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The Wash Bros Podcast
Join The Wash Bros, Matt Jackson and Clay Smith, as they talk friendship, business, and how working together as owner/operators of competing businesses has helped them achieve even greater success.
The Wash Bros Podcast
Season 2: Episode 4: Navigating the Pressure Washing Business: Cash Flow, Commercial and Connections
Gain invaluable insights into the pressure washing industry as we explore the delicate balance between residential and commercial work in this engaging episode. Our hosts discuss the nuances of each sector, pulling from personal experiences that highlight the financial implications of focusing solely on commercial contracts. Learn how immediate cash flow from residential jobs can serve as a stabilizing foundation while understanding the long timelines often associated with commercial contracts can impact your overall cash management strategy.
As the conversation unfolds, we tackle the importance of networking and building solid connections within the commercial side of the business, explaining how essential it is to know the right people to ensure timely payments and ongoing contracts. We demystify the complicated nature of payment processes in the commercial realm, offering listeners actionable tips to ask the right questions when bidding on jobs.
The hosts emphasize that establishing a professional image through clear communication and reliable practices can significantly enhance customer satisfaction and foster repeat business in both sectors. Tune in to discover how to navigate this dynamic landscape effectively, leading to growth and success in your pressure washing business.
Join us on this journey to elevate your pressure washing game, subscribe for more insights, and connect with us to share your thoughts and experiences.
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Hey, hey, hey, hey. What's up? Guys? It is Matt Jackson and Clay Smith and we're the Wash Bros. We want to kick off this newest episode. I'm trying to blank. What were we on? Episode 7? Episode 5?
Speaker 2:Let's see so I think we're on episode episode three or four now okay, yeah, we.
Speaker 1:So, yes, doing the second season. I, my brain just got fried. So, yeah, episode three or four we're going to be talking about commercial pressure washing and going about you have like a residential section and then you have a commercial section and how they both can work together to help you grow your business and grow your brand and your position in the pressure washing market. So you want to kick this thing off, clay.
Speaker 2:Let's kick it off, yeah. So I think commercial is very important. The only thing about commercial I feel like a lot of people they get tied up in the commercial just strictly going towards after the commercial, and then what they run into is a cash flow issue. So if you're strictly going towards the commercial jobs, if you don't have an idea about when those checks are going to roll in, how they're going to start rolling in, because you could very well look up and get a net 90 first commercial day pay, net 90 first commercial day pay, you know, hey, and then you're screwed. Um, but if it wasn't for commercial, I wouldn't have had like a record break in February last month. So, uh, commercial is very important. It's like I always talk about with you. Uh, we always go towards, like I, I seek after residential, but the longer I'm in the game, the commercial comes towards us.
Speaker 1:I think that's true. I heard a great quote from somebody and it said residential pressure washing or residential work is all about who knows you, and then commercial work is all about who you know. So there's a networking component of going about making connections with these businesses and getting yourself out there at a different level than just running Facebook ads or running Google ads and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, commercial work is a whole other ballgame. If you're really seeking after it, I highly recommend shaking hands with people asking around, showing up in stores, showing up at the actual place of business, just making connections with people. Just making connections with people Mainly. I have never really actually seeked after commercial work, except for, like in the wintertime when we're campaigning and we're setting ourselves up for the spring. However, I have learned the longer I'm in the game.
Speaker 2:The commercial just comes naturally. So I'm very big into the residential because I know the residential pays my bills and I tell everybody all the guys that's listening and all the guys that's ever seeked after help from me I always say the residential pays the bills and the commercial bills the capital. So the first thing I'm more concerned about is what's going to get me paid today, because the commercial it's really a shot in the dark. You could get paid within seven days. I've had them pay as quick as the next day and I've had them be as long as 90 days. But that is, most importantly, the first question I answer before I ever give any pricing Okay, how long is it going to take me to get paid? So definitely important when seeking after that work and, like I say, the commercial definitely builds capital. There's nothing wrong with going after commercial if you can figure out your cash flow.
Speaker 1:That's very true. I was running into issues with that last year as we were growing and getting more into commercial work and I'm trying to hit like hey, how can we hit like six figures in commercial pressure washing? We have like multiple trucks. It's like okay, cool, a $15,000 job moves the needle and if you have a lot of trucks and you you can officially knock it down, you can make good money.
