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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 15: When to Hire: The Right Time to Add Employees to Your Pressure Washing Biz
Ready to take your pressure washing business to the next level? Matt Jackson and Clay Smith tackle one of the most critical turning points every successful owner faces: when to expand beyond a one-person operation.
Clay shares his evolution from a two-gallon machine to building a multi-truck operation, while Matt explains how his employees now generate enough revenue to cover their salaries in just one day of work. Through their candid conversation, they reveal the mindset shifts required to transform from technician to true business owner.
What makes this episode particularly valuable is their counter-intuitive approach to competition. Despite being rivals in the same market, Clay and Matt demonstrate how collaboration between competitors creates exponential growth for both parties. Their relationship exemplifies their philosophy that "losers compete, winners collaborate."
Beyond the financial benefits of scaling, the hosts explore the freedom that comes with building a team. Clay speaks candidly about reaching the point where he's "aced the pressure washing game" and is ready to shift into a more strategic role. Meanwhile, Matt reflects on how his business survived a six-month health crisis specifically because he had built systems that didn't rely entirely on his physical presence.
The discussion also covers practical considerations for growth: when weekend work generates more referrals, how employee networks become valuable lead sources, and why maintaining consistent service quality is non-negotiable when expanding. They emphasize that there's no universal "right time" to scale—your business's needs and your personal goals will signal when you're ready.
Whether you're grinding solo and feeling maxed out, or simply planning for your future growth strategy, this conversation provides the roadmap for scaling successfully while protecting what you've built. Subscribe to the Wash Bros Podcast for more insights from two operators who've built six-figure businesses in the pressure washing industry.
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what's up, guys? It's matt jackson and clay smith and we are the wash bros. Thanks for tuning in. This is going to be season 2, episode 15. It's it's crazy, uh. We've been uh going 15 strong so far since like we're just talking about with Clay here since February. So we're knocking these podcasts out and we hope everybody's got a great week. They've wrapped up a great week and they've got a great week ahead of them. So for this episode, we're going to be talking about something that's relevant to both Clay and I. It's when to bring on extra crew members, extra teammates, when to expand into another skid or another truck. So you want to kick this thing off, clay.
Speaker 2:As always, my pleasure, absolutely. First of all, first and foremost, I want to thank everybody for following us, listening to our podcast, listening to what we ramble on about, listening to the knowledge that we have that we've learned from to be able to pass on to guys getting started, whether they've been seasoned in the industry and they see us doing, you know, knocking out a bunch of work and doing good with our businesses. Um, we appreciate everybody listening, even if they're local or or whatnot. I really appreciate everybody listening, seeing what's going on. We've got some great feedback, always happy to help answer any questions people may have, and if we don't have the answers, we can find them for you with our, with our resources. So, as Matt said, when is a good time to bring on help? When is a good time to bring on more workers or employees, whatever you know? So I'll tell you a little bit of my story. I know that Matt already knows, but I want to tell everybody that's listening. I started this back in 2021, full time and I started with a four gallon a minute machine. Actually, I started with a two and a half gallon a minute machine, and this is where it's very important to surround yourself with individuals, because Matt's actually pushed me to grow as he, the, the grow as he's growing. You know the things that he's learned from and the things that he's done to grow. His business has actually helped mine. And the crazy part is where the, we're competitors. We're probably one of the top two guys in our area and we compete against each other. So, um, you know that saying that the, the, the, the best guys collaborate at the top, you know, we're not. We see ourselves as competition, but we're not like cutting each other's throats at the same time. So you can sit here and you can learn from each other, or you can, you know, have a big ego and just do whatever, do whatever you want to do, but I just don't see any growth in that. But so, going back to what I was saying, my two and a half gallon a minute machine turned to a four gallon a minute machine. I was doing three to four hours of the day with a four gallon a minute machine, busting my tail. So then you know, matt basically gives me an eight gallon a minute machine when he does an upgrade and then I was able to see okay, I can do even more work. So the coolest part about this is you can always grow. It's never ending. You can make it as big as you want it to be, and that's just the beauty of it.
