One Person’s Trash is An Entrepreneur’s Treasure Transcript

More Elephant Intro

[00:00:37] Jason Rudman: Welcome to the latest edition of the More Elephant podcast. And we've been talking about this thing called entrepreneurship. The reason entrepreneurship is important because that's where ideas get generated and change happens. And I think entrepreneurs are the bravest people on the planet because they have an idea and then they've got to stitch together resources, funding, and somehow make that great idea come to life.

And so thrilled today to invite Liz Picarazzi to the More Elephant podcast. Liz is the founder and CEO of CITIBIN and we're going to get into CITIBIN. I don't want to steal her thunder. We're going to get into what CITIBIN does, how she got to create a really fascinating and interesting solution. What it's taught her about herself and about the path to entrepreneurship.

And equally important, how she got there and the importance of agency and impact in her own life and that of the people that surround her. So Liz, welcome to the More Elephant Podcast. 

[00:01:50] Liz Picarazzi: Thanks for having me, Jason. Thanks for inviting me. 

[00:01:53] Jason Rudman: Thrilled you're here. What I'd love to do is invite you to give a top line as to what CITIBIN is. And then we're going to go backwards and say, all right, CITIBIN didn't happen overnight.

What's the arc of the story that got you to this great idea and the change that you're having on everybody's daily lives? 

[00:02:13] Liz Picarazzi: Great. So at CITIBIN, we design, manufacture, and distribute something very sexy trash enclosures. So they're basically very nice cabinets that can seal trash cans, trash bags in cities that often are on the curb.

And we really created a new category, Trash Enclosures. Yes, you can buy them at Home Depot and other places, but there really has never been a trash enclosure that was dedicated to being the most beautiful, the most durable trash enclosure in the world. And that's actually what my mission is.

We also do a couple of offshoots of trash enclosures. So we also ventured into package lockers because it uses a lot of the same materials. They can be used in a modular way. So sometimes I tell people I kind of got started in the trash business, but we also are doing anything having to do with outdoor storage.

So it can be for recycling, can be for trash, can be composting, can be a package locker, can be a mailbox, can be a shed. Anything having to do with outdoor storage. And I often tell people that we are an alternative to a rubbermaid shed for people that are going to want something that's nicer.

It's a really kind of conspicuous eyesore in places like New York, where I got my start, where someone may live in a 5, 10, 20 million dollar brownstone, and they still have their trash in front of their homes. So that's really what we're solving for. 

This is really a contradiction that this person that paid $2,000 for the light in their foyer, which maybe won't ever be seen, but yet they have these trash cans in front. So that's really where it came from. It was sort of a, wow, this is a need. This is an obvious need. I live in New York City, I'm walking around and I see it everywhere.

So that's how CITIBIN came to be. And we have a lot of other things going on, which I can possibly mention, but the beginnings of it was a trash enclosure. 

[00:04:13] Jason Rudman: I love that. So trash is sexy. You can make trash sexy. Trash is not bad. And then I think when we were talking previously you described was we spend a lot of time in our spaces, beautifying the back of the house, much like the light that nobody may ever see or that we live in.

Why are we not spending as much time on the front of the house that everybody can see, which is a marker of the investment that we've made in our property? And it's as much a design flourish and a beautification opportunity as everything that you do in the back. 

[00:04:45] Liz Picarazzi: Exactly. 

[00:04:46] Jason Rudman: So. I want to absolutely get into the growth story because I think there's such a gem of insight there, which is I started one place and then as I started thinking about it, it threw off some other opportunities, which were adjacent to what my original idea is that you add. But let's go all the way back if we can because, for the audience, you and I crossed paths at American Express many moons ago.

And I think that what I know about you is the power in the solution that you've built is that you're present to the customer need and a personal connection to the solution. And how you got on the path of entrepreneurship and CITIBIN was not the first rodeo. Is this realization of a love for American Express in the experience but a genuine level of unhappiness as a knowledge worker. 

And so, I'd love for you to take us through the arc of that and that realization journey because I think it teaches us so much about staying true and listening to who we are and ultimately what motivates us. And I think this story is one of those great ones that leads you to a different destiny.

[00:05:57] Liz Picarazzi: Yeah. So, I think that when I was at American Express and we knew each other, I really loved working there, but I worked in the small business division, which meant that I was encountering a lot of very inspired entrepreneurs who were following their dreams. And so, when I had ideas for businesses and I've always been an entrepreneur, I always was like, I need to find the one that is strong enough for me to leave my corporate jobs.

