Most people think starting a septic business begins with a truck, a logo, or a website. According to Jack, that’s exactly backwards.
In this episode of Jackquisitions, Jack breaks down the real blueprint for starting a septic company in 2026—from licensing and regulation to capital, lead generation, hiring, and scaling operations. This isn’t theory. It’s a practical walkthrough of how to actually build a septic business that survives long enough to grow.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why licensing and compliance matter more than branding early on
- The difference between septic pumping vs. repair businesses
- Why most new operators underestimate startup capital
- How the “J curve” impacts every home service business
- Whether it’s smarter to buy an existing septic company or start from scratch
The takeaway:
If you want to start a septic business, focus less on looking established and more on building the operational foundation correctly. Licensing, cash flow, lead generation, hiring, and systems are what actually create a business that lasts.
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How to start a septic business in 2026. If I were starting a septic business in 2026, I would not start with branding, I would not start with the logo, and I definitely wouldn't start with the name or the website. I wouldn't just go out and buy a truck either. The first place that you need to start if you're gonna buy a septic system in 2026 is the boring things. You gotta start on, hey, first and foremost, can I legally do this work? Because, like, let's be real, septic is not lawn care. Like it has to do with wastewater and public health, and there's permitting, and then there's state licensing and disposal rules. And if you get it wrong, this isn't just like, oh, here's a bad review. You get shut down and probably fined.
Uh so step one, uh, first and foremost, is to get the licensing. The framework is simple. I would call the state environmental agency or even Google it and just say, hey, what licenses do I need to pump septic tanks, inspect septic tanks and septic system, install risers, do minor repairs, and dispose of sewage. Because there's two sides to this business. The one first side is pumping, the second type side is actual septic and septic repair. So in Tennessee, it's it's a class, you go get you go get your permit, and then you're good to go. But there's lots of states like California and uh I think Florida is another one that they have a longer licensing period where you have to work for a company for a certain amount of years. So understanding this is going to be probably one of the most important things before even starting, because steptic is often state regulated, uh, but it's county administered. So the states may say one thing and the county may be the gatekeeper to approving permits and disposal and inspections and repairs. So don't rely on like ChatGBT. You actually have to go out there and contact your state and contact your uh county just to make sure that as a local operator you understand the rules of the game before you even get started. Because if you buy a hundred thousand dollar truck or a thirty thousand dollar truck, you don't want to be stuck with the payment without actually having the means to make revenue from that. So that's where
I would start. I'd probably start on the pumping side, just because the pumping side usually takes less regulation and it's easier to just get started on, and then that leads into the bigger ticket installation side. Uh so start with pumping, that's the best place, that's where I would personally start, and then go from there. So we know we've gotten our legal all understood. We know what our permits are and our licenses are, what we need from the state, what we need from the county. Uh, we've probably located a spot where we are going to be able to dispose. We know that we're gonna do pumping only. This is the foundation. That's what you need to do to start this program. Obviously, there's a lot more in there. I'm happy to deep dive this. Subscribe, like, follow, and let me know if you want me to deep dive like this specific section or any of the next sections.
Because the next section is what you have to do. Number two, is you have to go out and get capital, right? Every business requires capital to start up, savings, investors, whatever that case may be. And for me, I never want to start a project underfunded. I'd rather be overfunded, give away a little bit too much equity, or raise a little bit too much debt than to go in underfunded because underfunded is you're immediately starting behind the eight ball, you're going to lose most of the time. Uh, in this business or in all businesses, home service businesses, we have what's called the J curve. And the J curve is kind of the start, and then you actually have some traction, and then it goes straight up, it goes almost exponential. That's how growth works. You go you go flat for a long time, or maybe even a little bit down, and that's because it you don't know what you don't know. You're learning the industry, you're learning the business, you're trying to hire, you're trying to do everything, and it takes time, it takes time and money to start J curving. So give yourself enough runway. It's not a $5,000 startup, it's not a $10,000 or a $50,000 startup. If I'm gonna start a septic business, my recommendation is going to be to start somewhere lean, but that lean is going to be around $150k. Like I would not start day one without $150K because you need equipment, you need pump trucks, which are extremely expensive, you need insurance, you need working capital, you need marketing payroll, you need disposal license and disposal access, and you need enough money to survive the early months before the schedule really fills, and then you don't spend it all day one, right? Uh you leave a lot of it available for this working capital. So this gives you the room, first initial room, we have some money. Next is we go out and we acquire or release equipment. We're gonna build a lead machine. So, how what kind of pipeline are we getting leads from, which costs money to bring in leads? Uh, we're gonna hire somebody most likely, maybe not day one, but maybe within a few weeks as your leads start to go. And then we're not gonna panic when something breaks, a system, a process, or an item.
