.png)
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 12: Reframing Business To A Privilege, Not A Burden
The entrepreneurial journey comes with countless challenges, but the Wash Bros are here to remind you it's fundamentally a privilege, not a burden. In this thought-provoking episode, Matt Jackson and Clay Smith dive deep into the mindset shift that separates successful business owners from those who constantly struggle and complain.
Hitting their 12th episode since rebranding, the duo explores how reframing your perspective during hectic busy seasons or stressful periods can completely transform your experience as a business owner. They contrast the employee mindset (having ideas but no authority to implement them) with the entrepreneurial reality (complete responsibility for turning ideas into action). This accountability creates both tremendous pressure and remarkable freedom – a privilege that shouldn't be taken for granted.
The conversation shifts to a critical examination of "part-time" entrepreneurs who claim to be slammed while still maintaining full-time employment elsewhere. Matt and Clay make a compelling case for making the full commitment, explaining how straddling both worlds severely limits growth potential and creates customer service issues. They share practical insights on protecting your schedule, recognizing customer red flags, and maintaining consistency in your business practices.
Perhaps most valuable is their wisdom on building long-term business reputation over short-term gains. The Wash Bros emphasize how treating every customer interaction professionally—whether a $300 minimum job or a major project—impacts your business trajectory, as today's small customer might become tomorrow's significant client. Their firsthand experiences illustrate how consistency, professionalism, and genuine appreciation for the privilege of entrepreneurship create sustainable success.
Ready to shift your mindset and embrace the privilege of business ownership? This episode delivers exactly the perspective you need. Subscribe to the Wash Bros podcast, check out Matt's book on Amazon, and follow their journey as they continue growing their businesses through consistent action and grateful perspectives.
https://www.facebook.com/WASHBROSPODCAST
https://www.facebook.com/mattdrivewayguy
https://www.facebook.com/c3pressure
powerwashingcoach.com
C3washpros.com
mattthedrivewayguy.com
What's up, guys? It's Matt Jackson and Clay Smith and we're the Wash Bros, if you're tuning in. Thanks again, and we are at the 12th episode so far this year with our new rebrand. So appreciate everybody listening and supporting us as we go on this journey together. This is going to be airing on Sunday, the 27th, so we are later, later April.
Speaker 1:Where we're at, it's the heart of the busy season in South Carolina and we are moving forward. So what I want to talk about today and Clay wants to talk about like kind of the privilege that we have to be in business and it's almost a mindset that carries us through when we go through rough times, or where we're going through times like now, when we're like super hectic and super busy and the mental side of the business can really get to us. So like we always reframe that hey, like it is a privilege to be in our shoes and run a business and be a business owner, and kind of the mindsets we have and the way we go about business, um, to like plow forward and view it as a privilege as opposed to a chore, because you, you see online people can complain and gripe and then you get tired and business is a struggle, so the mindset to have is super important. So I feel like today we're going to reframe and talk about the privilege we have as being business owners.
Speaker 1:So you want to kick this thing off, Clay.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir, absolutely, as always. Appreciate everybody listening, joining in, tuning in Facebook Live, youtube, apple Podcasts, spotify, wherever you're listening from. We appreciate you from all across the world. We have many listeners, so appreciate everybody.
Speaker 2:Showing up as an entrepreneur, like you said, matt, is a very, very great privilege. It's a great opportunity for anyone, especially if you're just jumping into it. It's a privilege, it's not a burden, it's not a you got to make sure your mental state is there. You got to make sure that you're prepared. As I always talk about, you're setting yourself up for the spring and the winter and the and the spring you set yourself back up for the winter. So always have a game plan, always know where you're going, always have a game plan, always know where you're going, always have your goals, always surround yourself with the right people that are going to help get you there, and I think that's one of the big keys. You got to basically put yourself in rooms with like-minded individuals, not your just normal everyday civilian that works at nine to five, because the normal nine to five person they really don't understand the things that we go through daily. They think that they do, they think that they have great ideas. That's cool.
Speaker 2:I've learned off from a couple of those people too that have had great ideas but they really do not understand the mental state, the things that we go through daily, the things that you're trying to get through. They don't understand the goals. They don't understand the cash flow problems, the scheduling issues, the logistics, making sure you're providing your customer with good quality work, good quality customer service and you have to throw all those together. And when you're first getting started, you have to wear all those hats and you have to figure it out. Because I know when I first started, I was just like just trying to figure it.