So, I went through many of them. But the feeling that I had at Amex or anything in corporate was that knowledge work is really the manipulation of ideas and sort of manual labor is the manipulation of things. And I found that when I was doing work in my own house. And I'm very handy person. I'm very good at a lot of the trades. I felt incredible agency that if my bathtub needed to be re-caulked or my deck needed to be power washed, or I had new curtains that I wanted to hang or I had a new TV that needed to be mounted or I needed to paint a nursery. Those were things that were tangible that you needed to have done, and there is a solution to them; however, it's very hard to find someone other than yourself to do those things.

So, most of those are the domain of handymen. And we always called it the HoneyDew list. So those things that even something as simple as changing a light bulb, you don't have it established who's going to do the caulk once a year, let's say it can actually cause strife in a marriage or in a relationship. And I see you laughing there. I think we all have encountered this. This is stuff that needs to get done, and there isn't an easy way to get it done.

Back then, there was Angie's List; there was Task Graphic, and you could go on Craigslist. But if you had a list of 12 things that just work idling on that HoneyDew list, I want to fly it away to get those things done. And so, to your question about knowledge work, I realized that sitting in those conference rooms on projects that may not exist a year later. Many, many, many meetings. I didn't feel I had agency there. I just did it. Wonderful place, brilliant people. But if you're sitting in a room full of knowledge workers, they're just manipulating ideas, and they maybe don't care to manipulate things.

When I was on the weekend, I had time to power wash my deck. I had such a feeling of agency that I could clean my deck. And I enjoyed doing it, and I was outside. That feeling was really hard to get in a place like that. And I realized that that feeling of relief that the HoneyDew list was taken care of was something I wanted other people to feel because I loved it so much. Like, you can get this stuff done. It's so efficient. In my case, I did a lot of the work. And so, I sometimes tell people, I do really well in between being like a blue-collar worker and a white-collar worker. I'm not exactly one or the other and I really liked it that this was something that it was an obvious need that I could apply my marketing skills and my MBA too.

So, it's like, who in the world who has an MBA and works at Amex starts a handyman company? It may have been a little bit crazy, but it did give me a feeling of agency on behalf of myself and on behalf of my clients because I was the personification of my client. I was a corporate worker. I had a young child. I lived in a very old house that needed a lot of things done. And who am I going to turn to? So that's where the idea for the Handyman Company came up.

I started in 2011, the same year that I left Amex. I ended up selling it in 2018. But in between, it was building up the service company, building up W-2 handymen who were licensed and insured, which is pretty unheard of in most places. You know, most people, to get a handyman, you're going to go on Craigslist. So this is not only am I going to take care of your HoneyDew list but I'm going to do it in such a professional way that you're going to be really surprised that you were ever even dealing with a contractor.

And that was the level of service that I have always taught my employees is that you want them to be like, what? Was that a contractor? Contractors don't call me back. They cheat me. Poor quality. All sorts of things. And so that was really the goal: to combine getting this thing done, the HoneyDew list, with doing it in a totally unexpected way for this industry. 

[00:10:35] Jason Rudman: Which I think is the beauty of having worked at American Express and appreciating a level of customer centricity and service that allows you to stand out. When I talk to people who were part of that period in American Express, there is a reverence because it taught so many great people so many great things that they then said now how do I apply this? And I love the spirit of agency.

So, I'm going to go a little further back before we go forward. So, where does that come from in your DNA? Because I don't think we wake up immediately and say, Oh, I've got agency. I'd love to explore what were the seminal More Elephant moments around agency that got you confident and comfortable enough to make that leap of faith because my sense is that there were moments that happened even before that. That really, really helped you lean into the courage to say, I'm going to be an entrepreneur, I'm going to start a handiwork business, and I'm going to surprise and delight people in a way they might not expect.

[00:11:41] Liz Picarazzi: If you go a little further back. I always loved ‘shop’ class, which they barely have in the U. S. Like 80 percent of shop programs, if not more, have been totally shut down in favor of, guess what? Knowledge work, technology, computers, all the shop classes were replaced with computer labs. And that means that most people don't have these sorts of technical skills. 

I was a good student. I never would have thought, wow, I'm going to lean into shop class here. I knew I really liked it and I knew I liked to create things. I like to build things. I also really in the arts. I am an entrepreneur, but I think more than anything is I'm an artist. I really like creating things. And so, it came from that with I know I'm not going to the rest of my life be great as a knowledge worker. I don't love it. So I think that's kind of the origins, but it really all gets back to customer need. If I didn't think that most people I knew need a handy rad.

Look at the list of things that you have on your HoneyDew list. So many people have it. And the same person that will hire a nanny or hire a cook; will outsource many things. If they want to outsource that list, there's nowhere to go, really. I would say maybe if you're asking a bit about motivation, it's that I really like to create things. I like iteration. I like creation. That's who I am and I found a place where I can do it. The problem though is that if you're an entrepreneur and you're running ideas all the time, you can get very distracted.

