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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 5: Preparing Yourself For Success
Success in business isn't a fixed destination—it's an evolving journey that demands adaptability, perseverance, and occasional course corrections. Clay Smith and Matt Jackson dive deep into this concept, sharing candid perspectives on what it truly means to build a thriving pressure washing business without sacrificing personal well-being.
The conversation takes an honest turn as Matt reflects on his shift from aggressive scaling to a leaner, more profitable approach. "My objective this year is to be a little bit leaner, meaner," he explains, highlighting how success metrics can and should change based on current circumstances. Clay adds that consistency remains the cornerstone of any successful venture, regardless of how you define your goals: "The consistency in doing things leads you to success."
Both entrepreneurs reveal their contrasting-yet-complementary strategies. While Clay has mastered generating multiple truck numbers as a solo operator, maintaining hands-on control of quality and customer experience, Matt has explored different scaling approaches. Their willingness to serve as "guinea pigs" for each other demonstrates a refreshing collaborative mindset in a competitive industry.
The pair doesn't shy away from addressing hard truths about modern business realities. They emphasize that traditional marketing channels like Facebook groups and yard signs have become oversaturated, requiring today's entrepreneurs to think differently. "If everybody's doing something, you've already missed the bus," Matt warns, encouraging listeners to stay ahead of trends rather than following the crowd.
Perhaps most valuable is their insight on building genuine connections within your community. From introducing yourself to local business owners to creating helpful video content that answers customer questions, these relationship-building efforts often yield better results than conventional advertising. Clay shares how he directs potential customers to educational videos: "I'm going to shoot you a link on how we do things. If you have any questions, give me a call."
Ready to redefine what success means for your business? Join the Wash Bros community to continue learning from their experiences and mistakes so you can chart your own path to sustainable growth without repeating their costly lessons.
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What's up, guys? It is Matt Jackson and Clay Smith here, and welcome to episode 5 of the Wash Bros. We're going to talk this week about how to set yourself up for success and the things that we both do to position ourselves the best possible way to grow our businesses and be successful this year. So you want to kick this thing off, clay?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. First and foremost, I want to thank everybody for joining us tonight. Thanks for listening to our previous episodes, all the downloads. This is crazy, the support that we've been getting here recently. We appreciate you joining in with us and we hope that we're able to pour some good knowledge and you can carry that on into the spring and have a successful year.
Speaker 2:Just got back in from the C3 pressure washing store out of Concord. Casey and his guys they opened up a new store out of Concord. I know that we have quite a few listeners in Charlotte. If you haven't been up there and checked out the store, I highly recommend going and doing so. Casey's got some cool stuff up there. Go check them out. I sent you Colton. The store manager will be there waiting on you, so go check that out.
Speaker 2:And today we're going to talk about how are you setting yourself up for success? How are you making sure that you're on the right road to success? What are the things that you're doing to set yourself up to be successful? So I know that me and Matt we bounce a lot of ideas off each other. We talk about certain things. We talk about the things that we've tried out together whether I'll try something and then he'll go try something. So we kind of like to guinea pig for each other. We kind of tag team this stuff and we try to figure out what's the best way of doing things and that way you can be. Just make sure you're going on the right track, stay on the right track and not get on that crazy path to the side that takes you nowhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think too, success is always going to be a vision. That is like you're chasing and then maybe you're going towards what you think success is or you feel like you're going away from it. But you're constantly gauging yourself and it's not like a fixed thing. So I feel like we get into trouble as business owners because we think, oh like, success to me meant this, and I have to constantly go after it and not kind of gauge myself and grow and feel like what is success meaning to me? And success can mean different things to you during different years.
Speaker 1:And I'm kind of in a period this year of like a little bit of like a reassessment of what success meant to me. And I feel like a lot of people probably are in this boat too, where you try to be like how big and bad can I grow? How many trucks can I get? But if you do it too fast and if you do it like take on debt, or if you're scaling quickly or the economy is not the greatest for you, sometimes you have to reassess your situation. So what my objective was is like how can I throw money to grow as fast as I can? Stressful, sometimes you run into cashflow problems and then you correct those cashflow problems and okay, so you have that revenue target that you get. And now, like, my objective this year is to be a little bit leaner, meaner, and maybe if I have to race ticket prices or go out on jobs here and there to make stuff work, that's going to be the objective. So, like if I would have asked myself that two, three years ago, oh, like, maybe to get a little bit more involved again in my business, that would be failure to me. But for this year, uh, an example of like how we're shifting, um, what success to us, like profitability is like number one for me this year and that's going to be like it's.
Speaker 1:I guess the point of this rant here is to make sure that you have the clear definition of what your success is to you, and it's okay to change what success means to you, because don't listen to a guru, don't listen to somebody who says this is what success means, or even like what your vision was of success when you first started. It's always going to change and it's important that you kind of gauge yourself and where you are and what your business needs, so you can address success and reassess your target. That way you can hit it and be successful, because there's nothing worse than like burning yourself out chasing something you don't even want anymore. And that's kind of like the growth and the learning lesson that I've made over the last couple of years with this, where, like we set a goal, we go after that goal and then we say, ok, well, that goal is not exactly what I want. I'm going to course, correct, learn and set a new goal.