Speaker 2:I mean, I didn't know I had never done that accounting, I had never dealt with cashflow other than my management job and sales that I had, you know, doing millions of dollars. But I'm thankful for that. I believe everything happens for a reason. It's things that I had learned previously, that I had applied to what I'm doing now, and I truly feel like if you are stumbling, you don't know where you're at. You got to reach out for help. You got to surround yourself with those like-minded individuals. You got to listen to the Wash Bros podcast, listen to what we say, because nine times out of ten, we've already been there and you just gotta, you just gotta. You gotta put your ego aside, you gotta ask for help, you gotta learn the things to be successful yep and two.
Speaker 1:Like clay's point, a lot of times if you talk to employees, they don't necessarily, um, they may have a good idea, right, because a lot of times an employee they're like I see, this is how it works in my business, but they're not directly involved with doing that action in their business. Everything's so siloed out for them so it's like oh, I have an idea, I could do it better. You always see, are the employees who are like kind of in a mid level position where they're not doing anything, they don't have a lot of and they can do it better and they're better than the boss and the bosses are stupid and everybody's dumb around them. That's like that employee mindset trap that people get into Now with business, like it is a privilege to have your own business because your ideas then turn into the actions that you take and then you can move the needle. So that's the privilege.
Speaker 1:I think in business, instead of griping about something for years, sitting behind a desk saying, oh man, if they were just as smart as me, they would do this, this and this, and then like life would be easier, like in business, that's our responsibility. So it's not just the ideas that we have or like talking about something. It's like the actions that we do every single day, how we show up every single day, is what's going to determine whether we have a successful business or whether we have a bad business. And you can have a super successful business, but if you don't have teams in place, then you get burnt out. If you don't have multiple crews in the field, then you can't take on so much work. Like everything is directly, we are accountable to everything. And that's what I find in business super, super fun, super satisfying, but also it can be stressful. So, like instead of saying, oh man, the burden of the world is on my shoulders, which it is, I like to reframe it and say, hey, look, it's a privilege that I'm in this position Because, like Clay was saying, when I was in a W2 job, when I was an employee, I may have all the ideas in the world, but for five years I've been sitting here bitching about it, not getting a pay raise, not doing anything about it, and I still have my position.
Speaker 1:Like in business, we don't have that um, we don't have that luxury, like if we're not showing up every day, if we're not implementing what we're talking about and the ideas that we're talking about, we're gonna fail. And you got to reframe that from oh my gosh, this is so much stress, everything's on me to like it's privileged that I have the ability to do this and that that's kind of my uh, my, my feelings and thought processes of this episode. Just from, like, talking to a couple of people this week or, um, just kind of experiencing it and being being doing this for five years, like we're in the heat of the busy season again and in the first couple of seasons, when it's like, oh my God, I'm so overwhelmed by lead flow, I'm so overwhelmed by work, whether it's messing things up, like there's so many factors like you got to tell yourself, hey, look, this is a privilege that I have, that I'm able to go about doing things exactly how I want to do it and grow a business however I choose. And that's why, like Clay's saying too, you got to surround yourselves in the right rooms, otherwise you're going to be you're if, if you're sitting on Facebook all day long and we joke about this all the time people sit on Facebook posting in the middle of the day. What are they doing? Obviously, they're not in the right room that you want to be in If you're getting sucked into that kind of toxic, negative bull crap. It's just a bunch of time waste. There's no different than those employees that we were talking about, where they're just sitting around doing nothing, complaining.
Speaker 1:Having all the ideas in the world, getting into the wash bros group like we have on our facebook, listening to our podcast, surrounding ourselves by local competitors like clay and I do, is why, uh, we're able to continuously level up and grow when it seems like on social media you always find negative people griping, complaining about how oh the this economy is not where it needs to be. I'm'm down this year. Blah, blah, blah. It's like figure out who you're surrounded with, figure out like your mindset about things and go and attack this year, because this is late April. This is when most places are ratcheting up their busy season and we got a lot of business left. So that is my, that's my 10 cents.
Speaker 2:My two cents, however many cents, however many cents we have right, yeah, yeah, and another thing. When you're an employee, you don't really. You have a lot of great ideas and you're not afraid to tell somebody to use those ideas. But when you're out on your own, you're an entrepreneur, you're starting out, you're scared to. You have a bunch of cool ideas, but it's not as easy to apply those ideas, obviously because you have to deal with the consequences. When you're working for somebody, you don't deal with the consequences if you have a great idea and it turns into a bad idea.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:So that's. You know the privilege can bite you in the butt, but it's still a privilege that you're a business owner. You get to do your own thing, you get to make your own decisions. You don't have a boss, but you still have to deal with those consequences. As in, if you're an employee, you don't have to deal with the consequences if you didn't come up with a great idea.
