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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 29: The Fall Strategy Session: How to Finish Your Wash Season Strong
The pressure washing landscape shifts dramatically as summer ends, creating both challenges and unique opportunities for business owners. For companies solely focused on pressure washing rather than diversifying into holiday lights, fall presents a strategic advantage as competitors take their foot off the gas, leaving their core washing clients up for grabs.
August marks a transitional period where residential work becomes more unpredictable, while commercial projects provide stability. The Wash Bros have noticed this pattern consistently, with residential business fluctuating dramatically while commercial work remains strong. This market reality makes fall the perfect time to shift marketing strategies and position your business to capitalize on these gaps in service.
Smart pressure washing businesses aren't simply waiting for the phone to ring—they're actively farming their existing customer lists through targeted email campaigns offering time-sensitive promotions. These "End of Summer" specials create urgency without necessarily sacrificing profit margins. As one Wash Bro points out, psychology drives consumer behavior more than the actual reality of discounts. Creating bundle packages and limited-time offers motivates customers to book now rather than later, filling those crucial fall calendar slots.
The most successful pressure washing entrepreneurs use fall months to prepare for the inevitable winter slowdown while simultaneously positioning themselves for explosive spring growth. Rather than viewing September through November as the beginning of the end, forward-thinking owners recognize these months as prime time for securing HOA contracts, neighborhood bundle deals, and larger commercial projects like stadium cleaning that sustain revenue through the transitional season.
Ready to finish your year strong and lay the groundwork for next spring's success? Join our Wash Bros Facebook community where we share specific strategies, answer questions, and help you implement these proven approaches in your own pressure washing business. Follow our business journeys at Matt the Driveway Guy and C3 Wash Pros to see these principles in action!
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what's up, guys? It's matt jackson and clay smith and we are the wash rose. Thanks for tuning in. This sunday, august 24th, we are going to be talking about this uh, kind of the end of august wrap up, which to me is almost like the end of the summer season, and then what we do to prepare and position ourselves for a good fall.
Speaker 1:So, the fall season for us in South Carolina. We usually have a pretty strong September, october and November and December January that's usually our off season, when it's cold. So this will be episode 29. Crazy, we're banging this thing out so much, but with these weekly shows we already knocked out 29 episodes this season. But I'll let Clay kick this thing off. You want to kind of give us a recap of what's been going on with you and any wins you got going on, or like how you're wrapping up August and what you got in store for the fall.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man. So 29 weeks, that's nuts. I know that we played a throwback yesterday. I was a little busy doing something yesterday. Last Sunday, obviously, I was a little busy off working on some equipment and all that mess. So, appreciate all you guys that continuously follow and listen to us every Monday morning, every Sunday night, whenever you're listening if you're listening live, you're listening live if you're listening on Spotify, apple Podcasts, youtube we appreciate every one of you.
Speaker 2:We got a lot of good stuff in the works. I know I've been saying that all year, but maybe when it slows down a little bit, we'll be able to throw it all together and we'll have some good stuff for you, especially, like all the merchandise and stuff like that we have talked about previously. Throwing some cool stuff together. Can't wait to for all of you guys to see it actually. But, like matt said, we got the fall coming up. Um, it's usually a pretty big push to the end of the season, right? So, uh, there's a lot of guys that like to start pushing the holiday lights around this time. If you're like me and matt, we don't do holiday law all of the uh holiday lights with a pressure wash.
Speaker 1:Exactly right, yeah, so so pretty much with the like.
Speaker 1:Sorry, my, my computer lagged there, but as far as like holiday lights, we don't do it. We focus primarily on pressure washing. So this is what I've noticed is people are able to go in, we're able to pick up business from other people who are legitimate pressure washing businesses that hit it hard in the spring and summer, but when they're focused more on Christmas lights in this season we're able to take jobs. So I noticed personally that the market kind of opens up a little bit on the high level, with people kind of taking their foot off the gas with pressure washing. If they're doing the Christmas lights themselves and they got their teams running around, there's less focus on pressure washing. So this is kind of a opportunity for you guys, if you're strictly pressure washing focused, that you can hammer hard and take business, that you're not competing with as many companies as you were in the spring and the summer with as many companies as you were in the spring and the summer, absolutely, and August seems like it's a little bit better for us.
