S3: E6: How We Farm Customers And Beat The Spring Rush

Transcript

Setting The Stage For Spring

SPEAKER_00 0:29

What's up, guys? It's Matt Jackson and Clay Smith, and we are the Wash Bros. Thanks for tuning in. This is gonna be episode six of season three. And uh we're gonna talk about what we're doing now leading into the the the season essentially. So I would say for us, this is Sunday, February 8th. So if you guys are tuning in uh now, it's it's pretty much like the week before Valentine's Day, the week before everything in our space and our side of the country really starts heating up. So what we're doing in our business right now to engage our list, engage the customers we have to uh get the ball rolling aggressively and really work on building up a solid spring. So you want to kick this thing off, Clay?

Farming Past Customers With CRMs

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Absolutely. As always, so the biggest thing is um this kind of varies per wherever you are as far as when the season kicks off. I know that some people do spring and fall cleaning, but you got the spring coming up where we live on the southeast. Um it's very hit or miss. The weather's bipolar. Um and typically mid-February is when it really kicks off, when the phone starts ringing, um, and when the leads start popping, you start getting your internet forms and quote requests, and everybody's starting to think about these things specifically because number one, they filed their taxes and they're getting that tax return back. So they're trying to catch up on their house, do the things they need to do to be ready for spring. And two, it's just it's just spring, it's spring cleaning. I mean, that's that's just a big thing around here. So um what we're doing to stay on top of mind for our customers, our current customers, our past customers, and potential customers. So there's three different things, four different things. There's so many ideas that you can do. So, number one, we'll we can talk about um what are we doing to get our past customers, our recent customers, the customers that we have used over the years. What are we doing to maintain those? We call those farming customers. Um, so Matt, I'll let Matt speak a little bit on what we do to farm customers and how we do to engage with them and stay on top of mind with them because he does a good job with that.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Yeah, so we stress over time uh the importance of maintaining your customer list. So, what does that mean? That means every time somebody reaches out to you, every time, every time you get a lead, make sure to put that in your CRM. So we use House Call Pro, and that's uh gonna manage all of our contacts. So over the years, say uh at this point in business, we're probably doing around 800 to 1,000 jobs a year. And that's a lot of customers we have. So every couple years, we probably will have a repeat. And I think I don't know about you, but Clay, like we we're probably averaging like 18 months, two years per repeat. We get a lot of people that are seasonal. Those are the spring customers, like we're talking about here. It's it's getting into spring. They're like, every every May, I want you to put me down. Once the pollen clears, I want you to put put me down on the schedule. So it's important that you keep a list of all these people, not just for your sake, but for their sake, because a lot of times they don't remember who cleaned their house two years ago. But if you have an email address or if you have a phone number for them, just sending a gentle reminder like, hey, get lock in your preseason prices now. Uh I I just sent out an email to some of my contacts. I had like 2,500 people on the list and uh pretty much warming up the list. So it's uh previous residential customers uh pretty much are saying, hey, if you book between now and March 1st, you lock in your preseason pricing. And what we've been doing is is essentially saying after March 1st, our pricing is going to go up this year. So in order to lock in the pricing that you've had last year, uh schedule now before March 1st. And I've noticed it's been weird weather-wise here in South Carolina. We've had some snow, we've had ice, it's been cold, it's been windy. So the the normal spring seems to have slowed down a little bit as far as it isn't like taking off as it normally has. Um, so like this has helped engage the list, bring people in earlier than they would normally think. And uh just sending out a simple email like that. I think I generated like 25 leads uh of previous customers who are like, yeah, put me back on the books, whether it be in March, April, or or February. It's a way to engage your current customers, get motion, get get movement back on your in your business, on your list, get people excited again. That way you're you're getting ahead of everybody for the spring rush.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Absolutely. So the biggest thing is with the weather changing and it not being, I don't want to say basically I'm gonna say not normal. So in years past, we've seemed like we have warmed up a little quicker. We had a couple of cold weeks, but we were still able to wash this year. For instance, we haven't been able to wash regularly. Um, and it's been here and there, it's been cold pretty much all winter. So it's probably been one of the roughest winters that I've had since I've been in business. Um, so naturally people are not thinking about pressure washing. You go outside, you're spending some time outside, you're doing some yard work or whatever, you're like, oh, look at my house. It's dirty. I need to make sure I call my pressure washing guy. But where we are this year, it's been a little colder, so nobody's really thinking about that. So that's when the emails come into play. That's when, you know, the some people do text blast or whatever, but make sure you get a good CRM. Look into that if you haven't. I know I've said it a few times. The CRM um allows you to log all your customers, put all their information in. If you want to do text blast, you can do text blast. I personally don't do them. I don't think Matt does them either, but the emails seem to work the best. Um, you're able to do all those through a third-party vendor in there, and you can create templates, make them pretty. Matt's better and creative than I am, but they still work. Whatever you can do to stay atop of mind with that customer and do a quarterly newsletter. I think Matt does that. I'm just kind of slack on that, but a quarterly newsletter, throwing out some information, things that's changing with your business, or even just anything. Hey, just thinking about you.