Speaker 1:Like Clay was saying, he was managing cash flows when he was in his sales roles or when he was in the dealerships, where every vehicle is $50,000, $100,000. There's millions of dollars on the line. What happens if you mess up a couple of deals and you lose $50,000? Like you may, yeah you get a claw back of a commission or you, worst case, you get fired. You're not going into bankruptcy over here Like if you have your own business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, if you make the wrong decision in business even in our scale you know the home service industry it can get crazy. But if you make a wrong decision, I mean you're just one bad decision from losing everything. So that's another beauty. You got to make sure you're making the right decisions, make sure you're make sure you have a game plan, make sure you know what you're doing. Don't try to bite off more than you can chew, just specifically because of the risk, right? So it's just a privilege. You know you get to make great decisions. You know sometimes they work out, sometimes you learn from them, sometimes you grow from them, and I think that's one of the beauties of it, and I've done a lot of that myself, like throwing money at different things and seeing if they stick, seeing if they work.
Speaker 2:If they don't work, okay, let's move on to the next thing. Let's move on to the next thing. Let's try out the next thing. Let's see what we can do here. But you can never go wrong by investing in yourself, whether it be money, time or whatever it may be. But always invest in yourself, always invest in your business. Like we're coming up here in a week, we're going to go off the Bahamas for four days. We're going to reset before this busy season kicks in Very, very important for your mentality.
Speaker 1:That's a solid point because I know this past week Clay just put up his biggest solo number week of jobs and revenue. So he's like I didn't even have time to eat last week, so it's super important that he's baked in that kind of getaway to reset. That way he's not, first week of June, burnt out, messing stuff up because he's not taking care of himself.
Speaker 2:Well, that's another thing. I knew that I was having a little getaway coming up so I didn't mind pushing myself. I'm like, okay, it'll pay off when I'm in the Bahamas, yeah yeah, but still you've got to take care of yourself. Stay hydrated. I know I preach it on our podcast, but sometimes I need to preach it to myself and we all get caught up getting busy, trying to chase money, trying to get work done, just trying to make all of our customers happy. But, uh truly, if you beat yourself up over and over and over and over, you're eventually your quality is not going to be as good as it is. If you were fresh you were, you know, as it was in the beginning of the season definitely got to make sure you keep that quality up.
Speaker 1:Yes and again, the perspective and the mindset is this is our like this is our business.
Speaker 1:We're not doing this as a hustle, so don't say, oh, I'm just going to kill my body, kill myself, have no game plan, and just go forward and grind and hustle without, without, without plans, without baking in like a trip here and there or time off, because it's about the long run and we're at full time. We're at like our fourth season, so part-time I'd say like five, five, six years, something like that. So like we've gotten this momentum rolling so much where, like it's just showing up every day and it's boring. Honestly, it's a job. Like you got to show up every day, you got the guys come to the shop. Like it's the task get easier with time and the difficulty isn't getting the work. The difficulty isn't, oh, the revenue I'm finding, or this or that, the. The difficulty is just like not being bored with it.
Speaker 1:It's like we all got into this because we were trying to leave something and get into a better position eventually, how our brains work. We're going to view the same thing, that same energy of like, oh, I'm trying to find a better thing as we do our current business like the business we built because we're growth minded people, we want to achieve and grow and do all this and this. So, like, what do you do when you're at that, that spot in business where you're like man, I've been killing it year over year, like I'm kind of like'm, I'm feeling stale, like I need something fresh, I need something like different. And, like we, we always try to like spark up our business, do something different every year, to like keep it fresh for us and keep it fresh for our team, and grow. Because at the end of the day, it's like you're not, you don't want to replace a job that you found boring and didn't enjoy with a business that you find boring and don't enjoy, and like, like we're talking about on this episode, like we, we can have all the ideas in the world, but unless you're implementing those ideas, what are you doing about it?
Speaker 1:And it's stuff like that keeps it fresh and then just like keeping that mindset, uh, and that perspective of kind of gratitude in control the whole time, because it's it is easy to say, man, I created a treadmill for myself. Where am I going with this thing? I'm on that hamster wheel, hustling, grinding, and then it's like we're doing the same thing every year. So it's like figure out how you can like break down your year, figure out what direction you want to go in your year. Like, um, bring on a team if you guys want to get into different types of projects or you want to bake in a couple days here and there that you're on the truck or you're off the truck stuff like that but absolutely 100% agree.
