the local newsletter before starting something else. Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing at a time.