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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 31: Separation Season: Standing Out When Others Slow Down
When autumn leaves start falling, most pressure washing businesses scramble to diversify—Christmas lights, gutter cleaning, anything to avoid the dreaded "slow season." But what if that's exactly the wrong approach?
The Wash Bros, Matt Jackson and Clay Smith, reveal their counter-intuitive strategy for dominating what they call "Separation Season." Instead of diluting their focus, they double down on their core business when competitors retreat. This approach has transformed what used to be their slowest months into consistent $50,000+ revenue periods.
"The consistency of marketing—if you're really good at your marketing, this time of year is when you tell if what you've done all year, if you've been consistent with it, pays off," Clay explains. It's a refreshing perspective that challenges the conventional wisdom about seasonal businesses.
The brothers break down exactly how they've evolved from fighting over $300 residential jobs to landing $30,000 commercial contracts. Their systematic approach to data management, customer retention, and strategic positioning forms the foundation of their fall success. Learn why implementing a CRM from day one might be the most valuable business decision you'll ever make, potentially saving thousands in lead generation costs.
Perhaps most importantly, Matt and Clay share their insights on the critical transition from being on the truck to working on your business—the inflection point that allowed them both to scale beyond the owner-operator ceiling that traps so many service businesses.
Whether you're just starting out or looking to break through to the next level, this episode provides a roadmap for turning the traditional "off-season" into your competitive advantage. Listen now to discover how consistency and strategic focus can separate you from the competition when it matters most.
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What's up, guys? It's Matt Jackson and Clay Smith and we are the Wash Bros. Thanks for tuning in. This Sunday, september 14th, we are going to be talking about separation season kind of what are we doing? Going into the slower season, how we differentiate ourselves from everybody who may be fixated on diversifying a little bit, getting into Christmas lights, getting into other services. This is where we really dive down, double down and separate ourselves from the other pressure washing companies or other companies out there that may be taking their foot off the gas. It's fall, you got football season going on and it's not the same aggressive push as spring and summer. Um, so this will be episode 31 and we'll also probably loop in like commercial stuff as well as hoa work. So so what? What? We do pretty much this time of year to stay busy, to stay full and really separate ourselves from the competition.
Speaker 2:So you're ready to kick this thing off clay as always, yeah, appreciate everybody listening and following us, downloading our podcast. Thanks for listening. For sure we appreciate each and every one of you. It's been cool to answer all your questions, it's been cool to get your phone calls, appreciate you calling and when you're able to catch me. Anyway, we've been seeing all your messages and all that stuff in the Facebook and our actually in our actual page and then our group, and we appreciate everybody locally and everybody across the world that listens to us. So, yeah, so, going to what Matt said, what we're going to talk about today is making sure you set yourself apart from everybody else, right? So we've talked about that a lot.
Speaker 2:But how fitting is it? Going into the fall, going into the off season? A lot of people are doing the lights, a lot of people are getting distracted by offering other services. Is it really slower in this time of year? Who knows? It depends on how you market right.
Speaker 2:So the consistency of marketing if you're really good at your marketing, this time of year is when you really tell if what you've done all year with your marketing, if you've been consistent with it, pays off. So, like with me and Matt, we hammer it hard all year long. We hammer it consistently all year long. We hammer, still hammer it when it's slow. You know you don't ever want to give up on that. You got to keep going. It's like going to the gym you got to keep consistently going and doing the same thing every day if you want to be fit. It's the same thing with business If you want to be successful, you got to keep doing the same things every day.
Speaker 2:You got to keep climbing the ladder. You got to keep doing the things. If you fail from things, you got to learn from it. You got to grow from it and you got to just keep going.
Speaker 2:You can't just give up and start changing stuff just because you need to change it, just because you think it needs to be changed, and then if you're one of those that think that, hey, I'm slow right now, if I buy more equipment, then maybe I can get more work, that's the wrong way to go about it. Think about working in your business before working on your equipment. Another thing, like Matt had said about the commercial stuff if you're not continuously marketing, if you're not consistently marketing, if you're not consistently trying to make these relationships with these customers, with these clients, if you're not putting yourself on the internet, if you're not putting yourself on Google, if you're not putting yourself on like in my case, putting yourself on TV getting in front of all these people that you want to work for, if you're not consistently doing that, then you're going to be hurting a little bit when it does get slower. So just make sure you listen to the podcast, go back and listen to the first episode all the way through now, and you'll see how we've grown our businesses.