Preseason Pricing And Email Warmups

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Exactly right. Because people aren't constantly thinking about you or your business. So don't think that, oh, they're always looking at my Facebook posting, or they're always looking at my Google account, or they're always aware. Like, we got people have a lot of things going on in their life. So it's up to you as a business owner and a salesperson to be top of mind. You don't want to harass people, you don't want to bug them because then they can kind of turn tune you out and you're like, okay, this guy's spamming me. I don't want to be a part of it. But like a quarterly drip, a newsletter, say this like a win a spring kickoff, say like a mid middle of the year update, say a fall kickoff, say an end of the year thanks, like stuff like that. That's that's like a quarterly cadence, is is helpful just to keep keep your cur your current customer list up to date and kind of aware of of what's going on. And to uh to Clay's point of like creativity, you don't necessarily have to be too creative. Uh, we use MailChimp. So we can export all of our customer contact information and emails from House Call Pro directly into MailChimp. And when we do so, uh, we can pick templates and it's all pretty, and they have like follow-up sequences as well. I noticed I'll send a uh an email, I just sent one this past week, pretty much like a uh a reminder, give value, say hey, like lock in your preseason rates, and um like just to be top of mind to people. And a lot of people they they they're not in, they're like, hey, thanks for reminding me. I like I just want to get this handled now before the busyness of the spring. So you're you're not doing this to like hard sell people. Most people are gonna either unsubscribe or they're going to uh be like, ignore it. And uh what you can do in in MailChimp is set up like a reminder after, say, two weeks. So if somebody didn't open the email after one week or two weeks, it'll send like a follow-up sequence to that too. And I've noticed that just following the natural recommendations in MailChimp can help uh like with conversion and all that stuff. Again, I'm not I'm not condoning like super text blasting people because there's a lot of weird opt-ins you have to do. It's kind of frowned upon just to text blast people without consent. Um, but yeah, it's it's really important to stay top of mind to your customers and and and let them know, hey, look, springs right around the corner. We book up, everybody wants to have their houses pressure washed, the price is going up in a month or two. So if you want to lock in your pricing now, if you want to get on the schedule, give it um, and then um a simple email such as that. And I I say I probably have like 20-something customers out of my like list of 2,500 emails I just sent out that uh just came back and followed up with, hey, yeah, sure, put me back on the books. The last invoice is cool with me.

SPEAKER_01 9:05

Absolutely. It's it's definitely a good uh good tool to have, something that definitely helps, especially if you're looking for work, trying to get that momentum going. Uh highly recommend it. Another thing is naturally, the longer you're in business, you'll also have people that just naturally call. We call those organic leads. So, what are we doing about organic? So basically, organic is anything that comes without, I guess, how would you say it, Matt, not having to pay for marketing, advertising, something that just naturally comes to you through uh relationships that you've built, um, anything that you've put on the internet, anything from Facebook, uh, et cetera. So uh the biggest thing that I've been working on this year, this offseason is my SEO. Um, not sis, not necessarily the SEO game. I mean, I guess you could call it that, but I've been posting everything that I can on the internet. So the more data you have on the internet, the more data that the internet has to scrape for you. And the thing with the AI that you have coming in is that's all AI is doing. I don't know how often they do it. Matt may know the statistic on that, but they're scraping that data every time somebody searches. So I actually just had a customer yesterday tell me that they found me on AI. That's the first time I ever heard of that. First customer I'll probably have ever gotten off of that. So that tells me that everything that I'm posting on the internet is working.

