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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 18: Surviving the Summer Slump
The dreaded summer slowdown is hitting pressure washing businesses nationwide, and even seasoned pros feel the impact. In this candid conversation, Matt and Clay tackle the reality of the "summer slump" that follows the spring rush – when graduations happen, families take vacations, and homeowners who scrambled for spring cleaning are suddenly nowhere to be found.
But here's the truth: this predictable seasonal pattern separates the real business owners from the fly-by-night operators. The Wash Bros share their hard-earned wisdom on maintaining momentum when leads slow down, revealing why panic-driven price cutting is the worst mistake you can make.
With refreshing honesty, they break down the myths around being "booked three months out" versus their reality of running multiple trucks that need constant feeding. You'll discover why a two-week scheduling window hits the sweet spot for customer service while maximizing revenue, and how proper systems prevent the scheduling nightmares that plague growing businesses.
Most valuably, Matt and Clay contrast the transactional hustle of newcomers with the brand-building approach that sustains established companies. They explain why door-knocking and yard signs might work initially but eventually signal a failure to evolve your marketing strategy. Through personal examples of commercial contracts worth thousands that came from small residential jobs years earlier, they demonstrate how relationship building trumps hard selling every time.
Whether you're struggling to fill your schedule or aiming to scale beyond a single truck, this episode provides the perspective shift needed to navigate seasonal fluctuations confidently. Remember: summer isn't when you take your foot off the gas – it's when you double down so winter's true slowdown doesn't leave you desperate for work.
Ready to overcome the summer slump and build a pressure washing business that thrives year-round? Subscribe now, and be sure to join our Facebook group where we answer questions and help pressure washers avoid costly mistakes.
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Hey, hey, hey, what's up? Guys? It's matt jackson and clay smith and we are the wash bros. We want to thank everybody for tuning in this sunday. Um, we're june 8th, so about the first week of June, and this is going to be season two, episode 18. So I can't believe we're already 18 episodes deep into the second season. We want to thank everybody who's been listening. Our downloads are really steady and good and it's awesome to connect with everybody.
Speaker 1:For this episode. We want to talk about something relevant to probably what everybody's feeling. If you're new to the business and you think, oh my gosh, like I'm slow, what's going on, am I going to make it? This is part of, like, the summer season. You got slumps, like a summer slump, essentially, so a graduation may have just occurred. People who had rushed to have their houses pressure washed in the spring no longer need that done. So this is kind of the ebbs and flows of the season. So I figured this is a good episode. June is here. Uh, the summer season is like june, july, august, um, different, different, part of different, different than the the crazy rush of, like, say, march, april, may. So for all you new guys, this will be a great episode we kind of talk about our what we do in the summer, how do we keep our pipeline full and all that stuff. So you want to kick this thing off, clay.
Speaker 2:As always. Yep, like Matt said, appreciate everybody listening. Thanks for all of your support. Anybody that has any questions, be sure to reach out. We're happy to help any way. We can Check out powerwashingcoachcom. Subscribe. We're going to have some cool newsletters and stuff like that coming shortly. Still working on merch. I know we've said that the last couple episodes shortly. Still working on merch. I know we've said that the last couple episodes, but we'll get that taken care of. That way you guys can rock our stuff and, uh, get the word out there. Also, make sure you tell all your pressure washing buddies about our podcast.
Speaker 2:Um, all we're doing here is just giving a bunch of knowledge that we have learned through the couple years that we've been doing this and the things that we've done to be successful. Um, and speaking of summer slumps, obviously we're recording this. Beginning of June, I did just come off of a pretty big week with two trucks. Matt had a decent week as well, so we're staying really busy. But we do know that the lead flow can slow down, especially everybody's starting to take the vacations graduations, as Matt said. Nobody's really thinking about the things that need to be done around the house right this minute, so that that gets slow the lead flow up a little bit. So what are we doing to make sure that we are consistently getting leads filling the trucks, filling our schedule?
Speaker 2:Um, the worst thing you can do, I would say would would be to panic. Um, early in the stages of business, I used to panic. I used to start cutting my prices. I used to start begging people not necessarily begging, because I come from a sales background. I've always been pretty stout with getting business. But don't start to undercut yourself just because the lead flow is slowing down.
