S3:E5: How To Launch A Strong Spring Without Door Knocking Or Race-To-The-Bottom Pricing

Spring doesn’t sneak up on us; we build toward it on purpose. As phones start buzzing and tax refunds land, we walk through the exact steps we use to turn a slow winter into a strong surge: one targeted email drop that books real work, a smarter approach to paid ads when CPCs are spiking, and a retention-first strategy that turns past customers into your best marketing channel. We dig into the habits that keep schedules full without spamming, and the language that protects scope, margin, and trust.

We get real about pricing. Forget per-square-foot gimmicks and last-minute add-ons that erode credibility. Price to time and outcome, set expectations on red clay and oxidation, and honor the estimate you sent. That no-hassle experience is what earns second visits, bigger tickets, and referrals year after year. We also contrast old-school door knocking with a modern digital presence: review-rich profiles, local awards, clean truck wraps, and social content that makes you easy to recognize and easy to choose.

Operational readiness makes or breaks the rush, so we detail the maintenance cadence that prevents downtime, the spares that save a day, and the on-site walk-through that avoids leaks, open windows, and callbacks. Then we zoom out to the bigger shift: moving from technician to operator. Consistency, calm leadership, and repeatable systems turn boring days into compounding results. We also share where to plug into our curated community, plus resources and books that lay out the blueprint we actually use in our companies.

Ready to ramp up with confidence and protect your brand while you grow? Subscribe now, share this with a fellow operator who needs a spring tune-up, and leave a quick review to help more pros find the show.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:31

What's up, guys? It's Matt Jackson and Clay Smith, and we're the Watchbrothers. So thanks for tuning in and welcome to it's going to be episode three. I'll cut this out. It's going to be season three, episode five, and we're going to be talking about the um pretty much this is about the time for spring. We're going to ramp up here shortly, whether it be this week or next week. So we're we're going to go down like the checklist that we do, what we get ready for, what to expect, and kind of like all of our systems and operations right before kicking off of the spring season, which as you guys know, that's the most important season. It's great because we are coming off of the slow season and we're just ready to hit it hard and make the most out of this year. So you want to kick this thing off, Clay?

Timing, Regions, And Demand Signals

Filling The Calendar And Light Outreach

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Absolutely. Uh as Matt said, the spring season is the best, the best part of this business, especially um if you're in the, I guess, even in the southeast in Florida, it's you're pretty much good all year round. But like we were talking about, Matt, but in the in the warmer states, you pretty much work all year round. But you're in the parts of the country where it's get it gets colder and you do have an actual season, um, the slow season, it's it's kind of rough sometimes, especially if you didn't prepare yourself uh the year before uh financially. Um or I mean the biggest thing is making sure you set yourself up for the next year, right? So when we're going into 2026, we're getting there to the busy season, depending on your part of the country, when your spring comes, the spring will probably come a little earlier for us because we're in South Carolina than somebody that's in Michigan, right? So um what are we doing to prepare ourselves uh for the next couple weeks to because about according to our data, mid-February is about when it starts to kick off for us, the phone starts ringing, people are gotten their tax returns back, they've got a little money in their pockets and they're going ahead and getting things done that they need to get around at their house because in this economy, every little bit extra change that you can get, especially from the government, you've got to go ahead and uh use that little extra change to catch up on the things you need to catch up on. So uh the biggest thing I'm doing if I if I procrastinated uh up until now to get ready for spring, I'm hammering my customers, I'm sending them emails, I'm sending them texts, I'm going ahead and I'm lining up work for the end of February to March, and I'm getting ready to go out and start spraying some houses.

Email Strategy And Paid Ads Math

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Yep. And that's that's the game plan I have as well. Uh, like Clay said, historically, February is the month where me having like a main tech that I feed in the offseason. Uh this past uh month, he was probably getting two or three jobs or two or three days a week of work. So this is where we start rocking into like that almost fully booked out, four or five days on the truck. And um and to Klay's point too, we're we're we really start hitting the marketing hard. I'm a big person where I don't like to overly um like spam people. So as far as like I got my automations in the system that send people like yearly follow-ups, 18 month follow-ups, and then I'm using postcards, stuff like that. But as far as like direct email marketing to customers, I try to uh uh hit them maybe like once every quarter. So instead of blowing them up in January and then blowing them up again in February, I rather just kind of plan for those big like MailChimp email dumps of all the customer base. Like February just to anticipate, hey, I can do an email dump, I can probably book a week or so, I can probably get like 10, 15 new jobs that I wouldn't normally book, but since they get the email, they're like boom, let's put me on the schedule, uh stuff like that. And then like Clay says, you start dialing back into ads. You don't want to be wasting a lot of money on ads because I was looking at my Google ads, my cost per click and my LSA is almost like a hundred bucks right now. It's it's insane because there's not a lot of demand and or there's excuse me, there's a lot of demand with everybody trying to bid on not a lot of supply. So I I'm almost tempted to like dial back on that and then just really ramp into once once the season starts to shift, you want to be top of mind to everybody, you want momentum to be back in our favor. Because, like, as you guys know, it's a momentum game. If you start the spring, if you start early February really hard, you're gonna have a great setup for the year.