Speaker 1:But, like you're saying, I learned the hard way of like a net 30 or a net 45 or a net we forgot about you until three months later of following up and then you finally get paid Like that. That really hurts sitting on probably like $30,000 or $40,000 in accounts receivable for a good chunk of the year, because I was always behind on my commercial payouts and I don't know if it's something that I need to get better at really stressing to these people and really trying to set up from the front end so I'm not chasing down stuff 45 days later and they act like they have no idea who I am, even though we completed their service and we were working with like a contractor. We're working with somebody on the low level, but the office and the corporate they don't have you in the system and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:So Usually what I like to ask about. As far as the money part goes, I always like to ask the person, like the project manager or the property manager or whoever that is. Nine times out of 10, they're in charge of getting you paid, they're in charge of approving the quote, they're in charge of all that. But I'll always ask right after okay, when the job's complete. I always ask. I say okay, job's complete, you're happy, everything good, we're approved to get a check. And once I get that approval, I always ask them to connect me and the person that's in charge of paying me. So then, I want to make the relationship with the person that's in charge of paying me so that I can be able to communicate with that person and figure out what's going on, because nine times out of 10, they don't really care about your check. They're just there for their regular job. That's what they do every day, and if you can stay top of mind with that person, you can get paid a lot quicker.
Speaker 1:With my experience, that's great insight too, Like we're so busy chasing the guy who's the decision maker over the job, but the most important thing is the decision maker on when you're going to get paid. So it's like, hey, you can, you can have $50,000 of commercial work, but if you're not getting paid on that or it's going to be a hassle, you might want to connect and network with those people that are like the decision makers of when the check's going to get sent out and the people in the administrative side of the business, not just the guy in the field that's going to say I approve this quote, go do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it all goes back to who you know and how you treat people and how you professionally deal with them, because at the end of the day, I've never really had any issues with these people. They've always done what they said they were going to do, and if they didn't, I would just get in touch with the person in charge, because I've had invoices sitting on a desk just because I hadn't sent insurance, that I had no idea that I was even supposed to send the insurance. Or they had a problem with my insurance, or they had a problem with my workers comp and they just hadn't got around to calling me. No, we're waiting on this. Well, nobody ever called me. So definitely recommend when you're quoting these commercial jobs, let's go to that. When you're quoting these commercial jobs, ask them what they need up front so you already have that. That way, when that job's completed, the payment process is a lot smoother.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's smart and that's one of those things you learn after the fact. It's like, hey, when you reflect your year, you reflect these big commercial jobs you're doing. You're like how can I get paid, how can I get paid on time and minimize that pain of like I don't have money in my bank account but it's coming in and being proactive there, as opposed to just trusting the process that somebody else is looking after you. And that's like you. We fixate so much on like oh, did I get all the red clay out of the construction site? Or oh, did I clean the building? To like the project managers uh, like standards, so like they can sign off and and and then like we're cleared to go, but we're not thinking about how am I going to get my money as fast as possible so I can be on to the next job and not get hung up on something and be a distraction for me and cause a stress for the next three months before I get paid. So that's.
Speaker 2:I would most definitely rather do a month of commercial. I mean a month of residential. Before I spent two weeks doing a commercial job that was going to take me three months to get paid on. But that goes into. That's why you have more trucks, more employees and that kind of thing in the long run.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's one of those things. I'm getting more selective on what I'm wanting to bid. Everybody's like, oh, I have 16 gallons a minute and I'm going to do this and that, and it's $15,000 project but it's going to have to be done in May 10th to May 24th or something like that, and you're like there's so much money to be made in residential during that times, how much? Or something like that. And you're like there's so much money to be made in residential during that times that how much is that commercial job really going to cost you in?
Speaker 2:the long run and like what's the heavy factor? There's so many people on the internet that I see they just get caught up in the bigger tickets and they're not really looking at the potential that there is in residential. Because the residential I mean we're doing what? 90 jobs a month in the busy season, 120, what 90 jobs a month in the busy season? 120 jobs a month in the busy season with residential, I mean that's bread and butter volume.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you're getting paid same day and you're getting paid a lot of times in cash and if you're not getting paid in cash you're not being 10 99 like you are with commercial.
Speaker 2:So A hundred percent and they're not. You're the homeowner's not asking for a bunch of paperwork up front? Yeah, and the homeowner's not asking for a bunch of paperwork up front. You got to deal with that headache. I deal with weight on the check in the mail. The check's going to get lost in the mail.