Speaker 2:Stay consistent in what you do. Consistency is always key to any part of business If you can stay consistent on the things that are working and don't switch them up just because it's that time of the year. So, basically, what we do is I've said it in many other episodes is I just stay consistent. I do everything that I've been doing, even in the wintertime, when it's slow, the same things that I'm doing. I may hit it a little harder, may try to farm my customers a little harder, may look into sending out some I don't know, we don't do postcards, but that could be an option for you.
Speaker 2:You could send out an email newsletter. You could reach out to previous customers as far as like maybe an email automation, a text blast there are so many different ways. You can kind of just I would say, just light the match and just try to get it going. Um, and it was just. A good example would be like matt he uh, he had some work beginning last week but ended up with a full schedule. It's just staying consistent with the things that you do on the daily basis and not just getting overwhelmed and flabbergasted or whatever just because you wake up and you don't have any leads or any quotes to do the next day. Activity breeds activity. Get out there and figure out what you need to do to make sure you fill that schedule.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Clay's exactly right. Um, and even now, like I, we we haven't had the depth that we've had in the past. So with two trucks we literally eat up like $15,000 a week in work. So I know that's a lot to think about. But it's like you have to have so many leads and we did 121 jobs in May, so we do so much volume that we need to constantly get leads flowing and then book those jobs. Otherwise I'm not going to be able to run two trucks. Our guys are going to be sitting around doing nothing. So always have faith and don't worry.
Speaker 1:If you don't have a lot of depth, like when you're new and you got two trucks, you might think oh man, like I should have it, I need to be like a week advanced, I need to be like booked out, booked out, booked out, so like I know I'll have space months and months out. Uh, I mean the volume we do. We eat through work so fast that like to say you're like three months out. That's kind of silly to me, because when we're putting up like $60,000 a month, like it's very, very difficult to be months out with that. No way I'm going to be sitting on $200,000 worth of work. So like that's just, we churn work quickly so we have a good pulse on the market because of all the work that's coming through. And like years past, like last the years past I think, the May we did previously was like $75,000. And it seemed like that year we had a little bit more depth to our schedule. So I was like booking two weeks out with two trucks, as opposed to now where I'm booking like the next week, uh, or like maybe end of week, like what Clay was saying.
Speaker 1:For this past week I was. I was like I don't have available, I don't have. I could fit people in like in a couple of days, and we always, we always end up doing it. It. We're never really dropping too much as far as capacity of our number goes and my guys are working full-time. So I'm just kind of teetering on that line where I have guys working on the weekends too, so I can literally work seven days a week and it's one of those things. It's just a numbers game. Hey, do I do? I have the lead flow to allow us to work seven days a week with one or two trucks, potentially on a weekend, because my full-time guy's taking a vacation the end of the month and he's trying to get some weekend work. And then my other kid, a college guy he's he's trying to work Saturdays and Sundays. So I'm like that's great, but eating through 10 jobs on a weekend and then having to feed two trucks at four jobs a day on average, you're burning through a lot of work right there. You're burning through like 60 jobs a week.
Speaker 1:So it's important that we have that lead flow and it's also more important not to stress out, like Clay was saying, because it's easy to say, oh my gosh, I'm trying to squeeze jobs in for Wednesday of next week. How am I going to do it? The economy is terrible, but we always end up getting jobs filled last minute or we'll have a day where we'll book 6,000 bucks. That was what saved us last week, I think. Wednesday or Thursday I booked two consecutive days of six grand and it all takes care of itself. So if you guys are stressing out, don't worry, it'll happen. It just takes time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the biggest thing thing you do is freak out and start switching up things, because that's when you start to really mess yourself up. Um, I always tell myself when it's slower, I'm just going to enjoy the slow time, I'm going to take a break and take a rest because we are steadily going, we're on the go all the daggum time. Sometimes you even forget to hydrate. I know that I do sometimes um, but the biggest thing is taking care of yourself. The leaf flow is going to come back. Um, it always does. There's, it's just the, the data that we have from the previous years. It, uh, it's just one of those things. But I mean, going back to what you're saying, matt, with the two trucks, I mean, I figured that out last week. You can, you can soak it up really quick, what I call sponging up the work. You sponge it really quick, especially with two trucks, two guys going. I think we did 31 jobs last week.