Weather Slumps And List Re-Engagement

SPEAKER_00 10:26

100%. And especially like to Klay's point, AI is really shifting the algorithms. Everything is pushing to AI. So instead of saying pressure washing near me and pull in like 10 companies, Google's reaching out. I don't know if you guys have maybe gotten some spam calls from Google, but Google's literally trying to reach out with AI to get quotes to try to figure out your pricing. So everything is getting more AI driven. The objective is for like the consumer to have like everything they need on hand without without input. So what you can do to make yourself easier for Google to position you as the re resource and the go-to for those customers makes the experience better for Google and makes you a better position company for your customers. So it doesn't matter what you're doing as much as how you're positioning yourself online. Yeah, I'm not saying pretend like you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing because there's also a lot of checks and balances that go into that. But you do big commercial properties, make sure to post about that. Tag those companies in there, post about how big of a scope you can do because Google is searching and scraping the internet and figuring out okay, who's a company? If if a property management company is needing this service, the scope required is going to be insurance, it's gonna be general liability, it's gonna be workmen's comp. It's gonna be how many trucks do they have? Are they reclaiming? Do they know what they're doing? Like it's a different field than a consumer. A consumer just wants the good price and they want how soon you can do it. There's more that goes into play with uh commercial work or even larger scale pressure washing jobs for like communities or HOAs, where Google's now noticing that and it's gonna start positioning your company certain ways. I've noticed just searching Google Gemini or Google AI, you could say, like, how, like, who should I use to pressure wash my business, or who should I use to pressure wash my house? And you'll get a different answer in the same area. So Google is differentiating the companies that are best aligned for whether you're a commercial pressure washer, whether you're a residential pressure washer, whether you're a window cleaner. So it's more important now than ever to, like Clay says, get ahead of your AI search, get ahead of your posting. They scrape Instagram, Facebook, post about stuff, and then also use Google. So post on Google updates and all that stuff. You want to be active on the organic side of things, as Clay was saying, as well as like farming your list. So if you don't have any money to spend, those are a couple things you can do to really get yourself ahead uh of free advertising, essentially.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Yeah, and uh I was riding down the road today and I've seen a bunch of uh companies I never heard of, uh just different companies, it doesn't matter. But they were yard signs. A lot of people think that the yard signs work. I think that they could, but in today's uh today's time, the problem is back in the day, 10, 15 years ago, when the yard sales yard signs became popular, maybe even 20, 25 years ago, whenever people started saying, hey, I'm gonna start putting a sign out at the floorway and hoping somebody calls me, right? The biggest thing now is you have so much stuff on the internet, people are pretty much, I know me as a consumer, I'm ignoring those signs. I'm going straight to the internet. Uh, the other biggest thing is if you're putting those signs up, you need to make sure that you have a reputation online because the first thing I'm gonna do if I see a sign that I like at the four-way, I'm gonna look up your company online. And if I can't find you online and you're non-existent, then I'm not gonna hire you. So before you go that route, um just think about those things. Make sure that you're somewhat relevant on the internet. Um, you're good and professional, and you can back up your business. You have a brand, you show your good work. Um, basically just building trust with that customer, build confidence when trying to get hired.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