Speaker 2:Another thing that I've noticed uh, especially in our area and if you do any networking in your area, wherever you you may be from, I know I mean I know it's pretty common A lot of guys in our area I have noticed it's a, it's a trend. Everyone is working a full-time job and they're claiming they're a business owner and they say and they're slammed. They don't know what they're doing, they're working seven days a week, they are just slammed. If you are in that point, you need to go ahead and quit your full-time job. If you, you know, for your mental state, if you, if you truly want to grow your business and you are slammed working seven days a week, calling yourself a business owner, go ahead and quit your full-time job and I promise you it'd be the best thing that you ever did, especially for your mental state. Because what's happening is you're at your full-time job and all you're thinking about is all the work you have waiting on you when you get off your regular job and all you're doing is burning yourself to the ground.
Speaker 1:I agree and say you've been doing it for five years in a row, what is your objective? If you can't outgrow your day job by pressure washing and you've been doing this for four or five years, what are you trying to do Again? If you're like, hey look, I'm in a position in life where I'm older, I got a retirement plan. I just want to make some spending money, that's one thing. Grow a business and you're like the I'm a business owner like this is me.
Speaker 1:You need to make that jump because you're severely limiting your earning potential and your productivity by just playing it safe and that's almost like the worst, like in between. That lukewarm is never where we want to be. We want to be like all or nothing, essentially like, yeah, don't be reckless about things, but commit to something, burn the ships and then you will realize this is like the jump I needed, versus trying to be in between two places and being average at most. Because, say, you have a good salary, well, it is a good salary, $100,000 a year. You can easily make that doing this full time. It just takes full commitment.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent and the biggest thing is okay. So if you're doing it on your three days off or whatever, you got your regular work, full-time job schedule set up. Okay, if you get some bad weather, then what right? So what if it thunderstorms or whatever? Wherever you're from some bad weather and you can't get done what you need to get done, what are you going to do with those customers? You're going to push them off to the following week. That customer is only going to wait so long and then you run into a customer service issue.
Speaker 1:Exactly. You're setting yourself up for undelivering quality work. And I did this for a tiny bit part-time and I remember I'd say it was like 2019, I was doing it part-time and then the same situation we're running into here oh, I'm only doing it on Saturdays and Sundays. Okay, well, I book out an entire month of Saturdays and Sundays within like a week of the month. So, like I'm telling customers yeah, just wait for me, I'll get to you to the end of the month. What?
Speaker 2:happens like Clay says if something comes up.
Speaker 1:Well, sorry, I'm going to have to wait.
Speaker 2:So Well, sorry, I'm going to have to wait. So you're dragging these people on only to push or move something for another week or another two weeks, and then you're only operating on a limited kind of the.
Speaker 2:That's the kind of mentality you got to have. You want to make every one of these guys happy. You can be on your time, you know. You know what I'm trying to get at when it comes to business your own customers time. You want to make your customer happy. You want to provide them great customer service. You want to do what you say you're want to get. You want to. You want to make sure they're they're taken care of immediately. You don't want to just keep pushing them off, because I see this happen a lot matt, a lot of guys.
Speaker 2:They'll find a bigger job and they'll move everything around so they can go ahead and get that bigger job before they take care of the smaller job and I've seen that too truly believe that's the shittiest way you can go about it, because nine times out of ten, as you know, I know that bigger job is only going to come around once, versus that three or four hundred five hundred dollar job. Whatever it is that customer, you may use them for as long as you're in business that's 100 the truth.
Speaker 1:And I liked how you said we think we're on our time and the customer has to listen to our, our criteria. If I told customers who are going on Google and probably getting a quote from you, a quote from me and a quote from somebody else, that I'm booked out six to eight weeks, I don't think I'm going to get that customer, no matter how much value I provide to them, no matter how much of this or that. And if you say, hey, I can fit you in the end of next week, boom, you already did the job. And we over inflate our egos in business and think, oh, these are my customers or oh, I'm working on they got to abide by my terms and conditions. I'm like I'm a business owner, yeah, but we work for the customer.
Speaker 1:It's like you get into business because you don't have a boss, but your boss is pretty much every interaction you have with customer. And like we'll have business, go between me and Clay. It's like, hey, sorry, do you know anybody else? I can't wait two weeks to have this done or have a party coming up. I'm like what we do is not that important. People have a need and we need to fix that need by cleaning their house. So I've had plenty of times over the year where I've recommended Clay and he's run with it and they became his customers and they may come back to me because we're all just kind of borrowing each other's customers.