Speaker 1:And success is just ever changing. And I think, like Clay said, we throw things off of each other. I see what he does. That works for him, I may try it, it may not work for me. So we always gauge each other and whatever is successful for each other, usually we can probably take one or two things, but we're not copy pasting each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's definitely no blueprint to business. I know that I've said that a lot. Like you just said something that may work for me, may not work for you and anybody that's listening. Some of the things we say, you may try and be like screw this, but the main thing is consistency. I've said that a lot. Consistency, the consistency in doing things, leads you to success.
Speaker 1:Like.
Speaker 2:Matt was saying, success may mean 10,000 different things to you. Everybody has different goals, everybody has different places that they want to go and where they want to be or whatnot. But, like Matt was also saying, for me it changes every year. I have something different every year. I want to retire when I'm 40, so I got 10 years to figure that out, and next year it might be 45. When I'm 40. So I got 10 years to figure that out, and next year it might be 45. So just whatever.
Speaker 2:Like when we first started, I think my goal was like six figure. How can I consistently earn six figures? And I think that's everybody's goal. But once you get into business and you learn the cost of doing business and the things that you need to do to be successful, you realize that six figures isn't going very far. But then you're like okay, how can I get seven figures? So now I'm trying to figure out how I can get seven figures and trying to set myself up for that. It's not the and it was going back to what you said. The fast way is not always the best way, and so I'm on that path where I'm wanting to do that slower the slower, more healthier route than the let's hurry up and get it done type thing, and I feel like the more I rush things in business, the more the more uh-ohs happen. I'd rather just enjoy the process and let it, and let it work out and learn slowly versus learn too fast, and learn slowly versus learn too fast.
Speaker 1:And again to Clay's point, he puts up multiple truck numbers by himself. So it's like, okay, it's going to be a physical headache, he's going to be in the field more often, but he is able to control a lot of aspects of the business. That, okay, you throw a lot of money into ads, you scale, you hire somebody. In two weeks you're sending them off to do your work for you. There's a lot of risk and headache associated with that, Whereas, like Clay has been able to kind of maintain control on his business but he's able to get a lot of great referrals. He's able to get a lot of like word of mouth, like we hear people talk about word of mouth. If you're just kind of building a business and within one year you're handing the keys over to somebody that you paid 20, $25 an hour to run for you, you're probably going to struggle with that word of mouth, with the operations and all the other things that you don't think about when you're trying to grow a business. You watch people on YouTube and they talk about like, oh, get off the truck, get off the truck, get off the truck. Okay, but what are they currently doing? One thing that we see a lot is these guys run a business to like three hundred thousand, five hundred thousand dollars a year and they're no longer running that business and they're coaching about it. So to me that just means they ran their business in the ground, chasing a vanity metric like revenue. Because the lessons I've learned by growing my business has been like you're setting up this machine that has to run like smoothly, otherwise you're going to get tanked. And we're talking about like cash flows, whether it be commercial jobs paying you slow, or just the day to day of like you pay out your employees. You have your chemical costs rising. Like you're doing these big numbers revenue wise, but if you're not, if you're not tight with things, you can run into issues and then it's almost the joke. You see guys in these pressure washing Facebook groups they talk about oh, I know an owner operator that's making two times what the guy who's making double the revenue is making, because he's got too big of an operation, almost like he's too big for his bridges, where he's got all these things going everywhere, and then he's got a lot of stress and on the surface he looks great but at the same time he's not in control of his business and his operations aren't down and he's got more going out than he has coming in. So to me it's like success is either is success to you like, oh, I have multiple trucks, I'm off the truck or success to you I'm growing a healthy business a little bit slower than the guy down the street, but at the same time I'm growing a healthy business a little bit slower than the guy down the street, but at the same time I'm able to make a lot of money in it and it's stable and that's. I kind of went from like zero to 100 in scaling, but at the same time there's a little bit of drop off that I'm course correcting now and I mean both. Both takes are successful.
Speaker 1:To me, I think it's just learning and growing and then seeing what works and what doesn't work, and there's no such thing as failure unless you quit and don't be so stuck in. Oh, this is not success, because my plan three years ago was this, or my plan the next three years is this Always adjust and always be flexible with yourself and you have to set these goals that are attainable but they also stretch you a little bit. That way you're able to like, continuously grow through that process and not just, oh, I'm going to do this and then once I hit this, it's over. That's a funny thing about success. People think, like you were saying, oh, when you first started, if I could just hit six figures doing this, that's successful. Oh, you have a six figure business, that's success. Ok, well, what are you doing now? Are you still saying, oh, I have a six figure business, like that success? No, we have to create these goals within our goals to gauge ourselves on success and keep moving the ball forward.
