.png)
The Wash Bros Podcast
Join The Wash Bros, Matt Jackson and Clay Smith, as they talk friendship, business, and how working together as owner/operators of competing businesses has helped them achieve even greater success.
The Wash Bros Podcast
Season 2: Episode 30: Building Your Pressure Washing Business with Zero Budget
Dreaming of starting a pressure washing business but don't have much capital? Good news - you don't need a fat wallet to build a thriving exterior cleaning company. In this candid conversation, Matt and Clay reveal exactly how they built their successful pressure washing businesses from scratch without significant marketing budgets.
The secret isn't complicated, but it does require consistency and creativity. We break down the power of relationship marketing - leveraging your existing network of friends, family, and former colleagues to secure your first customers. We share how making personal connections and treating everyone with respect created our initial customer base without spending a dime on advertising.
Discover why your Google Business listing should be your first priority, even though results won't be immediate. We explain how our hundreds of Google reviews have secured major contracts without competing bids and why establishing this foundation early pays massive dividends later. Learn which free platforms provide the best visibility and how to maximize your presence across multiple digital channels.
The marketplace is crowded with pressure washing businesses using identical marketing approaches. We reveal how to stand out with creative content that showcases your personality and builds trust before you ever arrive at a customer's home. From effective video marketing to avoiding the "post blindness" that plagues generic content, we provide practical strategies to differentiate yourself without spending money.
Whether you're just considering entering the exterior cleaning industry or you've started but are struggling to gain traction without a marketing budget, this episode delivers actionable insights from two owners who've built thriving businesses from zero. We're giving you the shortcuts and cheat codes we wish we'd had when starting out - the foundation-building steps that create sustainable growth rather than quick, expensive fixes.
Ready to build your pressure washing business the right way? Listen now and start implementing these proven strategies today.
https://www.facebook.com/WASHBROSPODCAST
https://www.facebook.com/mattdrivewayguy
https://www.facebook.com/c3pressure
powerwashingcoach.com
C3washpros.com
mattthedrivewayguy.com
What's up, guys? It's Matt Jackson and Clay Smith and we are the Wash Bros. Thanks for tuning in. This Sunday, august 31st. It's going to be the last day of August and Labor Day weekend for you guys, so hope everybody had a fantastic August, wrapped up that summer season and is ready to get into the fall. We figured today we would talk about what to do. If you're just starting out, I know in our previous episodes we can kind of tend to fill you guys in on where we're at at our level, but we want to resonate with people who are newer or maybe don't have a huge marketing budget. So we'll take this one back to kind of our origin story of like how Clay and I both started this without a lot of money and was able to create a business as well as pretty much a business. Sorry, my employee texted me about he got a toad the other day. Freshwashing is weird but pretty much how we started our business with no money and we're able to grow to the brands we have today.
Speaker 1:So you want to start this thing off, Clay.
Speaker 2:As always, appreciate everybody listening. Thanks for joining in. Whether you're listening on Sunday night or Monday morning, we know we have a lot of regular listeners. We appreciate each and every one of you. We see you guys downloading our episodes and we appreciate everybody that listens.
Speaker 2:Um, cause, uh, obviously, we take a little time out of our uh evenings or days or whenever we record these things and we're able to help you guys out. So the $0 marketing plan. So, basically, what did we do when we first started? How did we get going? Um, the first thing you need to know is it doesn't happen overnight. So the consistencies if you've listened to all of our episodes, the consistencies of learning, the consistencies of the processes that you put in place, the consistencies of everything that you do every day pays off in the long run. And I'm still doing the things that I've done from the beginning, or the things that I learned from the things that didn't work, that I had learned from to do better.
Speaker 2:But the coolest thing about starting a business is you don't really need any money. A lot of people think you need money, that you need to buy the flashy trucks, you need to buy the flashy equipment. You know, whatever it's, it's not sexy. Business is not sexy, especially in the beginning. It doesn't have to be. The biggest thing that I think helped me when I first started my business was relationship meeting people, shaking their hands, working for people that I had already known previously, family friends, shaking hands, having personal relationship and just treat everybody that you come in contact with with respect and make it personal. Put something out on Facebook, put a video out on Facebook. I know that me and Matt, when we first started, we both had a very positive experience with putting videos on Facebook, making it personable, making them feel like they already know you before you ever come out to their house. So that's one of the things I know that Matt likes to talk about this. I'll let him tell on this conversation a little bit about how effective the video marketing is and it's free.