Speaker 1:No doubt, and to Clay's point too, I feel like the first rung of this is filling up your presidential pressure washing schedule. We're both at that point where we've set our brands and our businesses out there with marketing, whether, like Clay said on TV, on Google, like, if you Google us, we're like in the top three all the time. So that's the objective here. You want to be an authority in your space, whether you're attracting a homeowner who's got a big house, or whether you're attracting a property management company or you're attracting a general contractor. Like they're going to go after people that are positioned correctly on the internet. So if you aren't doing anything, make sure that you guys are set up online. You're automating stuff, you're getting good Google reviews, you're getting everything in line. So if somebody Googles pressure washing near them, you're one of the top contenders. You don't have to be the first one. A lot of times we think, hey, if we're not the first one, then what's the point? Like they're probably going to call multiple people. So if you're in the top three, whether it's LSA I know Clay does a great job at sitting at the top of LSA like every time I search or Google ads that's another area or like map pack, can. You can be strategic and rank in different things, and it's easier and better to rank in one one of these things really well and you get a better roi than trying to be average in all of them. So, to our point, it's all about consistency. So, whether you're posting to your google my business page, whether you're updating stuff, whether you're responding to reviews, there's a lot of ways that you can show yourself as active online with Google and that's the ultimate objective with ranking high on Google. So, as Clay says, it's important that we post regularly. We stay consistent with stuff. And now, recently, with AI. It's cool because Gemini is like the Google platform where you can search AI. It's not just using Google, it's going to be scraping social media. It's going to be scraping Yelp, better Business Bureau, all these platforms that you want to stay busy on. So the consistency and busyness of building your brand. More than just I have a website or, oh, I have a Google page. Like we got to figure out how to spread ourselves across the internet. That way, we're marketing ourselves and positioning ourselves as, like that number one company in our area.
Speaker 1:And back to Clay's point about like what we stress all the time is consistency posting often doing everything. Often that has allowed us both to get into bigger tickets and bigger opportunities. We used to like fight over these $300 residential leads and like push a lot of volume with that. We're now getting bigger tickets, we're getting commercial work, we're getting opportunities to bid on huge projects. I know Clay was just bidding on a massive TPO roof and big commercial property. I've got a couple of things like that in the pipeline as well and it doesn't take much to get one of those and move the needle and then make your whole fall. So as we build up our brands and our businesses and our online presence and word of mouth and stuff like that, we're able to get into these bigger tickets and bigger opportunities where we can move the needle and really scale our business. And that's ultimately just following what we talk about day in and day out, week after week on the Wash Bros.
Speaker 1:You're able to do the same thing we're doing because we're able to do the same thing individually in our businesses and grow together individually in our businesses and grow together, despite however the residential season may be, despite however the market may be, we're able to make growth happen.
Speaker 1:And it's crazy because I've noticed that the fall to me has been really solid because I've been getting some commercial opportunities that I didn't really have before. In the past I'd have to rely upon the seasonal swings. It's like, okay, april, may, june, those are like the big months and if you don't maximize those months you're going to lose out. Now we're able to hit these commercial projects, we're able to get into HOA work, we're able to get um work with universities, et cetera. So we're building up that book of business and we're not as up and down swings as we used to be. So it's cool. Going into the fall season we're able to knock out like 50 000 plus months in what is known as the slower season, with just a year. So previously that was only heard of for us in the spring. So just showing up every day, seeing the fruits of your labors and consistency of action just takes a few years and then you can build up that business where you have enough reoccurring work that fills your pipeline and you can scale your business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the biggest thing, if you want to be in, just say, mine and Matt's shoes or whatever, where we have successful businesses that are continuously growing, the biggest thing that I would stress is, especially if you're in the first year or if you're in the first month, if you're just getting started and you're just starting to listen to us, the first thing I would do is make sure that I'm able to have a system to track data, able to have a system to track data, so a data, and what we call it is a CRM. I know a lot of people that have been in this business know what a CRM is, but some people don't, so I'm going to explain it. A CRM allows you to collect everyone's data as far as phone numbers, cell phone numbers, emails, their location, their service address, any kind of information that you can get from that customer. When you're giving them a quote, you want to enter that in your CRM. Whether they use you now or not. You want to make sure you get everything, say okay, when you're collecting a quote, you want to go ahead and grab all this information that is free information that say, when it comes time and there's a random customer looking on the Internet, they're looking for me or Matt to do the pressure washing. It's going to cost me or Matt on average, anywhere from $30 to $60 to $80, depending on the lead per Google. So all that is free information, whether you use it now or it happens three years down the road.