Speaker 2:Last year I had a skid, I had a trailer and I ran the trailer. I brought in a smaller guy that did some pressure washing. He maybe did it once or twice a week and I said hey, why don't you come work with me? Why don't you come learn from me? Why don't you come see what you can do? And you could see that you can do this with the right equipment and you can do four to five jobs a day with the right equipment and you can make great money at it, even working under someone you know. So if you're in that boat, I would highly recommend that Going and working for somebody. Tell them the deal, tell them what's going on. Tell them up front.
Speaker 2:Do not click on their freaking ads. Don't start asking. You know I have that every day. I know you do too, matt. Don't start clicking on their ads. Don't ask, you know. Don't call and click on people's Google ads and say what are you? Uh, I have one the other day. What are you charging for? A medium sized driveway? Well, buddy, you know, a medium sized driveway could be $200 or it could be $2,000. You know, a medium could be different for anybody Like. Those are stupid questions, call and ask for help. But the coolest thing about it is Dylan. He worked for me last year for a few months, then the busier months, and then he went on his way and he's doing great. He moved in a different area and he learned a lot from me, learned a lot from my business and started his own thing and now this year we're ready to bring on a full time guy.
Speaker 2:We're actually this is happening right now, so it's live. So I'll be able to you know every episode, tell everybody a little bit about it. But we are buying a single cab. If anybody follows me, follows my page, we're buying another. I want all my trucks to be the same. I want them to be, you know, turnkey ready. You hop in one truck, you hop in another truck. Everything is the same way and keep it simple. So we've got a truck order from texas. It's coming this week sometime. Well, I've hollered at casey at c3 skids. He's already starting on me a skid. We're going to pick the skid up and then, hopefully within the next 10 days I'll have my new guy that I've hired. He's already hired, we're going to train him up and we're going to be running two trucks that's awesome.
Speaker 1:And again, like clay's point, uh, I love that quote and I almost want to like condense it out. I'd be like losers compete, winners collaborate. It's like how can you find somebody in your area and, almost like mentor, mentee them and then you both grow more than if it's you and him competing with each other? And also to Clay's point about if you're a new guy and you're trying to get into this business, maybe you could collaborate with somebody and learn under them and just be fully transparent with that. Because, like Clay says, we get people all the time. They hit us up oh, price shopping, us and the secret shopping, just to get an idea how the business is supposed to work, as opposed to just being honest and transparent and finding ways of adding value to them. And like there's jobs that Clay and I have jumped on and we both learn from the jobs. So it isn't like a one-sided relationship here inside a relationship here. Clay does stuff, he learns, he tells me about it, I learn, I, I motivate and push myself and vice versa. So like find that guy like Clay and I in your local market or whether it's your local competitor or there's somebody online that you find and connect with and you guys can grow together and share stories and like if you guys have been paying attention to the wash bro since the beginning of our season one.
Speaker 1:That was kind of the phase where um clay's in the phase now where I was in, kind of like in that beginning part you bring on your first couple guys full time. You got the skid, you got the truck. You're kind of like the baby that you've grown and built, you're handing off to somebody. So it's kind of an exciting time and it's almost a full circle moment now where clay's going from like maxing out, banging out the one truck deal, putting up huge numbers with the one truck, but then he's getting kind of tired of like the physical part of the body. You get storms that roll in. You can say I'm going to work seven days a week, sun up to sundown. But what are you going to do if you got two or three rainy days? You got lightning? That's going to slow you down and you're going to be limited to how much you can make a month.
Speaker 1:So like that next growth trajectory which Clay's making now and I made a couple of years back is is getting that other truck so you can double your productivity and you don't have to say, oh, if I'm, if I don't double my productivity the first year or the first week or the first six months doing it, it's a failure. No, like just adding one or two extra days of free productivity due to like Just adding one or two extra days of free productivity due to like we're talking about this today, if you're paying your guy like 10%, 20%, say that Like when one day my guy's making me his weekly payout, so he's making that $1,000, $1,200, $1,300 for one day of productivity, I have four free days of work off of him. And that's kind of like that owner mindset, the business mindset. And that's that's kind of the exciting thing.
