Grand Slam mentor 05 / 05

Organic brand and community

Matt & JoJo

They started over with two garbage bags. Then they built a business and a blueprint.

Matt and JoJo met while each was rebuilding a life with very little. They moved into an apartment with no couch, saved for a $5,000 pickup, built their own website, underpriced their first job, and kept learning in public. Years later, their truck became a fleet, their local name became a trusted brand, and their teaching archive grew to hundreds of long-form videos.

Learn with Matt & JoJo Read the full story

Sonoma Strong Hauling & Junk RemovalOwner-operators, teachers, and builders of a deeply local brand

2017the year they began building Sonoma Strong

$5Kthe used Toyota Tundra that started the operation

270 hoursof long-form video inventoried in their teaching archive

700+five-star Google reviews reported by the company site

The person behind the expertise

Before there were dump trucks, there was an apartment floor.

The strength of this story is not that hardship magically produced a company. It is that two people made thousands of ordinary, disciplined choices after hardship. Matt brings urgency, field judgment, sales courage, and radical empathy for the late starter. JoJo brings strategy, customer understanding, digital resourcefulness, and the calm that turns a hard-won instinct into something another owner can repeat.

Two separate restarts

Each of them arrived at a new life carrying two garbage bags.

Matt says he spent roughly twenty years caught in addiction, homelessness, and repeated jail stays. He slept in laundromats and stolen cars, lost connection with people who loved him, and eventually reached a point where arrest meant food, a shower, and somewhere to sleep. In May 2015, at thirty-five, he left county jail with the clothes he was wearing, no driver's license, no vehicle, no money, and no appetite for giving the old life another year.

A six-month Salvation Army rehabilitation program in Healdsburg gave him structure: wake up, clean, make the bed, shave, work, study, repeat. He moved into sober living, stayed away from the people and places tied to drugs, and accepted a humble job at the Safeway deli. Recovery became a set of daily actions instead of a feeling he had to wait for.

JoJo was starting over too. Born and raised in Healdsburg, she had left a previous relationship with two garbage bags, was supporting her teenage son, worked multiple jobs, and fought to build a tiny studio home for the two of them. She was not a rescuer arriving with an easy life. She knew what it meant to rebuild a home one responsible decision at a time.

The partnership

A burnt Safeway wrap, a brutally honest first date, and a home with no couch.

JoJo's son worked at the same Safeway as Matt. Matt had already over-toasted one of JoJo's wraps at the deli when he asked her son about meeting her. On their first real date, Matt led with everything he assumed might make her walk away: the record, addiction, recovery, and Salvation Army program. JoJo remembers the honesty as proof of courage. She wanted to see what life might look like for someone learning to experience it with sober eyes.

They were broke enough that Matt sometimes borrowed date money without telling her. At a movie, an eight-dollar bottle of water was out of reach, so he pointed JoJo toward the fountain. When they eventually moved in together, everything they owned fit in two cars. They sat on the apartment floor because there was no couch and talked about the life they might build.

That partnership later became one of Sonoma Strong's operating strengths. Matt is often the first through the door, the one willing to ask, sell, estimate, and turn fear into action. JoJo is the strategist who built the early digital foundation, studies how a customer sees the company, and translates rough experience into a clear process. Neither story works if the other person is reduced to a sidekick.

The first truck

They built the face of the business before they could afford the vehicle.

The idea began during Matt's Salvation Army work on a donation truck. People offered furniture the program could not accept, then asked the same unanswered question: who can remove it? Later, while frying chicken and making sandwiches for about fifteen dollars an hour, Matt decided that unserved need could become a legitimate way forward.

They did not begin with a loan or a polished fleet. Matt researched the market and possible names. JoJo taught herself website building through YouTube because an agency was not in the budget. They created a logo, business cards, a Google presence, and early service photos. The phrase Sonoma Strong carried a community meaning forged during the 2017 wildfires, so the brand sounded local before a customer ever met them.

It took roughly a year of sacrifice to save $5,000 for a 2002 long-bed Toyota Tundra. Matt worked overnight at Safeway, then hauled for hours. JoJo worked at a school and events, then hauled after work, on weekends, and during breaks. Their first Craigslist job paid around $200. Matt underpriced it and drove to the landfill unsure whether the bank balance would cover the dump fee.

From hustle to a local institution

They built demand with relationships, proof, repetition, and a willingness to be seen.

Matt walked into real-estate offices with candy dishes and business cards when he had almost no track record to show. JoJo kept refining the website, presentation, photos, links, and customer path. Together they worked Google, Yelp, local Facebook groups, before-and-after content, community relationships, realtors, property managers, repeats, referrals, and the reviews that make the next stranger feel safer choosing a small local company.

They reinvested when the work proved what the next bottleneck was. Thousands of pounds were hand-unloaded before a dump mechanism changed throughput. Paper records eventually gave way to a CRM. A pickup became two dump trucks and a donation box truck. At the time of a 2026 UpFlip feature, Matt reported roughly ninety to one hundred jobs per month, a $549 average ticket, and about one-third of work coming from repeat customers. UpFlip framed the operation at roughly $50,000 per month, a snapshot rather than a promise.