Retention, Relationship Selling, And Trust

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Absolutely. I just had the best January I've ever had since I've been in business, and I truly believe that the time in the game is the biggest thing because naturally, year over year, you're gonna have those customers call you no matter what, whether you've called them and texted them or emailed them or bugged them or whatever, sent those automated emails, they're still gonna call you no matter what, especially if you've done a great job. You made sure that they remembered you when you left, you left them a card, you left them something. I always like to uh do something to make it personable when I'm there, make it feel like you're a friend before you leave, uh, because they're gonna keep calling you back. And I've noticed year over year, when I've had these people call me back three or four times, I've noticed that I've been able to uh basically the customer doesn't care about the price on the second visit as of to where you were getting shopped the first time. If you're able to win that customer over, you're able to get out there and you're able to make it personable, make it feel like you're their friend. You've been you've known them forever when you leave, they're gonna keep calling you back. They're not gonna be worried about calling the next guy and shopping any quotes.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Exactly. And half the time, they're not even thinking negatively about your business. They may have forgotten who did the work last time. I know uh this happens to us a lot. We send out yearly reminders and follow-ups. Somebody uh gets the email, they say, Oh, yeah, you guys pressure wash your house. Looks great, ready again. Not everybody is always thinking about pressure washing, like you and I. Not everybody is always like top of mind when it comes to who their vendors are, who the contracts contractors are. They got a lot of stuff going on in their lives. They got uh plumbers, electricians, all the stuff that surfaces their homes, they're busy. Like they're not really fixated on oh, the the pressure washer guy, the driveway guy, or C3 Wash Bros. So it's really important to be on people. You don't want to sell them, you don't want to push them away, don't want to sound desperate because occasionally I'll get follow-ups from people and it's just like constant. And then I just block them. So it's kind of a fine line and a balance. But if you approach the situation of trying to help them out as opposed to like pressure sale them or bait and switch, it's uh that's the ideal way that we like to do it here.

Follow-Ups Without Spam And Balance

SPEAKER_00 6:56

Yeah, I know that me and you were talking earlier, Matt, about uh, you know, going door to door and doing things like that. But I think that those things are the things of the past. Somebody's always got a phone in their hand. They're always uh, I don't want to say they're always because a lot of people don't even watch TV now, they watch it on their phone, but everybody's got a phone in their hand. How can you get in front of somebody's eyes basically? Somehow find a way to get on in front of them on the phone, right? So um versus soliciting, knocking door to door. It works for some people. Some people love the model, but as a business owner myself, I don't want people knocking on my door. If someone knocks on my door and tries to sell me something, I'm immediately turned off. Now, I have had the uh it's an instance where a salesman did knock on a customer's door and they reminded that customer that they needed to get their house brush washed. They didn't want to go with the guy that knocked on their door, but they got on Google and they found me.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

So I I've always told it to get the guys that I've heard or ask me about door knocking or whatever, putting stuff in mailboxes. And there's been, I've said it on the show many times, there's been many houses that I've watched and I've found clip flyers in the driveway. You are reminding that customer to call somebody and somebody else, basically. You put a bad taste in their mouth and they're ready to hire somebody else. I mean, you may get that one guy that just doesn't really give a crap, and he's like, Yeah, go ahead and do it. But the world that we live in today, I don't I don't think it's as as effective as getting in a Facebook group or going out and meeting people and saying, Hey, this is what I do, please refer me if you know anybody. Um, I just think that the door knocking and uh other things are a thing of the past. Yard signs still may work, but then you got to deal with all the city bull crap and getting the tickets and worrying about people running over crap. And then, you know, if your signs in somewhere it ain't supposed to be, you're littering. So it's just everything's just digital nowadays. Find the best way to if you need help with it, join our school community.

