He Sold His Garbage Company. Now He Makes Millions for Other Service Businesses.

At 26, Bodhi Gallo was running a dumpster business in upstate New York. But he realized that wasn’t his best skill. He was testing marketing strategies that no one else in his market was using. His competitors had no website, no Facebook page, no clue. Meanwhile, Bodhi’s dumpsters started popping up everywhere.

Local roofers noticed. They asked him to run their marketing too. One client turned into four, then dozens. Today, Stryker Digital is a full-blown agency helping contractors dominate their local markets, and Bodhi’s playing the long game with software.

I sat down with him to unpack how he scaled from dumpsters to digital, why he avoids contracts, and what’s next for Stryker.

1. Who are you and what do you do?
I’m Bodhi Gallo, founder of Stryker Digital. We’re a marketing agency for local service businesses, like roofers, remodelers, HVAC companies, etc. We help them get found online, generate leads, and grow.

2. What’s your backstory? How did this start?
I started in corporate America at Benjamin Moore, helping them build their first e-commerce platform during COVID. But I hated corporate life. So I left to buy a garbage company.

Scaling the dumpster business taught me local marketing fast. When competitors didn’t even have websites, I was running SEO, Google profiles, and Facebook ads. Soon, other contractors started asking for help. One roofer literally said, “I see your dumpsters everywhere. Can you do that for me?” That first $750 monthly retainer snowballed into a full agency.

3. How did you get your first paying clients?
That first roofer was already a dumpster customer. Word of mouth spread fast from there. I worked with four roofers in the same market and became a local celebrity. People would say, “If Bodhi’s doing your marketing, you’re winning.”

4. What’s worked best for growth and retention?
For growth: posting wins on social media. Every time a client lands a $30K roof or a new lead from ChatGPT Search, we blast it on Twitter and Facebook. Those posts bring in calls like clockwork.

For retention: obsessive communication, no contract lock ups, and no surprises. We give clients a Slack channel, three calls in the first month, and automated updates whenever we touch their site or Google profile. That keeps churn near 4%, way below the industry average.

5. What’s next for Stryker Digital?
We’re building a platform. I don’t want to play in the CRM space… there’s already ServiceTitan for that, but I do want every client to have a central hub. A dashboard where they can track rankings, call recordings, leads, everything.

We already built the first tool: Review Rover. It auto-texts customers after a job and asks for a Google review. Simple, but it works. From there, we’re expanding it into a full-blown suite, great for upsells or even for brand-new businesses that aren’t ready for SEO or ads yet. It’s a wedge to build trust and show what’s working.

6. What’s the biggest misconception about your industry?
Easy. It’s that all agencies are scammers. And to be fair, a lot of them are. You’ve got companies locking people into 12-month contracts, no communication, no reporting, nothing.

That’s exactly what we do differently. No contracts. Month-to-month. If you hate us, cancel. I’d rather lose a client than trap them. Our churn’s 4% because we actually deliver, and we stay easy to reach. That alone makes us feel like a unicorn in this industry.

7. Favorite tools?
Slack is home base, and monday.com runs the backend ops (we’re so deep into it, there’s no switching now). 

HubSpot handles the sales side, and Aircall plugs in for outreach. 

For SEO, I’m big on SEMrush and Local Viking (those map ranking visuals I post on Twitter come from there).

Every Sunday, my cofounder and I manually update our Google Sheets dashboard with key metrics: calls booked, deals closed, MRR added. Could we automate it? Sure. But doing it by hand forces us to stay close to the numbers.

Also: Zapier for automation. OneUp for Google Business posts. And Gmail, obviously.

8. If you started a new business today, what would it be?
I wouldn’t start one from scratch. I’d partner with a $2–3M HVAC company, inject marketing and capital, scale it to $10M+, and sell it to PE.

There are so many great operators stuck just below the next level because they don’t have sales or systems. I’d bring that piece to the table. But I wouldn’t do it in New York or LA. I’d go to a tier 2 or 3 city like Winston-Salem, Boise, wherever. Big enough to matter, small enough to dominate.

9. Best advice for entrepreneurs?
Network like your business depends on it, because it does. Most of my growth came from word of mouth. Talk to people. Show up. Build relationships before you need anything.

You can be the best in your market, but if nobody knows you, none of it matters.

Final Takeaways

1. Start scrappy: Bodhi turned his dumpster marketing into agency clients.
   

2. Results sell: Posting client wins online creates inbound demand.
   

3. Churn killer: Month-to-month contracts + Slack + frequent calls.
   

4. Think beyond services: The future is a SaaS-style platform for local businesses.