Speaker 1:That's not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we sponged a lot of work last week. And going back to what you were saying about the guys that are saying they're three months out, well, if you're two or three months out, it's probably time to look into growing into another truck even with one exactly yeah, I mean, even even with me having one truck, I I was never three to four weeks out.
Speaker 2:I was always steadily two weeks out, scrunching on man. If I had to work six or seven days a week, I would um, and you're also when you, when you start booking that far out, you start running into the issues where people are wanting to reschedule or something came up, their dog got sick, they got called into work and they just so happened. I just absolutely have to be at home for the job, or they got sick or ended up having to have an emergency surgery. There's all these things. If you keep it outside that two weekweek window that things are going to come up and people are going to start rescheduling, then you're going to start running into other issues just because you're like, oh crap, this guy's having to reschedule. That messes my whole daggum day up. Now I'm having to call these other people and figure it out and it's just. It's just one of those things. Two weeks is the sweet spot. Two and a half weeks you're kind of pushing it, but if you're two to three months out, I would bet my money on it. That you're having issues with scheduling problems also. Yeah, and also another thing that uh, we me and matt both actually have been running into um.
Speaker 2:Going back to, like what I was saying about the scheduling problems people are not showing up for these jobs. If you're treating your customers poorly, you're not showing up these jobs jobs. If you're treating your customers poorly, you're not showing up to these jobs, you're going to leave a sour taste in their mouth and they're going to not call you back. You're not going to ever have a chance. It's very unprofessional. Make sure that you're showing up when you say you're going to show up. If you don't run a CRM, make sure you're calling or shooting that customer a text to remind them about the appointment. We have CRMs in place that remind the customers about their appointment, telling them when we're going to be there, and then it lets them know when our tech or whoever's showing up to the house is en route to the job. So make sure you get those systems in place. If you don't, it helps me out tremendously. If I was working on pen and paper with 31 jobs last week, I would be lost.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and the volume we do. I occasionally drop the ball because, like you said, when you're talking to so many people all the time, something changes. You're texting a customer at like nine o'clock at night and you're like, yeah sure, I'll put you on the schedule for then. And then you're like frick, they text you like that appointment time slot and then you forgot to put on the books. And so like we scramble, just because we're human beings, like Clay says, when you're doing 30 something jobs in a week, like every single week for the spring, summer and then fall year, stuff happens and, like you do, you need to do everything you can to manage people in a CRM, just so like we don't end up being like like I did a job last week, somebody completely dropped the ball. They had a graduation party that week, freaked out, not only did like I, like they reached out to me to have it done, but there's like four other pressure washers that were like reached out to as well because they're trying to fit it in. And every one of those people they're like oh this, this guy is horrible, don't ever use his company. He's terrible. He hung me out to dry. How dare he think he can be a business owner.
Speaker 1:That's what it goes on when you drop the ball. So you don't want to put yourself in that situation. You don't want to say, oh, I'm four weeks booked out, or I'm four months booked out Nine times out of 10, something's going to come up, like Clay was saying with budget. If somebody says, oh, that $800 pressure washing job in two months from now, they're going to be like I found something that I want to spend that $800 on first, and then you just disappear. Or what happens more times than not? Somebody just calls another guy, gets a quote for $100 less. Boom, you lost that job. Yeah, well, not even.
Speaker 2:I mean if they run across somebody that could do it two weeks or sooner at a time, yeah, or a month closer at a time. You're saying you're two months out A lot of people aren't loyal anymore, no matter how much you think they like you or how loyal they are to you. If they can get it done quicker and it's more convenient for them, they're going to always choose convenience over loyalty any day. And that's just something that I've learned. Unless it's a family member, and unless it's a family member, unless it's, you know, a great friend of yours even if it's a family member.