Speaker 1:No doubt, and it is one of those things too, like Clay says, if you just starting out, surely you guys know people. If you work in a job, take advantage of that. Think of that as, like your power base. Who are the people that you grew up with? Who are the people that you know? Who are the people your parents know? When I was in corporate America, I worked at two large companies in the area and each company had like 1500 people, so there was a huge networking base there. I was able to post in like our Facebook groups that pretty much were like of the people there. I was able to tap into my network on LinkedIn. I was able to tap into things that people already knew who I was. So if you're just starting a business and you don't have a lot of money, it's not like, oh, you need to go jump straight into Google ads. People ask us questions all the time about like oh, how can I get my first customer?
Speaker 1:Well do you have a budget? If you don't have a budget, it's going to take a little bit longer. You got to be realistic with yourself too, and that's kind of what Clay's alluding to as far as the consistency of the process. You get people that want to jump into it and be like the best, the biggest guy around, but they don't have a budget. If you have a lot of money to spend and invest in your company, you can grow really, really fast. But on the contrary of it, you don't need a big budget. You can grow and just grow at your own pace and grow slower and then build money in your business and then you can pour money into paid ads. But you could start out with a cell phone. Go on, live on your Facebook group just talking about what you're doing.
Speaker 1:People love the story that organic marketing like that'll never go away. There may be limits of what kind of jobs you can get off of that, but like posting in social media, Facebook groups. Understand everybody else is doing these forms of organic marketing, but if that's all you have, that's going to be a cost-effective way to grow a business. But just know, when there's 100 people posting in these groups, you're not going to be able to charge what you probably want to charge or what you think you're worth, because that's just the nature of the game when you're competing in organic marketing in these groups.
Speaker 2:Yeah, another thing with the zero dollar marketing, not having any money, not having a big budget, the first thing you need to do is starting your business and if you're listening, you haven't done this yet. Make sure you get on Google, google listing, whatever. Whatever your name is, get it on there, get all, get, get verified with Google. That is the first thing, the most important thing that you will not see right away. You will not see any results from it right away. I'm just going to go ahead and tell you, but time in the game it makes a huge difference.
Speaker 2:I mean, we just scored a football stadium just because we were on top of Google. We had great reviews and they trusted us. I don't even think that they had gotten any other bids. So the value in being on Google with a great presence, with good Google reviews I think we're pushing 400 Google reviews now. I think Matt's pushing almost 600. So the trust that you are building with what people are seeing online and this is free this is your Google business listing. You meet somebody in Home Depot or Lowe's or wherever you meet them. If you're cleaning somebody else's house, hey, check us out on Google. We have plenty of reviews you can check out there. That's free marketing. That's free value that you've built into your brand, in your business. I mean that's providing value to whoever's looking at you and thinking about hiring you. You definitely got to stand out from the rest of the people. You got to find ways to be creative and you got to make sure you stand out from the rest.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent. And the thing about Google get on it as fast as you can, because the difference between my review count and Clay's review count is I have like another year ahead of him and you can kind of do the math. We're doing about the same volume of work. We're doing about the same amount of reviews gained each year. So the sooner you get started, the more reviews you have. And think like you don't have to compete with me and Clay per se, because I'm sure in your market if you get a couple hundred reviews, you're going to be a top pressure washing company based purely on reviews. But we're in a really saturated market where, hey, you need to have three or four or 500 reviews to really be at the top review wise. And that's how you separate yourself from, say, if everybody's pressure washing on the side.