Speaker 1:When you start to scale and build into trucks because you're buying yourself some time again and say you like clay and I, we both like racing, we like doing stuff on the weekends. You don't want to say, oh man, I'm I'm so slammed and stuck in my business I don't have availability to step away for one to two days. So it was kind of an exciting growth period for Clay because he can lean more into being like the business owner and less like being stuck on the equipment and whether he wants to hustle too and double up and make a lot of profit, which I've been doing actually this past spring, running one guy full time and then me on another truck. Or you can say, hey, I'm going to take a week at the beach and we're still going to make five to $8,000 without me doing any of the work. So it's exciting. You can open yourself up to growth and and then it just becomes how much business can you put on the books? So it's exciting times.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and it goes back to the, like you said, the freedom thing. Everybody has different goals. We talked about this time and time again. Me and you have talked about it. You know when is the perfect time, when is the right time. Hey, we need to do this and I don't. I don't think there's any right way of growing. You'll know when it's time, like I know when it's time the biggest. I was just actually talking to somebody about this a couple of weeks ago. What we had talked about was, you know, he had grew too fast and it initially just screwed him up. And I've had a lot of guys, a lot of advice being given to me, but I try to learn every day, right, but you got to be very careful on what you apply, what you're listening to. Only you know when it's the right time.
Speaker 1:Exactly right. And then you got to decide do you want a like a mental headache of, say, I'm managing the stress of running a business with multiple things going on, with cashflow issues, if you're taking on debt, with uncertainty, if you have other mouths to feed besides your own, or do you want to be the physical headache or that you want to be in that like physical zone of pain where you're like I work six, seven days a week, I'm physically drained, the summer's hot Like man. I'm just starting to like burn myself out. So you just pick your battle. And again, it's not one way or the other. It's okay to step back on the truck. That's kind of what I've been doing this past spring packing down a lot of profit in the business, paying down kind of a little bit of debt, like Clay was saying, as far as growing fast, I kind of ripped off a bandaid a couple years back and doubled the revenue of the business and by doing so you have a lot of cash flow problems. It's costly, and then you're trying to like kind of correct all that behavior. But the beauty of having multiple trucks and employees you can just cut it down and be a little leaner and then still run a full truck yourself, and then the extra guy you have is just icing on the cake. So it's not something to be super stressed about. You don't have to like oh, now that I've scaled, there's no coming back, I'm only going to make this much profitability. No, it's constantly a juggling act.
Speaker 1:Luckily, when I scaled, I had a health injury last year that took me out for six months. So like if I didn't scale, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have been able to survive six months of not working. And I don't know guys on social media they're like oh I, I worked so hard, I got all these ailments. I'm like until you can't legally drive. That's a different situation. Like like stuff happens in life that's out of your control. So you prepare yourself and protect yourself and your business by like naturally scaling. When it's like inside of you, you're like okay, you know what, I'm ready for that next jump, and it may feel like a step back in certain areas, but then once you get over that, you're like whoa, never again, never, never. Like your, your, your brain is going to like unlock a different level and you're gonna see the world differently. So if you guys are in similar situation as Clay or you're kind of in my situation.
Speaker 1:It's super scary when like you're like, oh man, this is an investment. But you have to think about it. It's not expense, it's an investment and like it's the natural way forward because you build up some momentum, so much momentum growing a business. I'm looking at our CRM we're already at like 300 jobs for the year, at like 150K. So like that would be impossible to do solo and it's exhausting to even think about trying to do solo. But when you have a business and you have guys running where you can, you can be more in the office and take a few weeks off. You can hire people. I've got some college kids coming back in and that helped me with the summer work and I had a truck running today. So I was sitting here doing yard work, doing office work. A thousand dollar day, chill day. The guy made 200 bucks, so there's an $800 day pretty much for me, just kind of sitting here taking care of my customers.