I've had a lot of products that I've created that have failed. I've had things that I've taken my team on for months that I ended up canceling because it was the wrong path. But the thing is, I can't dim that. I should not dim that because that's what got us here. And it's almost like you're gambling. A lot of my ideas are going to be bad, but some of them are going to be really good.

And you have to have the belief in yourself that you're going to bet, right? 

[00:13:48] Jason Rudman: Well, I think you got to take the shot in order to score the hoop, right? I know that I butchered the Michael Jordan analogy there. But at the end of the day, your point is, if I'm not experimenting in creating a hundred tests, I'm not going to find what the next best thing could be. And I'm at my best, You're at your best when you're creating and experimenting and prototyping. And that is not for everybody.

Indeed, I know that you shared with me that one of the things that you learned within the handiwork part of your journey is that the service business is way more difficult than the product business. So, could you talk about that in the context of what the handiwork business taught you and how that leans in then to, okay, I'm going to put that piece down because I've got this other idea that I want to explore?

[00:14:39] Liz Picarazzi: Yes. So, a service business can be very difficult. The variability in every job is something that is really complex. So you got a client, you got a handyman, you've got their home, you've got their list, you've got the materials you need to get, you've got the parking spot you need to get. There are all of these things that could go wrong. The most important being the actual labor person, the handy person.

That was really easy to get wrong, and that was the one that really kind of put me into, I'd rather be doing something else. I had a very strong right-hand person who managed a lot of the stuff that I wouldn't have been good at. She was very strong in operation, but what started to happen was that we were getting requests for trash enclosures from our handyperson client.

And we had a shop in the Navy yard in Brooklyn, and so we started iterating and building trash enclosures. The first one was actually in my backyard. We had clients that had the means to basically help us prototype. So, I would say we can do this at cost. These are our early models, and people really like that because they also like being part of the process. That makes them feel good. Some of my earliest clients are really happy that they were part of the journey at the beginning. So, we started getting more business from trash enclosures. I started getting more interested in it, building products, standardizing it, and eventually mass manufacturing it.

And I liked that it was narrower. There was more control. There were fewer variables, and it was easier to scale. So, a handy person company means you always need to have talent and people who are going to be reliable. That's not an area where people are all that reliable. I know some people really wanted to franchise checklist home services, and I looked into that for a while, but I kind of knew that it would be difficult for people in other cities to recruit, train, and retain handymen. And I thought, well, if that's the only way I can grow is a franchise model, and I doubt their ability to hire people. I'm going to get out of here with the increased trash enclosures, as well as some of the press we were getting from the New York Times to Fast Company, you name it.

I decided to move to product, and I'm really glad I did that, but that definitely has its issues, too. I mean, at Amex, we talked a lot about cash flow. In a handyman business, the cash flows as you do the work. It's like the same day you do the work, and you get paid on that day, whereas with my other business, I'm doing mass manufacturing. I'm buying things, inventory, before I'm going to sell it. And I have to deal with the cash flow process that's different. I've got it now, but it took me a couple of years because the cadence and the flow was very, very different.

If you're not doing it right, you could buy too much inventory, as I did several times, and then be paying for that inventory, and you're sitting on it. I bought a ton of inventory in January 2020 and sat there in the warehouse; you pay rent on your inventory that's not moving. I couldn't have known that was going to happen. But if I am in the Amex and still getting a paycheck, I wouldn't be worried about a million dollars of inventory in an expensive warehouse when no one's buying. And that's what it was like for me during the pandemic. That was terrifying, and that was because it was a product business.

[00:18:14] Jason Rudman: I don't want to skip past the amount of research and work that you did, and you made it sound so simple. All of a sudden, in my handy work business, I was seeing this increased incidence of this trash problem I want to solve, which led you to design. This comes down to substrate and different types of hinges, and different types of connecting pieces. So, prototyping and design thinking. But I want the audience to appreciate the level of research and the walking of the walk that you did to get your working prototype in place. 

[00:18:50] Liz Picarazzi: Yes, so I spent a lot of time walking around New York City, taking pictures of trash enclosures, custom made prefab, rubber made. And I really looked at it from the perspective of the durability, the look, the price. I have many thousands of photos on my phone of both trash and trash enclosures. And I know that I have more of those than I even have of my daughter. That's how obsessed I was.

So, looking at all of these elements and you look at, okay, I see a trash enclosure, and their hardware is rusted. What did they use? Why did they use that? How can I make sure my trash enclosure solves all the issues that I see that they have? I had a Pinterest board. I think I started my Pinterest board about trash enclosures even before I left Amex. So, the obsession preceded the handyman company, actually.