Speaker 1:If they need their house cleaned for a party, an event or they just want to have it cleaned, they're not going to wait for you. Like we are a service provider. If there's a need for the service and you said you're three months out or two months out or one month out, you just sound like an idiot to everybody. And if you want to play the game of like, look at me, I'm so booked up and I'm so backed out. It's funny in the facebook groups people talk smack about the guys who are like the facebook gods, who lie about everything, and they're like oh, I'm mr do-it-all myself and I hold on to everything. And like I don't move my truck for less than 1500 bucks. And like, oh, we're so booked out. It's like don't kid yourself. Stop lying to yourself yourself. We all know what's up. Just be honest, grow your business, don't brag about stupid things. It's like ego. You're holding on to ego. At the end of the day, nobody cares.
Speaker 1:The purpose of the Wash Bros is to encourage you to make those moves that you need in your business. Now, if you're part-time and you don't necessarily care to make this a business, you can do whatever you want to. But if you're serious about having this as a business and you're saying, oh, I'm three months out and I'm a solo operator and I'm doing one to two jobs a day, you may want to reassess what you're doing here, just so you're not setting yourself up for failure. Where you're complaining about the market being slow, you're complaining about this just because you're not going all in on this.
Speaker 1:And kind of the point of this episode about the summer slump is this is where you start to realize the people that are the chuck in the trucks that just simply bought a pressure washer or nowadays they may have a fancy one because they financed it on their personal credit and they are like making money in the spring. But as the summer months come, the summer slump is here, and then that's when you're going to really see who's the good who, who has been working in their business, growing their business, versus just who shows up and half-ass does this Like. This isn't coming from a frame of trying to like say anybody's better than anybody, but it's just from the experience that we have had. Successful guys have had, like this is what's required to make that next jump and that next step. Otherwise, you're going to be one of those people that you see selling their Facebook rigs on Marketplace.
Speaker 2:Well, not even that. This is the time that you need to be making the money and working hard and making sure that you're making the most of the busy season. I know that we were talking about summer slump, but it does just kind of steady, slow up a little bit, but you need to be making the most of everything that you can right now, because November, december, january they come really quick and it hits like a brick wall Exactly, really quick and it hits like a brick wall.
Speaker 2:So exactly, you got to make sure you're putting up plenty of money for the slow season, making sure you're able to have a great Christmas, make sure you can not stress about money while we're sitting on our tails doing nothing other than trying to get better for the busy season coming up ahead to the next year. Obviously, I always say that, you know, in the winter we're getting ready for the spring, and in the spring we're getting ready for the winter, like in the spring and summer. Right now they're in the busy season. We're making sure that we're preparing ourselves for the wintertime. When it's getting slow, we're putting our money back, we're making sure our stuff's in order, or either we are looking into other services that we could offer during the slow season. We're looking into, maybe, commercial work, making sure, seeing if we can do any of that. I mean, there's so many things that you can be doing right now um to making sure that you're successful I think too clay has a good point there.
Speaker 1:I mean, we're talking about a summer slump. I look at it from like high level data of like okay, when we're hitting capacity at all cylinders, it's. It's like march, april, may, uh, june, and then the summer slump is usually like July, august, kind of around the dips. Like first week of June High schoolers do whatever. First week their families are on vacations, graduation just occurred, you're still in the busy season, so we have to max out what we're doing here.
Speaker 1:It's just not as easy to get work in the heart of the summer, in the heat of the summer, when people are doing their vacations and other things and oftentimes people take vacations like owner operator, pressure washer companies or like people in general from like June and July. They take their foot off the gas because they're taking a vacation. And Clay's got a great point the vacation for us is the slow season. So this is where we need to be plowing ahead. We don't need to be like oh, look at our neighbor down the streets taking their vacation. They're taking their two vacations a year, like we have the whole winter and off season to do that. So we're keeping the pedal down to the metal and grinding it out and not pushing our schedule back and trying to do everything we can. We're working six days. I think I worked six days this past week and we had a big commercial project on Saturday. That was cool. We banged that out and I'm pretty much booking six or seven days a week in this season because that's where you make your money and we're moving the needle more by working like extra Saturdays in June than we do in all of like January and probably all of January and December. I'm making more money just like the weekend work in the summer than like an entire month in the off season, cause we we understand the seasons, we understand all that.
Speaker 1:Um, but I would say too like I'm like Clay's point that's a really good point he always brings up is is like what we're doing now is setting ourselves up for going into the slower season. So like the, the busy spring rush, that that was great. Uh, summer, summer is great too, but figure out what you're doing now to position yourself for that. Like july, august, that's more, more of like that slump we're going to get into where kids go back to school and then the fall season starts.