Speaker 2:I don't know so much residential, but the commercial side has really been up for us this year. I know it has been up for you, matt. Residential has been kind of. It's been good some months and then some months I'll put it to you this way it's been very inconsistent. So if I can find a way to make up the inconsistency, we will be good to go as far as hitting our marketing harder.
Speaker 2:I don't know if people are running out of money and what's going on, but in our market in general, just according to my data, the residential has been down. So what are we doing to find ways to try to make up for the down residential stuff? Right? Are we sending an email blast? Are we upping our ads? Are we going to door knock, which we don't?
Speaker 2:Me or Matt ourselves, we don't really do any of that. Nothing wrong with it If you don't have the budget to spend on any kind of ads, digital marketing, anything of that nature. Like Tuesday, I'm going to go make an appearance on a TV show. I've been on a bunch of times as a local TV show. That definitely helps get you in front of a lot of people I think you get in front of. Just according to their analytics, you get in front of like 40,000 people watching the show and that's everybody local in our area.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you, if you've ever thought of any TV stuff. That's something I do to separate myself and my market. I know that me and Matt, we do different things just because we know that we compete against each other. But if we advertise and market the same way, we know that we're only shooting ourselves in the foot. So we kind of talk it out amongst each other about that. But if you are struggling, just think of ways that you can be different from all the other people in the area, in your industry, and that's really what separates you from the rest. If you're doing everything that everybody else is doing, all you're doing is competing against the other guys in the area that are struggling and looking for work like you, and then you're just shooting for the bottom of the barrel. You got to be cheap to win those bids exactly right.
Speaker 1:And google is becoming more and more like angie's list and these other platforms where, if I was just I see this all the time like if you're on messaging ads with local service ads, you're at the top. You can click a button with google and it's saying, uh, get a cool, get a competitive pricing today. And it shoots out four of the top companies on local service ads with a generic message. And that's where a lot of you guys, if you get these messages that don't seem very personable to you, it's probably from Google. I've also read where Google is going to use AI to call companies and try to get pricing for people. So, instead of you talking directly with somebody, you're going to get a call from an AI robot or an AI agent via Google who's going to reach out and try to contact you. So to Clay's point, if you're putting all your eggs in one basket, like we say all the time, you want to diversify your marketing, you want to own your list, so you don't want to just say, oh, I do social media or I do door knocking, or I do this. There's a lot of uncontrollables there. You can go to a neighborhood and knock on 10 doors and get a couple of jobs here and there, but that's not something that you can replicate and when you replicate you're able to fill that schedule up. So, like it seems on social media or not just social media, but it seems to on Google, I'm seeing new companies in and out of my Google ads and that's just kind of indicative of like how many people are in this, how many people are just like, maybe, throwing a ton of money as a last resort into Google ads to try to get work if they're busy. Because ultimately, the objective here is, like we say in every episode, we're a sales and marketing company. First, we want to own our clients, we want to own our leads. Every time we get a lead we need to get a first name, last name, email address, phone number and we don't just do a service to these people one time, we do a service every every two years, every three years and we try to keep ahead of these things. One thing that Clay and I have both done is like email blast. They help out. We do like quarterly emails. We just shot one off for the end of August. We pretty much did like a push for the end of the summer season. We said hey, for 15% off anybody that opens this email. We can pressure wash your house before September 1 for 15% off. And it's not like we're giving money away per se, but we're giving people an incentive. We can price accordingly. We can fill spaces up. We can get people thinking about, oh, it's time to have your house washed, it's time for fall.
Speaker 1:We're like cultivating and farming our clients, and that is something. If you're new to business, you're probably not able to farm just because you don't have a lot of clients. But as you build your business, you want to keep contact with all these people and I've been running a lot of social media campaigns, which is great for brand awareness. I know if you're new and you see these guys on Facebook, it's like do I hire somebody to run Facebook ads? Facebook ads are great. You can set them up yourself.