So here's how I would think about money. I would not want to put every dollar into this truck. Uh I think that's a rookie mistake. Nice trucks are good, but like what I see a lot is that people go out and they run out and buy the biggest, nicest truck possible, and then they run out of money and they have no money to buy leads, so the truck just sits. Right? For the truck, I would compare about three options. The best option is buying a small existing septic operator, but most likely that's not gonna happen, especially not at this kind of cost range. Uh it's gonna cost more, but it does come with a truck. It's gonna come with a phone number, it's gonna come with a customer list, license, paths, local reputation. I mean, it comes with everything, right? It's uh you're buying in a business. It's usually better than starting cold, but you're gonna pay more, right? Um, you're gonna pay a lot more. But that being said, like right at a three or four X multiple plus a SBA 7A loan, this is what it would look like, right? If you say, hey, I have a hundred K, like we've talked about, I'm gonna put 10% down, which is the SBA minimum, and that's gonna buy me up to in a million dollar company. Well, if you're giving a 3x multiple of EBITDA, that means that that company is cash flowing somewhere around $333,000 a year, or netting, or SDEing $333,000. That's all different conversation on acquisitions, but that'll get you a nice start. Yes, the debt service is gonna be more, you're gonna be looking at ten to fifteen thousand dollars a month in payments, but ideally, I mean, that's gonna be coming from the cash flow of the business. So your cash flow decreases a little bit, but there's still plenty to grow. The second one is going to be hey, we're starting cold, so it's going out and buying a truck. Not the prettiest truck, not the biggest truck. I'm gonna buy something reliable, something reliable, something smaller that can get me through the first two years of service because you can always outgrow the truck, but you cannot overutilize capacity of the truck, right? So, like I can buy another truck, but if I buy too big early on, it's just gonna sit for most of the time. So if I had so we're saying like 250k to start, I might allocate it something like this 75 to 150 on the truck, down payment and like the leasing, uh, and then maybe 15 to 30k towards like the licensing, the legal, the basic tools, safety, gear compliance, maybe another 30 to 50k on marketing for the first six months, which is like 10k a month. So, I mean that's very heavy marketing, but that should get you moving in the
right direction. All the marketing I'm gonna be focusing on personally is lead generation or demand marketing. It is somebody's looking for a job, like an Angie's or a Thumbtack or an LSA lead, uh local service ads from Google, not on branding material. So I'm not gonna be putting up a bunch of billboards, I'm not gonna be running radio ads, I'm going to focus on direct lead generation activities. A lot of people try the branding early on, and for some small local communities, it works fantastic. It works amazing. It is the best thing since life spread, but a lot of times it's untrackable or very, very hard to track and figure out where those leads came from. So if you don't know where the leads came from, like you don't know if your marketing is working. So, how do you double down on something you don't know is working? In attribution, with like Angie's list or a thumbtack, like you know where that lead came from because it says it on the text message that comes in, it's on their lead app portal. So you you need to focus on what kind of leads come in and make sense. Uh, for septics, traditionally, Google has been the entire game. It's not a cute branding business, it's not like a building a following business, like there's no Instagram that's gonna get you these leads. It's people type in my septic is broken, my toilets won't flush, why plumber near me? Like, that's where you need to go is to be a Google first business, and where that starts is optimizing your Google profile, your Google business profile or your GBP. And this needs to be done before you turn on LSAs. This should probably be done before you start any of your thumbtack or angie's or any other type of leaders aggregator because this works from an organic standpoint. As you can get into the map pack, people Google uh septic uh pumping near me, and you show up if you're geographically close to them. So it's it's your mobile, it's your online storefront. This is needs to be filled out completely. Fill it out, upload pictures, even if they're not great pictures. Go out, take pictures of some septic systems in your backyard. The key here is the more you fill out for Google, the better Google does for you. Hours, service areas, phone numbers, FAQs, posts,