And to Clay's point, if I see an advertisement or I see a billboard or if I see something I like, the first thing I'm gonna do is go to Google to check the references of it. How many reviews do you have? So if you have 50 reviews on Google, even if you pull on top, you're probably gonna get searched against people who have like four or five hundred reviews. So it's like if Clay and I have been established longer and we have like five or six hundred Google reviews, somebody might scroll by that first person on Google that has 15 reviews. And then they say, Okay, well, I'll spend a little bit more time researching this because there's not a lot of trust there if there's only such a limited amount of reviews. And whereas Clay and I say if we pulled at the top, we might be like, Oh, this guy's got all these reviews, they're trustworthy. I want to go with them. So you're wanting to do everything you possibly can to create that um like the word of mouth is more so like how you appear online, how you appear on Google, all this stuff. And like Siri, uh the phones, uh Amazon, like everything, everything's tied together nowadays. So like people are gonna question you if you don't pull positively or if you don't pool online. That's a huge red flag. You could be on you could have yard signs everywhere, but nobody knows who you are if they can't uh essentially find you online and prove to you online. And like we talk about this a lot. There's guys that go like door knocking and all this stuff. It's again one thing, you can you can like hustle and put revenue on the books, but off oftentimes you do the math on like okay, go door knocking all day long, and it's hard to make money with that business model. So, like, yeah, if you're brands banking new, you're just trying to get into a community, it's the race to the bottom. Go door knock, go do yard science. But if you want to be a legitimate business here for like five years plus, and it's gonna it's gonna require you to really work on your internet footprint.

Organic Leads And SEO Fundamentals

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Yeah, I mean, I fully believe that if if you want longevity in this business, you definitely have to get the online deal going because that's what we're moving forward to. We're moving forward to AI, we're moving forward to the internet, anything. Everybody, I mean, everybody walking around, they have a phone in their hand. I mean, my 80-year-old grandmother has a phone in her hand every time I see her. So everybody's got a phone in their hand, no matter what generation. Um, how can I get in front? Yeah, how can I stay in front of their face? You know, everybody's got one in their hand. Every time they're um looking to see what time it is, they may see C3 watch pros. They see may see Matt the Dryblade guy. So the biggest thing is stay top of mind. The the biggest thing that I see with the part-timers and the guys that are doing it for a hobby, yes, you could do that, right? You could do the boots on the ground marketing, but are you really building longevity? I can reach more people sitting in this chair on my phone, on the internet, than I can going out and knocking on doors, throwing clip flyers. So that's that's just the world we live in now. A lot of people, you know, your older generation like to meet people who want to do in-person estimates. It just doesn't work that way anymore, unfortunately. And then what I'm what I'm getting at with the longevity thing is you can reach more people from the internet, but what if all you're doing is knocking on doors for marketing because you don't want to invest in your business, you don't want to dump money back into your business, and the only thing you're doing is knocking doors. What happens when you stop knocking doors?

SPEAKER_00 17:31

Yep. And and and it's all about creating systems as well. So people talk about oh, system, systems, systems. If you're just knocking on somebody's door and you don't have like good branding, you don't have an online presence, you don't have a follow-up system, you don't capture emails, you don't capture this, they're not gonna remember who you are. They're gonna be like, Oh, yeah, somebody knocked on my door. It's like Clay and I say in the busy season, we will pressure wash people's houses and they send clip flyers and junk mail and door knock, and and that's getting somebody like that. You may say, Oh, yeah, sure. I noticed there's there's dirt on my house. I'm not in a buying position right now, I'm not ready to buy, but they're not gonna use you in that moment. But you just kind of told them that there's a problem they need to solve. So they're gonna go on Google. This is what happened to us tons of times last year. Like there'd be clip flyers in the driveway, and I'm like, Oh, I see. Like, did somebody stop by? They're like, Yeah, somebody stopped by, or they threw that in the driveway. I I just Google who I want to use. It's like it's trustworthy. If you're if you're throwing clip flyers nine times out of ten, they're all generic, they look the same. Everybody's copying and pasting each other, so there's no differentiate differentiation. So, like that again, that can work if you're hustling to make a thousand dollars, or if you're like, how to make your first ten thousand dollars. It's gonna be brute force. But what do you do when you're making a half a million dollar a year business? What do you do when you have systems in place? What do you do when you have to have stable cash flow? What do you do when you're like a true legitimate business? It's a completely different game and ball, um, it's a completely different game than oh, let me go out and hustle. And a lot of times people are stuck in the hustle mode or they're like, oh yeah, go go door knock. Okay, cool. Like reps are like you can get all the reps in the world, but like, what's your ROI on that? And it says not to kill the hustle vibe and and to kill like the young ambition, but it's like sometimes you need to use a little bit of brain as opposed to just straight brawn and and muscle. It's like be creative, but like if Clay and I can touch two, three hundred thousand people and saturate a market on on the internet space and and really move the needle a lot more than that. There's no way in time, like we couldn't knock on doors. And and nine times out of ten, people are are not gonna answer the door, and or they're probably not home. So you don't want to be on somebody's ring camera on Facebook where they're like, Who's this guy just going door to door? I don't want you to be knocking on my door. We're not selling roofs either. So it's not like, hey, I'm gonna make a$20,000 commission by knocking on somebody's door. Like this is a$300 housewash.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

