What’s the best thing about doing business in Middle Tennessee?
This is our community and our home and we love that we are bringing a much-needed service using a completely different approach that we believe will serve the Middle Tennessee area really well.
What has been the most valuable aspect of your Chamber membership?
We believe that having genuine relationships with people is one of the most important parts of any business and ours is no different. We are a tech-based company in the waste industry, but it all comes down to solving problems for people and that’s really our passion.
Who is TriStar Solutions Group and what should we know about you?
We approach our customers differently than others in our industry. We like to look at the big picture and identify the problems before we offer a solution. If price is the problem, we can certainly help, but our focus is to get to know our customers and the waste and recycling-related issues that they are facing. Once we understand the problems our communities or businesses are having we are able to provide a solution that usually saves money while fixing any service issues and often while adding additional services to enhance the program. We develop innovative solutions for people seeking smarter and more affordable waste and recycling programs.
What is unique about your business that makes you stand out?
We are bringing value to everyone involved – the property managers, the residents and tenants, the service providers, and haulers. We’re bringing our partners new business, or saving accounts for them, while solving problems for our customers, establishing a fair rate, and offering additional services. In addition, working alongside our partner, Global Disposal, we offer the industry’s only custom-built platform to manage the programs and extra services for our customers. From a community where everyone wants different services that an HOA does not want to manage to a community that wants to do community events like shredding, bulk item removal, trash can cleaning, holiday item removal, and more—our platform PINWaste manages the payments and event signups for our customers. We also have an additional custom platform that manages our billing and invoicing to ensure our customers are paying only what we have agreed to in our service contracts. In our world, we know that everyone deals with trash in one way or another and there’s a good chance they need some help.
What’s your biggest goal for your company this year?
Our biggest goal this year is to audit as many properties as we can (always at no cost) so that we can solve as many problems as possible. We become the customer of record for the majority of our customers, and that allows us to give better service to all of our customers. The more properties we help, the more we are able to help the properties already in our portfolio.
What best business practices did you learn in 2020 and what did you do to be creative?
People want to work with people they trust and we learned that everyone has a different level of comfort meeting in person verses relying on virtual meetings. We are able to listen to people and their waste struggles from wherever they are comfortable, and when the world locked down, trash didn’t go away (actually it increased) so we knew we needed to stay as engaged as possible. Providing solutions like clean trash rooms as well as clean and disinfected trash cans to our customers really does help when healthy living has become so important.
What’s your best piece of advice for other business owners?
Provide long-term value, whether it’s with your customer today or a potential partnership tomorrow, you just never know when your paths will cross again. No business is perfect nor are the people inside it, but always trying to do the right thing should always be a core value.
How do you stay involved in the community?
We believe that community impact is just as important as customer impact and employee impact. We partner with three different organizations that we believe in through financial support as well as volunteer and outreach. Those organizations are Make-A-Wish, Stronger Than My Father, and Narrow Gate Foundation. We also donate our trash can cleaning services for silent auctions, school fundraisers, as well as community fundraisers and events.