Door Knocking Versus Digital Presence

Brand Positioning And Protecting Reputation

SPEAKER_01 9:03

Exactly. And if you're gonna think about this as a true business and not just a hustle, uh, I like to think about it. Clay and I have been in business uh five years plus. Uh five years is kind of the standard. I think if you're full-time five years, this is kind of something that's gonna work. Like you got to pay taxes at this point. You can't just be BS and through doing it under the table. And like if you've survived for at least five years, you should be like very serious in your business. And you should be you should be positioning yourself as like a true professional in the community and striving to be the best uh company in your area. And think about uh how you run your business. And is that how the best companies in other industries in your area run their business? Are you seeing the guys who are running the big uh HVAC companies uh uh going door to door? No. But are you seeing the guys who come to new to town and are the pest col the pest control companies and they're the brand new guy and they're hustling you for that$90 a month payment to uh spray your yard with weed killer or whatever they do? Yeah, those are the types of customers. They're brand new to the area, it's Canvas, and then they're in and out. And then usually there's negative Google reviews to those companies, usually there's not a lot of referrals of those companies. Sure, you can get jobs, sure you can get money, but are you best at optimizing your marketing to protect your brand? After a few years in business, like you've proven to yourself and you've proven to the world that yes, you're you're successful at this. Now it's important that you take it to the next stage and next level and protect your brand. And like Clay and I said, like it's a little bit slower to do marketing the ways we're doing it. We're not over here trying to copy the guy next to us and out hustle them. We're not over here cutting throats, we're not over here creating all this like unnecessary urgency and and car salesy vibes. Like we both came from that world, so we're aware of it. And but it's uh a a great example of this is like say you go to a dealership or you plug in um you you go online, fill out your information to a dealership, right? They're probably gonna sell that information or like auto trader. If you get get it, get it get your true value on your car or whatever, whatever it's called nowadays. Like they're gonna sell that data and you're gonna have 50 people call you. Are you gonna answer the phone and buy a car from one of those dealerships? No, you might get a price from them, you might price shop, but uh ultimately like that's a race to the bottom, right? So we don't want to use that same marketing strategy in our business. We want to lean on the word of mouth, the referrals, and like Clay says, we're both uh like have strived to become like the best in the upstate, right? So like you you if there's local awards you can go after and win, that's a huge branding, that's a huge pool positively in the area. Like you get it once, throw it on your truck, throw it on your website, there you go. That's credibility. That's what you should be going after. You shouldn't be going after how can I canvas somebody's neighborhood? Because like that's great if you're in zero uh one, two, three years and you're just trying to get by with low budget. But like once you've established yourself, it's important that you focus on that digital connection, focus on being a uh like a viable uh uh member of your community, of your business community, and then and then you lean more on referrals. Like our ticket price has gone up, not because we're hustling people or we're trying to push like shady upsells on people. It's gone up because our reputation has gone up. And this is the point in our business where we're just maintaining it and we're protecting it.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Absolutely. You don't really want to start at the bottom of the barrel. I know that the first year I did this, I did it. Uh I'll I'll be the first to say it. I did it extremely cheap. I learned, but I'm learning from my mistakes. So um it it has bit me in the butt a couple of times with past customers, and that's the biggest thing. It's like a double-edged sword. Like, okay, I need to stay busy. I'm gonna do this cheap for you. Please leave me a five-star review. Please help me grow my business. Tell the neighbors, tell your family, tell everybody about me. I'll take care of them as well. But it's it can be a double-edged sword those first couple years because as you start to grow and they call you back year after year, they're like, Whoa, that's double what we paid last time. So if you can find a good price that you can be a price point that you can basically grow your business at for the next few years, then that's where you need to go. Um, and don't do the don't do the oh, I need I charge 25 cents a square foot type thing because you're not in a saturated market like mine and match, you're not gonna be able to charge per square foot. You can use a baseline on bigger model jobs or whatever you need to do, but it's all about how long it's gonna take you to do the job. What's your time worth?