Yeah, and then most of the time the new guys that are knocking on the doors are doing it for half of that. So you're really not making any money. But the biggest thing, like Matt said, 300, 300 to 400,000 people, if we can reach that off of one ad, that's pretty much average, right? How many houses can you knock on in a day? Like I don't even know. Uh I've never really door knocked, so I can't tell you how many doors I can knock in a day. Maybe what uh a world record would probably be three or four hundred houses if that yeah, if you're close together, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

But then how many people are opening the door?

AI Search Is Changing Local Services

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Right. Yeah, so you're you know, your percentage on that. When we're when we're sitting back in our chair and we're clicking, we're clicking a button and sending 2,500 emails. So you know exactly it's all about like Matt said, starting in the beginning, putting the system in place, log everybody that you speak to, as long as they're willing to give you information and they like you and they trust you, and you've uh pretty much told them your story. You know, everything that we've done is a story, and uh people buy on that. They've seen my kids grow. My kids have C3 Wash Pros, that's what my my business name is. So Clay, Connor, and Colin. So everybody loves, they always ask what's C3 stand for? You sell them on your story um as you're loading up, and then you're pretty much locked in with them for a lifetime.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Exactly right. And it's one of those things too, like AI sees all this stuff and they love to read about the story. So people are it's like, tell me more about C3 Wash Bros. And it will tell you this is what it's about, this is when he's on TV, this is his origin story. It like it tells you everything. So AI is becoming the salesperson for you. It's your job to load the internet and position your company so AI knows exactly what to say about you because you're competing against a hundred other people in your area that are trying to do the same thing, whether it be door knocking, generic stuff, or following like the quote unquote YouTube guru advice. And that's one thing if you want to be, hey, how can I make$10,000 in the summer as a college kid? It's another thing when you say it's how can I dominate a market that's super saturated and pressure washers. And there's definitely a shift because like the Google is is more expensive year over year. Pay-per-click's more expensive. LSA is more expensive. What are you doing to get on the more organic side of these platforms where AI starts suggesting you? Map pack still somewhat relevant. Like you got to do what you you got to do to position yourself as well as farm your current base. Like you can say, hey, I want to have two trucks. I'm going to farm my list, and then I'm going to really position myself organically. And you can say, I'm going to run a$300,000, four to five hundred thousand dollar business doing that really lean and mean. I'm not going to be stressed out because I got a huge customer list. And that's completely fine. You can ride that out, maintain it, and just whatever you want to do. If you don't capture those customers, if you don't capture the um information in your system and follow up with them, you're reliant upon every year to find new people. And if you don't actively, like I was sending out emails, Clay sends out emails, somebody else is going to snatch those customers. So you got to protect your list.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Absolutely. And then I mean Matt said it earlier. If if I've been to houses many a times and they not remember who did it last year, I will ask, be like, okay, did we watch your house last year? Are you under a different name? They'll be like, no, I don't remember who I used last year. So that's another biggest thing. Grabbing your list, logging your customers, and then being able to maintain those customers and keep them as the biggest thing. Now, I'm not saying everybody's going to be loyal because there's been many times Matt sent me pictures of houses and I'm like, wait a minute, I've been there before. So they're not always going to be loyal. They're sometimes, but the biggest thing is you want to make sure that you're able to sell them on your story. Do something to make them remember you. I mean, even if it's something stupid. Or what I do is the first thing I do when I walk up to a customer is I shake their hand and I give them a business card. So the reason I do that is that business card is going to be floating around in one of their junk drawers one day when they're cleaning their house. So when they're in the mood cleaning their house, they're already in the mood to get their house clean on the outside. So that's just one of my small little sales tech techniques that I think about. And uh I've used it for 10 years.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