And seeing how things can fail. You know, one thing I always really delight in is that probably half of our customers are replacing existing trash enclosures. And so those broke down - something you got off of Wayfair. Sometimes, it'll be like a multifamily building where the co-op board will spend many months deciding which trash enclosure they're going to buy. And they buy the wrong one that then fails, and then they come back to us 5 years later. They pay us to replace the one that they bought, and you see how flimsy they are.

I really want my trash enclosure to be a piece of outdoor furniture that you're going to have for a long time, just like you would buy patio furniture, which most people aren't going to see. This is a piece of furniture that's in front of your house. It adds curb appeal, or it can subtract curb appeal. So, the research and then with actual customers, that's the part I should also mention is that some of my customers knew, like, I didn't know exactly what I was doing, but I could talk to them about what they needed, how much trash they had, what the issues were.

And we went through iterations with materials that ended up being horrible. Some of our first ones were like tracks decking that's an inch thick. Those were really heavy, and they were too heavy on the hinges, and they were thick and bulky. They didn't look good. So we used two or three different materials, trying it out before we got to the iconic bamboo boards that we use now.

But it took that iterating to see what is going to work well. So definitely a lot of talking to customers, but also a lot of creepy looking at people's trash and taking pictures, you know, hinges and their latches and their adjustable feet and how do the top doors close and very importantly, are they rat resistant or rat proof? Most trash enclosures are not rat-proof. 

[00:21:44] Jason Rudman: So, let's spend a little bit of time there because there is an environmental sanitary outcome here beyond beautifying the front of the house. And I think you had said this: it's a statement in a place where design and choice have been largely missing, but also for our audience that is not as familiar with New York City as you and me, can you talk a little about the rat problem which is real which also connects to what you were able to help solve?

[00:22:15]Liz Picarazzi: So, in New York City, when we put our trash out, we just put them out on bags. On the sidewalk, so residential, schools, anything in the public, almost all trash bags are on the sidewalk, which means there's a really big rat problem because you're putting out rat food every night in every bag when you do that.

So, one of the big changes in the city is that they're mandating, over time, containerization of trash. Meaning that, as of next September, you can't put a trash bag on a New York City sidewalk at all. You're going to get ticketed for it. That's the residential part, but on the municipal side, they made a big effort to containerize business improvement district trash. Most of them will have private cleaning crews, and they're going to have a team that will help support the businesses. They have a huge sanitation and beautification mission.

And so, in New York, they have 60, 76 business improvement districts, and CITIBIN is already in 22 of them growing. And one of the first bids we had of all places was Times Square. We get our bins installed in Times Square. We got a contract, we replied to an RFP, and the mayor held a press conference in Times Square next to the bin, gestured to it, talks about how this is going to solve our rat problem in the city.

And next thing you know, we're everywhere: New York Times, Russian news, Italian news, all over the place. But we were there, we had the product, but it was also at the right time. So, if they wanted containerization quickly, oh my gosh, there's this company in Brooklyn that that's what they do. And, of course, I let them know that because I knew before the program launched, because it was in the New York Times, that they were going to have a containerization effort. That was made public right before the pandemic.

And when I saw that article. I was like, I'm going to get that contract when the time is right. I was ready. I pounced on that contract as soon as it became available. People knew I wanted it, but it corresponded with the need for sanitation. And then I will say in Times Square, we're in nine (9) different intersections and, on all of those intersections, there previously was a pile of trash.

So, there are 300,000 tourists that go through Times Square, and yet they have these piles everywhere. That's not good for tourism. The business case can be made very easily for trash enclosure. If you look at how repellent rats and trash are to tourists, a really easy one to make. So, we've done really well with that municipal market because they have a mission that aligns with what we can do, and we love working with them.

And then the municipal market in New York has then opened up to many other cities. So, we're now in Philly and Boston. We're doing Chicago Monday and Tuesday next week, next Hoboken. I think a lot of it had to do with the Mayor declaring this is how we're going to take care of trash in New York City. I think I was a pretty good beneficiary worthy, but not as much publicity as we got. I want to say it's crazy. Like, how much if you're dealing with trash and rats in New York City and Times Square, how much press you can get?

[00:25:42] Jason Rudman: Well, one could argue it's an existential problem because, to your point, it's a quality-of-life challenge. We should also acknowledge that the pandemic got exacerbated in New York City as well. Not only is it a persistent quality of life, for those who are listening, I lived in Manhattan for 22 years. You're not at home with rats, but they're frequently available for you to see. And then I think it got exacerbated in the pandemic. And then you mentioned that you were storing a million dollars’ worth of equipment.