Speaker 1:So, like, by not allowing yourself enough time to service customers, you are severely limiting your ability in business and that's like what we're talking about here. Do you want to be a entrepreneur, full time business owner, and do you want to be like, oh, I'm the best in the upstate, I'm the best in the area, like are you pushing yourself for future growth? Or are you saying, hey, I have a limited window and I want to be part-time and I have no problem making an extra thousand dollars or so a month. Again, if you want to be like part-time and you want to have employees run your work, I have no issues with that. The issues come when you're the owner operator. You're doing it all and then you're almost misleading people and you're putting off an image and a brand of like, oh, like, we're competing with the guys that are running multiple trucks every single day, but I'm only, I'm slammed, I'm booked out like best year ever, okay, well, how many days do you work? I work eight days a month. That's not really doing any any good to anybody.
Speaker 2:I mean like that's my favorite is I'm two months out. I can't even get my customers to wait two months.
Speaker 1:I can't even get my customers to wait two weeks.
Speaker 2:I know, yeah, yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. Yeah, same thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you say two weeks and they ghost. It's like okay, cool, get back to you.
Speaker 2:If it's more than two weeks, it's usually something. When we finally get to that date that they have scheduled, it's always something more than a month, more than two weeks out.
Speaker 1:Yeah unless it's like a big project, for like I got a wedding or I got a commercial property that we have to do it on this date. Like a customer say, say they budget five or six hundred bucks. And to clay's point too, I've had this happen this year more than other years, where I book a job and then they're like we'll do it after pollen season, okay, well, they either they find an excuse or like the day before they forget about it and my reminder sends to their email and then they message me frantically saying hey, I didn't emergency expense come up, I got to push this back.
Speaker 2:I've had that happen. That's like the best excuse that customers have. It's very common and the the. The thing with me is I used to get pissed off and ask questions or whatever, but I don't even care anymore. I just click cancel and my CRM and it says jobs canceled, sends a customer notification. But um, here's the thing, man, I don't. I don't book out further than two weeks, unless it's a big ticket.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:It's just not worth it to me. I mean, here's the thing you got a $300 ticket, $400 ticket, whatever regular house wash. Okay, you schedule that job for four weeks out, right, because the customer wanted to be prepared, whatever. Sometimes they work out, sometimes they don't. I just kind of fill the customer out. I'm always doing customer interviews.
Speaker 2:I've had a lot of conversations with different people, learned that in sales I know what I got when I talked to them. If I don't feel good about it, I just tell them hey, I don't schedule no more than two weeks out. Call me about a week and a half. Let's nail down a date. But say you schedule that customer, schedule that customer on a Monday. They're the first stop of the day. You have just say two more stops that day, two or three more stops that day. That customer cancels the day before. So then you got from. Okay, in my instance, I start my job around 7.30, 8 o'clock is my first stop. So you got from 7.30, 8 o'clock all the way to 11 o'clock with an open window. Now you missed out on all that money and all that time when you could have been making money somewhere else.
Speaker 1:I fully agree there. That's something I've learned the hard way as well, because in your mind you're always like, oh, customer's always right, work around them, but you have to protect yourself from open schedule. And then, too, to your point as well, like when you have an employee running for you bud, I can't pay you, you're just going to have to sit on your hands until 11 o'clock. What do you do? It's all about filling spots on the schedule, and if customers are that way, it'd be like hey look, if you don't want to book in a week or my next available, just call me when you're ready. And nine times out of 10, they never call me again. And it's not like I missed an opportunity. I just didn't have to deal with that headache of them trying to dick me around, because if they wanted the service enough, they would put it on the schedule Like I'm not playing this game.
Speaker 1:And you see this too on social media. There's like somebody will post in a Facebook group Does anybody know any pressure washers? Of course they know pressure washers because they're actively in these groups and they see every single five days somebody posts the same thing and there's 50,000 people commenting. But these are the types of people that want you to bend over for them and give them the best deal. Those are the worst possible people you can work for. So I've pretty much like not dealt with these people whatsoever.
Speaker 1:And then in our wash rose group, one of our local guys uh, josh, he posted about turning away a customer and he's like the red flags were too much. I didn't want to push a job in the end of May, which is a busy season to us, and then deal with him dicking me over. And if you're seeing red flags on the front end, you've got to trust your gut because you're probably going to burn yourself. Whether it be they cancel last minute or they don't want to pay you or they make you work for free doing all this extra stuff, it's just not worth it. And like that's how you grow your business by protecting your time, and then you protect your employees time, and then you're able to serve the best types of customers.
Speaker 2:And my favorite word here be consistent with your decision making. Say, okay, this is how I'm going to run things, this is how I'm going to do things, and then apply it. Don't just do things on the fly because I don't know. I just see a lot of people making inconsistent decisions with business.