Speaker 1:There's this new like meta AI platform where it'll pretty much send ads to people that it thinks is going to convert the most for you. So with those types of ads, I wouldn't worry too much about paying somebody to set them up. It's more about how good is your creative and what brand you're putting out there. But I mean, all those are little things that we do, that we're actively doing, just to push out August Because, like Clay says, residential has been a swing up and down. We've been blessed to get into some commercial work and our objective ultimately is to grow our business into a higher percentage of commercial. Therefore we can move the needle and really scale easier than chasing a thousand residential jobs a year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and to your point, matt, about the emails giving out discounts doesn't necessarily mean that you need to make less money. You want to make it look good, right? So back when I used to run a Pepsi route back in the day, I would always laugh at all these stores because they would run a quote, unquote sale. But it was still the same price, what looks good to the eye, what is going to get that customer's attention. That's all part of being creative with your marketing. So if you're giving 15% off, just up your prices 15%, you're still technically giving them 15% off. But just whatever you can do to draw the customer in. If you want to give the 15% off and you can eat the 15% off, go ahead.
Speaker 2:But you don't necessarily have to give the money off. You don't necessarily have to make any less money. Me personally, it depends on my flow of work. If I'm slow and I need to fill the schedule, cool, we're going to go ahead and see if they. Personally, it depends on my flow of work. If I'm slow and I need to fill the schedule, cool, we're going to go ahead and see if they buy it on the 15 off and roll with it it's.
Speaker 1:It's super important that we, we get our marketing in check and we stay in front of stuff, because this, there are swings, is there swings to the business and um, and then we, we can incentivize people with pricing and that not necessarily means, hey, we're taking money off of out of our pockets. What we can do is create a bundle service and a lot of times I'll be like, hey, fall 15, bundle and save. If you want your house and your pr in your driveway pressure wash, we can do it for 15 off. And yeah it, the. The customer is getting in. The customer is getting like, if they're motivated by pricing, they're saying, oh, I'm gonna get a deal now, so I'm book.
Speaker 1:We're creating urgency there. We're always wanting to create a reason that somebody's going to pull the trigger. We don't just say I can pressure wash your driveway. We always have to say here's a reason that's time sensitive. That's going to be, that's going to be something that you will lose if you don't take action now. And that's that's the objective of whenever we're running a campaign on Facebook or whether we're running these email blasts. Not only do you want to stay in front of customers, but you want to give them a reason to buy today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was like going back to what I was saying about the. I remember when Bilo was in business or whatever, I would always see those prices and I would just always giggle because I'm like, well, you know, uh, everybody in my family have always chased the, have always chased the sales right, Always chasing the sales, but it's not really a sale, it's still the same price.
Speaker 1:Amazon got in trouble because with prime day, they would adjust the prices. So therefore anything that was a prime discount was the same price, whether or not it was on Prime Day or not. They just adjusted the price to start. So if something was like 20% off for Prime Day, usually they just deducted it off of like their MSRP as opposed to their normal Amazon price was probably 20% off. Understand that, like sales and marketing is more psychology than it is actual reality. So we want to create that reality in the customer's mind of hey, here's a great deal, it's expiring Book. Now All these things are. We have to like reverse engineer our season to say, okay, in spring, leaves are going to be flowing in. We have to do things to encourage people to take action in other months out of the year and like that's how we've been able to get through August, and then that's what we're starting to do to position ourselves for a great fall and a great winter season absolutely firm believer.
Speaker 2:Catching, catching the uh doing some creative marketing to catch the customers attention. And uh, just like we were talking about the email blast, I mean I sent one out and uh booked four jobs. So, uh, email blaster cool. Always make sure you're farming your customers. I know we've talked about this a lot. Uh, firm believer in doing that. I learned that from my car sales days. Always got to be calling your customers and making those relationships, checking up on them, and that's what makes the difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly right, because there's so many people in this space and there's so many people that enter the space and so many people that are advertising that you got to do something to cut through the noise. And we've been really pushing consistency of action with posting on social media and posting on Google and working on maximizing all channels because it's a shrinking it's a shrinking market because so many people are getting into this that if, if you're just starting out, it's a really hard grind to get yourself business and if you're going into the fall season or going into the winter season and you're new, you should just, you should just know the expectations are like I have to push every single day because from now until next spring your business is gonna keep going down and down and down. So what are you doing today to get ahead of that downward curve of the winter season and then position yourself as best as you can for that spring season?
Speaker 1:Most of the money is made in three or four months, whether it be like April, march or March, april, may and June. Those are like really heavy months. So we pretty much build our business that we survive and we can make some money and in the months outside of that and the majority of your money, like your Superbowl, is going to be in those three or four months in the spring and early summer and, like we always say, we prepare for that season in the winter and we always are willing to prepare ahead of time. So, instead of sitting around being like, oh, I'm slow, what can you do to position your brand to really kill it in 2026? And that should be your goal as you guys get into the fall season.