Speaker 2:And that's just on a Sunday. That's on a Sunday, yeah, and that's I mean, even if it was $500, it's a win.
Speaker 1:Exactly. It's like you want to keep the truck moving because you got a good guy in place. Your truck's out there, it's being seen, You're getting jobs completed. Word of mouth Somebody's like oh, I saw you on the road, Boom, You're just when. I saw your truck out there. And then you never know who sees your app, who calls you, who's, who's the next door neighbor or the guy's house that your guy's washing.
Speaker 2:It's just kind of a snowball effect and and another another cool thing about the weekends when you're, when you're out working on the weekends, everybody's home on the weekends, right Versus the weekdays you don't have many people at home, so you can get all the neighbors together and give them a neighborhood package deal.
Speaker 1:Exactly right, and I've noticed that I get more referrals from weekend work than I do during the week. Because, like Clay says, not everybody's sitting at home, like they are on the weekends, or they're not doing yard work like they are on the weekends, and they see you, the guy down the washing a house, and then, hey, I saw you're cleaning my neighbor's house. I want to be the next guy to do it versus like a monday or tuesday, and you blend in with everybody else absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everybody's at work on the weekdays, so it's a little different. I have noticed that trend. If I work a saturday or whatever, and you know, so, yeah, if my guys want to work a saturday or sunday, have at it, we'll go ahead and put you some work down. You need a little extra cash in your pocket, we'll go right ahead. I can get, I can use a little extra cash in my pocket too.
Speaker 2:So this, this, this episode's for anybody that's listening, even any new guys, this, this is some knowledge that you can put towards the future. You can think about this thing or you can go back and listen to it later on down the road. I think it's something that needs to be talked about, because you really don't know when the right time is. Only you're going to know when the right time is, what your situation is, what your personal bills are like, what kind of money. And my angle me and Matt went at it two different angles my angle and my angle me and matt went out at two different angles. My angle was I just wanted to work hard, kill myself not really kill myself, but just work really hard.
Speaker 2:Um, it's been exhausting. You know, we we did almost a three thousand dollar day. If you follow the the wash bros uh group, the group that we have for the wash bros group, make sure you go follow that on facebook. We got a little private group in there. We share some things from time to time. If you go back in there you can see the day that I did. What was that? Just the other day? It was like this earlier this past week, so I think it was like $2,700. One day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's nuts.
Speaker 2:One truck and it's just me, right. So I've pretty much aced the pressure washing game. I can do it with my eyes closed. You know what I mean. It's just one of those things I've aced. I've gotten tired with it. I want to move on to the next thing, like I've heard you talk about previously, matt Ready, to move on to the next thing and be more of a businessman than a pressure washer. It's the same thing I've already been doing.
Speaker 1:It's just going to be times two. And this is a problem. If you guys are super new to this, you don't really understand, you don't face. You will get to the point where, when the busy season hits like it's hit for us and most of you guys out there you will have too much work coming in and you can't manage that work. So then you start to lose customers, and it's a trend you see, all these guys do, and then usually the result they have to do is jack up their prices like crazy or they book out three to four weeks and then and then you're you're limited to what your business can do.
Speaker 1:And if you're okay with being on that treadmill of this is what I can, this, this is my capacity, this is what I'm going to do, that's awesome. But if you want to grow your business, if you want to say hey, every year, like I'm striving to be better, I'm striving to be different and and and move the ball forward in order to maintain that, like customer service, you're going to have to grow. And I saw a great quote. It was like until you're at a certain amount of revenue, you're the job of a business is literally like sales and marketing, and then it shifts into like customer maintenance and like maintaining, and then you become more like placed as a business owner, a manager, what I find really cool. I have had Ryan, my main guy, for three years. This is going on. Let's see 20. I brought him on 23, 24, 25, okay, so like, yeah, like three, ish, three, three seasons, three seasons yeah this is about his third season.