So, did that buy turn out to be a little fortuitous because you were able to accelerate, even though you were obviously unduly concerned in the pandemic of what am I going to do with all of this raw material? 

[00:26:26] Liz Picarazzi: Yeah. The inventory took about 4 months longer to sell than it should have been, but then we ended up selling all of it. When people spent the summers outside and they're on their stoops, they don't want to see the trash there.

So we ended up rebounding and then we end up having troubles with supply chain where we couldn't buy them and sell them fast enough or get them. We had some clients that were paying us six, seven months in advance because the supply chain issues were so difficult, but that's a little bit of a separate issue. 

[00:26:59] Jason Rudman: Many manufacturers face post-pandemic.

I think about first world problems, which were moving homes and furniture. Just to get a sofa. Might take you like six months to get a sofa. You have to get on a wait list. So just connecting that to much larger issues in the supply chain in general. And we've talked about solving for rats and sanitation and quality of life.

We should also talk a little bit about space constraints in New York City. And I'm going there because many people in my audience may never have been to New York City and realize the compact nature of how people live. So there's an elegance to the design that you had as well because you're dealing with space constraints.

And I wonder if you just take us on a journey as to what you were confronted with and how you solve that. And then I'd love to get into the growth story because you started mentioning some offshoots and about what the space constraints and then other insights gave you the opportunity to develop. 

[00:28:00] Liz Picarazzi: Yeah, so the space constraints as it has to do with trash is largely due to the fact that in New York, we don't have garages, driveways, or alleys like most people do.

So there's nowhere to put it except out front. So if you're trying to take care of your trash, your recycling, your composting, your packages, your mail, the modular approach that we created allows you to basically, like a container store like California Closets, you can put together the modules you want. And because they all work together, it really saves space.

So that was another thing that is a really good selling point for us, because a lot of these products are not space efficient and don't work together. And for designers and others that are doing stuff with higher end properties, they want it to all look nice

and pretty together. And they're not going to get that really with anything else, at least if they want to combine it. 

[00:29:01] Jason Rudman: So again, we've got neat states here. We're solving a rat problem. We're solving for space constraints. We're also solving for package theft. 

So package theft is a real thing. I think wherever you live. My ring app goes off, not necessarily in front of my house, but my ring app is so and so has just seen so and so run off with my Amazon package. So, package delivery and lockers solving for package theft, but there's also an interesting thing about money, about time and efficiency in terms of what we end up having to do without these lockers from a I need a package, where is it going to be delivered.

 I come back to the unique, I think not completely unique, but the uniqueness of how people move around in New York City. So would you take us on the journey of that aha moment around packages. How people move in New York City and what the elegance of your solution affords people the ability to do.

[00:30:00] Liz Picarazzi: Yeah, so a lot of this and it comes from online shopping. Buying things online is really easy. It almost couldn't be easier, but receiving them, it's still really difficult. And there aren't any really easy solutions to it. Some of the things that people do in New York, they may have it delivered somewhere else.

They may have it delivered to work, and then they take it home on the subway. So you're schlepping it on the subway. They may have it delivered to, let's say, Whole Foods, as much as we probably all love Whole Foods. Should you really drive to Whole Foods to pick up something from an Amazon locker?

Is that really even environmentally or if you live in a city like mine, they sometimes will send it to 7-Eleven or a gas station? So if you've just bought your kids’ school supplies, and you don't want them to be stolen, they send them to the 7-Eleven. You're walking eight blocks to get the school supplies. That's not convenient.

If you can have it delivered to your house, it's convenient. And just not having to worry about how you're going to get them. Theft is a really big deal. Let's say you do have an Amazon package or other stolen. What about the time it takes for you to recover that, to reorder it? And make sure the second time you order, it doesn't get stolen. So, we recently had a customer who got a package locker because a computer monitor had been stolen. So, they ended up replacing it, but then the monitor got stolen, and the replacement got stolen. And so, they were like, my time trying to get this monitor is.

really valuable. It was so easy to order the monitor, but how am I going to get it? So, there is a time calculation in there that having a package locker that is right there, you can just pick your stuff up just like your mail. You take your mail inside. When you come home, you take your package inside. You don't have to get in the car or go anywhere.

You don't need it delivered to your neighbor. I think everybody can relate to and I think the statistics show that around 80 percent of people have had at least one package stolen, and it just keeps getting worse and worse. You mentioned having a ring. If you catch a porch pirate on your ring, pretty likely that the police aren't going to do anything about it.