Speaker 2:And there's a new thing out that actually just worked. I'd never heard of it before, I was skeptical about it, didn't know if I was getting scammed or what. But we did that big job last month and they paid with an e-check. So if anybody's listening and you've never heard of an e-check, an e-check is legit. They send you a check via email. You print it off, you cut it off, you cut it on the dotted line, you sign the back of it, you take it to the bank and boom, it works just like a regular check. So that is another thing that a lot of these property management companies, from my understanding, are trying to do to make sure you get paid quicker. So don't be skeptical about that kind of thing. I just went through it. I took it to my bank. They were very familiar with it, very familiar with the process. It's something new. Just call it an e-check $10,000 job.
Speaker 1:So there's stuff that he knows, that he's talking about here that are really the right way to go about things and that's what I'm going to start implementing on my end of the business of, like, hey, making connections. Hey, okay, cool, this is the requirements for the jobs. When you're doing the RFQ, when you're filling out the quote request, say you get the job, cool. Before I schedule, what's the process of me getting paid? Like that's also like a professional, that's what we do. Like you're not going to say, oh, I want to buy that house and they say, great, we're sold on the house. Like you go to financing, you got to get, you got to get funding. There's a process involved with that. So we should carry that same process when we're doing these commercial jobs where, hey, you have ten thousand plus dollars sitting on the line. We're not going to just sit here all day long. That should be factored into your equation when you're going about bidding on these jobs and seeing if these jobs are even worth it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we did a car dealership last year Thursday, friday and Saturday. I think I did it Thursday, friday and Saturday night and then Monday I got a text that everything looks great. Then I got an email that said invoice paid $13,000 with the Amex.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what you want.
Speaker 2:That transaction fee kind of hurt a little bit. But I was like damn, that was pretty quick Convenience, I guess bit, but I was like damn, that was pretty quick.
Speaker 1:You know convenience, I guess. Yeah, no doubt. And two, that's another thing. It's like how, how are you going to pay? Are you going to pay with a card? Because, like you said, there's fees associated with it and if somebody's going to pay 10 grand with a card and you're paying three percent on that, that's a few hundred dollars. So, like I, I like checks, um, or another thing we've done is like achs, where they just kind of direct deposit into your account.
Speaker 2:So it's just there's yeah, we've done is like ACHs, where they just kind of direct deposit into your account. So it's just there's yeah, we've done that too. It's really. I mean, all these companies, they all do want to be paid different ways, their accounting and all set up different ways, so just got to get familiar with it. Then, once you've done a couple of jobs with them, it's a breeze really.
Speaker 1:And a lot of times you got to be set up as a vendor in their system, I know.
Speaker 1:And then, whether they do it from their own system or you're doing it through like a third-party system, there's a couple people I've uh, like I know we did some work with amazon and I was going through and looking up like there's certain vendors that amazon like requires to have in a portal. So there's like I can't, I don't know it's called like a veto or something like that. It's it like this giant third party property management company that a lot of these huge companies use. So like, if you're in that portal, like these companies are going through and selecting people in there and reaching out to call so you can almost put yourself on a directory of like a preferred vendor list for these massive corporations and then they reach out to you because you've had to go through the hoops and jump through the hoops and kind of put all of your stuff through their criteria first, so they're not just calling somebody off of Google. A lot of times they're going to be in these directories of like approved vendors.
Speaker 2:And if you're going to go through the headache of doing all that, they say, well, I guess he might might be a pretty decent contractor.
Speaker 1:Exactly. I know there's a big property management group here that I've worked in with and it was kind of a pain in the ass to get in but they required like a $2 million umbrella policy on things and like you almost have to up your insurance to be in this group. But they manage like thousands of units in the whole South Carolina area and then they even cover like Georgia, north Carolina. So it's one of those things is like okay, well, they have a hundred unit townhome community. They need to have pressure washed like almost yearly in just one of their locations and they're going to go through and call people in their list.
Speaker 1:I had the woman. She reached out and she was like well, you're in our system as this. So I was like, okay, at least people are seeing me. So it's kind of like put yourself into positions where people are able to see you in like a commercial setting as opposed to just on Google, because a lot of times it's like you said, you're dealing with somebody on the backend who's just procuring a contractor and they have to go through their internal portal and say, okay, there's three pressure washing companies in here. I turn a portal and say okay, there's three pressure washing companies in here. I'm going to get a quote of these three and I'm going to see who's the best price or who's the best for this project and like nowhere to be seen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, don't be afraid to tell your customer they're not going to be a cheapest. I mean you kind of. I had a customer the other day it was a HOA president saying oh well, you're kind of in the middle right now. Well, that's where I want to be. I don't want to be the cheapest guy. A lot of people are looking at the cheapest guy. Commercial is a different ballgame. You just got to be very careful. You got to build value in your company. You got to build value in your equipment that you have. Build value on your process, how you explain how you're going to do the job, and that middle ways sometimes works out.
