How Firefighter Junk Removal Went From About 80 to 207 Google Reviews in Under Eight Months

Who is Austin Davis, and why did reviews matter for Firefighter Junk Removal?

Austin Davis runs a power washing company, teaches other home service owners on his own YouTube channel, and more recently took over Firefighter Junk Removal with a business partner. This conversation was recorded for his channel, with Austin asking the questions about a tool he had been using for several months.

He knew from the start what the junk removal company needed. “I knew one thing whenever we kind of took over Firefighter Junk Removal was, we got to get the reviews up,” he said. He called junk removal competitive, with big players that have several hundred reviews each.

He also knew how long the manual route takes. His power washing company started in 2019, and it took about six years of calling customers and following up to pass 600 reviews. “Sometimes you just don’t have the time,” he said. “You get lazy. You don’t talk to your customers. And then it just takes forever to build up reviews.”

How fast did the reviews come in?

Firefighter Junk Removal went from about 80 reviews to 207. Austin remembered having around 80 in September. He signed up for Review Harvest on October 25, and by April 15 the count was 207.

He was skeptical at first, because he gets pitched software constantly, and started on a free trial. The two had met when Clay paid to join Austin’s Skool community.

The first lift came from past customers. When he first signed up, requests went to the customers the company had served in the previous one to two months. Since then, Austin said, he has not personally messaged a single client to remind them about a review.

What does the review request process look like, start to finish?

Austin walked through it himself:

1. The job is closed and invoiced in Jobber.
2. Moments later the customer gets a text with a review link and a photo.
3. If they do not respond, a follow-up goes out about two days later.
4. When the review is posted, a reply is written automatically.
5. The review is turned into an image and posted to the company’s Facebook and Instagram stories.

“It’s basically a completely done-for-you review system,” he said.

Why does the photo matter so much?

Because it gets opened. The image is a picture of Austin and his partner, one of the photos from their website, with the company logo and the customer’s first name written on it.

Austin already teaches the owners in his programs to use photos in their marketing texts. People get random messages from unknown numbers all day and ignore them, he said, but with a photo, “at a bare minimum, you’re going to look at it.” The customer recognizes the crew that was at their house and understands the company cares about the review.

The follow-up matters just as much. Looking at his account, he said, “we get a lot of reviews just from the follow-up.”

He had also forgotten, until it came up mid-conversation, that every new review becomes a social media post. For owners who struggle to post consistently, he said, that alone sets it apart from the review request built into most CRMs.

What have 120 more reviews meant for the business?

Visibility. Austin said Firefighter Junk Removal is already ranking pretty high for junk removal, and he believes the reviews are part of the reason. He thinks about online presence as parts that have to work together: the website, the SEO, the photos, the branding and the reviews.

When the cost came up, he framed it against the result. At roughly $100 a month, he figured he had spent about $800 over eight months. “That took me from not being in a position where I’m found to being in a position where I’m found,” he said, “and that opens up the door to leads, referrals, and just everything else.”

What would he tell another home service owner?

Do not let reviews depend on your memory. The trap he described is the owner who gets busy, stops asking, and stays at 50 or 60 reviews for six or eight months.

His own regret is not having a system sooner. “I just wish I had this back when I started,” he said of his power washing company. “I’d probably be over 2,000 reviews on power washing now.”