Speaker 1:That's a great point there.
Speaker 2:It's one of those things too.
Speaker 1:You create a standard operating procedure and it's easy to handle a bad customer because you say hey, miss, this is just how our business runs. If you go to McDonald's and you have an issue, they're not going to say, okay, we'll do this, this and this. They're going to say, well, this is what the book says, this is our standard operating procedures and that's how you have to run your business, because I think customers can smell you. If you don't know how, about nonsense? And if you're responding to that or being unprofessional and you just say, sorry, that's not how we run our business, they're going to find somebody else, they're going to find another sucker. But, like to Clay's point, if you just have a one way of doing business with everybody, you're delivering that best quality service and it's standardized across everything, so you're not going to get all these inconsistent results.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent consistency. That's my favorite word. We're going to have to put it on a shirt consistently. We're still trying to figure the shirt thing out.
Speaker 1:We'll get it figured out, I'll come up, I'll, I'll figure something out.
Speaker 2:I'm sure that we'll. We will uh have a lot of uh sales off of these shirts whenever we get them, so we're not going to we're not going to beat anybody's heads over these shirts. We're going to make sure that you can get them cheap. We're not trying to make a penny off of them.
Speaker 1:Rather have people have shirts on them that have the wash bros on them than try to gouge somebody to make five bucks.
Speaker 2:It would be a privilege to see a lot of other.
Speaker 1:A consistent privilege.
Speaker 2:Yes, privilege to see all the guys that listen to our show wearing the shirts when we show, oh yes. So just make sure that you're making those consistent decisions. Make sure you're running the business to your standard, the standard that you want your company to be. The business decisions that you are making are basically your brand right. That's providing value to your brand. That's how people view you. Make sure you're making the right ones. Sometimes you're not going to make the right ones.
Speaker 2:If you don't make the right one, you'll know it, you'll learn from it, you'll grow from it and I think that's another privilege of being a business owner. It's all about learning. I learn every day. I'm not perfect. I have a great business. I make great money. I have a lot of great customers. We do a lot of jobs. We have a lot of lead flow. We've figured that out. We've nailed it down. Me and matt's figured it out. We've kind of have the same business model, different marketing strategies, because we're in the same market. In our area there's about a I don't know I think there's at least 120 of us out there in the same market I mean anybody can go out and buy a pressure water easy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we are one of the most, I mean, if you've heard of pat clark. Pat clark's open to three locations of the bright brothers here, so a lot of big competition here in greenville, south carolina. Um, we are.
Speaker 1:We're trying to get it done for sure we are one of the top markets, especially if you look on on pressure washer, like per capital, like we are in the top, I'd say probably five, five markets outside of florida.
Speaker 2:We are huge like texas, here, florida, like.
Speaker 1:This is an insane market, so it's a good problem to have, because where there's a lot of, if there's a lot of competition, that means that there's a lot of market. So the the goal is just to figure out how to get as much of that market as you can without killing yourself or lowering your brand or like we want. We want to focus on like. How can we keep this consistent? How can we keep the same customer experience from year one to year, however many years we want to work, and that's the. That's the thing in business. Like who cares what you do in three years? Who cares what you do in five years? If you want to run a business and 10 years down the road, you got no reputation anymore. Like that's it doesn't matter. It's like. This is we're showing up every single day because this is the life we want to build, and anybody can sell you on like oh, I can make a hundred thousand dollars. You can run Facebook ads and make a hundred thousand dollars. Like you're one.
Speaker 1:It's not that impressive, but it's what is. What does your business mean to the community? What does the business mean to you? Are you doing your best to serve the community and is it? Is it able to be like replicated year over year? And to me, that is a flex. It isn't a flex of like. Oh, look at me I. I went from zero to five hundred thousand dollars in two years and then now I'm doing something completely different, selling somebody else. It's like that's what is your reputation and and that just boils down to what your reputation is.
Speaker 2:It's like what do people know you?
Speaker 1:have.
Speaker 1:It's the privilege exactly uh but I think it's a super solid podcast episode. We got here, um, because, as, as the markets have flooded with pressure washers in 2020 and covid air, all that stuff, we're going to start to see that weeding out of the people who aren't caliber and aren't fit for it. So the people that are idealist and they're not applying the things that we're talking about every single day or they're not putting their best set forward, they're going to get weeded out and they're going to go back to their jobs. So it's why it's really important to be honest with yourself and say am I doing everything I possibly can do actions, not thinking, or what should I do? Don't, don't ask people what you should do. Do stuff, figure it out yourself, invest in yourself and then keep going forward and, like what Clay was saying, there's nothing that can go wrong with investing in yourself, because the worst thing that comes out of it is a lesson.