Speaker 2:There have been many times where I have serviced a customer and Matt had given them a quote previously and he does a great job at farming his customers. So he took that customer from me the next year and it was a free. It was just all he did was send a follow-up email. He farmed his customers. So you can save money in the long run by gathering all this information. They may not use you this year, they may not be happy with the guy that they found cheaper. They may want to pay a little more for you next time. So gathering all that data, that is step number one. Step number two when you have all the data and you've worked for these people, you've done all these jobs. It keeps up with your job count, it keeps up with your revenue. It keeps up with everything month to month, day to day, week to week. However you want, it keeps up with everything month to month, day to day, week to week, however you want it, and then you know what to expect the next year.
Speaker 1:And that's how you grow a company, exactly right. We've been conditioned through these YouTube gurus or these business gurus on these Facebook groups, that this is a get rich quick scheme and that's not the case at all. If you view it that way and you treat it as a hustler, as a transactional type of guy, you're not going to last very long in pressure washing or any other venture you do. We have to treat this as a business and it's such a saturated place. But the good thing is we're dealing with mainly hacks in this space. You're dealing with these part-time guys. You're dealing with these guys that are get-rich-quick minded people, these guys that hit it hard for one to two years and then they quit. They don't think long-term, they don't think building out their business. Ultimately, we build out our book of business and, to Clay's point, like I'm able to have more depth because, while I might not get the leads coming in like net new leads off of Google or off of the phone, off of this or that, I'm able to have a lot of people call me who are repeat customers and I'd say it's like a decent chunk of repeat businesses has been this year and I'll notice hey, you pressure wash my house in 2022. It's 2025. Now, on average, it probably takes one and a half to three years for people to call back to have their house clean. So if I pressure wash 500, back in that day, if I was doing five or 600 jobs a year, there's a lot of people in three years that are going to call me back again, probably like 100 people. And that's the mindset you have to have with farming your base, like if we've done, since I've started, 4,000 to 5,000 jobs, there's going to be a ton of repeat business in that my job is to stay on top of people, remind them about it and then, sure, they may have moved, they may have no longer need our services. They may have found somebody like Clay, they may have found somebody else, but there's going to be a good chunk of people that are still going to use you. They may not use you year one, two or three, but you never know that random time they may call you and say, hey, I'm ready to have this done, or hey, I refer you to all my friends being able to in your business. And then you don't have to worry about the ups and downs of the economy If you're just relying on net new business like anybody can hit a hundred thousand dollars a year, but our objective is how can we hit a hundred thousand dollars a month?
Speaker 1:And you got to stack, stack your capacity. If I can do $30,000 on one truck, okay. If I have two trucks, my goal is $60,000. That's maxing out those two trucks. Okay, if I add another truck, I can do maybe $90,000. If I get into bigger stuff with commercial, maybe I could do $100,000. In order to feed those trucks I'm going to have to farm what I'm doing. I'm not able to just dump a ton of money into Google, dump a ton of money into advertising or hope I get some big tickets. I got to strategically build out a system that follows up with people and that markets for me, out a system that follows up with people and that markets for me. And I got to hit that hard. And my objective has to be how can I be a sales and marketing business and how can I, as the business owner, focus on filling that pipeline?