Speaker 1:Exactly Cause a lot of these guys. If they've gone the cheaper route, then they got to hire somebody to fix it and they're like, okay, well, I could save a hundred bucks on this one, but I'm going to have to spend a thousand bucks to fix the mistake of this first guy. So it all depends. And then do you really want to be the guy working for the cheapest bid? Cause usually if they're not going to respect you, they're going to say, oh, this guy's the cheapest, it's not worth your time. I've almost like, like you were saying, when somebody hits you up and they're like, oh, you're in the middle, I'm like let's take it or leave it. I'm on top of Google for a reason. Like you, reach out to me. We have value in our company and we're moving forward.
Speaker 2:So you either can work this with us and we both win, or you can find somebody cheaper. And what's that headache going to cost you? I know we're talking about commercial here, but I always love the residential customers that are like, oh, Freddie down the road is $50 cheaper than you. Can you match that? And I'm like Nope, and they end up hiring me anyway. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Half the time I can't tell if people just want to play a game or not. And it's funny because they will never go to a restaurant and say you know what? That $40 steak looks great, but can you do $30? Because if I go down to Bilo and I buy it myself and I cook it, it's worth $30.
Speaker 2:It blows my mind, man, and we're the small businesses. And then you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the same people that say like support small business, like down with the big corporations, they're going to take time out and protest.
Speaker 2:Like these big corporations, they're the ones that are trying to beat up the guy down the street that's trying to make an honest living correct and uh, when I first got started in this business I would try to do a lot of kind of like more of the cheaper to the freeze type stuff for the people I know and my friends. But now, the longer I've been in business, the longer I've learned that I'm actually going to keep paying. You know you're either going to pay full price or you're not going to get my service exactly. I gotta pay my bills, as you do if I come to your job. If I come to your job, you know I'm gonna have to pay full price exactly.
Speaker 1:I kind of have the excuse now. I'm like, hey look, I got employees to pay too, so like it's not fair to me to pay these guys without like. I'm like, hey, they make a percentage of the job, so it's not fair to my guys for doing stuff at a discounted rate. But it is funny because I had some corporate friends and like I'd throw them a deal in the beginning and then the problem is like their dumb asses would tell their neighbor what they paid to have the job done and I'm like no, no, no, no, no stop stop this nonsense.
Speaker 1:I was like I actually dealt with that this morning yeah, it's like oh well, you did his house for like 200 bucks. I'm like yeah, because I'm his buddy. And then here's the problem. I had this morning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here's the problem I had this morning. We're doing like a front of a house on a roof wash for 600 and he asked how much for my driveway. I just threw 100 bucks on there because it's like just one of those subdivision type driveways. So he told his neighbor that I would do his driveway for 100 bucks I've had a couple hoas, uh, one that we did in the fall.
Speaker 1:Uh, it was one of those really tiny driveways. They're like 50 dollar driveways. When we were cleaning all the curb sidewalks of the neighborhood for like six grand and then we were doing the house washes for standard pricing, I'd say, yeah, if you want to throw on that driveway, it's 50 bucks. People are calling me like hey, well, you said you could do our driveway for 50 bucks. I was like when we were on your street and it would take us three minutes, but we're not going to do that anymore and I'm just already moving.
Speaker 1:You want me to come back yeah, I said hey, I told you guys, when we're there this is what it's for. I feel like with people sometimes it's not even worth following up with and like if somebody's gonna say, oh, I'm reaching out to you because you're like you can give me a 50 driveway, I'm like sorry, I can't no Like or I just respond.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's basically what I do. It's like what's the point in trying to negotiate with somebody who's reaching out to you because they think they can get something severely under the market value. It's like they're they're saying oh, I want a freebie, Okay, Well, sorry, Not. Sorry, Not my problem.
Speaker 2:And it's usually the ones in the nicer homes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly. These are like $500,000 plus townhome communities and it's like Thornblade. You do stuff in Thornblade, which is a nice area in Greenville where you're on a golf course and every house is almost a million dollars plus, and those people are like $100, $200, $300 pressure washer type people and I'm like, all right, have the handyman or have your painter do it. I'll see the stripes in your driveway the next day. I drive by.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. And then another thing you just reminded me about make sure there's a lot of new construction going on in our area. Not really sure about who I was listening, but if there's a lot of new construction going on in your area Not really sure about who I was listening, but if there's a lot of new construction going on in your area and these people are wanting you to clean the concrete, take a look at that concrete and try to see what's going on and make sure it's not going to milk up on you, because there's a lot of concrete contractors. They're just throwing a lot of the concrete together. It's not a good quality concrete anymore, like it used to be. I had one a couple of weeks ago and it was two and a half years old and it was just a shitty quality concrete, like it was shedding. So just make sure that you're doing little test spots on these concretes, because it could turn into a nightmare down the road and you're trying to fix it.
