Podcast: Troy Clogg's Hot Pink Helpers

We spent 30 minutes getting to know Troy, a landscaper in Detroit who's turning salt into a solution. His charity work through the Hot Pink Helpers assists families affected by breast cancer.

Troy Clogg has worked in snow long enough to see it — everybody hates salt.

It could be clients who don’t want the salt, who say the salt killed their lawns but will sue companies for not applying it. It could be the employees who say salt is destroying their trucks. There are even some who say it’s bad for the environment.

“There’s just a lot of weird energy wrapped around salt,” says Clogg, who manages Troy Clogg Landscape Associates in Detroit.

Clogg found a way to turn something that frustrates into a reason to smile: He created a pink deicing product in 2010, donating a portion of proceeds to local families affected by breast cancer. Their first donation went to a family just a few days before Christmas in 2011. Cancer treatments had forced the family into just one income and the bills were piling up, so Clogg used proceeds from Hot Pink Deicer sales to help the parents and their two young sons.  

After a few more years of providing checks around the holidays, Clogg formed the Hot Pink Helpers as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization to expand their outreach. Hot Pink Helpers raises money through fundraisers, including its annual October golf outing. Hot Pink Helpers has given away grants totaling over $700,000 to local families battling cancer.

“I think the world would be a much better place if, if people built business models around serving, again, whatever the whatever's tugging at their heart,” Clogg says.

Listen to the full conversation to learn more about the Hot Pink Helpers charity work, plus ways you can start your own charity work.