Speaker 1:I've been doing a lot more video stuff. I got more photos done for my marketing that we push in August. So like we're thinking ahead, like Clay's saying, like I got some video shot, we're going to start really hitting that hard again. So every couple of years we're redoing our video ads, our branding and our marketing, just so we stay fresh in everybody's eyes. And otherwise, like like clay said, like if, if I'm just getting complacent and not grinding and looking forward, I'm just going to get passed by somebody like clay who's staying fresh and grinding and growing. It's like you can't just you can't just get to a certain level and then just say, oh, this is going to be a continuum, like you got to keep pushing, otherwise you're going to get past yeah and don't let.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got it. So you're going to be making the connections now for the, for the winter time, to at least have some sort of work, like last week we did more money and more jobs than we did all of december and january, I think, put together. So that's a big perspective. Like I said, make sure you're getting all that you can get. And when Matt says he's booking out a week, he's booking, you know, 30 to 35 jobs a week, maybe more sometimes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:So that may be some of you guys that are listening. That may be more than your whole month, right? So that's, that's another thing that you need to think about. Like, the knowledge we're giving you is really good knowledge. It's just not some crap that we pulled out of a book. It's not something that we pulled from a guru. This is actually real stuff that we're telling you about. Me and Matt have the same business model. We're telling you exactly what we're going through, what we have learned and what we have done to grow two trucks apiece and trying to just keep them busy, keeping those schedules full, doing big numbers, doing crazy numbers that we never thought we could even do, or I didn't think I could do.
Speaker 2:It just blows my mind when you stay consistent at what you do, make the relationships do good quality work, be good to your customers, show up when you're going to show up. Put the right processes and I don't know what word I'm looking for right now but just put the right things in place to make sure you're providing great quality, quality work and good customer service so that they return.
Speaker 1:And don't let your ego get in the way. I remember when, like Clay and I first got together, we were I was still, I think I think I was still an owner operator and then I made the jump in 23 and then like you're putting up big numbers but I'm like just wait until you got like two trucks rocking. And then now you're doing like what you. What you do in a week now is probably like what you're killing it in a month before and then you're just like that's just a five-day week it's like, but like you didn't let your ego hold you back to that.
Speaker 1:Oh I'm, I'm the smartest guy. Look at me. I'm killing it at like at me. I'm killing it at this much money. I'm killing it at $15,000 a month right now. In the beginning, I don't need any help, and now you're banging that out in a week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a $15,000 a week now with two trucks is nothing. It's like, okay, give me some more, can I have some more? Let's do some more, let's work, and I'll find some more work where can we let's make sure we keep the schedule full and let's keep pounding it.
Speaker 2:And you know, before you know it, we'll be at 70 or 80 grand a month. So that's uh and and then. Then, once you hit those big numbers you always hear the big gurus talk about oh, I did this in a week or I did this in a month. Well, the biggest key is you got to make sure you stay consistent with it, because you can hit a big number once and it's awesome, wow, okay, cool. But the really the bragging comes into it when you keep that number consistent. So that's what we're working on now exactly because then you become a business and that's like kind of the difference.
Speaker 1:When you can be a one-man army and killing yourself and grinding and like you said you can, you can do it for a couple years. But like when you got a team built out, you got multiple trucks running. And what's cool to me is like I got these college kids that help out in the summer and they're back again and I mean I've had some kids. They work for me in 2023, they work for me in 2024, and now they're back working and they just pick it right, pick it up and rock and roll again. And like they're getting repeat jobs from when they did the houses in like June of 2023, because it's like that two year mark and it's kind of cool to see everything go together.
Speaker 1:And when you have two trucks, you can either have your guys run them or say it's a big project or roof or something complicated. You don't necessarily want an employee to do it, I'll pop out. Sometimes I pop out if it's a cool job and I like the customer or just take some pictures and use it for marketing. So like you're just opening yourself up and buying time for opportunity. You can ask Clay and I were doing it because, like in the spring I was running a truck a little bit Like you can make a ton of profit when your guys out there banging out $8,000. And you're out there doing the same thing, you're, you're paying your guy a percentage of whatever that is and then you're walking home with $12,000 in your pocket. That's huge.