Pricing Principles And Avoiding Per-Square-Foot Traps

SPEAKER_01 13:28

Exactly right. And customers are not stupid. So if you're positioning yourself as this is my price per square foot, if you're new to the industry, you may think that's smart. You may think, oh, this is how the professionals quote. But the customers are aware of this as well because people have hard sold them on this is how much my price per square foot is. It's way better to sell value in your company, understand your time, and then deliver a price without allowing the customer just to plug numbers into a calculator and then say, well, if you can do it for less, it's like when I was in the car sales world, like we we don't like negotiate with a price. You're allowing the customer to negotiate with a price and not see the value in what you provide to them, right? So like we're going to their house, hey, we're not gonna hit you with any unnecessary things last minute. Oh, we didn't factor that into the equation, we can do this for another 50 50 bucks or 100 bucks here or there. No, like you get the total experience of us showing up, cleaning your house, and being a no-hassle solution. And to Clay's point, like you have to understand what value you bring to the custom to the customer and what value to you uh do you fit in the market correctly. If Clay and Clay and I are able to make$150,$200 an hour, if we're on our minimums, like$300 an hour and service the customer and do a great job, and then you're trying to come in and charge double to that customer, charge them$600 just because it's some arbitrary thing that you think you need to do, but you're probably gonna have a hard time in that market. So it's it's important to understand like how to price correctly and then how to fit in the market. And like if you're going door to door, you're probably not gonna hard sell people at a thousand dollar ticket, you're probably gonna be a cheap option because uh to Clay's point, a lot of customers we press wash, they call us because they've used us in the past and they were door knocked and they brought the attention to the homeowner that their house is dirty. And so instead of us doing the marketing, people who go door to door do the marketing and they say, Hey, look, I got a guy, let me call him. They don't even care what the guy has to say. I'm sure you can go in and grossly undercut somebody like Clay and I and get work. But a lot of times if you're watching YouTube and you see these guys go to door to door, they're doing it for literally 99 bucks. And that's not a sustainable model, that's a hustle. If you want to go out and make a few thousand dollars in this, that's one thing. But if you want to be a licensed and insured company with a reputation and able to pay your bills as well as employees' bills, you got to build the business the correct way.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Absolutely 100%. You gotta have that baseline always. That's one of the things I learned. Um, you can't be cheap. Uh, no matter what, even if it's slow, my minimums don't change. I mean, I've been the same, and I just had the biggest January I've ever had ever in the history of C3 WatchPros in the last five years. So um sticking to your gut, being confident when you're giving out quotes is a big thing. Like Matt says, nobody wants you. I actually had a customer a couple of a couple about a week or so ago um that was saying, okay, so when you come out, your price is is your price, right? I'm like, yeah, we don't do any of that. You know, if we get there and there's some stuff that we have noticed that we may not have seen on the satellite or whatever, then then okay. I mean, that's we're just gonna eat it. You know, I I I win more times than I lose on doing quotes virtually. So um if you get that one, it is what it is, right? But if they go to start and add in a bunch of crap that wasn't ever talked about, then that's when you say, okay, look, I didn't have this in my quote, but if you want to do it, this is what it'll be. But I think that's the beauty of uh our business model is we stick to our price. They get a price when they get that estimate, they approve that estimate, and then we reach out to them and we schedule it. And then we go out and we do the job for what we said we were gonna do, right? And that builds trust with the customer.