Speaker 1:I think that's very accurate. And also, if you're quoting somebody, make sure you're aware of, like, what they want to have clean Cause, like you were saying with new construction, a lot of times, yeah, if it's just organic stains, that's, that's easy. But if you're going out to quote stuff and people are, hey, I just had this work done and it's like red clay stains, like you got to prep differently for that. You need to have acids, you need to understand how to clean, that you can't just blast away with pressure and you have to set that expectation. Hey, if the person, if the person's expecting it to be acid washed and then and then pressure washed, that's going to be a completely different service than just showing up and hitting it with surface cleaner and then throwing some bleach on it.
Speaker 1:But to your point as well we we deal with a lot of shitty concrete, so it's easy to stripe, stripe it, it's easy to, like you said, milk it where, like, the cream starts to come off and like fibers start to appear. Like a lot of times I don't even have my guys hit it with a pressure washer. If it's new, I'm like just give it a good solid rinse and then put some chemical on it and that's all we're going to do, because we're not trying to destroy somebody's $10,000 patio they just had poured, even if it's two years old and at the end of the day, it's probably not your fault.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, it's just a the shitty quality of concrete and people doing their jobs half-ass, really yep so but yeah, as far as, as far as commercial stuff, that's kind of an area we're trying to push this year.
Speaker 1:Um, just because, like you said, like we have multiple, we have two trucks that can stay pretty busy and usually if I can allocate both trucks, we we can competitively bid on these jobs, say, like somebody's going against it solo and um, it's good to move the needle, but at the same time we we don't like allocate huge amounts of times to commercial. We rather, uh, fill our schedule with residential and almost bake a couple days for like a large commercial project in with that. So it's like icing on the cake as opposed to our bread and butter. Because, like you said, I see guys online where they're like all commercial. I'm like dude, that's a struggle because you're probably sitting on a ton of cash waiting to be paid upon, even if you got jobs lined up where it's all going to pay itself. It's not the same as when you got that residential when, hey, I got paid. Today Money's going right back into my business and it flows evenly.
Speaker 2:It just makes more sense to me. You're building a clientele, you're building a customer base. You can do the same with commercial, but you're not doing it as fast. I can gain a lot more customers in my database that I can get residually throughout the years and make just as much money than just focusing on straight commercial if not more money. Because I think what the biggest May that you had last year was 70 grand and most of that was just residential.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, like 90% of that is going to be residential and our Mays are pretty consistent because the same people like our best customers, the cream of the pressure washing customers they're like put me down for May Because in our area we have bad pollen and usually May is when it clears. So like I can guarantee you like year after year, we're going to be in that revenue ballpark within probably five thousand dollars, unless I add another truck and we really grow. But like we're like maxing out at like 70 grand because we're loading up two trucks and we're just like going to go into town for that entire month and to me I'm like, hey, it's going to cost me a lot of. It's going to have to be really worth it to do a job in that time, a year. That's not a residential job where we can consistently knock it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, If a commercial job, an apartment complex or one of those calls me during May or whatever, I mean, I'm usually like I'm probably not going to be available, but I'll take a look to see how big the job is, See, if I want to work a you know a Sunday or a Monday, or, you know, try to do it when I'm not busy.
Speaker 1:Exactly. There's certain um bigger property management companies that we work with are like facility management and it seems like all the time it's like middle of may. And companies that we work with are like facility management and it seems like all the time it's like middle of May and they're like schools graduating in the end of May.
Speaker 1:Like we need you to clean the football stadium and it's like a $20,000 project. But you're like I don't know how I would fit that in my schedule and usually it's down to like the wire. Where they're like you either say yes or no and then you're like I got enough business coming in. That's going to be stressful. We're going to like drop the ball. And then, of the people that do these jobs, I've had calls from them to me needing help, Cause I remember, like one of the bigger guys in our area, you've probably got a call.
Speaker 2:They called me and you both.
Speaker 1:They're like, hey, desperate, like we, we need this done the end of the week and you and I are both like we're booked up two weeks plus, like I'd love to help you.