Clay's good with some of these little nuanced sales things. He'll say he'll tell me stuff during the day, and I'm like, oh, that's actually pretty good. I'm sure that actually helps. So like we talk about like, hey, internet, digital, like don't have human contact, but like at the end of the day, people crave that human-to-human contact. So they see you, they buy from you, they you sell them online, but it's really important that you make that first impression count. And like with Clay, like meeting somebody, shaking their hand, like handing them a card. That is like, okay, you have the they found you on the internet, they found you with the new age, the the relevant ways of doing it, but like you're you're separating yourself from like, hey, I'm a proficient, whatever millennial or whatever generation you are, and I'm able to connect with these people like at their old time, like, oh, he's he shakes a hand and he looks me in the eyes. That's like value add. So if you're able to tie both of those together, that's a huge, huge jump than saying, like, oh, this guy's really good on the internet, but he has no social skills. So do things that people remember you, and like Clay says, be memorable because there's so many times where I'll do a house, he'll do a house, I can't make it in time. Clay gets the job. Like, customer switches out over like we've been competing with each other for like what four or five years now. And there's times where we probably washed each other's houses like two or three times. And it's not anything against him or I, it's just like, hey, he was booked out, I was booked out. Customer was just like, hey, I want to try this guy this year, I want to try you the next year. Like, you guys are all good.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

Yeah, it's uh just a business transaction. It we keep our personal personal and our business business. So uh there's no reason to be pissed off at the next guy because you think they stole your customer. If they really did, there's a reason to be pissed off. But if that customer picked up the phone and called somebody else over you, it's really your own fault. And usually when that happens, I'm like, okay, where did I go wrong here? What could I have done differently? Did I not hand them a business card on that job? Did I not send them that email? Did they not get their follow-up email? Um, so there's so many, the the smallest things that I've talked about in this podcast uh are really big big game changers. So make sure you apply some of the stuff, some of the things that I've said because they definitely were because the even the card thing, okay, they found me on the internet, like Matt says. Okay, you show up to the door, you look them in the eye, you shake their hand, and you give them a business card. So now they have not only have everything that they need on their phone through your system and everything that it's gonna send them. If something happens to that cell phone, then then what? You know, if they don't remember the name of your company because there's a hundred other ones out there, then what? You know, so then they remember, oh, he gave me a business card. Let me dig through my drawer and find it, right? So um just a couple of small things that uh they're just little game changers.

Reviews, Reputation, And Trust Signals

SPEAKER_00 26:47

One thing too, I'll add to that is um we use House Call Pro. So there's like a postcard function, and I've created a rule for like seven days after a job, pretty much send like a thank you letter via postcard to to the house. And it's like a picture of like me and my son, and it's just like we appreciate the opportunity to like clean your home, trust us with your business. We hope you're happy and like have like a signature on it, but it's like all digitized, and on the back it pretty much says like uh like we like we serve customers like you off of word of mouth, so like referrals are great. Like if you hadn't left us a Google review and you want to like pretty much encouraging encouraging them, like, hey, leave us a Google review because our automated system send them review links, but also like uh word of mouth in your neighborhoods always appreciated. People like that, it's a different touch. It's like, okay, cool. That was a fun transaction. I closed my internet tab. I'm no longer pulling up C3WatchPros or mount the driveway guy on the internet. But if it shows up at their house seven days later, is like Clay said, you're going through your junk drawer, you're finding the physical card, you're hitting them on another touch point. Not everybody lives in the internet, so yeah, like there's customers where like they get the postcards, and that's something simple. It's a little follow-up I have on all my all my previous customers, and I also have it set up where a year after the appointment, they get a postcard as well. So not only do they get like a follow-up email, they'll get they'll get like a postcard in the mail as well. And it's just a touch point. You're not sending them 10 text messages back to back to back where it's spam, you're sending them an email, you're sending them a postcard. You may occasionally text them if it's a special customer and you're like, hey, we normally pressure wash your house. How you doing? So be creative and diversify.