The deeper proof is what they did with the knowledge. Their authorized archive inventories roughly 270 hours of long-form video, including 836 useful English transcripts. They have shown the ugly jobs, the first mistakes, the estimates, the winter doubt, the hiring errors, the pricing logic, the website decisions, the trucks, the cleanouts, and the lessons in real time. Named students have described using their coaching to close work and create sustained demand. Those are individual experiences, but they show a pair who can do more than perform. They can make the work teachable.

Why the name still matters

The business became a way to return dignity, not only remove material.

Sonoma Strong's local reputation grew through visible community behavior as well as marketing. Matt and JoJo describe recovering food for a food bank, working with donation centers, delivering furniture or appliances to families, and creating events for local children. They are candid that community service can strengthen a brand. They also understand that it only works when the care is real before the camera turns on.

Their wedding brought the journey back to its beginning. A Salvation Army lieutenant connected to Matt's recovery officiated, and a staff member who had helped admit people into the program attended. The people who had seen the doorway into a new life were there for the marriage and business partnership that followed.

That is the perspective members get from Matt and JoJo. Junk removal often arrives at a transition: a move, a death, a fire, a cleanout, a new home, or a family overwhelmed by a space it can no longer manage. The operator is not simply hauling objects. The operator is being trusted with the moment on the other side of them.

What overnight-success stories leave out

There was no shortcut. There was a next honest move, repeated for years.

The pickup did not instantly become a fleet. Matt and JoJo worked other jobs, hauled around those schedules, faced quiet winters, loaded by hand, made bad estimates, hired people who were not safe for the work, kept records on paper too long, and learned platforms that kept changing. Each mistake became a specific correction instead of a reason to quit.

That makes their coaching unusually valuable for someone embarrassed by a late start or an imperfect setup. They can help a member distinguish what has to be professional now from what can be earned later, what the next dollar should fix, and what action will create evidence instead of another month of wishing.

What you get in the room

Two mentors, two lenses, one complete local growth engine.

Matt and JoJo bring complementary strengths across the field, the customer journey, and the public face of the company. Their advice stays close to the stage of business the member is actually in.

Matt: pricing, estimating, and field judgment

Price around disposal, cubic-yard capacity, labor, access, travel, stairs, weight, hazards, uncertainty, and the jobs you only want at a premium. Protect the margin without turning the customer conversation into a cold price chart.

JoJo: website, brand, and customer psychology

Build a simple, credible local presence with real people, real equipment, useful pages, proof, reviews, strong calls to action, and a story that tells the customer why this business belongs in the community.

Organic demand and relationship selling

Connect Google visibility, local groups, before-and-after content, realtors, property managers, partner haulers, reviews, repeat work, referrals, and face-to-face outreach into a system that does not depend on one paid channel.

Lean growth, hiring, and equipment timing

Validate demand before loading the company with debt. Know when delayed scheduling justifies help, how to test a crew member for pace and customer fit, and when a trailer, dump body, box truck, or software system will truly change capacity.

Difficult cleanouts and high-stakes estimates

Approach hoarder, estate, hazardous, and access-heavy work with realistic labor, disposal, protective equipment, uncertainty, and human context. Sell the reclaimed space and the transition, not just a truckload leaving the property.

Resilience that leads to action

Move through shame, seasonal doubt, an underpriced job, a thin bank account, or a late start by defining the next behavior that creates evidence. Their optimism is persuasive because it was built under constraint.

Six months of live access

Bring the first-truck problem and the multi-truck problem.

Matt and JoJo can meet an owner at either end of the journey. Their live sessions connect the immediate field decision with the reputation and operating system that decision is slowly building.

Build a local pricing ladder from your real disposal, capacity, labor, distance, and access costs.
Strengthen one organic channel with better proof, consistency, and a clear next action.
Turn one-time customers into repeats, referrals, reviews, and long-term accounts.
Identify the next hire, piece of equipment, or system that will relieve a proven bottleneck.
Use the company's story and community behavior to become memorable without becoming performative.

Go to the source

Watch, read, and hear more from Matt & JoJo.

This profile was built from first-person interviews, public business material, and the work Matt & JoJo has shared in the field.

WatchFrom homeless to a business profiled at $50K per monthThe complete supplied UpFlip feature, fully transcribed for this profile ReadAsk Matt & JoJoTheir searchable AI teaching archive built from hundreds of long-form videos ReadSonoma Strong Hauling & Junk RemovalThe official company, community mission, services, and current proof WatchHow it all startedThe two-bag story, the empty apartment, and the first fragile jobs WatchMatt's recovery story in his own wordsThe structures, choices, and people behind the life change WatchThe ultimate pricing guideMatt and JoJo teach disposal, capacity, labor, access, and field judgment

One mentor is only the beginning

Meet the rest of your Grand Slam coaching team.

AI, systems, and growthAndrew ThompsonRead the story

SEO and local visibilityLewis VandervalkRead the story

Leadership and cultureKevin HessRead the story

Google Ads and paid demandXavier CalderaRead the story

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