Speaker 1:Most people aren't going to have a website. They're going to use Facebook groups. It's going to be organic stuff. They're not going to go above and beyond and make themselves look legitimate online. They may post and say, hey, I can do this service Anytime somebody asks if somebody needs pressure washing or they may talk about their service. The next level you get people build websites. They take it from. I'm like a handyman. I'm on my personal Facebook. I'm just organically marketing. Here's a picture of me. This is what I do to hey, here's a website. And then, once they get past that stage, they create a Google page and then they're building out their presence online too.
Speaker 1:Yelp is another thing. I hate Yelp because it's it seems, like a Ponzi scheme, because you can get blackmailed on it with bad reviews. But AI is loving to pull from Yelp. So if you have a great optimized Yelp page, that's going to help you rank on AI and that's that as well. Like look at better business bureau, that's another platform you can get on. It's a free platform. Don't pay for all this stuff because once you pay, they kind of trap you and if you stop paying, they're going to like just tank your score. So, like get on these free platforms BBB, yelp, homeadvisor I know Clay's done a few of them.
Speaker 1:Back in my day there was like Nextdoor app. All of these are free forms of marketing and you're not just wanting to fish in one of these individually, like Facebook or um. Like like you got to spread yourself wide. If you don't have money to spend, you have to invest in being in a lot of places at once and being active on these platforms Because, like what I can do on Facebook, is a great platform. There's a ton of people on it. I can spend 60 bucks a day on ads and I can touch like a million people every 90 days. If you don't have the money to do that, you're going to have to be creative and invest a lot of your time and post in a lot of these different groups and different platforms.
Speaker 2:Now I don't want to call anybody out here, but when you were talking about the Facebook groups, I just thought about this one individual in our area and he posts the same picture, the same description and the same thing on the same exact day every week in these Facebook groups. Don't be that guy. It's okay to post one of the pictures or whatever Be different. Don't post the same thing. What happens is the audience they get postponed. They see the same thing every single week. He has great consistency, but his marketing is not creative. So if you can make sure that your marketing is creative, you're asking questions in these Facebook groups. Hey, what are you looking for when you're hiring an exterior cleaning business? Something like that? Get the people engaged in to what they are looking at, what you're trying to show them, what you're trying to provide them. Just get very creative. Stick out from all the rest of the people and don't keep posting the same picture and the same thing every single day.
Speaker 1:Exactly right. Be creative because, like you said, social media, the people that excel on these free platforms are creative and you'll see people make a ton of money on organic marketing. But you have to be the 1% of the 1% and extremely good at it and then do well. It's like viral videos. You see these pages and they got tons of viral content. They're making tons of money, but the percentage of people that actually make money doing this is so rare. It's easier to do paid ads, it's better, there's way more ROI to do other forms of marketing. So you have to be really creative. You have to be funny.
Speaker 1:I did memes for a while, I'd say between 21 and 22,. I did a lot of memes and I became known for my sense of humor with memes because, hey, I enjoy that. My personality comes through. I was really separating myself from the super satisfying pressure washing videos, because back when I first started doing all this, there wasn't a lot of people on that and I started realizing, like to Clay's point, people become post-blind. You can be the biggest, baddest guy in the area doing all the stuff, but if you do it the same thing every single time, every single day, year over year, people are going to just blow you off. You got to be fresh, you got to be fun and creative. So do stuff that resonates.
Speaker 1:I've seen cool AI edits of videos.
Speaker 1:They were, I think, more relevant before everybody started pushing them, but again, like kind of find the trends, get ahead of things and be cool.
Speaker 1:And then another thing not just from the standpoint of, like, creativity and virality, of making cool content engage with your community, the people that are good resources and are helping and adding value to these community groups, outside of just spamming them with posting a Facebook page Because, like, if you were just like Clay says, if you were just copy pasting the same crap over and over again and responding to somebody and saying here's my company, here's my company, you are a spammer. The objective in these groups is not to be a spammer, so you have to figure out what everybody's doing and almost do the opposite, because if I'm a consumer and I ask who's having who can pressure wash my house, or like, who does pressure washing, there's going to be hundreds of people with the exact same message and the exact same marketing you have. It's your job to stand out and be different and understand your company enough where you know where your strengths are and where everybody else's weaknesses are, and then figure out how to fill those gaps.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't want to be one of the desperate guys. If you're like everybody else, doing the same things that everybody else is doing, you're going to have to be that desperate guy in order to get the job. That is not what you want to do. So these cheap logos or they're creating these cheap logos and it's just like the logos are the? Are the just the original house with the, with a pressure washing wand in front of it, and then you got their business name on the bottom of it. They are, and I'm sorry if anybody's listening to this. I'm not trying to pick on you. I'm just trying to help you. I'm trying to make sure you better with your marketing or whatnot.