Speaker 1:And to Clay's point, if you are new, it's extremely important that you manage all of your information phone numbers, emails because, like he's saying, if a phone number and an email and a lead is going to cost you 50 to 60 bucks. Think of how valuable that list is. Think of how valuable those 100 people that you've pressure washed is is worth, and it's super important to to get on top of it and stay on it too. Don't don't be complacent, don't just put somebody, uh, don't just pen and paper it. It's got to be automated. It's got to be a numbers game and consistency. So, like we're hitting people in our CRM, uh, I'd say probably three or four times a year just through our CRM, and then I'm sending out quarterly email blast. So we get unsubscribes here and there, but a lot of times it we've noticed this year we've been able to get a lot more reoccurring business and I think that's due to like our MailChimp campaigns and some of these more consistent follow-ups.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what you're saying about the commercial stuff. The guy that called me didn't even know that I did commercial. He was the first thing he'd said. He said uh, clay, do you do? Uh, do you do commercial work and see a lot of residential? So that may have been a lack on my marketing. I haven't really marketed towards as much as commercial as I have residential.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of commercial stuff on there, but a lot of people also are not going to read or going to go to skim through your page. So anyway, we had an opportunity. I just wanted to tell everybody that listens we have an opportunity of 200,000 square foot of TPO roof, 80,000 square foot of concrete and we're probably going to bid. It can, like Matt said, it's going to make our fall. So if we can get that. But the biggest thing that I used to do was is get all excited and pretty much go ahead and put a check mark beside that job. Oh, I've already gotten this job. The worst thing you do is get your hopes up on stuff like that, because nine times out of 10, I mean with me, we haven't really gotten many it's learning your market, knowing your market and moving forward.
Speaker 1:Exactly right. And two, to think on opportunities like that. You never know when they're going to close. I do this place in Donaldson Center. So we did a job last summer and it was like $12,000 or something like that Pretty basic soft washing.
Speaker 1:And the guy last year he quoted us. He's like hey, give me an estimate on that quote on the roof. So he had a TPO roof on one of the buildings big building and then I gave him a quote on that. And he had a TPO roof on one of the buildings big building and then I gave him a, I gave him a quote on that and he's like cool, yeah, we'll get to you, we're, we're interested crickets over a year. And then literally the other day he hit me up. He's like hey, when, when are you ready to schedule that quote? So you never know how, like how things close and when things close.
Speaker 1:And a lot of times with commercial stuff, it's got to be in the budget. And I noticed this with a lot of my work. Come for the city. Hey, look, we don't have a budget for this yet, but I'll have to write you in for next year. Okay, cool. So like in one year you're doing a ton of work, getting a lot of quotes out, making relationships doing small work that fits in their budget. But hey say they have that football stadium they need quoted. You give them a $10,000 plus quote. Sure, yeah, we're interested. Crickets Don't give up hope.
Speaker 1:It might close. They just have to pencil it in their budget. So know the fiscal years, know when stuff happens, know the cycles. Commercial is a different beast than residential. A lot of times residential you can just go up to somebody and they say, okay, I want my house cleaned and this is the price and they do it. Today that's a different game with with, uh, commercial work and it's a longer sales cycle. But usually it it pays off in the end. Like you can get one commercial job and pay for almost a month of residential work. And that's the exciting thing about what Clay and I are talking about and how we're moving into kind of bigger tickets stuff.
Speaker 1:But again, it takes five years of business and like how many thousands and thousands and thousands of jobs that we do correctly and get Google reviews Like it isn't something you can just walk into. Usually the equipment is required as higher, higher equipment, higher cost of everything. So don't just, don't just try to say oh, I'm, I'm, I'm your one in business. I'm trying to compete with people like this. Like, have patience, It'll all pan out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we're talking about thousands of dollars versus hundreds of dollars, so it's a little bit of difference as far as the scale. And then you know if you're just getting started, um, you may not be around next year. You know, I see a lot, of, a lot of the times the businesses they don't work out versus working out. I mean the percentage rate on that is nuts, because people don't realize what they're getting themselves into. So if you jump into it and say, oh, I'm your commercial guy, well, it may be a year before they ever say okay, like Matt said, it could take a while.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and a lot of times, like Clay says, you get your hopes up if you're new and you're like oh man, I got $100,000 in quotes that I just put out. Okay, but realistically, if you're a newbie, you're a newbie, you're probably not pricing anywhere close to what the rate is and you're probably not going to get it.