Speaker 1:And it's OK to like reassess your direction because, like you kind of change your business as you go, as you learn, and then that helps you continuously grow and earn more money or serve better customers.
Speaker 1:Or there could be a different season of life, like I got. I got a young son now and I'm not in the same position where I'm wanting to work all the time. So it's kind of like I have to assess what's going on and I had health issues last last year, so like I had to kind of reassess again what success meant to me. And it's okay to be flexible and it's okay to be kind of like loving yourself enough where, okay, I started the year doing this, I didn't hit this, but that doesn't mean I didn't have a successful year or like how the economy is. It's a slower. It's been kind of a slower start this year, I think, whether it's because of the election or whether it's because the temperatures have been a little colder this winter than they were in the past. So it's kind of gauging yourself and finding out what success looks like for you and being flexible and okay and not just using metrics like numbers to dictate was I successful or wasn't unsuccessful?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's easy to get caught up on just beating yourself up on some stuff that's went wrong. You know, considering like the the, the thing that you you went through last year with your health and all, I mean that was kind of success, right. So you were able to, you were sitting in the hospital and your business was still working for you, like that's success to me, like making sure that you're able to set yourself up in a position to do something like that, and that's something that a lot of people don't think about. You know, uh, like, if something were to happen to me, I'm still trying to find, find help, like I got guys I could run with my stuff like some part-timers, but I'm still struggling to find a full-time guy. So it's like, okay, here, what are we?
Speaker 2:What's gonna happen, you know, am I gonna pay? There's no way I'm gonna pay somebody my salary if something happens to me to do my job. Um, so, uh, definitely something. You got to be careful. I always make sure that I take care of my health, make sure I'm doing the proper things that I need to do to make sure that I'm not stressing myself out, not going mentally crazy, not burning myself out, and meanwhile I'm still doing five or six stops a day. So I mean it's tough physically and mentally and you're still having to answer the phone, you're still having to do all that mess and that's why you got to put yourself in the position to be able to just walk away from it.
Speaker 2:That's something that obviously we know that I've been trying to position myself for the past couple of years, but I'm still in that stage where I'm like man, I just want to work, work, work, work, work and build capital.
Speaker 2:But sometimes that's not always the best route to take yep depending on your, depending on your family life, your personal life and what goals you have set with your family at home. Right so my family? They know like what's going on there, we're all on the same page. We know that in a couple years that's my goal I'm going to be. I'm going to be free, I'm going to be able to kind of just do whatever I want to do and then just let the business run itself.
Speaker 2:So success is different. Like you're in a different stage of your business, I'm in a different stage of my business, but we like to work together and learn off each other's failures.
Speaker 1:Yep, and two there's just because and I think this is something too like we see or it's easy to get sucked up in if you're like online and in these Facebook groups. To get sucked up in if you're like online and in these facebook groups, people will use what is successful to them to kind of gauge themselves against other people, to try to make themselves feel better about themselves than other people and it's like we were talking about.
Speaker 2:It's just a. It's almost like a. You know it's a measuring contest who can do better than who and all that crap, and who's bigger than who and who's doing what? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Who's got the bigger, better equipment, who's big, who got who sold the biggest job? Uh, a lot of us are just caught up too much in our phones looking at social media and then it's almost bad for you mentally. You know, if you get too caught up in that you're you're beating yourself up. Um, a lot of the image of different people are kind of what's the word matt, like people can be whoever they want to be on the internet. Yeah, it's like a fake.
Speaker 1:They're like the fake guru personas and then, like we were talking about in the previous episodes, you see these guys. They come out of nowhere and they're all over these groups and then, within the next wash season, I've never seen them again and 100.
Speaker 2:And you know, it's like the guys that were giving me a bunch of engagement on one of my posts in the groups and I was doing a little research like okay, who are these guys, maybe I can learn from them, and I go, and they got like two Google reviews. They're just starting pressure washing. So you know that they're getting in the middle of the hype and trying to match yourself to these other people and they haven't even been watching a month, you know. So they're uh going out and financing rigs.
Speaker 2:And that was a conversation I had with uh somebody at the at my, at our chemical supply place where me and you go, and she was talking about how somebody she knew uh just bought a pressure washer and was talking to him blah, blah, blah, whatever and said that uh, yeah, well, that Clay Smith guy, he he's made a lot of money doing pressure washing. I've never even met the dude in my life, never heard his name, don't even know who it is, and she's like, yeah, well, clay will also works hard and he's never home and he's very business savvy. It's a big difference than just buying the equipment and going to work.
Speaker 1:No doubt.
Speaker 2:And I think that that's what a lot of people you know, especially if you're listening. You're just trying to get going. That is one thing that you need to realize. Like just buying the equipment, okay, great, it's very exciting, you're very happy, you're, you know all about what you got, okay. But what you need to realize is that equipment is going to make you money. But just because you have that equipment doesn't mean you're going to make money. So you need to go out Exactly so.