Speaker 1:I'm having repeats request to have him. They're like, hey, can ryan do it again? It's like they come to me as like matt the driveway guy, but they're requesting my lead tech. That's been with me for the last three years, so that's to me that's cool. It's like we were talking about in the beginning. You're like, oh man, that Google review. They're like C3 Wash Pro, like Clay's the greatest. The next level, I think is, is when they say, hey Kellen, hey your guy, your guy is the best guy. I want to say I want him to do my house again. That's when I think it becomes cool yeah, man, I'm at.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, we're excited. Dylan, uh, that worked for us last year. He got a ton of reviews as well, so it's always cool to see that uh, mixing it up a little bit, because you see clay, clay, clay, clay, clay all over the google reviews and then when you get it mixed up a little bit, they're like, okay, well, they got a couple good guys, not just one good guy. Because then you get to the point where they just request clay and I'm like, well, I don't want to. I'm getting to the point where I don't really want to go out there anymore.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and then like, obviously I still go out on bigger projects. If it's a big commercial project, if it's roof washing, if it's stuff that it's not the basic cookie cutter, like 80 of our jobs, and it's kind of like 80 20 principle, you can still be in your business 20 percent of the time and you say I'm not going to show up unless it's a 500, a thousand dollar job, those, those like volume type jobs, the 350, 400 something dollar jobs that are cookie cutter, have your guy do it, they'll get tips. I've found too a lot of times people tip employees just because they know hey, this is not the boss. Man like you did a great job, a great job Like here's a tip, and it's just cool to keep the ball rolling with things and then invest your time on the fun projects, and that's like Clay says.
Speaker 1:There's so many different ways you can do this. And once you start buying some time back, that doesn't mean you're sitting in an office doing nothing. That means that you're able to say run a truck, make extra money, and then, instead of turning away work, backfill the work that you don't necessarily want to do with your employee, and then he's really good at doing $5,000, $8,000 a week and then that's how you really grow your business, because a single truck can do about $30,000 comfortably with an employee and you think, hey, if Clay can bang out 40K himself and he's got an employee that can do 30K, you can stack $70,000 a month without with without like really killing yourself. It's just continuing what you've done this month and then you add on somebody else and then that's when he can start like really growing.
Speaker 2:There's nothing better than sitting on a cruise ship or sitting on the beach or sitting in the Bahamas and just you know. You know you're making money. You don't have anything to worry about, right? So you know, I got a little bit of a taste of it last year and I'm just ready to be able to take off when I want, do what I want when I want to do it and actually have a more of a life. Because, as a solo operator, you are. If you want to be successful and you want to do it right and you want to grow, you want to have a great business, you want to have over. You know I've done over 300 Google reviews and since 21,. If you want to do all those things, you want to have a good reputation. You truly care about your business. You truly care about your brand. You are going to be in your business 24 seven as a solo operator and that's what it takes.
Speaker 2:You don't quit your regular job for freedom. That's where a lot of people get their mindset messed up. Oh, I made my own schedule. I'm a boss. I can show up when I want to. If you don't make it easy on the customer, you don't put a schedule down date. You don't have a CRM that makes, because people love the CRM. I've said this in about every episode If you don't communicate with that customer, you don't show up. When you say you're going to that customer, you don't show up when you say you're going to. You don't make it easier for payment process and when it's completed and you know, you just show up and you're just a pressure washing guy. You don't provide any value. They're probably not going to call you back next time. They don't even remember who you was.
Speaker 2:That's very true, and and that's the thing you want to make that customer feel like they know you before you ever pull up to their job or feel like they know you before you ever pull up to their job.
Speaker 1:Exactly right. And another thing to stress this is just coming from understanding capacity of work. It's like Clay's grinded so far to get to the point where he is now. He's naturally going to grow year over year. So if he's maxing himself out on his one truck, like doing great numbers with a solo like what is he going to do next year?
Speaker 2:like we're doing two truck numbers with one, yeah, what are you gonna do next year?