Speaker 1:Or you can have your two employees run it and walk away with maybe $10,000 a week, like, however you do this, it's up to you and it's just when you're opening the door as a business and you're banging out work and like we're talking about here, like you got to keep your foot down because, like the ebbs and flows of the summer and all that stuff, like the ebbs and flows of the summer and all that stuff, like the amount of like we can have a bad week and make it up the following week and we're kind of making up from a slower start to the spring because june seems to be hitting a little bit better than made it.
Speaker 1:So we're trying to trying to always adapt and keep, keep the ball rolling forward, just because, like clay says, like you can hit a huge number one month. But if, if you're consistently not, it's not going to remove the needle, but if you're hitting consistent numbers you can move the needle over the entire year really quickly. I think I was looking at our numbers revenue-wise and we're probably around the 180 mark for the year. So end of this month we'll be in the $200,000 range and I don't know how this year is going to end up. But I mean, we always hope for growth and it seems like it's been more of a grind than it has been in the years past to hit the number. But who knows it could, it could be a later year.
Speaker 1:So all you can do like Clay says is just put your head down and keep going.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just keep plugging away. Always, uh, uh, always. Live by the that phrase. You know, activity breeds activity. Get out there and wave at the the people walking down the street and in the neighborhoods. Make conversation with them if you need to, because they'll remember you. They don't sell them, you know, but if you you're nice to them, say hey, how you doing, I hope you have a great day, type thing. They're gonna remember you, you know.
Speaker 2:Don't just oh, oh, I hate my job, I'm miserable type guy just walking around the truck, and you know they're going to say, damn, that guy looks miserable. I don't know if I want him to come to my house, but if you give them a smile and a wave, so they're going to at least get a quote from you, right? So, uh, just the small things that you don't think about, that I think about just because I'm a business guy. I'm always over analyzing things, always trying to figure out what can I be doing differently, the little things that I can be doing, like putting a card on the next door neighbor's door, just because I watched their neighbor's house, saying no, oh, we're here in the area, maybe greet them, say hey to them, whatever, not necessarily hard selling like door-to-door type sales, but say hey, we just watched your neighbor's house, just thought I'd drop a card off. So neighbors are always curious. Whether you think it or not, or thought about it, neighbors are always curious, especially when their neighbor's getting something done. It's always like a competition in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1:Exactly right, and if you're a new guy too, you have to have a realistic expectation on how fast your growth will be. You're seeing the growth of me and Clay over time, but it's still been like on my end hitting it really hard and really consistently for the past five years. And then clay is what like three years pretty strong, something like that uh, 21 yeah 2021, four years, three years, something like that.
Speaker 1:So like, and then and then clay and I have been working kind of like like we've been like wash burn it up together, so like clay had kind of a jump of like having me help him, as I've had like mastermind groups and stuff that helped me jump. So like if you're in the Wash Bros and you're connected to us and you just following us and listening to this like you will accelerate your growth much faster than if you're just trying to figure it all out yourself. But you also need to have faith in the process because it takes time. And if you're doing everything we're doing and if you're grinding and you have a cool brand behind yourself and pushing and, like Clay says, you're not trying to hard sell people, we want people to say, oh, that guy's awesome. I'll use him one day Because I'm at that point now where between commercial jobs are flowing into me because of not only my online reputation but word of mouth from customers I have.
Speaker 1:I had one customer the jobs I do at Presbyterian great guy washed his house for years. $300 job over deliver been awesome, cool, great conversations. Thought nothing of it besides like, hey, that's cool dude. Now he has a job as like a facility director at a big university and it's just like, yeah, it's like, just keep it in the budget and we're good. So that's just like an open pipeline. Just because I've been in the game long, proved myself, he's like hey, you're trustworthy. I know you do a great job for me. Here you go. So by making those relationships with people over time and like staying on them and being cool, you're opening yourself up for this.
Speaker 1:We just did a downtown Greenville project $3,000, we made it in like five hours and I had a guy doing video there to working on our marketing.