Speaker 2:Just your average person that's worked, an everyday job. Maybe you didn't come from a family of entrepreneurs like I did. I was very fortunate to watch my parents and I've watched quite a few family members do their own thing and watch how they've done and the different stages in life and then the rewards later on. But you have to realize that you have to. You just have to program your brain where you just can't wait. You're not punching a clock, a time clock, you're not. You can't be waiting or wondering when you're going to get off it later on in the day you get off. When you get off, and the way I look at it is I never clock out and we say you know, I'm always thinking of business ideas you mentally got to clock out. But you always thinking of business ideas, especially in those first few months or first few years on.
Speaker 2:Hey, how can I be successful? What can I do? Who can I go shake hands with? If I'm out in the restaurant and I'm having a supper at whatever the hot dog stand or the bar and grill, tonight when I go eat supper I want to find the manager. I want to introduce myself, say you know you're giving them business. Why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't they give you theirs? Why wouldn't they let you come out and clean their patio or whatnot? So just different small things like that, and then just being nice to people holding the door for them, hey, how you doing. You never know what conversation that may be that may spark. They may own a car dealership down the road. It may spark the $20,000 down the road, you know.
Speaker 2:So just always, just always thinking about stuff like that and who you may run into. And always every new person I meet is like a job interview to me, because if they ever see my face again, they're going to hire me more than likely because they trust me, they've had a conversation with me and they feel like they know too.
Speaker 1:And again they're gonna say wait, this guy's busy growing a business and he's big on social media and he's got tv commercials and he's on tv and he has the time to sit down to talk to me. They're gonna be like that's a good guy, that's somebody I want to support and I want to, it's it's one of the. You're not this like oh, he's the business guy, he's too busy for the small guy or he's too busy for me, unless he's trying to make money off of me. So by being personable, by being likable, people are instantly going to kind of have that relationship with you and they're going to be like hey, I like that guy. And that makes sense. Why you get a lot of these referrals in these groups of people that some of them, it looks like they've never even used your service, but they just have followed you, they're aware of you, or you may have ran into them in a restaurant or something like that, and then they are like well, that's a cool guy.
Speaker 2:I'm going to like refer him out. Yeah, I'm, I'm. I'm always thinking you gotta be creative as a business owner. Um, we were at the racetrack a couple of weeks ago and, um, I got, I got creative with something. I don't remember what it was. Actually, I do remember what it was, but it'd be hard, too much, hard to explain. But anyways, I got creative with the situation that we were having to handle it on a race car and the guy he's been working on race cars forever and he was just like man, why did you, how did you think of that? Like we, we, you know, and I'm like, as a business owner, you got to be creative, you got to think outside the box, you got to, you can't give up. Like you just got to get creative.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like if you wire your brain that way, then you will be successful. You know, if you're stuck on a job and uh, what something? Something just went wrong, how can you solve that problem without being less efficient?
Speaker 1:exactly. And business ownership there's no manager there, there's no boss there. As employees, we're so conditioned that, like, oh asks for help. Do this, raise your hand and somebody will come and take care of you. Like, as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, you have to be resourceful enough to be able to say how can I fix this problem as efficiently as I possibly can and move on to the next, and not be held up emotionally by it and not be, oh, like I can't get to this.
Speaker 1:Because of this and that mindset we see in a lot of these people who are purely from, like, the W2 world or they're always kind of having to have somebody over them tell them what to do, whether it be online, because you see this a lot. These guys ask these questions online in these groups and I'm like, why are you even thinking this way, ask these questions online in these groups? And I'm like, why are you even thinking this way? Like your job as a business owner, your job as an entrepreneur, is to be able to come up with stuff on the fly and on your own and be able to like kind of fail your way forward through things, try things out. If it doesn't work, move on. It's like I'm not the most mechanically savvy guy in the world but with this business figuring out like troubleshooting machines at 10 o'clock at night, knowing I had jobs scheduled the next day, for the next week it makes you resourceful, it makes you figure shit out on your own, because if you're not able to do that, you're not able to grow your business. And then it's like a learned skill where, whether you're fixing a machine or you're troubleshooting how to clean a stain on a house, or you're troubleshooting a relationship with a customer, it's all that same learned skill of like being resourceful, figuring stuff out, trying to view yourself as like the solution in the world to problems around you.
Speaker 1:And like you were saying, hey, if you're in a restaurant, hey, I want to speak to the manager, I want to speak to the guy who owns this place and say, hey, I come here all the time. I, I'm a regular. What does it take to clean this building? I know you did that with mr cactus, because I cleaned it, mr cactus, and easily a few times which is like a mexican spot. And then I I know you said something about like well, I go there all the time. And then, sure enough, I saw you cleaned it the next time yeah, yeah, my wife actually said something so you probably hit him up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, it was my wife. He came, uh, he came around the tables or whatnot. My wife's like yeah, we love the fresh wash your house. I'm like well, matt already does this. Just what I told him and he just kind of giggled it off. But I guess he called me back because he seen me actually eating in his restaurant. So he's like this guy supports me, so I'm gonna support him yeah, he seems like a good guy yeah yeah, he's a good guy, but yeah, 100%.