[00:32:23] Jason Rudman: Absolutely. We know that to be true. I think there's also a safety and a security element to this as well. Packages left on the soup or left outside are inviting somebody who is nefarious to monitor and say that it hasn't been picked up for maybe a day or something like that while you're on vacation, and therefore, that may be easy pickings. 

[00:32:51] Liz Picarazzi: Yeah, and there's an emotional element too. Because let's say someone buys you a really thoughtful gift, something that they had custom-made, and they send it to you, and it gets stolen. Then the person who sent it, it was super thoughtful, is going to feel shitty. And then the person that they send it to is going to feel like, how can I find this?

Where is this? When something is stolen, that's meaningful to you, like a holiday present. That's an impact that people should really look at. That takes a toll on you, your psyche. And it affects your time and just your belief in humanity, all sorts of stuff. So that's another factor that really can drive that part of the business.

[00:33:32] Jason Rudman: And I think that emotional connection to the solution, we so often gloss over. Those moments that matter and, to your point, the opportunity to surprise and delight somebody with something as simple as a package delivery locker enables you to feel confident that you're going to be able to not only save time but

trust and believe that what you need to get delivered will get delivered on time and that you can have access to it. What have you heard from your customers in terms of the impact on the community? I think as we described what we're solving for safety, security, convenience, and time. I'm not walking to 7-Eleven eight blocks.

I haven't got a card at home which is actually not convenient. It's funny, right? We shop for convenience, and then we add a lack of convenience on the other end of it, depending on where you live. So, if we broaden out the aperture a little because the original idea of CITIBIN has turned into this wonderful design flourish, a statement in a place where design and choice have been missing.

What's the impact been on the community? 

[00:34:36] Liz Picarazzi: One thing I really like in the community is they want to beautify things together. So there's one block in 9th street where, over the years, many people individually bought CITIBIN or package lockers. And then they’ve created this sort of FOMO situation on 9th Street and Park Slope where you look at your neighbor’s

trash. I mean, their CITIBIN' and you think, I want that. So, we launched this thing where if they buy together, they get a very deep discount. And so last summer, we had a whole block on Ninth Street, I think it was seven homes. And this was sort of something like, okay, we're near this park where people come along, and they throw their trash, not in our cans, but near our cans.

And then rats are coming. So this block is a good example where they decided we're going to handle this together to beautify things to partially get rid of the rats. But by doing it this way, we're going to get a deeper discount. Obviously, as a business person, I like that, but I enabled them to buy together by saying this can beautify your community collectively because you're all taking charge of it at the same time.

So that was when we were doing that more with neighborhood and block associations because people talk. If the rat issue is a big deal in your neighborhood. You're not going to be able to solve it on your own. 

[00:35:57] Jason Rudman: I think also we should mention when you talk about beautification, you can have flower boxes.

And we're not just talking about this elegantly yet angular design. You've taken beautification and upped the level in terms of the functionality that the modular design can actually provide. I think when we go through other neighborhoods, we might see a hanging basket of flowers on a lamppost. So, the modular design of what you have includes beautification to the extent that you can put flowers and other design flourishes on it. 

[00:36:30] Liz Picarazzi: Yeah, that's a modular option for the top doors of the bins. You can either just have it a top door or you can have a door that has a planter on the back of it.

So you get 4 bins, you're going to have a long row of flowers or spices or whatever you want. I love that feature. I think it actually has become part of our brand because there are no other companies that do that. But I also love it because there are some customers that change their flowers seasonally.

And I walk around, and I see those, and I was like, wow, I created that. They now have a gardener coming in and changing it, and that is beautification. I don't tend to my CITIBIN planters very well, but I have a couple of neighbors who are really on top of it. And I'm always like, I'm not going to use my house for marketing photography anymore. I'm just going to use yours. 

[00:37:22] Jason Rudman: Well, on some level, they're creating these smaller ways. It's like a community garden of sorts. You don't have the green thumb that some of your neighbors might, but they've taken your idea and they have made your environment better for it.

[00:37:35] Liz Picarazzi: Yeah. Yep. 

[00:37:37] Jason Rudman: So what is entrepreneurship for you? It's not for the faint of heart. My first podcast conversation was with Ben Brooks and Ben said, I try to dissuade people from being an entrepreneur every single day because I'm nine years into my company and I love what I'm doing. I love the impact that I'm having.

It's hard. It's going to test you at the best of times. So would you subscribe to that notion? You're an entrepreneur. What have been some of the challenges that you've come through? And what has it taught you about yourself? 

[00:38:11] Liz Picarazzi: Entrepreneurship is very difficult, and it is not right for most people. I definitely agree with that. A large percentage of businesses fail because you like something and you think you can make a business out of it. So just because you like cooking doesn't mean you should open a restaurant. I'm hands-on somewhat with the work, like less so.