Speaker 2:But if you look at mine or Matt's logos, if you look at our logo for the Pressure Washing Podcast, for the Wash Bros Podcast here, they're not original. They're not I don't know if that's the right word, matt, but they're unique, they stand out, they're different. So if you put us next to another Pressure Washing Podcast, obviously the logos would probably be something different, right? So you just want to stick out, you want to look different, you want to be unique, you want to be creative, you want to make the the eye appealing to the marketing so that they look further, deeper into you and keep digging. You don't want them to click on your page and then click right off because you look like just the next guy.
Speaker 1:No doubt.
Speaker 1:And to Clay's point, like we're not a pressure washing podcast, we're the wash bros and that's what we're selling via our marketing and our logos. And even though we're not like monetizing this at the moment, like we're still positioning ourself of high value and how we do that with our individual businesses, we're doing it with this business. Like we're in the add value stage and that's the stage you guys have to be at, because, if you think about it, what we're doing currently with the Wash Bros is organic marketing. We're not spending money on ads, getting this out here. We're adding value to you guys, the community, and we're sharing our stories. We're talking about, like, our strengths, what we know how to help you, your weakness wanting to learn, learn to grow a pressure washing business and that's the same thing you guys have to do with your businesses as you start out. So, again, like like we say all the time, it's cliche by now, but like like how you do anything is how you do everything, you pretty much like how we build one business, whether it's pressure washing or the wash rows or a marketing company. It's the same way. You just have to understand how you fit in the marketplace and your strengths and then hit your base. Like we both have pressure washing friends. We just started posting this on our Facebook page. We just started sharing this in Facebook groups and we've got like 8,000, almost 10,000. So downloads we're not spending a penny on all this stuff, we're just showing up consistently.
Speaker 1:Our shift this year, where we started to be weekly, is like a prime example of the importance of that consistency that we talk about. We were doing this show for like one or two years and then doing it when we had time and then, once we dialed in our consistency and the same time every day, added value, our cool branding, like it, really started to take off. And that's what you guys have to do in your pressure washing businesses. It's not fun, it's not sexy, but you show up every day. You're going to have bad days, you're going to have good days, you're going to have good years, you're going to have bad years, but then you zoom out five years and you got a legitimate company. And that's the objective here, and not just okay, if I hustle, then I get this Figure out what you want to do every day and like how you want to do it. Set your business up. So you're having fun and it's an enjoyable thing that you can do every single day, because that's the reality of the situation.
Speaker 1:You don't just say, oh cool, I made half a million dollars in my pressure washing business, like now I can retire. It's like, no, that's something you have to manage and do every single day. So, with how we do things, it's authentic, it's organic, we, it resonates with people and that's kind of the objectives you should have as far as, like, building out your pressure washing business. That's authentic, so it comes off organically. Well, it isn't harsh where you have to spend a lot of money on advertising and all that.
Speaker 1:Because I guess my final thing of this rant is like, if, if you can grow a business organically, you have a good, viable business, anybody can throw money into ads and it's not a good business.