Speaker 2:And the biggest thing, like I always say, is consistency. Always be consistent in anything that you do. Come up with a plan, say, okay, this is how I'm going to dominate the rest of the year, this is how I'm going to get ready for winter. Or this is how I'm going to get ready for spring. Because in a couple months I'll be getting ready for spring. I'll be coming up with my marketing plan, figuring out what my budget is, figuring out what kind of equipment I need to buy. What do I need to do to get ready for spring? Because spring comes around pretty quick again.
Speaker 1:Exactly right. We stress about the winter, we stress about like January and February, but it's always so quick Before you know it, we're firing everything back up again, we're fighting through some cold mornings and then we're like man, we blink and it goes from March to August. So this is a quick business. There's a lot of money to be made. I think we're going to wrap up August around that $300,000 mark. So we're hoping to put another $150,000 on the books from now until the end of the year. So our goal always want to do like $500,000, but we may be pacing more like $450,000 range. But hopefully we don't have a hurricane like we did last year and I don't have any health issues, so everything should be pretty good to go.
Speaker 1:Fall season's usually a little bit of a blip. So there's hope for you guys. If you're struggling in August and you're like man this is just like I don't know if I'm going to make it there is a blip you can ride out a couple of waves of like maybe two months of strong business and then you start going down into that December. So biggest thing is stay in front of your customers, stay consistent and figure out your marketing. We've been trying to push more commercial focused marketing this year as we're trying to grow more into commercial work, uh, the following year, so it's. You can kind of see the directions that we're trying to head based upon what we put out marketing wise what, what types of pictures and our posts and our team posts like the positioning of our business. Now we're trying to shift from that heavy residential like to to more professional, more, more, more, bigger, bigger tickets and bigger projects and hopefully in 2026, we'll be able to do a lot more work there.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent agree. I'm glad you said something about the hurricane, so that definitely put a troll on us last year, I think for what at least a month, and then with your health issues, I know that that uh definitely made a difference, um, and your numbers and stuff like that. So, uh, pretty cool, pretty excited about what's coming up, trying to see what we can do, especially with our marketing. I know we're always on top of it, especially with me.
Speaker 1:Now I'm not really on a truck anymore, unless, uh, it's something but yeah, I guess, in summation of this episode, as we get into the fall season, our objectives are to really push forward with where we want to be next year. Um, and then let customers know like hey, create some time sensitive uh sales and discounts. Unlike the spring, people are not going to be reaching out as as heavily as they they are, but it's HOA season for a lot of people. So if you can get in with neighborhoods, cleaning curbs, cleaning sidewalks, doing HOA bundle deals I've done a few of those last year Usually that kicks like October and November, as well as maybe football stadiums like Clay. It's got some opportunities to clean like bleachers and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:So the focus will probably be more on bigger things than your typical like residential reach out. Hey, I got a notice from my HOA. Usually a lot of the bigger tickets will land in the slower, like the fall season. But every month try to market differently. Try to say hey, back to school, special, like before the football season, and you're enjoying your patio outside. Be creative, be fun. That's what people want to see. If you're just advertising yourself as a pressure washing company and there's no connection to your audience and there's no call to action, it's just going to be wasted marketing bucks. So this, uh, that's just. That's my two cents and that's kind of the action we're taking going into the fall season.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's's pretty much a good touch on everything that we've talked about what everybody needs to know as far as going into September. So if anybody has any questions, feel free to reach out to us via the Wash Bros podcast page or join our Wash Bros it's called the Wash Bros the group on our private group on Facebook. Join us there, keep up with us, post some pictures, ask some questions. Uh, we'll be cool to engage with you there. And then, uh, be sure you follow all of our personal pages Matthew Jackson on Facebook, clay Smith on Facebook, our business pages, matt the driveway guy and C3 wash pros.
Speaker 1:No doubt, and if you guys want to replicate anything or get ideas, just follow our pages, give us some likes and then model that into your business. So that's everything. Thanks for tuning in for this episode. Hope everybody finished up a strong August and is ready for the last, last kind of push of the season September, October, November. That's going to be like that last hoorah, so wish everybody the best and we'll see you guys on the next one.
Speaker 2:See you guys.
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