No-Hassle Estimates And Scope Control

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Exactly right. And they already trust you, so they know you're fair. And I've had a lot of instances where they're like, hey, I got a house on the lake. Uh wash that next. They're not asking you, hey, give me a price so I can quote shop you, they're trusting you already. They're like, hey, you've always been fair to me. I've picked up a lot of commercial work because I've been fair to contractors, whether it be their flip homes, whether it be their own homes, without even knowing, oh, this is a contractor, let me try to be sleazy sales-y to get in. And uh oftentimes it's like, hey, if they they see you in the community, they see you on social, like Clay just mentioned here, like digital is is everything. They're on their phone all the time. AI is getting even crazier where it's gonna start telling people what to do, what to think. So if you're not top of mind on digital, you're gonna be even more relevant than before. So, like all this stuff is uh is vital to to think about and and gear up and and and too, this isn't like the old school way of pressure washing. Like, we're evolving with the times. I just had my website redone, uh truck raps are super important, advertising is still important. Like we we talk about we could stop doing ads, stop all of our paid marketing, and still make uh a decent amount of money just off of word of mouth. And uh we choose to evolve and grow because if we turn everything off, like we're we're gonna lose all that business. So, like one thing I find uh uh interesting is a lot of guys think like, hey, this is the solution. Once I hit this solution, I'm done. No, like business is always evolving, you have to maintain business, you have to grow business. You can't just say once I do this, I'll be fine. Pick whatever level of business you're happy at and what works the best for you and your goals, and then follow like the framework that's required. You can't you can't use the same strategy that got you to$100,000 a year to run a truck uh with a couple guys on it, or run two trucks at$300,000,$500,000 a year. It's a it's a completely different math. And just understanding your numbers, understanding your marketing, understanding how everything flows together is necessary, otherwise you're gonna be using the wrong information and trying to fit stuff together into a puzzle that's not the right piece.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Right. And uh, as we said time and time again on all of our episodes, it's all about the business side of things, not the equipment side of things. So don't worry about the equipment that you have. You know, you need to upgrade uh a machine here and there, like me and Matt do. I think every two years we buy a new machine per truck. So that's kind of where we go because we're doing what I don't really have accurate numbers on my machines, but I would say we're doing probably 12 to 1,500 hours a year. So once you get above 3,000 hours on a machine, that's when they pretty much start having problems. You want to be efficient, you can, I don't want to say palm, but you can sell those machines and pretty much get another one for half basically half half off, basically is how I do it in my head. So um just think about that, rotate those machines in and out. Make sure that you are uh you got a bag of O-rings, you got the little ice pick things to pick those O-rings out. O-ring tool, yeah. Yep. Coming into that season when the weather starts changing, the weather's hot and cold, your hoses start busting. Make sure you got them hoses on hand if you need to, or know of a store nearby that has them in stock. Luckily, we got a couple stores around here. Um, if you don't have them on the trucks, um, make sure that your uh I my my machines are due. It's just been so cold, I ain't been wanting to do it. Make sure you're doing your uh maintenance, changing the spark plug, changing the uh oil filter and the little filter, the air filter in the top. I do mine about 100 to 150 hours, depending on how busy I am, um, just to try to keep things moving and then the pump all as well.

Evolving Marketing, Website, And Momentum

SPEAKER_01 20:59

Yep. Yeah, I mean it's a simple game. The equipment part, the washing part, that's a simple game. My my main guy, Ryan, he's been with me for three years. He's killing it, and he knows the game. He shows up, gets the truck on his way, puts out the money. So, like the focus has to be how how how do I go beyond just the washing part? And and then like my my level now is like how do I protect the brand, how do I strategically connect with people, and how do I determine and like sail the ship of the direction that we want to head this year? Like, we want to get more into commercial work, we want to try to do a little bit bigger tickets, like we want to create less friction in our business. We don't want to be chasing all these like$300 crappy jobs that are gonna be callbacks and chalky oxidation and all that stuff. So like we're trying to figure out how can we keep this as efficient as possible and move it forward, but how can we keep it so the guys show up happy, make money, go home, and then we all win. It's it's a simple game, like Clay says, but the focus has to be on the business and not in the business because you're probably Shift from oh my gosh, what's my hose management? Or like what side of the street should I park on? Or like how should I greet the customer? And it shifts into like how am I growing my business and how am I attracting this? And how like real business moves. It's not about the pretend look at me, I'm a pressure washer. Sure, we all like the marketing gigs and and and and all these little things that you can do. But like when you start arguing technical, you start arguing equipment, you're really missing the market. Now, if you want to be a hobbyist, if this is your fun thing to do on the weekend, that's perfectly fine. But if you guys are super serious about this, want to grow this into something that supports you and your family, then follow the Washbros style, follow the Washbros blueprint, like Clay says. We got a school page and we are working on growing that Facebook uh page. So if you guys are uh aware, we just crossed that thousand dollars a thousand person threshold and we are pumping some ads. So uh we are really working this year to start growing the uh Facebook page. Uh ask us any question you want. But uh we're uh trying to position the school community a little bit better. It's free. So if you want to join it, ask questions, talk us at talk shop. It's great. There's other guys in here. Ask questions whether you're in the field. We don't mind if you got an issue of the technical or the the um like mechanical issues. We've all been there. We could probably help you out in a pinch. And more importantly, like we're gonna position that to be like, hey, there's there's that entry level, free level, like an open forum, and then there'll probably be like a premium option once we fill everything up and and like that demand increases where we really go down and break that like Washbros blueprint style and and it's just gonna be more curative. And if you guys notice, like Facebook can kind of be a crapshoot. Everybody's in there, everybody's giving you their opinion. Most people don't even know what they're talking about. But if you're truly an operator, if you're truly wanting to level up and be on that same frame as the Washbros, like Clay and I, the uh the community on school is going to be your place to be.