Speaker 1:But if you're able to grow something and test and figure out your brand voice and figure out what works and what resonates with your market with no money, meaning organic, that is where your lessons of business are. So like don't think, oh, I have to have money to start a business. It's almost better if you can slowly grow a business and make pivots and changes early on without blowing a ton of money and just listening to your audience and being authentic with yourself and then reaching out to your Facebook group or your power base or your local community, cause you never know, you may, you may, figure out. Oh, there's a greater need for me doing something else. I have a pressure washing business. Maybe I want to do Christmas lights, maybe I want to do landscaping, maybe I want to do this, and then that's where you ultimately decide to land and you're able to listen to your audience or listen to your market, and then they pretty much tell you the next steps you need to do.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I mean, it's like trying to build a house without a foundation. So you got to build that foundation first before you start growing Right. So and that's one thing why I was saying that Google is so very important it's like one of the first things. Like if I were to go back, that would be one of the first things I did. If I were to start all over, I think it took me about six months to even be relevant on the internet. So if I were to go back and do it all over again, I would work harder on building that foundation. Obviously, you don't know until you learn right. I didn't have a me or Matt that's been through here to know the right things to do and the quicker ways to do the shortcuts. We're basically giving you guys shortcuts. We're giving you guys a cheat sheet. We're showing you everything that we've been through, everything we've done that has worked to get us where we're at today.
Speaker 1:No doubt.
Speaker 1:And yeah, a hundred percent too, Uh like. And then I know we we stress it. But to Clay's point, like you're laying that foundation down, google is super important. That's not going anywhere. Facebook, clay and I both were like really solid in these Facebook groups when we started out. We were pounding organic marketing. We probably made $50,000 just off of that when we first started.
Speaker 1:But, like, as we grew our businesses, we needed the strong foundation of a Google page. We needed a good Google ranking where there's a larger market to tap. There's less competition there if you're doing it correctly, and that's how we have been able to grow our businesses and really accelerate. I think there's a difference between saying how can I make my first 10 grand and how can I make my first 50 grand or a hundred grand. Social media, organic stuff, like that that is fantastic.
Speaker 1:But the sooner you can lay down that foundation of a good Google page, a good website, a good like legitimate marketing, legitimate digital marketing, the sooner you can really stack and grow revenue. And and that's the thing too, it's like you guys are just starting out get a Facebook page, get a Google page, verify on Google, do all that kind of stuff, because you never know, sometimes you could rank really high and then you can make a ton of money and Google just ranks your website high. So it's the early you get into all this stuff. It's it's cause, even with SEO like you, I could pay all the money in the world to get SEO, and if somebody started 10 years earlier than me, they're going to have better SEO. It's a consistency game, it's a time game. Show up early, as soon as you guys can show up, often on social media, on Google, and then you're really building that foundation to excel in your local market.
Speaker 2:Another thing I know you had said something about the home advisor and stuff like that. These platforms like home advisor or contact, whatever any of those top websites that are bugging you and blowing your phone up when you're first beginning in your business, they're really not uh, I don't want to say I don't want to say they're scams. They can help you. They charge you per lead just like anything else, but nine times out of 10, those leads are going everywhere else. Right, and I did sort of kind of use it for a foundation for my business. But the biggest thing about it now is I pay my little yearly subscription or monthly subscription. I don't even know what I pay them, but I'm still having my profile on these websites. So not only if I want to turn them back on and try to dig into some of those leads. I could use that for SEO.
Speaker 2:So those links are all on SEO. So when they go searching pressure washing company, you're going to be on home advisor. You're going to be on the thumbtack, you're going to be on the whatever other platforms there are. You want to make sure that your business and I know this is probably going over some people's heads, but the people that have been in the game for a minute, they understand it. The more platforms you're on with your company, the better off. It's going to beef up your SEO as well, organically 100% and not just SEO.
Speaker 1:like AI is the new thing and if you guys are on Google, you can look on like AI mode and a lot of times I'll search stuff via Google AI and they value community notes, they value Reddit posts, they value what you rank on Like these platforms. We talk about home advisor Yelp. Like I have had a couple of fake reviews ding me on AI because Yelp has like two negative reviews and there was some some guy that like was out of this country trying to blackmail me and it's sitting there right on top of AI, google AI oh well, there's these two bad results. So it's important that you get ahead and create positive profiles and it also just shows the weight that that Google and AI holds for these, these search platforms.