Speaker 1:you're gonna have to tell people sorry, bro, like I'm, I'm beyond full, I can't continue this. Whether you're like, hey, I've moved on to something else, or mentally you're burned out, or you're just like there's not enough time in the day to fulfill all this demand that I've created because I put such a good business and a good and brand out there. And that's why I kind of see this owner operator thing, where somebody gets really hot and then they fizzle out and then they get back on that wheel and they go really hot again versus that slow and consistent growth Like you've got you built yourself to that point of critical mass where you don't have to worry about, oh, going out of business. Like everybody already knows you, you got a great reputation and now it just becomes like that slow and steady growth.
Speaker 1:And then absolutely and then you're maintaining and then you have a book of business of 800 to 1000 jobs a year that you can fit onto a schedule and you're like I know my business is going to make $400,000, $500,000 a year, however hard I want to push it. And then you're buying your time back so you can focus on adding other services, going after bigger types of projects, or you can just kind of, like Clay says, make it more of a lifestyle business.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's all about. Everybody has different goals. Everybody has different plans. I mean, it's no secret I've talked to a couple of people about it, I may have mentioned it in here, but my goal is to have this thing making seven figures. I want to be by the time I'm 40. I want to be able to just do what I want to do business running itself, be in something else, have my hands in something else and you know, 40 is maybe a little too far out there. You know that's just my goal. I may hit it by the time I'm 35. I'm only 30 now. Right, I'm still young.
Speaker 2:I've done a lot of things I've had. I've been able to be in a lot of positions that people my age haven't been able to be in, and a lot of people think I'm older because of that. I've been through a lot. I've learned a lot about business. You can be the best pressure washer out there. But if, if you don with the, with the, with the mindset of oh, I want more freedom than my nine to five job, that's just the craziest thing I've ever heard.
Speaker 2:People got it backwards. Basically, what you got to do is you got to work hard, to work harder. You got to keep grinding. You got to keep going after. You got to keep going and getting the customer. You got to keep providing that value. You got to keep creating that brand, creating that great reputation, and just don't try to stay consistent with it. Don't be trying to do 10 million things at once and we see that a lot in our area. A lot of guys have got their hands in all kinds of crap different services and then the next month they're doing something else and then the next month they're trying to offer something. Find what you're really good at and be the master of it.
Speaker 1:Exactly Be the best person you can be at one to two things like you. You look at places like amazon or you look at like elon musk and all those guys and they're really good at like one or two things. They're not doing this, they're not doing that, they're not spreading themselves all over, they're not looking for that next shiny object. Because the secret is like it gets to a level like kind of the level I'm at and probably where clay's at, where it's boring, he's like man, I'm getting really, really good at this and you're like, okay, I'm ready for that next uh level where I can, where I can grow into a different, different version of myself where I currently am, because I'm like an expert at the current level I'm at now and that's kind of that natural growth upward and you start to realize you can delegate tasks and then you're buying your time back so you can take more of an ownership and a leadership role within your business and you can, you can, you can focus on like higher level activities. You're not here Pressure washing nothing wrong with pressure washing, it's great. But like you don't want to be 40 something years old, still in the wand because, as you see, people on the facebook groups or just like I've had a hernia surgery from pressure washing that probably was caused from that.
Speaker 1:I had issues. Sometimes you're in the sun all day long. You could get like skin cancer issues, stuff happens, and if you're just completely relying upon your ability to spray water and bleach, you're really setting yourself up to be in a bad situation if something goes wrong. We all know guys. I know Pat Clark. He's been on our show before. Back in the day he broke his leg with doing drag racing motorcycles and he's like man. That would have wrecked my business if I didn't decide to scale. I had my health issue with having a seizure and having encephalitis and not being able to work for six months. That would have completely bankrupted me. And it's like, hey, you never know when you step on something wrong and you break an ankle and then what are you going to do? You want to make sure that you position yourself with a team around you, not only so you can grow, but so you can protect yourself if anything were to happen 100% and that kind of opened my eyes.