Speaker 2:Like you said, that's just one of my things Always be nice to people. I always look at it as a job interview. You never know where it could lead to 100%.
Speaker 1:Yep, yeah, we all want to be our own bosses and we all want to do things on our terms. But it's funny because as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, you pretty much have to do everything on everybody else's terms because you're trying to like win every deal or win every every like. My mindset here is, like in every interaction, like like you're saying, you want to like win that interaction, you want to add more value, you want to be somebody like making the day of whoever else better than it was before they met you or or had that conversation with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've seen a post, something, uh, one of our guys, one of our good buddies in town, and he was talking about something about not being able to win every, every uh bid or whatnot. But uh, it's not good to win every bid and that's kind of like what I've commented down. You know, not every customer is your customer. Like, if success to you is winning every bid, then that's not very good. That just means it might mean you're just too cheap. Maybe I'm not really sure. I'm not always fond of going towards like all the cheaper bids. Like I'll tell a customer up front if you're looking for cheap, then we're probably not a good fit. And I believe once you're able to get to that point, you're actually able to tell somebody that I believe that's success, because we work so hard Matt and we work to build that good reputation online For, say, if so-and-so has been doing this for X amount of years and he doesn't have a good online presence.
Speaker 2:But I've been doing this four years and my online presence is great. I have a bazillion references online on every platform. I have a good resume that's built online, yeah, then, nine times out of 10, the guy that has the better reputation and all that with the reviews they're going to, they're going to win that battle and that's what I'm seeing a lot of here recently is it's actually starting to pay off because we're in a growing market, we're in a growing area and the the people that have been around town they're starting to move away and you got newer people filtering in so they don't know anybody around here, and that's where they're going. They're going to those online sources and they're finding those good guys like us with a good reputation online.
Speaker 1:True that Also, somebody could use another guy for 10 years and then they say I want to try this guy. I actually like this guy better. There's no, no hate on anybody doing a service because, at the end of the day, what we do is a commodity, so that customer experience and that like service is going to be everything. So if, like, there's so many times that you do jobs and I do jobs where they're saying like, oh, I was, I was using this guy forever, but I decided to call upon you. Well, that's because they were like, and it's the same thing as what we do as consumers. We don't just say OK, well, I've been eating at this family diner down the street for the rest of my life. I'm never going anywhere else. Even if they build a brand new place down the street, you're going to want to try that new place down the street. You're going to want to try that. And if you have a greater and a better relationship at the new place, you're definitely going to go there.
Speaker 1:And every day is like kind of a dog-eat-dog world in business, because that's the beauty of capitalism. It's funny because people start whining about things, about, oh, the market's this or the market's that it's like you have to wake up every day, almost vicious about like I'm going to eat today I'm going to hunt. To wake up every day, almost vicious about like I'm going to eat today I'm going to hunt. And if that's not the mindset, it's stressful to live, because that there's so many people that are doing what we're doing and there's so many people that are young and are good on TikTok or good on YouTube and they have like good visual marketing that if you're not constantly doing that, you're not up on the trends. You're, you're, you.
Speaker 1:You're gonna lose a lot of business because there's plenty of jobs that you lose to me and I lose to you and there's people that have used you and there's people that use me and they go back and forth and a lot of times they don't know a difference.
Speaker 1:They're like oh yeah, clay was great he. And then they almost lump us together because I remember there was a patch where I think it was a couple years ago when I was growing and I didn't have, I didn't have availability to get to somebody because I was on like on a cruise, and then I send them your way and then they like flow back and forth between you and me, kind of based upon who's quickly, who's, who's more readily available and like that's like. So if we're just purely relying on referrals and word of mouth, like it's, we're, we're, we're losing business to each other because people view us the same way. So like, if you're just purely relying on word of mouth and not trying to average, like advertise and market it kind of attack, attack your growth strategies every day, it's not how to run a business because, like we do both and even our referrals will flow back and forth between each other.
Speaker 2:Yes, 100%. And another thing I believe that the days of not having a market or not advertising and all that, I believe those days are long gone. If you want to be a consistent company, if you want to be consistent, consistently grow. Because we're able to go back and we're able to look at our numbers. We're able to see and we can see that trend. It's every year. We have a graph of our numbers and our crm and we can kind of see, okay, these are the trends of, uh, the season, and we can see when we're going to be busy and when we're not going to be busy and all that mess.