Speaker 1:but this thing, january, we're both sitting around looking to get work yeah, call me in january yeah, but I was like hey, call this guy, call this guy and you're like literally offering people to make thousands of dollars for cleaning a cool project and everybody's busy. That's kind of like understand your seasons, understands how much something's worth. Like the commercial work I like to do is usually in the middle of the summer, like july. We've done a few like ten thousand dollar plus projects for plants that have shutdown weeks and usually they're around like the fourth of july, because these plants run 24 7 and they have usually a week or two around christmas or around like the 4th of July where they close and they do all their maintenance and it's it's like really awesome to say hey, I know, in July I got $15,000 coming in when normally residential kind of tapers down due to vacations and holidays. So like that makes sense. But in the middle of May, if you want me to clean your football stadium, it ain't going to really happen.
Speaker 2:Oh man, you get a real good suntan around that time of year.
Speaker 1:No doubt, yeah, no doubt so. But you've you've been doing a lot of good commercial and I mean I see you on top of Google now a lot with your advertising. So do you think that that helps a lot? Or or is a lot of your commercial coming from like word of mouth with your previous customers? Or have you reached out and tried to make connections with builders and stuff like that, because I know you have projects that are like new construction or like red clay cleanup and you seem to like have creative relationships with these guys where they reach out to you for estimates and you're like kind of plugging in with bigger guys around the area. So like what do you think has helped the most with that, with getting that?
Speaker 2:Like I said, I think it's just time in the business. I don't necessarily think it's. I mean we do a great job of marketing. I mean everybody knows that. Everybody in our area knows that I do a good job of marketing and I believe it's just like I say. I think it's more time in the business and my consistent marketing and I've always preached that on about every episode on here and I've always said to you my consistency in marketing has always been a big deal and it's always paid off and being all in all the time investing back into the business, not being afraid.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you make those decisions and there's butterflies in your stomach, keep you up at night, really bother. You have a couple headaches during the week, but then you either learn from it or you grow from it. I think that's been the biggest thing since I've been in business. I had a lot of experience before I started the pressure washing business with the sales and then running a multi-million dollar business with the car dealership and maintaining numbers and knowing where to throw money in certain places to make stuff do different things, and this is just a smaller scale of that, except I'm playing with my own money. So it's like how much do you want to gamble? The marketing, yes, I would say, is a big deal, but a lot of it now that I've done a lot of thinking about it, because I've thought about going into a different style of marketing for commercial. But I'm just going to let the time of the game pay it off and the people that I've done work for previously.
Speaker 2:The commercial game is kind of like the residential game. What's it saying? The birds of a feather flock together. Your million-dollar business owners like me and you, we're all collaborating together. And these guys that do property management, they collaborate together. These guys that run gas stations, they collaborate together. And so I do some restaurant work too. And all the Greeks, they collaborate together. So it's all the same game. But at the same time you got to do things a little differently.
Speaker 1:That's true. Yeah, I guess, like you're saying, the guys managing the big properties are friends with the other guys that manage the big properties and they're probably saying, hey, who do you have? That's a great guy that can help me out. And you plug in word of mouth in that too. And because from the commercial side it seems like running a Facebook ad or going on Google and just running ads you're not going to get a lot of commercial work as much as you're going to get residential work, because these people seem to be looking for more of a professional like an established company. That is a better reputation than just somebody spending a lot of money on Google ads at the moment.
Speaker 2:The biggest thing that I've learned is the easier if you put your processes together as a company to make it easier on people, the better they like doing business with you, because anybody can go pick up a pressure washer and learn how to use it and do a good job. But the world is lazy. If you could put the processes in place. Okay, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to send you a quote. It's going to come to your email. If you have any questions, give me a call or shoot me a text or shoot me an email. But if you decide to move forward with my company, click approve on my quote and then I'll be reaching out to you to get you on the schedule. Nine times out of 10, when I get that approval email or that approval text or whatever it is, within five to 10 minutes I'm already reaching out to the customer, sometimes quicker, and I've already got them on my schedule.
Speaker 1:I think that's huge. Everybody's so fixated on how many gallons a minute they have in their machine and how they can clean better than that and clean better than you. I know you were talking to me about this on on your tiktok, which you got a lot of followers on there. But with a lot of followers you get a lot of trolls and they were commenting on like your wet concrete had lines in it and they missed they completely missed the point of like they're focused so much on like the right technique to avoid leaving lines on wet concrete before you post-treated it, but they're missing the fact.