Speaker 2:when that happened with your situation last year, we kind of stepped in and said, hey, I don't mind helping, and that's another thing, finding a guy that you can trust, collaborate with. And I was willing to help Matt out. I was able to help him make sure he had some income coming in. If I needed to help him run his show, help him with his quotes, help him with his employees, help him with his scheduling, help him with all quotes, help him with his employees, help him with his scheduling, help him with all that. So if you've got a good guy that you can ride along and collaborate because me and Matt have the same business model Like the things that he does is the same things that I do so I was able to say, hey, man, if you need me to step in and help you out, I know that he could trust me. And you know it's not about trying to take any business or any of that, it's just trying to help a good friend out.
Speaker 1:No doubt, and when you start, to like build a business, you're building something bigger than yourself, so your ego naturally dies off. If you're stuck trying to do everything yourself and be the best person in the room, you're not going to have good people working for you and you're not going to have people that are going to step up when you need them to step up when you need them to step up. And whether you're like going on a vacation, you're going on a cruise, you don't have good cell service and you or you got a employee in the field having to troubleshoot pressure washing stuff, having to troubleshoot a cleaning question on cleaning. Or like uh, the guy I had working for me, uh, tom, he's a, he's a college kid. He worked for me last year. I didn't ride with him. He just showed up again after his last job was in august. He shows up today, rocks and rolls.
Speaker 1:He's like, yep, it's easy figured out a couple troubleshooting issues of, like a clogged tip on a surface cleaner, um, like an injector that just the belt, the ball inside the injector needed to be reset, never called me, never did anything, took advantage of it. So, like by empowering people on your team you, you're building your team up, you're, you're acting selflessly say something were to happen. I know like the story with Clay and I, where he helped me by giving him a surface cleaner, or sometimes I'll see him doing something and I'm like, hey, try doing this, because you see stuff that you may have a blind spot to, because when we're so stuck doing everything ourselves, we're burnt out. We got all the pressures of the world on us. It's hard to see straight and that's why it's. It's kind of that natural growth when you're you're being, whether you're bringing on a team or you got guys in your area that can kind of have your back and look out for you.
Speaker 1:I found when you're not doing everything yourself and you're not stressed out as much and it's not as physically demanding, you're kind of more cool with things and like, hey, yeah, I'll help you, or you want this job, like I'm not over here, like trying to be the biggest, like dickhead in town. I rather share the wealth and understand, like this isn't a hustle that I'm going to burn out and I'm going to be afraid for winters. Like we've been at this for five years. Like I have a team in place, we have a good idea of like and good confidence in our business. And, like, as you grow, you get into that phase, you it's easier to collaborate with people. And then people will reach out to you and they're like hey, I see that you got a crew now. That's awesome. And then, like you're like Kalei and I talk about, like your customers are your friends and your biggest cheerleaders. So when they start to see like you got a couple guys running trucks, they're like you're a big dog now and that's. That's cool too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man Always love the growth. I always love going back to customers and they can see it and it's awesome. It's almost like going back to old family members house.
Speaker 1:Another thing you don't think about too. Think about if you have an employee. They have friends and family that have houses that need to be cleaned. You can get into their network as well, and that's something that you don't realize until you have guys. I've done work for people of all of my employees and then everybody's like oh yeah, my son works for you, clean my house, or like their neighbor or this or that, and then, before you know it, not only are they making money for you doing the work, but you're getting into their network and you're getting almost a referral base out of that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, so I've always talked about the. You know there's always this saying that I had from the sales world is activity breeds activity. So you can make sure you keep those trucks on the road, make sure you keep them out on the on the weekends and if they want to work the weekends, I wouldn't suggest pushing the weekends unless they really want to work. But activity breeds activity. Another thing that I just wanted to cover as we close this is if you have an, pushing the weekends unless they really want to work. But activity breeds activity. Another thing that I just wanted to cover as we close this is if you have an employees.