Speaker 1:And there's so many times where we've spent money and you're like, oh, I'm underwater because I've invested in this or I spent this. This was a bad investment. But then you learn from it no-transcript every single day, going forward, you zoom out a year or two years and you're going to be in a completely different situation than you were in the start. And it doesn't matter if you're in business for five years or one year, like it's.
Speaker 1:It's a big picture game and too many people play the short term game where it's the how do I make my first 10 grand in 90 days, and they have zero idea of like what their day to day and year to year and what their business future looks like, and it's it's just as hard to maintain business as it is to start a business. So don't think't think, oh, it'll be easy once everything's kicked off, like we have this podcast partially for us to learn. But another reason is like a therapy session to me, where we're like hey, this is what we're struggling through, this is like how we're processing it, and then you, you go back to our earlier episodes and we're completely different people than we were then in just a short amount of time and that's the cool thing I'd like to go back myself and I live through the actual lives of recording the podcast.
Speaker 2:I'd actually like to go back and listen to the first one and listen to it myself.
Speaker 1:I think it's cool you go back and you look at yourself and then you say your kids have something to look at and watch too. It's like, hey, your kids were involved in your business at that early point. And they're like, well, look at, look five years from now, when dad's got a million dollar business. This is where he started. This is what he was talking about. This is like his pain points.
Speaker 2:So it's cool. Yeah, yeah. Well, another cool thing you brought up my kids so I thought it was cool. The other day, our kids were in the mechanic shop as well yes, and it is.
Speaker 1:And then to clay's point too on friday I was out in the field, uh, doing some work before my um seasonal guys come back from college and uh, and then I had a customer. She's like, yeah, this guy was really good, like like super, like cost effective, and he did a great job. And he, like he listened to me and I was like who was it? And he's like she was trying to figure out. And she's like see something? I was like oh, it's probably c3. And she because she was asking me for a quote, and I was like who did it last year? And then I was like I just asked clay again. He's like you can't go wrong with clay. It's like I'm yeah, I was like I'll be the same price point. It's like if you told me somebody else, I'd say let me give you a quote. But I was like no, we're pretty much apples to apples here, so I think you're in good hands.
Speaker 2:Yep Same old business model. Just about Yep.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty much like hey, I was like he might bump you 50 bucks this year because he did it a few years ago, but you're in good hands there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like he might. He might bump you 50 bucks this year because he did a few years ago, but you're, you're in good hands there. Yeah, I always love it when the customer's like you know. You tell them oh, we got a podcast together.
Speaker 1:Not what right, I was like I'm not going to give you a counter price so you can try to get the best deal between two of us. When I figure out is like the I was like, look, I don't, I'm not going to give you a price, like I'm not to be like, hey, you're in good hands with him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the worst thing we could do is start a bidding war with each other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm not at all interested in that game. I'll tell you if somebody's looking for cheaper go on Facebook.
Speaker 2:There's plenty of people that have no idea what they're doing and you'll call us back to fix it and hey, like and hey, I had a guy that wanted to watch a patio on a sidewalk the other day and I said, sir, I'm gonna be honest, we have a minimum charge of 300 bucks. I don't think that. Uh, you know, we usually take on a little lot bigger jobs. He said. And uh, he said so you wouldn't be interested. I said, man, I'd call a part-timer. You know somebody that may be in one of the, like you said, the facebook groups, facebook groups or whatnot. The guy said I appreciate you being honest with me. I may give you a call back. You call me back an hour later and I'm going to do a $300 20 minute job.
Speaker 1:That's awesome Because the guy saw value in that and that's why nine times out of 10 is not price Like. You do have your price shoppers who are like fixed income and they're like, well, I just need to get the best deal. But most normal people, once they understand, like what the market rate is, they say, oh, I like that guy. I had a situation similar to that. A woman called me never had her house pressure washed. It was a big driveway. I was like it's going to be a thousand bucks and she was shell shocked. And then two days later she called me back. She says okay, well, I'm ready.
Speaker 2:So stay, yep, and, and you got to do that. You can't just let them beat you up. You got to stand your ground.
Speaker 1:Um, another thing is uh, just like I said, just be consistent with your decisions yep, because, like you'll tell somebody and like, like clay was saying, I've had that exact situation on a 300r minimum and and to these people they're like it's not worth my time to find somebody who might damage my house to save 20 bucks or to save a hundred bucks.