Speaker 1:I I'll help guys out. And usually the pricing I see on people is like nowhere close to the ballpark of what's required to close the deal. And there's a difference between selling and closing. A lot of people think, oh, look at me, I sold this, I sold that, I was like, but you't closed anything. That's why the number one question when I asked people like he were talking all these numbers, I'm like, yeah, what is your revenue? Like, what have you actually done? Don't focus on like selling everything. Focus on closing. Focus on what are you able to put on the board.
Speaker 1:Because if you're not closing stuff, look into your, look like, do some self assessment, look at what's going on. Are you too high? Are you providing enough value? Do you even know what you're talking about? Because, like Clay says, a lot of times, people reach out and call us because we have experience in bigger things and commercial. It sounds awesome, it sounds like, oh, it's such a big ticket. But if you're pricing it with the same mindset as residential, you're not even competitive and that's not a knock on us of being cheaper. That's just saying, hey, we, we know how to efficiently come in and knock out a project and make a solid amount of money, but it's going to be probably way less than what you're going to charge. And that's just understanding, understanding the market, having the crews and the trucks to efficiently bang it out, and that just comes with time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean basically, if you were to go do $30,000 worth of residential work in a month and you do a $30,000 commercial job, okay, it takes you a month. You're really not making any more money than you were, and then you're having to wait on your check, exactly right, and that's what drains most people.
Speaker 1:I found that out too. Like, if you're just heavy in commercial work, you got to have cash on hand and you got to have stuff to pay the bills because you can wait 30 days on checks for stuff like this and if you got payroll and if you got equipment costs and then you got living expenses. This is not something you can just walk into and say, oh, I'm going to go after this fifty thousand dollar opportunity and it's going to be, it's going to be great. It's like we cash flow, our stuff with our residential work that pays for my employees, that pays for my personal bills, that pays for my overhead. Like if I was just going, let me, let me go to my commercial work, bang, bang, bang, without having a ton of accounts receivable. That's gonna just kind of pay for itself. I'm gonna be on the hook.
Speaker 1:So, like, understand where you're at in business, understand what are your strengths and what you can and cannot do, a lot of times residential is still essential and like Clay and I talk about, like we love residential, like I plan on running residential, two trucks residentially and just managing those like 50 60 000 a month making good profit, not doing anything sexy, and then eventually bring it on another truck, maybe like a flatbed setup, something more geared to. I bought a hot water burner. Uh, because we we do some work with like the cities, with like grease and and boring stuff like, but again it's like kind of getting our foot into more reoccurring commercial work.
Speaker 1:So I bought a burner just to help out with like oil cleanups and stuff like that. But I don't want to remove my trucks from the road. This isn't going to be something that I want to like. Pull my residential guys off of their work because it's cookie cutter, like soft wash house get check. Like. We don't need to get distracted in what we do. If we already have something going on right. We're not saying, oh, we're, we're, we're killing it. We're consistent, we're doing great.
Speaker 1:And in residential work we're going to pull all of our resources and try to go after commercial just because we could potentially make $30,000 on one job. Like the goal is to expand into another truck dedicated to commercial, using those other trucks that are cash flowing to pay for that expansion. And this is where getting off the truck is vital, because if you're still doing it all yourself, you have to pick and choose. And this is the like owner operator dilemma. These guys maybe hit $20,000, $25,000 a month, not not not hating on that, but you get so busy you can't grow your business and then you're stuck on the hamster wheel. So it's important that, like, okay, you get enough money where you can expand out and then you can focus on selling jobs, you can focus on having multiple trucks so you can win these bids at a better price point than if you just have one truck absolutely right.
Speaker 2:I got a little piece of that this year. You get so capped out and doing so many things then you get burnout, you don't have nobody to lean on and then it's just a mental game.