Speaker 1:What you just said there of like the process, of how easy you're making it for people when you make it super easy to connect with you. You give them a professional process of giving them a quote, you make it really easy for them and then give them a call back and you schedule them within a short window of time. Meanwhile, these guys are over here measuring their dicks on social media all day, looking at the most technical equipment they possibly can. But like what you said is like that's how you need to focus on business, as opposed to seeing oh, I can clean that driveway five minutes quicker than you because I have a better surface, cleaner, and people don't get that and that's like the big gap between you, me and a lot of these other people who are stuck in the owner operator technician mode.
Speaker 2:Anybody that does the volume we do and does the amount of work that we do. I mean most of these guys. I look them up, they'll have five Google reviews, so I know they don't do a lot of work. They're newer into the business and the longer they're in the game they'll understand. But anybody that knows and has done the amount of work that we have done knows that no matter what you do, you're going to have lines in your concrete when it's wet.
Speaker 1:And there's also going to be concrete where, even if you do everything absolutely perfect, you're still going to get lines and the. Thing that the customer doesn't care. We care because we are in it every day. Customer says that's great, there's no more leaf stains on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, here's the thing If you got enough time to sit around and wait and watch that concrete dry, you're not busy enough.
Speaker 1:That's facts, right there, that's facts so once you see, I mean once you've watched enough and you understand, you'll be thinking of me later, but I just laugh at those guys. But anyway, it gets a lot of engagement. I enjoy it. That's true and almost to your point. It's like if Amazon delivered a package to your house and one day you ordering it and the box was kind of crinkled up a little bit and you just say I'm not even gonna touch this, get out of here. Like, that's, that's not what you do. You just say, oh great, it came here. In one day the box got damaged, cool, like, but it's still what I wanted.
Speaker 1:And another point too I guess with the pressure washing we don't realize we're only there. So we see like the before and the after within. When we're there, we're not seeing the leaves that fall on the driveway, the next rain that makes it muddy, the customer that pulls their car in with mud on their tires. There's so many times where these people have been dickheads to us about like, oh, you missed this spot. To us about like, oh, you missed this spot.
Speaker 1:And then I'll go to their house and I'll say, bro, you just pulled your car in and you ran over your grass and you track mud all over your driveway. Are we really looking at this issue right here? It's like we clean your driveway, just like you get your car cleaned, and then you're going to drive the next day and you're going to get dirt on your car. A bird's going to poop on your run through a mud puddle by accident. You're gonna go at the car wash and tell them they didn't do a good job, absolutely and if, and then it's like managing that expectation with customers and not allowing a customer or the internet to drive you into this like insane ocd mode where you're not doing the appropriate things and focusing the appropriate ways in your business to grow your business as a true professional. And, like you said, if you're, if you're able to do all that stuff, you're not busy enough.
Speaker 1:So if, instead of wasting your time trying to like, optimize your pressure, washing and being a dickhead and being anal online, figure out how to get busy to the point where that doesn't matter to you and then you focus on the processes that are that customer experience that separates you from everybody else a hundred percent agree so but yeah, all that in total, yeah, all that, all that in total helps build the image and make you better in the commercial setting where you're a professional being shopped by a true professional, so like it's a, it's a professional world on that commercial end, more than like, oh, the guy down the street is my neighbor and he pressure washed my driveway, let me, let me, let me have it done for that much.
Speaker 1:So, like, if you're not focusing on like how we were discussing the processes and that professionalism within how we do our business, that's probably why these guys struggle to get like repeat commercial work or or they're just down to a price point and, like you said, I'll go look at commercial work all the time and the quality of work and commercial work is terrible compared to the previous work that I've seen in residential work from either guy before me or whatnot.
Speaker 1:Yeah To me. I don't know if that's due to like there's more competition in the residential space where guys are really like working there's way more guys doing it so they can. They can get people like that, or or there's just bottom dollar cheap. But I I hear what you're saying. I'm always looking around at like shopping centers.
Speaker 1:I was up in easily off of 123 in like that big shopping center out there and I was looking at the sidewalks and they were just trashed or like I've seen the guy that does those yeah, and then you can always tell when the surface cleaner is like a 12 inch surface cleaner, that like 100 they're, they're not doing it the right way, it's just like a guy that knows the owner of the building or something that does always handyman work yeah and that's the thing you don't like.
Speaker 1:You don't want to go about and compete with the handyman caliber people and there's going to be customers who own stuff and they're like, well, this is going to be the guy I go after. Uh, like I'm trying to go after and I think you're probably trying to go after too like the big professional property management companies that like manage big stuff, like we've got a job coming up for Presbyterian college, which is a big college in our area, and then, um, like that's a decent size ticket but like it's a professional process and we do it efficiently and professionally, where the guy who's doing that is not going to be able to compete with us on time, price or quality. We're trying to find those good opportunities in the commercial pressure washing space where we're dealing with professionals or we're washing a hotel or we're doing stuff where it isn't just the cheapest type of customer and somebody just looking for the bottom dollar.