and once that's all filled out, the next thing is to go focus on reviews. So we filled it out. Maybe we've turned on a few ads, we're we're starting to get maybe one or two calls in a week, maybe one or two a day, hopefully. And then the focus becomes from a marketing perspective, reviews. Reviews, reviews, reviews, reviews, because that's the currency with Google. How many reviews you can get, the velocity and the quality, and obviously five stars, is what drives Google to say this is a good business, I'm going to refer you more often. So, how do you do that? You have technicians ask, hey, did you like your pumping service today? Would you mind leaving us a review? Always comes better from the technician. Nobody wants to review a company, they want to review a person, neither here nor there. So, what now? Right? The phone at this point should start to ring, or you're calling customers out from those leads. Um, you're starting to run jobs, and you want to work on the business. So the next step of this is to get out of the business. So, what this looked like for me and what this looks like for many, I didn't start my business, but I bought so small that I had to do this process, is you need to find your first employee. And first employees are always some of the most hardest to find because they have to take a big chance on you. And that's what you need to convey. You convey that in your posting, you convey that in your indeed profile, you convey that in however you're doing recruiting outbounding, you have to convey some sort of value and some sort of reason that this person wants to take a chance on you and work for you. And that could be, hey, you get all my leads, right? For the next year. I don't like this is our goal. We're planning on growing fast, but in the meantime, like you're our guy. You can get all the leads, and we're gonna pay you a cost per job. You know, the incentive matches to his benefit or her benefit. Um, but the key is you have to figure out something. Any industry, you have to figure out some reason that they should work for you, otherwise, you'll stay in that truck. So we've got the license, we know where we're pumping and disposing to, we've bought the truck, we've started our Google business profile, we're running leads, we're running calls, we hire someone to run calls for us.
Now, last but not least, part of this is to build the systems, right? How do you now scale? The goal is for you to work on the business so you can scale the business. And what this looks like is now you work on, hey, let's focus on route-based driving. Whereas before you had five leads a day, you had to run all five of them no matter where they were. But now you're starting to get 10 leads. Maybe you're looking at systems for hiring, maybe you're looking at systems for like, hey, how can we make this more efficient so that I say spend less on gas? These are the keys. You you're talking to gas suppliers, WEX and whoever, saying, Hey, can we reduce costs here? Maintenance, you're starting to do your first couple maintenance on the truck. You have to do uh, you know, some spend there. So, like, how do we maximize the spend or the time in between maintenance or the time in between repairs with the answer being maintenance? So, this is now the time where it's no longer like starting a business. This should be still in year one, but now you're building a business. So that is my 20-minute condensed. If I were to start a septic business this year, that is exactly how I do it. That's how I would focus in that order and drive to get to this building stage as quick as possible. Because once you hit the building stage, you're no longer pumping poop. You are a business owner, which sounds a lot nicer to me. If you like what you heard, leave a five-star review. Let me know why I'm an idiot and what I missed about septic if you run a septic company. I know for you who've commented on it before, someone can say, Oh, you make it sound so easy. Yeah, no shit. It's a 17-minute video. I could go on for hours about this. So it is a condensed video. If you want to hear more, you're like, hey Jack, I think you you were too quick on some of these things. Can you break individual parts down of this? The answer is yes, but you gotta let me know to do it. Okay. Let me know that it's not falling on deaf ears of Google bots and uh or YouTube bots, and we'll go from there. Uh, five stars, let your mother know that uh she should listen to this as well. I don't know. All right, man. See ya.