Equipment Cycles And Spring Maintenance

Shift From Technician To Operator

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Absolutely. I'm excited about it, excited about making new friends and uh helping other people grow their business because that's been something I've been wanting to do ever since I've been successful in doing what we've done. I mean, it's uh it's incredible. The small things always make the bigger difference. Like uh Matt said, you you want to look professional pulling up to somebody's house. You want to know how to pull up to the door. Like I'll pull, I'll already know where the spigot is before I ever get out of my truck. That way I know where to position my truck and know how I'm gonna pull my hose, how I'm gonna route my hose and all that stuff. It's just small things that half of you that are listening probably don't even think about it. And they can sound exactly. I mean, I already know where the spigot is. I'm not even lying to you. I know where I'm taking the water hose to as soon as I get out of the car. I know what the dirtiest side of the house is, I've already found it. And I've already noticed if uh there's a clip center of South Carolina flag on the on the post. I'm already finding the common ground that I'm gonna break the ice with with the customer as soon as I knock on the door and I shake their hand. And it's just you want to make them, like I said, or you want to make them feel like they've known you forever. Even, you know, me and Matt, we both position our ads where they're very personable. The the customer feels like they that's how we've branded ourselves. The customer already feels like they know us, but you do get those from time to time or just found you on Google and just called you because you were the first guy that popped up and blah, blah, blah, or you were the better fit that they like because you had good reviews. But you always want to be a professional, shake their hand, be confident, walk them around the house, show them what you're gonna do. Make sure that there's no issues. There, I ran into an issue yesterday. We walked around the house and a lady had a window open. She did that she had forgot about. Sometimes you won't even notice things like they could get spray and you'll spray straight through their house. I've done it before. Exactly. Be looking for things like that, be looking around the outlets. They could leak. Some guys tape the outlets to cover their ass. I don't. I go ahead and look. They're most mainly siliconed um most of the time. But if I see one that may need to be taped up, I'll take care of it because I don't want to blow an outlet. If there's red clay on the side of somebody's house, I go ahead and explain to them that's another service. If you're wanting to skip this off, it's gonna be an extra charge. We specialize in softwashing. Just all the things that make you sound confident, make you sound like a professional versus let's I know when I first started, I would I I wasn't very confident in what I did because I I was still nervous, right? I didn't know what to expect or how things were gonna go. I was I had that anxiety, that beginner anxiety. I was scared to you want to feel confident. You want to show the customer you know what you're doing. You want them to make them feel like you want to make them feel like that they have hired the right guy before you ever begin.

On-Site Professionalism And Risk Checks

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Exactly right. And again, none of this has to do with the equipment. It's all about the customer experience. And customer is going to remember the experience they had with you more so than they're gonna remember the outcome of what happened to the home. And to Clay's point, it's important that you set the expectation while you're on site. If you guys are like us, and a lot of times you're quoting online, you're giving him a price, you're saying, Hey, look, we'll honor this price. But just so you know, this, this, and this are not part of the service. And that's big in our area because we're in South Carolina and red clay's everywhere. So sure, we could remove this. I also try to explain to people uh like you can't just spot treat this. We'd have to blend it out. Uh or you got oxidation, like it's best to not disturb it. So, like, yeah, we could sell you this, or a newbie would probably try to sell you an ox oxidation removal of your entire house. A professional is gonna say, look, that's not worth my time. That's an area that's gonna cause me headaches down the road, and the customer's not gonna want to spend twelve hundred dollars to do one side of their house. So, like, we're making the decision based upon what's best for the customer and what's best for us in our business model. A lot of times people will post stuff, they have a different business model. It's important that you're doing things that align with how you run business every day because the number one rule is to be um able to re replicate your day. You want to have it so your employees know what to do, you know what to do. Like Klay was saying, so you show up and you're confident and your customer senses that and they know like and trust you. Because if you're coming off and you're trying to hedge and like you're you're like being weird, they're gonna sense that energy off the bat and they're gonna start noticing stuff. They're gonna say, Oh, like this uh spot didn't clean them up how much I wanted to clean up, or oh, this over here or this plant's starting to die. Like they're gonna notice stuff like that. Whereas if you over-deliver with that customer personal experience, they're gonna fall in love with you in the sense and be your number one advocate. And that's how we get our Google reviews, that's how we get tips, that's how we get word of mouth. And that's super important to growing your business past just that hustle of a side thing.