Speaker 1:So it's one of those opportunities that came because we cleaned his buddy's driveway and he said, oh, you need to call this guy Matt because he has like and ask him about his Corvette. So it was like I made a connection with this guy because he had a Corvette and I have a Corvette and like I wasn't hard selling him. Like Clay is saying, like I'm not over here trying to like oh, let me pressure wash your driveway. I'm not trying to trade money for time. Or I'm not trying to trade money with these people, I'm over here just trying to be a good person. And then they remember time comes for them to have a big project, hey, you're the first to call and you never know when relationships you're making now, a couple of years down the road, they're going to reach out to you and be like hey, do you want to bid on this huge building? Or, like clay, he's got relationships in the car space, he does a lot of work with dealerships and stuff like that, and it's like hey, that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Always helps with the summer slumps. You could always reach out and say hey, remember that conversation we had. But, like I said, I'm not one of the DIs that's going to hard sell. I don't throw the clip flyers, I don't put the yard signs out, I don't knock on your door uninvited or any of that mess. If, in my opinion, if you're having to do all those things, you're not doing a good enough job in your marketing and you're not creating a good enough brand for yourself. I understand, like when you're starting out, you got to kind of do some of that stuff, especially if you want to stay busy, if you just drop, you just went straight into this and you're just looking for word. But if you're years into this and you're having to put out door hangers, you're having to dock on doors, on invited, you're having to solicit you're having to do all these things that I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:You need to do a better job in coming up with a marketing plan to keep yourself busy. Boom, that right. There could be a clip in itself. People mess up like and and and too like, depending on what phase you're in business. If you are brand spanking new, like zero to two years, you need to put in a lot of hustle and you're going to have a lot of transactional business, whether that be door to door, like hammering Facebook groups, like clip flyering, like you said, you're getting a transactional sale.
Speaker 1:You see these guys on YouTube. They like go to somebody's house, ring their doorbell and they're going door to door and they're saying, hey, can I pressure wash your driveway for $99? Like, you're gonna have a limit worth how much value people perceive you by doing those activities. But if you don't have value because you're a brand new company and you need to cut your teeth and need to make your money, that's a great way to do it. On the contrary, if you have tons of money say you're later in life, you're wanting to pull money out of a 401k this is like like your fun project and like hopes of a business. Yeah, you can dump $50,000 into marketing and you can get yourself in front of a ton of people. So you see this a lot of times on the Facebook groups too. These older guys, they can jump into something and dump a ton of money into it and they can get a lot of work.
Speaker 1:But we wanna look at that. How is their brand like? How is how are people like coming to them? Like you can hustle your way into things but eventually, like people will figure out if you're a fraud or if you're not a fraud. So that's why I like the importance of hey, like five years, your business has become like a well known brand, a well-known name. People are coming up to you Like I could not run any ads and probably do $300,000 or something a year just on, like maxing out one truck, just on reputation. But like we choose to grow, we choose to keep the ball rolling and all this stuff.
Speaker 1:But like you need to assess yourself and like Clay's saying, if you're a couple of years into business and you're still relying on, like door to door or yard signs or stuff that's more in the newbie category, like you really need to figure out how you're working and positioning your brand and how people perceive you as a company, because they're probably viewing you no differently than everybody else. So if you're viewed in the eyes of a customer, it's kind of spammy. You're going to be no different than the guy, than than the hundred other guys. Like, there's so many people that go to door to door and knock on my customers doors or throw clip flyers and my customers call me back and they're like, yeah, this guy was trying to solicit pressure washing, but I already got a guy and that's exactly how we as the wash bros, and how you're trying to do. That's how you should want to do it, because you're building that reputation and that brand where better jobs come to you than just hustling somebody. It's like there's levels to the game 100% and it's just hard.
Speaker 2:You don't have a great marketing plan. It's very hard and you're just inconsistent. So the biggest thing is just try to be as consistent as you can be.