Speaker 1:Like Clay says it's a good backlink, so like it's an authoritative site that links to your website and you just got to put as many reels and lines out there as you can, because you never know where somebody's looking and then you never know who's going to catch and once you put everything out there, it's out there to stay. So like somebody could just be searching, see your profile on the site. You hadn't been to the site in three years. And then they say oh, I've seen that guy everywhere, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go with him yeah, that's the importance of uh.
Speaker 2:Obviously it took me a couple years to uh get in the game with the rap truck stuff, but even having a rap truck, I mean it just you give the customer so much more confidence when you pull up and you can feel it no doubt you're a legitimate business, you're not just. Oh, can I trust this guy and and that's huge 20 other trucks versus just one exactly right and and.
Speaker 1:And here's just like a kind of a random anecdote, with my uh, uh, let's see, I had a customer reach out, we, we, we did something years ago with them and he was like hey, uh, last time you guys did this, we've been meaning to get it done and forgot about it until I saw you guys in our neighborhood a few weeks ago. That's the value out of a wrap truck. It's like we always say if you're not top of mind whether it's Facebook, whether it's emails, whether it's text message campaigns um, just like, if you have a wrapped truck and you're in the neighborhood, they're gonna be like oh man, I need to call him. He, he was at my house three years ago. I totally forgot, but now I saw his truck, he was in the neighborhood.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna call and that's, or if they couldn't remember your name. Uh, you just kind of breezed by their house and then they go and search for pressure washing companies online there you go see the pictures on Google of your truck bill. Oh damn, that's the truck that I've seen in a neighborhood. We're going to call those guys.
Speaker 1:Exactly right, A hundred percent. And it's another thing too, from an SEO standpoint if somebody is in a random location and they're Googling your business name, that's going to help Google show that there's interest in your company in that area. So that's almost like a high level, a SEO trick. If everybody's searching that math, the driveway guy or the C3 wash pros and tailors, Google's going to rank you higher in tailors.
Speaker 2:So Right, right, yeah, but but yeah, the $0 marketing plan. I mean I think we covered a bunch of good stuff. Hopefully you guys gained some wisdom from the, from the stuff that we shared with you with the $0. If you have any questions, go comment, send us a message. We'd be happy to help you. Uh, just maybe if you, if you've been struggling with something or maybe need us to kind of just guide you in the right direction we're not going to give you a, take it two hours out of our day and set up your whole business for you, but we will answer a couple of questions.
Speaker 1:Exactly right. Plus, it gives us it gives us stuff to do for contacts and and um like topics for our podcast. So if we're going to spend 30 minutes a week talking to you guys, like we always say, just leave us a comment and say, hey, could you guys talk more about this, cause we'd love to dive deeper into topics.
Speaker 2:Otherwise, that is something we struggle with.
Speaker 1:Otherwise we're like what do we talk about today?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, If you guys have something you're struggling with that you want us to talk about for 30 or 45 minutes, send us a message or or even comment it below this video. I mean, we'd be happy to do it, Um and and just cover a whole, a whole episode on it.
Speaker 1:And two another cool thing if you guys would want to like, have us walk through your business and be like hey, this is what I see, this is what I think you should do, you can you can do the same thing and we can almost break down like a business and say, hey, if you want to start a business in this market, this is what you're looking at, this is what I see. This is what you should probably be doing. We could almost like break down somebody's business plan and that could be higher level things that we do that more engaging to people.
Speaker 2:Let's do it. Yeah, uh, if you haven't yet follow me. Follow my personal page on facebook, clay smith. Follow my tiktok. I'm doing some big things on there. I am the pressure wash guru, so it's the pressure wash guru on tiktok. Check out some of my content, some of the stuff I got going on on there. Follow my business page, c3 watch bros. Follow the Watch Bros podcast page and then we have the Watch Bros private group on Facebook. Follow Matthew Jackson his personal page on Facebook. And Matt, the job we got.
Speaker 1:Yep, and that's everything we guys have. Hopefully everybody enjoys this episode and starts out September super strong. I know a lot of guys like to listen on Mondays, so carry this momentum forward and let's kill the fall season and finish up for a great year let's do it, guys.
Speaker 2:See you guys.