But I like that I can actually put marketing over something that normally doesn't have marketing or doesn't have photography or doesn't have any sort of a beautiful thing. So, I'm always coming up with new things, whether it's about the product itself or, like we do in marketing. How we're going to project this out to a different segment.

So most of my competitors are not going to have this sort of Amex level training to understand how do I get the word out about this thing that I've created. How do I get customer buzz? So it is really difficult putting your finances on the line, which we haven't talked about. I've got my house mortgaged against my business.

I almost crashed and burned during the pandemic when things were shut down. Had there not been PPP, I might not be here. People like to criticize the government a lot. I think they were incredibly generous. with small businesses. So those are the hard parts. It's like realizing that your money is on the line and also particularly with me because my husband is my COO, and he joined the business at the beginning of the pandemic. He has very complimentary skills, but we do know that if shit goes down, both of us we're not going to have the income. Our house is on the line. A lot of things could go wrong with that. But we actually do like working together. We have some difficulties sometimes, but he came along at a time when I'm not strong in operations, and he is from a lot of his experience.

He really likes it. When it comes to dealing with inventory, dealing with terrace or moving things from A to B to C. If he didn't come in and take a lot of that off my plate, I don't know. He does a lot of the things that I don't like. To answer your question on kind of what is a risk or what gets you down?

The risk that I have from having my family income totally dependent on the business is really scary when I think about it, but I also get a lot of support from other entrepreneurs. So I'd really made an effort to have a lot of peer groups. Goldman Sachs, 10, 000 small businesses. I did a member of the chamber of commerce.

I'm in two other entrepreneur organizations, mastermind. This morning I went on a monthly walk with three other women entrepreneurs. If you don't get out there and have those connections with other entrepreneurs, that's also a high rate of failure. I really embraced that because I know I learned every time. Like something I was really bummed out about this morning with the business that I went on walk, I had a totally different insight from something that they said to me that I'm like, wow, this setback actually is an opportunity.

And then as an entrepreneur, that will get me excited. So I know it's going to go kind of up and down with my level of excitement, but I'm also pretty manic. If I get an idea, I'm going to want to take action on it. And that's why working at a place like Amex, anything corporate, that's difficult because if you're excited about something and you can't get someone else excited about it, probably not going to go anywhere.

[00:41:37] Jason Rudman: It doesn't get done. 

[00:41:38] Liz Picarazzi: So, an entrepreneur, you're going to find a way to get to where you want to go. You're going to go around, you're going to go above, you're going to find a way to do it. And if you hit that point where you realize, well, this is a shit idea. At least you know that you've been crazy trying to find the answer, and then you can put the thing down. I've done this with a lot of products, particularly in recent years, because there are so many opportunities.

If a customer was like, I want this, can you do this? I'm going to spend weeks thinking about it, or working, or looking into materials. I'm going to go through this whole thing. So I do need to get a little bit better at reigning myself in, but I like new ideas, right? It's high. 

[00:42:20] Jason Rudman: If we were to connect that to the promise and the premise of More Elephant, which is ideation leads to change. You're a change agent because you've thought about trash in a fundamentally different way. And from a design-thinking perspective, you've created a beautification opportunity. In a city, we'll just do with New York, where absent what you've created, we're stepping over black and blue bin liners that are half open, you see food, it all goes on front street.

So, without that spark, CITIBIN doesn't exist. And I think you've proven, with growth into other areas, that the opportunity is to see how far I can stretch this in different dimensions. Solving for the opportunity to use contained space in the most optimal way in order to help people lead a better life and it all starts with listening. The More Elephant tagline is listen, learn, live, better. You are a walking example of doing that every day by listening to the environment around you, learning from others, and ultimately helping people live better in that sentiment of how they manage their day-to-day lives from not only trash but also delivery and beautification of the neighborhood and everything else that your solution provides.

I don't think that I have to say that you learned how to be resilient through this experience or your entrepreneurial journey. What's one thing that you didn't know about yourself that being an entrepreneur has taught you that you didn't know that this is revealed? 

[00:44:03] Liz Picarazzi: Well, I'll actually be honest about one of the biggest things I've learned: I'm actually not a very good leader or manager. I'm a good visionary, but I should not have that many people reporting to me. I don't love being in the nitty gritty. So if someone had told me five years ago, you're going to hire your husband, and you're going to have everyone report to him, I would have been like, what? Why would I do that?

Like, this is my company. Why would I bring him in? It really helped things because I can now focus on growing the company. I can focus on strategic partnerships. I can really embrace every aspect of the marketing down to the photographer. I love working on stuff like that. And that was tough to realize because I need to be the leader, but it's not about being in the weeds.