SPEAKER_00 28:34

Yeah, and the I mean the biggest thing is you got to do it consistent consistently. Um, and what I mean by that is everybody has a bad day. If you're in a shitty mood, you're arguing with your wife at home, or somebody pissed you off on a rover age incident all the way there. You got to show up and put everything aside and do it with a smile on your face. Treat every customer the same, no matter what.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Exactly right. Word of mouth is extremely important, and you can spend 10 years building it up, and you could have one bad week and you can destroy it. So it's it's important that you carry the frame. And if you have employees, they see you as an example. Employees got issues too, they got their personal battles, they bring it to work, they may be salty. Don't don't yell at them, don't be like, I can't find anybody, there nobody's worth a damn to work for, and then don't push that on them because they'll leave you, right? And in today's day and age, like you get what you put out. So if you're putting out uh toxic energy, you're gonna attract toxic people to you. Same with customers. There's a lot of a lot of times when we show up, a customer's in a bad mood, they got something going on, we're just cordial, we're just like, sure, yes, ma'am, yes, sir. Keep it going. We're non-reactive, non-responsive to whatever nonsense they're trying to bring into the conversation. They come back, house looks clean, they're like, hey, that was a good guy. I appreciate that. So don't take stuff personal. Make sure you're treating this as a profession, have pride in it, and do things that you can write down, create those systems and operations, and it's all about how can you repeat the same thing day in and day out, be boring, and and that's that way to success. It's like super boring. There's no magic pill, you show up every day, you do the same thing every day. You do the same thing every day, and it's not positive and it's bad, you're gonna run your business in the ground. You do the same thing every day, you show up, your business is good, you're gonna be the best person in your community. Quite simple.

Setting Expectations And Saying No To Bad Fits

SPEAKER_00 30:17

Absolutely. I think you put the nail on the coffin there. I think that's a good ending of this episode, Matt. Um, running up on that 30-minute mark. So um, I hope everybody enjoyed this episode. This is just kind of like a kickoff, uh, a pre-kickoff. We'll do another good one for uh spring kickoff. But uh just wanted to get over get in everybody's head, go ahead and get everybody fired up because it's coming. You know, this is the month that uh it starts to get busy, according to my data, especially in our area. Um and I'm I'm really excited. I think it's gonna be a good year. We started off at the best January we've ever had. We grew almost 20% last year in 2025. So 2026 could get better. So um just uh keep on listening. We appreciate all the follows, everybody liking us. Join the school page. The school page is in the link on our Wash Bros page. So just go there, you can join. If you don't have a profile, I didn't have a profile, I actually have a profile on there now. So just go in there, create your profile, and uh you'll find us as the Wash Bros community. Uh, we'd be happy to have you. We talk about everything, it's free right now. But like Matt said, we're gonna have another another section where it's premium. You know, you join however much a month, and we'll talk about everything. You know, we'll help you if you have an issue on the job site. Uh, if you need something real quick, there'll be guys there in our community that'll be able to help you, you know. So um pretty cool. It's it's it's more, it's better, it's gonna be a better community than anything that you've seen on Facebook, any of these Facebook groups, because like Matt said, half of them don't know what they're talking about. You got the old school guru type fellas in there, which I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. They give they give some great good nuggets. But me and Matt are up to today's trend. We're up to the we're up to date on the things going on now. We're up to date on how to do business digitally, um, run successful Google ads, uh, just the successful marketing and the successful side of business, the things that's helped us, real things that we're doing every day. A lot of the guys that you see on Facebook, they're not actually in have their hands in a business every day. You know, they're not out washing uh as much as me and Matt, which the goal is we don't want to be washing that much either, but we are up to date with everything in a pressure washing business. We have our hands tied in everything. So we know from the the filling up the truck in the filling up the truck with gas, filling up the pressure wash with gas, changing o-rings, changing hoses, changing skids, whatever we're doing, up to finish washing the house. We do it all every day. We we are doing something of that nature, taking phone calls, doing quotes. We we know the ins and outs of everything that goes on in a pressure washing business. So all we want to do is just help you. So, like I said, go follow us, Clay Smith, uh, on Facebook and all social media pages. And C3WatchPros is my business. You can check me out there, check me out on Google. I have over uh I have almost 400 Google reviews on there. You can check out my business, my website, c3washbros.com, go to Matthew Jackson, uh, see his personal Facebook, go to matt the driveway.com, check out his stuff. Matt Matt the Driveway guy on his Google, he has over 500 reviews now, I think, or pushing it. Yes, and uh yeah, go or 600. I'm out of it.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

Google Google likes to drop my reviews, so it's all good.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

Uh yeah. He's got he's got uh you can see the legit legitimacy of us, right? So we're not just somebody that's popped out of nowhere and said, Oh, you know, we uh we can do this, we can help you with this, and we'll charge you this. Like we are real guys, real businesses, and we're in this stuff every day. So go join our school community, check us out, give us a follow at the Wash Bros podcast page on Facebook, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, you name it. You can find us anywhere. We also have the website. Matt's got some merch on. He's gonna tell you about our books and everything else we got going on.