Speaker 1:Yep, and consistency is important too with, just like, the image of your brand. You don't want to be all over the place, because I've been in this business long enough where I see guys every six months or every year. They're doing something completely different, they're changing their brand and to me, as somebody who likes marketing and branding, I think it looks terrible and if I was a consumer, I'd be really confused and I'd say, oh, they're no longer in business because they are moving around so much Like keep it simple, figure out what works and keep showing up, like Clay says, every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and another thing I kind of want to end with, the biggest thing that I've run into this year is a lot of guys they're not doing a good job for their customers. Or when I say good job, they're not doing a good job for their customers. Or when I say good job, they're not providing the customer service, they're not showing up or they didn't do that one little extra thing, or they messed something up, and I mean there's so many different things that can go wrong and what we're doing dealing with is we're having to deal with the repercussions of it and it's turning that customer into something where they have that scarcity mindset, where they're scared to use even a reputable company like me and Matt. Me and Matt have done our job.
Speaker 2:We have hundreds of reviews online, we have a great online reputation, we have a lot of references and we're still getting questions because of that one newbie or that one guy out there that did something unintentionally, probably, probably, but we're having to deal with the repercussions of it because they didn't ask the questions to someone that knew what they were doing. Maybe, maybe it was an ego thing I don't know. But if you don't know what you're doing or you need help with a customer, you need help with your process or just reach out to us. I just I've noticed a lot of these things. That's like the guy not showing up at one of Matt's customers house the other day and Matt ended up being there and it just makes the customer scared.
Speaker 1:Like they're just timid, they're, they're scared of you and and they just they throw a wall up and it's just hard to deal with a customer yeah, it is funny because Clay and I will do big projects and like we show up and we're like the customer's freaking out over some such such a tiny little thing and I'm like man, we were just washing a $50 million building in downtown Greenville or Clay's doing dealerships and there's hundreds of thousands of dollars of cars surrounding it. It's like we will not destroy your plants, don't worry. It's like we have a lot of experience. We've done many projects where, like, if we didn't know what we were doing, we wouldn't still be in business. And don't think you're the smartest guy in the room. Ask questions, like Clay saying we're the.
Speaker 1:We have the Wash Bros group on our Facebook it's. I have notifications on my phone, so like as soon as somebody posts in there, I see it. So if you're on a job and you're stuck and you want to be like, what do you? What should I do here? What should I do in this? Make sure, make sure to drop a comment, engage in that group or, if you haven't joined it already, go and go to the wash bros on Facebook and join that group. It's a lot of information in there and we we kind of share our day to day updates, so it's a good group. If, if you guys want, if you're like hey, I like to listen to the show, how do I get in touch with you? Go to the wash bros.
Speaker 2:Make a post in there and, uh, we'll definitely be on it pretty quickly. We're not going to roast you, we're not going to clown you, we're not going to troll you, like all the other groups that you're probably in.
Speaker 1:Just, you really need help. Just reach out. Yep, yeah, we have nothing to gain there for for being a troll, but we're. We're at that 35 minute mark and clay's trying to watch a race, so yeah, anything else.
Speaker 2:Car fan if you're a nice car fan, make sure you comment below tell me who your driver is.
Speaker 1:I'm big into nascar, so heck yeah, but that's everything on my end. You got anything clay?
Speaker 2:no, just make sure you follow all of our pages. Uh, clay smith is my personal page on facebook. I see a lot of you guys have already been following me here lately. Um, c3 watch pros llc. Is my business page. Uh, the watch bros podcast page on Facebook. All the other platforms Spotify, Apple podcast, YouTube, the whole nine. Matthew Jackson on his personal page brand up he's got the brand up page. It helps you with branding and stuff like that. Follow him at the driveway guy LLC. And. Uh, join our Facebook group.
Speaker 1:Yep, the brand up stuff is kind of cool. I have my VA. He helps me post stuff, so just follow it. It's a lot of pictures and reels and we try to do helpful stuff and there's a book as well. So if you guys just we're talking about this episode like work on your brand, work on your marketing, figure stuff out, like just give that page a follow, brand up your business. It's got tips and tricks and I'm not trying to sell you anything on any of these platforms, because our main focus is the Matt the driveway guy, of course. So we try to build value, build ourselves up in the community with other things. And then you got to help out the wash bros, so that, or you can go and get the no pressure pressure washing book we have on Amazon. It's free If you, if you guys have Kindle unlimited you want. The audio book is up there too. So that's everything for this episode. We hope everybody has a great week and make sure to join the wash bros page and we'll see you on the next one. You.