Speaker 2:But to consistently grow your company, you have to invest back into yourself, and that makes me not want to. Really, when people are saying, oh, I'm slow or oh, I'm doing this or oh well, what are you doing to fix that? Are you doing anything to fix that? Or are you just sitting back and you're just waiting on Mary down the street that used you two years ago to call you? Like, what are we doing to fix these situations? And like I say it just, when people are not doing anything to fix the slow situation, then I'm just like well, what are you doing Well. I've never had to advertise Well that consistent marketing, even if it's $10 a day or $100 a week or whatever. If you can consistently market later on down the road it's going to pay off where you're consistently busy. It's almost like investing in the stock market. If you're investing in that stock market, your money is going to eventually start growing, and that's the same thing with the business.
Speaker 1:Yep, there's a compounding effort whether you're compounding growth or you're compounding yourself to become irrelevant. And that's one thing we don't, we don't look at, we just say, ok, well, if I'm investing in it, it's going to go up, but if I'm not investing in it, it's it's going to stay flat. That's not the case at all. If you're not investing in something, it's going to go down. It's a hyper competitive world. And even look at inflation.
Speaker 1:These people almost the adage of, like Dave Ramsey, oh if I just save my money and keep it in my bank account, I'll be fine 30, 40 years down the road from now.
Speaker 1:Well, what's they don't factor is inflation.
Speaker 1:And when inflation is 20 percent, or if the world is running at such a speed going forward with inflation and like the need to grow to keep up with it, then you're just going to sit on your haunches and you're going to get behind and then it's just a losing strategy. So it's, it's a different mindset because it's a different world. And I feel like a generational thing between us and maybe the older generation is they were fed this lie that is not reality and they're they're starting to deal with it firsthand of like I can't afford to live life because they don't have the same mindset that you and I do, where it's very much of like. Hey, we understand that we have to drive the needle forward and if we're not driving the needle forward, somebody is going to go into our pockets and take that money that was my money coming in from referrals or just naturally because I've been in business for 30 years. They're going to take the money out of my pocket and I'm going to be broke or I'm going to have to get a job.
Speaker 2:And it's not a nice thing to say, but that's the reality of the life. You have to realize it sink or swim. Nobody's coming to save you. Nobody cares about your pockets, nobody cares about your bills. Nobody cares they. They really don't care. I mean, like you say it's it's harsh to say that, but it's, it's the true reality. Nobody cares about your bills, nobody cares about your pocket, nobody cares about how much money you make. They just want their house clean. Whether it be Matt the driveway guy or C3 Wash Pros, they both have a great reputation.
Speaker 1:Yep, and it's pretty much a race. So who can get to it first? And that's the big thing we're starting to see in our market and I feel like we talk about our market. Clay and I pretty much compete with ourselves. For the most part, everybody else kind of falls falls in doing their own things. But there's so many times where I look at marketing strategies or advertising and then I'm like OK, I'm at this and Clay's at this.
Speaker 1:Hopefully we're not just driving ourselves up into these like Google auctions or stuff like that, but like you have to do something to really separate yourself from the masses. Because, like every day I look on Facebook and there's a hundred new people posting oh, I can pressure wash your house, I can do this, I can do that. I've even like stopped posting in these groups because it almost seems to come off sometimes as like how bad do these people need work if they're constantly posting in these groups? I'd rather take a different approach and a different frame and be like okay, well, you know how to get in touch with us, this is where we are. Or like how Clay does it. He gets a lot of referrals in these groups and then he'll reply to the referrals, and I think that's a good way of doing it too, because you're not coming off as desperate needing work, you're just saying, yeah, thanks for the shout out.
Speaker 2:Here I go and then and then, before you know it, it's like you're posting in groups without having to beg for work. Yeah, I believe that Facebook was a good foundation of building my company, I think, as to you, but I think that a lot of the people that are newly in business whether it be pressure washing, any business, really, the word on the street is go to Facebook. You can get rich on Facebook, and I think that that is the thing of the past. The Facebook thing, it's just, it's it's oversaturated, whereas it used to not be like four years ago when we first started, five years ago, when we first started to not be like four years ago, when we first started five years ago when we first started, and now it's.
Speaker 2:It's definitely just the word on the street that, oh, just go post on a like local facebook groups.
Speaker 2:Well, there's so many people doing it now all you're doing is fighting to the bottom of the barrel.
Speaker 2:However, however and I've talked to you a little bit about this before uh, if you, if you kind of have the seo mindset of you, know how we do on the internet to build our seo, I gain a lot of the. I still get a lot of referrals in these groups, in the, in the facebook groups, people recommend to me or whatnot, and that's kind of paid off in the long run. Um, we've stayed consistent with trying to push those a little bit, because these people are going in their search and pressure, washing it in the top and nothing but c3 wash pros pulls up because we've been recommended so many times and, um, I think that that's the only good thing, that that that's even come with that. Really, anymore I don't really push it as aggressively as I used to. No, don't really care much about it anymore, and it's like's like me and you have talked about. If you happen to rely on Facebook for work, then that's not really good. It's not going to pay off in the long run.