Speaker 2:Don't get pissed at the employee if they make a mistake. At the end of the day it's on you. You got to make sure you hit the training. You got to make sure you you give them all the knowledge that they need, take them under your wing, say, hey, this is how I'll do it. They make a mistake. Help them learn from it, but they keep making the mistake. Try to figure out why they keep making a mistake. And then, obviously, if it's not a right fit, it's just not a right fit.
Speaker 1:Yep, the technical stuff will come with time. You want to find people who have an ownership mindset, care about your business and have that customer service heart where if the customer is going to be like, oh, can you spray this down over here, they're not going to say, no, like what would you do? Like you always want to do what you can to please a customer. You don't want somebody to be like, oh, sorry, I can't help you, and then that's, that's the face of your business to that customer. So like you could have great customer service yourself. But if you have employees that aren't of that same mindset of you, then you're going to have a lot of issues.
Speaker 1:And I've had, I've had a couple of guys where I had to let go, where they naturally left. And then I've had them follow up year after year and like this year we're booking jobs and they're like, hey, can I request a different crew? And I'm like absolutely, you can get whoever you want. And if you have customers that believe in your brand vision and and know that you do good work, they'll say, hey, look, I understand it's hard to have employees. So what may seem as if like, oh, this employee is gonna ruin my business customers see through that. It's all how you handle the situation and, like Clay says, you take ownership of the situation. Somebody calls up mad. Your employee did something messed. You gotta make it right because they'll call back the next time. You'll get a good review, you'll get word of mouth, and I've noticed that too. Like we've bombed jobs before, I've made it right and then they call me the next year. They're like hey, appreciate you fixing it. We'll call you next year.
Speaker 2:And then sometimes you'll even get a tip, exactly right, I've had that happen too, so it's yeah, that's about a 30 minute mark, Matt. Um, I think we've covered a good bit. It's a good episode.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good one. It's relevant to both of us. I've got guys coming back for the seasonal help and then Clay's got us skidding a new truck on the road. So exciting times ahead of us. You guys hope everybody has a great week. Comment and, like Clay says, get in that Wash Bros group and keep grinding. This is the time of year to make money, so just keep the pedal down and have faith and keep working.
Speaker 2:Time of year to make the money. For sure, Get after it.
Speaker 1:Yep, you got any closing statements?
Speaker 2:No, just make sure you follow our social media page Clay Smith, my personal page. Matt Jackson personal page. Matthew Jackson personal page. Matt the driveway guy llc. On facebook. C3 wash bros llc on facebook. The wash bros podcast facebook page. Follow us on all the platforms youtube, apple podcast, spotify all those guys I think matt wants to show you. Do you get your book? You want to show for amazon?
Speaker 1:oh yeah, let me see where it is. I got it right here so yeah easy.
Speaker 1:We need to come up with a new one. I'll come up with a new one. I actually had to write this one myself. Uh, but with AI nowadays, uh, it's pretty cool. You can, you can. It can help out writing a book. I'm thinking about doing this.
Speaker 1:This is a great kind of a 22 steps to your first six figures. Good basic business lessons. Say you're a technical minded person and you don't really understand business, marketing, sales, how to grow your business. That'll give you pretty much the blueprint to do your first hundred thousand. Pretty much fill yourself up as an owner operator on a truck. Go full time if you're a part time.
Speaker 1:But I was thinking about doing one kind of like a wash bros theme with like summation of all of our episodes, what we talk about in our growth. So if that one was my growth into expanding into a couple trucks, it's going to be like okay, how, how has it been with a couple of trucks doing like half a million dollars a year in revenue and going a little heavier into equipment stuff, because I know people like to know like equipment and technical stuff as well. But if you guys are interested, go to amazon. Amazon Got like 315 reviews on there. There's an Audible book out there for free too, if you like to listen to audiobooks, or you can get the Kindle Unlimited, too, for free. So check that out if you guys want more information.
Speaker 2:Good job, I'm good man. I appreciate everybody listening in. We'll see you in the next one.
Speaker 1:Sweet, we will drop the outro and we'll see you guys next week. See you guys, peace.