Speaker 2:The biggest thing is creating the residual income coming in, and that's what we do. A residential that's the way I look at it, because a lot of these guys are one and done, you know facts.
Speaker 1:You see these guys, especially online where they flex. All I do is commercial, I don't run ads. And then, five years down the road, I'm like I wonder what that guy's up to. Oh, he's working at the post office.
Speaker 2:Yep, anybody can be anybody they want to be on the internet.
Speaker 1:That's true. That's that's very true. And two, I look online and like, I try to build, like, okay, we're trying to build like our social profiles. And it can be just like chasing vanity metrics and you see guys with like 10,000 followers on their pressure washing page. But I was thinking, okay, you have 10,000 people, but most of those people are probably other pressure washers not in your market. So, apart from just dick measuring, what good is that to growing your pressure washing business in your area? Dick measuring, what good is that to growing your pressure washing business in your area? And it's like I'm working on campaigns to grow my math, the driveway guy page, and I'm like, okay, there's, I could easily run these big ads for throughout the country and then have all these followers come in, but it's going to do me no good when they're not people exactly. So it's figure out what you want, be goal, goal-driven and be like no nonsense. That's kind of my approach and I think that's your approach as well. That's why we're a lethal force, whether we're working together against each other.
Speaker 2:I'm all about the. I'm all about the money, man Right, all about the business. I'm not. I don't care about what everybody else thinks, or I mean, I care about what my customers think. That's about it.
Speaker 1:Yep, it's, it's almost a sport to me. It's like I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna get, I'm not gonna allow it to get into my head where I'm going to be like a dickhead to somebody or like lower my moral standard. But it's a sport and it's like that's like rising tides raises all ships and like iron sharpens iron. So if, if you're not in a circle of people where you got guys like Clay and I and you push each other every day, um great opportunities, listen to our podcast here, the wash bros, and then we're building that group of the, the, the wash bros in itself, so where we're going to post daily stuff and motivate each other and try to help everybody grow, not just me and Clay. You see what we've been able to do in the last few years of just talking to each other.
Speaker 1:The objective here with the Wash Bros podcast is to connect with others and kind of grow that whole band of brothers or however you want to put it, of guys in our industry where we can share things and grow together and like, really compound this. So I know, I know for me it's been super beneficial and I I've enjoyed like this podcast and I've enjoyed the group that we've started and I mean I hope everybody else can take one or two pieces of information and really run with it like like we have. So that's kind of my soapbox for the day.
Speaker 2:Heck, yeah, yeah. Make sure, if you have any questions to like, comment, whatever, send us a message. We're going to plan on eventually having some guests on here soon to cover some big topics that might help you grow. Make sure you go to our YouTube and subscribe. Make sure you're liking and sharing our content. We are all your buddies in your market in your area. If you're liking and sharing our content, we are all your buddies in your market in your area.
Speaker 2:If you're not making any friends in your area with your competition, I suggest that you at least try. Not everybody's going to want to be your friend. They're going to tell you to screw off whatever, but it's beneficial if you can find that one guy like me and Matt did. We found each other to help each other out. It's been very beneficial. And then if you have any questions, like I say, just comment below. We'll try to answer these live. When, when we stream this live and, uh, spotify, apple podcast, every pot, every platform, make sure you're following us on there. That way you get notified when the next episode is launched. And then, uh, we plan on. We have talked about t-shirts and stuff. Once we get enough people out there, um, try to get our t-shirts out there, and me and Matt both we're working on our appearance at the huge convention. Maybe we can work on something there and try to get everybody together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that'd be super cool and the consistency that we're doing with our new format here has definitely helped us a lot with getting out there. We have this like metrics apps for our podcast and we just crossed 2,500 downloads. So thank you, everybody who's listening, and last month we did a little bit over 500 listens, so we kind of put this on the back burner for almost a year and we were able to bring it back and within like the first real month of us doing it, we were already at 500 listens for the month. So we look forward to growing this and compounding this and then like really moving the needle and helping everybody else out. So big thanks to everybody who listens. And I mean, is there anything else you want to talk about today, clay?
Speaker 1:no man, I'm good, we'll see you guys next week sweet and if you guys like the episode, we'll be streaming this thing live tonight. You're watching now. It's going to be Sunday evening, so make sure to drop a comment below and share it with all your friends and we'll see you on the next one. See you guys.