Speaker 1:At that point you're burnout, you're tired of taking phone calls, you get the point where you don't even want to talk to anybody, you don't even want to pressure wash, you don't want to do anything that pertains to pressure washing or business, and it just drains you mentally, especially when you get to that point exactly right, because clay is putting up some serious, solid numbers solo and this year he made that growth jump where he has a guy so he could say, hey, look, I can double team this, or I can sit back for a week and my guy's going to print money for me and the game is a long. It's a long game, it isn't? Oh, let me hustle for two years doing this solo and then I'm going to sell my business for six figures. That's not the case. If you don't have a team in place and you don't have an office in place, your business is worth nothing.
Speaker 1:So get ready to expand your business or just be happy being that owner operator where you're in that churn and burn mode where you might burn yourself out Again. If you're trying to make some quick cash, it's nothing wrong with that, but just think long term. Do you want to be doing this in five years? Because it is a grind I I'm all about like the right time for growth. But if you feel ready and and you can make that jump, I highly suggest making the jump into going from on the truck to off the truck. That allows you to grow your business absolutely.
Speaker 1:I found so much more time to do other things that I didn't know that needed to be done when I got off the truck yes, and and you can find and I feel like being on the truck can convince you that you're busy and you're working hard, but you're not working on growing the business, You're just responding to work.
Speaker 1:So you're always going to be reactive, You're always going to be behind the eight ball, as opposed to when you're off the truck. You're able to say I can dedicate 40 to 50 hours a week on getting new business and that's when magic happens. So again, in times that are like this, where there's extreme market saturation, where you got the economy kind of down, if you're not actively hunting and pushing and growing your business, growing the top line, finding new work and then like pushing forward, you're going to get replaced. You're going to get replaced by somebody who is. So that's not hating on anybody, that's just saying if you're complaining about being slow, look at what you're doing every day and are you really moving the needle or are you just responding to busy work and are you doing 20, $25 an hour labor?
Speaker 2:And that's just the truth that a lot of people need to hear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're at that 25 minute. Mark, mark, you want to tie this thing up, clay.
Speaker 2:Yep, so appreciate everybody listening as always. As always, start and close with follow all of our pages the Wash Bros. We have a private group it's called the Wash Bros on Facebook. We chat it up in there. If you want to share some stuff, ask some questions, reach out to us via Messenger on the Wash Bros podcast page.
Speaker 1:If you've got any questions, any questions needing help with anything, um, follow me on clay smith on facebook and then c3 wash bros on facebook and then matthew jackson on his personal page. Absolutely, yeah, we appreciate you guys. And again, like the, the long game is the play here. So, like, by getting off the truck, you're freeing up your time, you're able to focus on the big picture. You can say, hey, in five or 10 years I want to be a dominant player, I've got depth, I'm building a life that I actually want. I'm not just in this constant hustle phase and that's a huge thing.
Speaker 1:And that's kind of what we've been doing with the Wash Bros Like sure, this and like do everything, but then it would sidetrack us from what else we do. And just kind of consistency of doing the wash bros. We're able to almost be at 10 000 downloads, which is pretty crazy considering we don't really do a lot of active pushing of it. We're just showing up every day and that consistency of what we do add value to people and same was what we do in our business. So like we appreciate all you guys listening and growing together.
Speaker 1:And if you guys guys are new to listening to these episodes, go back to the first one. There's plenty of episodes where you can learn a ton and you can see the growth of both me and Clay as we pretty much journal what we do and we've we've kind of grown from being, hey, this is going to be like a side hustle, so this is going to be what. What gets me out of my main job to this is what's building? Building my like first business to like hey, now we've both established ourselves as as decent players in our local market that's all I got matt yep, cool.
Speaker 1:I hope everybody has a great sunday and good luck on this fall season. It should be great and remember that like hey, commercial hoa stuff that that starts popping off. So if, if you guys are worried about, oh, how am I going to eat the rest of the year, usually it'll pick up, you get a little fall blip and then enjoy pressure washing in the nice weather. So we'll see you guys on the next one. Bye.