Speaker 1:I would say it's like almost the difference between being an amateur and being a professional at this. If you're a side hustle guy and you want to do it spring, summer and make money on the side, I think that's great to make an extra like $50,000 in revenue doing that Like if your entire job is like push, push, push Facebook, but you're going to be in a space where you're going after cheap people, You're going after like, oh, this is the friend, the friend down the street who's doing stuff. You're not really going to be able to grow out of that and you're not going to be able to grow to bigger projects and be more legitimate as a company. And it's almost like yard signs. Yard signs worked 10 years ago but now every street corner has 50 yard signs and they're all pressure washers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it says pressure washers.
Speaker 1:And that's what you've been taught. And if everybody's doing something, you've already missed the bus. It's like you're saying, if you're into stocks or if you're into cryptocurrency, when everybody in their neighbor is buying something, you've already lost it. You're in too late, you want to be before everybody's talking about it, and it's like the same mindset. These people are like oh, I'm going to buy Tesla, I'm going to buy this, I'm going to buy that. I was like, yeah, but you already missed it. When, when, when every single person is doing something, try to do something else, because you've missed that wave.
Speaker 1:These guys are they're selling you stuff that worked five, 10 years ago for them and they've haven't done it in five, 10 years. And they're saying this is what you need to do, not the reality anymore. Otherwise they wouldn't be telling you what to do.
Speaker 2:They'd be out there doing it themselves. Yeah, the internet has changed everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I see these guys in these groups and you've probably seen them too where they're implementing AI video edits in their pressure washing marketing videos and I'm like that's how to be on social media, because they're taking a video, they're not. Again, social media, I believe, is a platform, so it's not necessarily like don't use it, but it's how you're using it. If you're taking a picture of a vinyl siding that's got green on it and then half of it that's been pressure washed and saying, call now for your house wash, that ain't gonna cut it, you can sell the 200 house washes on that. But the guys that are doing the, they're like, real, like you. You on your or your YouTube, you have a ton of followers and on your TikTok you have a ton of followers. That is where I think it works.
Speaker 1:But it also works too where these guys are doing these really cool visually aesthetic edits that are like AI edits, and I've seen one guy do it in the Facebook groups and it catches my attention. So, as a homeowner, you're probably going to get business. It's probably going to catch the eyes of a homeowner too. Homeowner, you're probably going to get business. Uh, it's probably going to catch the eyes of a homeowner too.
Speaker 2:so like if you're using facebook, make sure you are like the coolest guy on facebook doing stuff, otherwise you're just blended in with everybody else yeah, the biggest thing about facebook is don't oversaturate your page but at the same time try to stay top of mind, and that's kind of how that's kind of my guideline and kind of my philosophy on it. If you could just stay top of mind and always kind of be somewhere, um, like I don't like to oversaturate my timeline, but I like to post like in my story, maybe alternate it every other day. And another big thing is, uh, I'm probably giving away too many of my secrets. But another big thing I like to do is every morning when I wake up, it's like the first thing I do. I make a habit of going and wishing everybody on my, on my facebook, a happy birthday. Yeah, oh, shoot, clay smith just wish me a happy birthday. That's awesome. Whenever I need pressure washing, I'll be sure to use it I think that's a subtle hack too.
Speaker 1:It's not about the friends or the followers you got. It's about how you're engaging with them. If you have 5000 people on a page and you don't engage with anybody, it doesn't matter, but if you're reaching out, to those people.
Speaker 2:It's like what you're talking about. You got to be creative, you got to think outside the box, man yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's like hey, there's a platform where you're able to have 5,000 people that you can talk to.
Speaker 2:But if you're not figuring out a right you got to utilize, I like to utilize my free marketing, as I call it uh, those free tools that you have that you can utilize, because it makes you a lot of money. Just knowing people make you a lot of money. But uh, another cool thing about the tiktok and the youtube and the facebook reels and all that stuff what if a customer uh, this is why I like the content stuff what if a customer says, okay, well, I've never had my house pressure washed, never have my driveway clean. How do you go about doing this?
Speaker 2:you have 100, 100 or 200, however many videos on your tiktok, your youtube or whatever. I have been directing people to my uh youtube or either sit in on the link of me washing a roof you know who I don't know many people that's had their roof clean, like personally. So, um, you know, we've made a video. We've got a few videos of us cleaning roofs and I'm like hey, I'm going to shoot you a link on how we do things. If you have any questions, give me a call.
Speaker 1:I think that's a great idea too With YouTube and that's kind of what I've been leaning into this year as well create like FAQs or create like a customer journey video. Like with video, somebody can send you a lead and you can have automatic videos sent to them via YouTube links where it says thanks for submitting a lead, click here and you can be in front of a camera selling yourself, your services and telling people what the next step are. And if they're able to instantly get that from you, there's instant value as opposed to just how it is for most people. Oh, this customer filled out a lead at eight in the morning on a Sunday. I'll get to them Monday If your systems have already sent them a video that's telling them exactly what you do, what the next step is, and like selling your services on them.