Consistency, Mindset, And Team Energy

Community, School Platform, And Real-World Ops

SPEAKER_01 34:06

Yep. So we're we're our objective here is like the anti-guru guru, because most times you become a guru because you're no longer pressure washing. And that's great, but like our objective is to like build an active community that not only we can grow from, but we can help you guys grow. And like the Washbros stuff is pretty cool. I I got this hat actually, so we all like rope hats, right? So this is the Washbros podcast with our logo. So it's it's cool, you can wear it around town and uh kind of support the show and all that. So you go to washbrospodcast.com and uh we got links to all that stuff. Whether you don't know the the the Facebook page, you want to see Clay and I's information, you want to see our school community, and you're like, man, what what did they say was on Facebook? What was the Facebook page? Go to uh washbrospodcast.com and you can find everything you want there. Right. So we're we got merch, we got some hoodies, and we're gonna work on designs and stuff like that. We'll probably have some cool sayings, uh like kind of tone down, like this being like the wash bros. I got the big bold branding, but we'll probably have something simple and clean that'll say, like, um what is this phrase that you like to say? Be consistent, like certain stuff like that. You can wear it to remind yourself of like, hey, show up every day, we're all in this fight together, like you're the washbros. Like this is what's allowed us to step away from jobs that we didn't like, support our families, have employees, and make a difference in our community. So, like, there's more to be in the washboro than just sprain bleach. And uh that's the objective here. And our school page is great, we're blowing that up. And uh it's it's it's a great time to join. You're you're getting into the the busy season, you've never had a spring before, or this is your fifth spring or sixth spring. There's things that you can learn to really make this your year. And to Clay's point, we got some books too. Uh you've got on Amazon, you probably see this one. Uh I've got over 300 something reviews. This is that kind of no pressure pressure washing. Wrote this a few years back. It's gonna be a 22-step framework. If you are uh like kind of a newbie, you want to learn how to go from part-time to full-time, or you know what want to know how to start, is like basic fundamentals to get you your first uh$100,000 or your first like uh get you on the truck. And then we just pop this one off. This is gonna be more so the blueprint of Clay and I's uh story. So same framework as the other one, 22 steps. Uh we have it broken down to lessons of Clay and I. So it's also available on uh Audible. So if you guys like Audible, it's gonna be like the Amazon voice, but it's still great info that you can listen to. It's about two hours, so you can listen to it while you're doing a job. It's on Kindle Unlimited if you have that for free. And if you want to support us, you can get the books on Amazon. Again, we don't make a lot of money on books, so it's not like we're doing this to make money. Our main gig is the wash, the wash side of things. So this is the anti-guru gurus for you. We we here are wanting to share information and build a community of fellow guys who are just like us because, like, hey, it's it's great to hop onto a school community and be like, what's wrong with my pressure washer? Or how should I get the stain off or how should I do this? And you can you can chime in and other guys can help wash it. Or if you have more technical questions, or you have Google ad set of questions, or you have higher level questions, or if you guys are like, Hey, how can I talk to you or Clay? that school community is gonna be the best way to do it.

SPEAKER_00 37:13

Absolutely. It means making a post in Facebook or whatever, get a million different answers, and or taking your time to watch a YouTube video, you can actually talk to a real person.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

Exactly right. If because again, everything's free online, right? Why why have a mechanic work on your car if you can find it on find that fix on YouTube? You're gonna you're you wanna have a curated community where you can get preferential treatment and filtered content. Like AI can tell you so much, but if you don't have that experience and you're not actively involved, you're gonna go down a rabbit trail. So objective here is to make everything curated. This is the blueprint that helped me and Clay go forward. So we we look forward to sharing this with more people because obviously what works with Clay and I is great, but if we can affect more guys and we can have thousands of people like Clay and I, that's a real movement that we can have in the community.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

Absolutely. And we appreciate all you guys coming for this episode. We'll see you on the next one. You got it. See you guys.