Nor am I even good at that. Like, I know that. And that happens a lot with companies that…let's say oftentimes the founders are booted a lot of the time, and it's because they're always going to be the dreamers, the visionaries, and they're not going to be the tacticians. They're not going to grow the company at the same rate. Let's say that acquire wants. I don't find it surprising that a lot of founders get booted.

And I even said if I ended up selling and someone wanted me to step down as CEO. I would say I want to be the Chief Creative Officer. I would like that job more in some ways. I realized that, like, I still want to be working on the creative and strategic things and that it won't be fun or enjoyable for me anymore. I'm dealing with something supply chain related.

[00:45:43] Jason Rudman: And so, to your point, you would be the CCO and not the COO, right?

[00:45:48] Liz Picarazzi: I wouldn't see that as emotion. I don't know if I want it right now, but if that's what happened in a few years, I might be like, you know what? I want that CCO role, and I'm going to make it what I want to make it, and someone else can help grow the company. Bring in a CEO to do that. I'm actually pretty open to that. 

[00:46:06] Jason Rudman: My sense is you've still got a lot of runway ahead of you though. So, to everybody that's listening, you're not ready to hang the coat on the peg yet and say, Hey, we're done. What do the next 12 to 24 months look like in your business? You mentioned that you're expanding to Chicago and other cities; if you could give our audience a sense without giving too much away, that's confidential or proprietary. Are there additional solutions in the modular design format that you're exploring, different cities that you're going into?

[00:46:36] Liz Picarazzi: So our biggest thing next year, which is really exciting, is we've developed a bear-resistant enclosure. And we've already started selling that. We've got a lot of customers in Aspen, the one city in the West where we've got a high concentration.

I was there last week and it's some modification of the product. Moving from aluminum to steel. But that's a whole new market. It's totally different marketing. I'm probably going to open up some new sales channels that are pretty different than what I currently do. That's exciting. Our westward expansion is going to be through bears. 

[00:47:11] Jason Rudman: We're solving for bears now.

Who would have known that that would be the next leg of the journey? That's awesome. 

[00:47:17] Liz Picarazzi: That came from listening. People that said, Hey, you dealt with the rats in New York. Can you deal with the bears here in Aspen? I can do it. 

[00:47:26] Jason Rudman: You can do this little small thing. Now, let's take on this big thing. So, does that mean that elephants are in the next leg of the journey? I don't know where we'd be going there to solve for elephants. But maybe that's the next leg. 

[00:47:36] Liz Picarazzi: It could be. 

[00:47:37] Jason Rudman: What's the one piece of advice that you would leave our audience for anybody that has an idea and they're thinking, could I, should I, would I have the courage to do this?

[00:47:49] Liz Picarazzi: It's actually pretty simple. Will people pay for it? No one wants to ask that question. You may be excited about it. You may think it's cool. Other people in your family are going to tell you it's cool. But if you leave your job, are people really going to pay for it?

Is the need sufficient enough that they're going to pull out their wallet and pay for it? If you put your idea to the test, it's usually going to fail. I hate to say it. You may need to revise the idea and come up with something new, but most people have ideas because they like them, not because it's going to make money. And if you're in business, you need to make money.

[00:48:24] Jason Rudman: I love that. There's a simplicity to that statement. I really appreciate it, Liz. How do people find out more about CITIBIN? And what the company is up to? 

[00:48:34] Liz Picarazzi: Sure. I'm on LinkedIn, Liz Picarazzi. I'm very proud of our Instagram portfolio for CITIBIN. So that's just @CITIBIN, and those are probably the best places to see us. Our website, CITIBIN.com. But the thing I love about our Instagram is that we're updating it with new installations all the time. And you just get to see the variety of what we do. The package lockers, air enclosures, and different colors. It's always our most up-to-date portfolio. 

[00:49:05] Jason Rudman: A kaleidoscope of greatness on Instagram at @CITIBIN. So, Liz, thank you for your time. Trash is beautiful, I think, is what we'll end with. And your journey is one of inspiration because, again, you realized early, and I love this, that you weren't happy as a knowledge worker, and there was a different journey, and you honed in on something that you felt you could solve that people would pay for. 

[00:49:32] Liz Picarazzi: Yeah. 

[00:49:32] Jason Rudman: Incredibly important. So, Liz, thanks for the time. And I'm sure my audience will be checking out your Instagram in due course. We'll make sure that they clearly understand where to go.

[00:49:43] Liz Picarazzi: Wonderful. Thank you so much for having me. And I'm so glad to reconnect after all these years. 

[00:49:49] Jason Rudman: Likewise. Likewise.

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