Speaker 2:And anytime you answer your phone, please understand that you're you're basically having a job interview with that customer. You're basically going through a job interview every time you have a conversation with a customer because they're filling you out, they're trying to fill out, fill out what kind of person you are, what kind of business you're running. Whether you're coming out or your employees coming out, they want to know what kind of person they're dealing with, and that means more than the price, most of the time as well exactly and, um, also, it doesn't matter, it's like it's a people game.
Speaker 1:So I have guys who I've done simple 300 like minimum house washes for or their rental properties for, and then four or five years down the road they get a job, say at Presbyterian college as a facility director and you're turning that $300 customer that you treat the same way as the big customer, the same. You treat them the same way on that $300 like thousand square foot rental property that they're fixing to their university that they have the new job at five, five years down the road. And's the ten thousand dollar ticket. So you never know who you are talking to exactly.
Speaker 1:Hey, man, you've always been fair to me. Give me a price. Cool, that's a fair price. I got plenty of work I can keep you busy. Took nothing for me to to treat him any differently. I'm like, yeah, sure, here you have 300 bucks, fair, a great job, show up. Customer of a head for years. And then all of a sudden, you're walking into a big project because it's just that consistency of delivering, whether it's the minimum price or whether it's a big building.
Speaker 2:I mean another great example of what you just said. Heck, I just dealt with a big mentor for the Clemson football team. It's good friends with Dabobo all the nfl football players. You never know where that could go. It's always super cool.
Speaker 1:Next thing you know, you're cleaning up the uh football stadium oh gosh, that would be a big one.
Speaker 2:I'd have to do that in december right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, I mean that's cool.
Speaker 2:Think of the visibility of that yeah, for sure 100, but yeah, I think it's a solid podcast man. We we definitely nailed this one. Um, I think that everybody is something everybody needs to hear. Wish I'd had. I wish I would've had the wash for his podcast when I was first getting started.
Speaker 1:Uh, same here. It's one of those things You're. Everybody tries to sell mentoring services. Everybody sells coaching.
Speaker 2:But just going through this podcast you will learn so much and you don't have to spend a single penny.
Speaker 1:Just subscribe and share with all your friends, and then buy a t-shirt one day, yeah, yeah, maybe have a course for you, yep, yep, but cool. That's everything I got on my end.
Speaker 2:Uh, any, any last closing statements. Uh, closing points, I mean, as always, just make sure you follow all of our social media platforms the wash press podcast facebook page, we're all on instagram. We're on all the social media pages youtube, apple podcast, spotify. All, all, the, all, the all the big name guys. You can find us there. Um, following my personal page, clay smith. Following matt jackson, matthew jackson's facebook page uh, he has a brand up facebook page too. He has a book on amazon. I'll show you here in just a second. If you have any questions or need anything, any emergency, you want, to feel free to shoot us a message. If we see it, we'll try to get back with you as soon as we can.
Speaker 1:Yep, I'm working on trying to spruce up our PowerWashingCoachcom page where we can have like I've been playing with like courses and stuff like that, just because I know people always ask me. They're like, okay, well, I don't have time to listen to the podcast Like, can you help me? Do you, can you hop on a call or can you do a coaching thing? And um, so we're working on probably like breaking stuff down into like the exact steps that we do every day. So instead of having to listen to a website, go to video and everything's laid out for you too. There's also, like Clay was saying in the book, no pressure washing. This has been on Amazon for a couple of years. We got over 300 reviews. So if you got Kindle Unlimited, it's free. If you want the paperback, it's like $9. So again, I'm not making any money on this stuff. It's mainly just to keep the brand out there and promote the wash rows. So it's 22 steps of basic stuff that we talk about in this podcast.
Speaker 1:That helped us get to our first 100K a year and but yeah, I think it was. I think it's great. We got good momentum with the show, probably close to 4,000 downloads so far. We're getting to that fun point where, like, we can start tracking out our monthly listens and we get almost like 700 to maybe a thousand downloads a month, which is is getting really cool. So we're able to almost do the amount of downloads in a single month than like the first year or so we've had this podcast. So it's amazing the power of consistency and showing up just as we do in our businesses. We're doing it for the wash bros and you guys can literally see us grow this as we grow our businesses. So it's one of those things we're not just talking bullshit here Like you can see it through the wash rows, you can see it through our businesses and just listen and follow along and get plenty of value and grow your own businesses just as we do these.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir.
Speaker 1:But that's everything. We'll drop the outro and hope everybody has a great week.
Speaker 2:See you guys.
Speaker 1:See ya.