Speaker 1:It's going to be a no-brainer for them. You're going to be able to sell yourself at a higher price and you're also going to be able to streamline your processes better. So it's not as much of a headache or, like you were saying with those questions that we get all the time videotape answering those questions. Say, hey, based upon what everybody says. These are the commonly frequently, most at the frequently asked questions for us. You may not even be thinking about it, but we're here to fill in the gaps, so you have no question about using us, and then just putting your face in front of people builds that trust it just saves a lot of time, especially just trying to explain a process on how you do it.
Speaker 2:You can give them a visual and they can watch you do it, versus you trying to tell them and they still don't understand after you tell them. They're just trusting that you're going to come out and do a good job, exactly, and think about too.
Speaker 1:What does everybody say? Oh, it's a eco-friendly sodium hypochlorite. And then you've already lost customers. They don't care. It's like if my car is broken and I take it to the mechanic and he gives me this super mechanical description of what's happening to it. All I care about is is it going to work or not? Yep.
Speaker 2:I like that. That was a great analogy.
Speaker 1:Those videos allow you to demonstrate what you're doing in a simplistic way, as opposed to just describing a bunch of random words that the pressure washers understand but the customer doesn't care about.
Speaker 2:It just makes you sound like you know what you're talking about. Yeah, they just trust you and just hope you're going to do a good job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it takes no time. You put a phone in front of your face, you video something. You can even keep it on your camera roll and just text it to somebody. Hey, if you have any questions, give me a call. 100, but I guess. Yeah, we've been going on a lot. This episode is like 40 minutes, heck.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we can always talk about success. I always have a uh, a lot to say when it comes to that, because there's, like we said again, and there's just so many different ways of being successful. Everybody has different goals. There's no blueprint to business. What works for you may not work for me, and what works for me may not work for you. Everybody just has to take their own spin on things and there's no correct.
Speaker 1:I mean there's a correct way, but there's no correct way of doing like business, like everybody has their own way of doing things correct, and what may be successful in one area of life could cause a demise or could cause stress in another area or could cause personal issues. And then you have to assess is success, am I going about success correctly? And I think, like having balance, making sure that you're able to be the type of husband to the type of father and the type of person you want to be, that's ultimately what matters in this world. And having a business where you can treat your, your customers, you can treat your uh, your, um, fellow, like community members a certain way. That's just icing on the cake. Don't, don't flip it around. Where you're like my success just comes purely from this aspect to my business, and then we're lopsided and then eventually you'll burn out, you'll stress out and you'll be unsuccessful in your business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think it's also rewarding as a business owner. As you build your business, you're able to provide for somebody else's family as well. Yeah, like creating jobs for other people.
Speaker 1:So that's like the next level, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yep, yep, a hundred percent. But yeah, I appreciate everybody listening. Thanks for watching, thanks for joining the live. Make sure you go to Spotify, apple podcast, youtube. Make sure you get those downloads. Go check out all of our previous episodes. We have so many, so many things that key points that you can learn from. We've had different guests. We plan on having guests in the future. We're probably going to get some merch out. We're going to work on that within the next month or so, trying to get some merch out. We're trying to plan our appearance for the huge convention. If you guys have any questions, hit us up. Send us a DM through the Wash Bros page. Add us on Facebook, give us a follow. See what we're doing every day. We have a Wash Bros group. Make sure you go join that. Introduce yourself to us. We'd like to get to know you a little more. And, yeah, anything. Matt.
Speaker 1:I think that's pretty much it. Yeah, we've got almost 700 followers in our Wash Bros group, so let's try to drive that number up and get to a thousand. And, uh, our listens look great, the downloads look great. So, like share, uh, tell it to your other wash friends. It's something great you can listen to whether you're working or you're on the way to a job, just to kind of get some insight from fellow pressure washers, whether it just be from an entertainment standpoint, or you learn a lesson here too. That way, you don't have to go through and do the same failures that we have done to get to the point that we're at today. So it's I, I like their show because we're not trying to pitch a product or anything. We're mainly just talking like two, two guys, two wash bros talking. So, and if you listen to this thing, you can build a successful business just from doing how, how we've been doing, cause we're fully transparent in everything we do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it beats the crap out of you know have a lot of people hit me up all the time and I tell them I just listened to our podcast. I can go, I can go for days telling you all the things you need to do, but if you just go listen to our podcast, put things on your own spin while you're working. Yeah, I mean, you can make so much money.
Speaker 1:If you go through, we probably have a full day of us talking. So Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So absolutely Well, it's been a. It's been a pleasure to do this one, but I look forward to the next one.
Speaker 1:Yep, and uh like, like Clay said, give us a like, subscribe, and we'll see you on the next one.