SPEAKER_01 28:29

And the coolest part about the postcard is they're a little bigger, so they're actually fridge material. So if you make it cute with your kid, um, the older ladies, the older generation, they're gonna love that. They're probably gonna put you on their fridge and you'll never you'll always be top of mind. So you never know.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

And and that's that's the thing too. Like you almost want to put different stuff out there depending on your audience. If you're going to like say you're in a fancy magazine, do like a family shot, it's it's a different image. But if you're on social media and you're posting reels, make it silly. I've done some stuff where I've trying to copy these like AI, um, trendy like landscaping slash pressure washing, where it's just like um ride the trends. It's kind of funny. Like with AI, you can do a lot of cool stuff. And and and the old lady's probably not gonna get it. So like the postcard's still important, but like the 35-year-old guy is gonna be like, that's funny. I want you to pressure wash my house. So you gotta understand like what what uh what sources you're on to target your marketing for.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Yeah, I mean, you've had Jerry Springer on your Facebook, so um, that's cool. I mean, even with me, I mean, I even yeah, right. I even giggled about my uh cardboard sign that I did the other day. You know, just cool little different things people would laugh about, and you never know. I did I made a uh a post if anybody follows me on Facebook on here um of holding up a sign that says your house is dirty, let me watch it, or something like that. And you know, if you need your house washed in a couple weeks, they're gonna be like, oh, it was the guy that was holding the sign the other day, and then they'll remember you from that, right? Just stupid stuff. Um, like we've said the whole podcast, make sure you get your stuff on the internet, be consistent with it. It's only gonna pay off in the long run. It's kind of like investing in the stocks, kind of like putting pennies in your piggy bank. It's eventually gonna pay off.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

Exactly right. You may not see it instantly, but you're building momentum and you're building credibility that's gonna outlast whatever active marketing you have to do. And for reference, even this podcast, Clay and I do together, like we're doing it and it's building our internet. Um, it's building how we rank online, it's building uh, it's like you type in Matt, the driveway guy pressure washing, and it literally pulls the washrose podcast. So we're doing stuff and it's all creating an image of you on the internet. So, say, like we have a podcast together, that's a good thing. Say we're doing commercial work with people and they're like, oh man, I love podcasts. I need to check out your podcast. Like all the small things, like people see, wow, you go above and beyond in that. I want to hire you for this. So, like, whatever you think you do that separates you from other people and that you're passionate about, put that out there because it's gonna connect with somebody who's likewise in the same position, whether they're like that's what they do or they're interested in that. And and then it's gonna separate their decision and choosing you versus somebody stranger off the street. Because, like, remember, at the end of the day, people like to buy from people that they like. And I'll do I like cars, Clay likes cars, like I'll do racing and and like I'll connect with guys who do racing too. And it's like, I don't give a shit about my house, I just want to talk to you for 30 minutes about racing, and then it looks good. Here's a check.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

Absolutely. There's been many times that I've pulled up at a customer's house and wanted to keep talking to them, but I had to get to the next stop.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

So yeah, you see their car in the garage, you're like, I got this guy.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

Yeah, always find that common ground. That's been one of my biggest things. Make it personal, like I said earlier. Make sure that they remember you for some reason, no matter what it is. Even if you don't get along with that customer, make sure you find a reason for them to remember you.

Ditching Door Knocking For Scalable Systems

SPEAKER_00 31:55

People don't care about how perfect the pressure washing job was, they care about if they remembered you. Because if they don't remember you, that's way worse than like you you leaving a memory and like missing a spot. Because at the end of the day, they're like, wow, that guy was cool. Even though, like, I like I've had stories where people are like, Oh, we love using you, but just like don't fuck up our windows like you did last time. They didn't care about the windows as much as they cared about the hey, the guys were good, they showed up, accidents happen. So, like oftentimes we overanalyze the technical and not really focus in on what's important, and that's the relationship.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

Absolutely. Now I think this has been a pretty good episode, man. Um, appreciate everybody listening. Um, is it you got anything else to add?

SPEAKER_00 32:37

I'm good.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

Yeah, I appreciate everybody listening. Um, if you haven't yet, follow my personal page, Clay Smith, follow Matt Matthew Jackson, his personal page on Facebook as well. Keep up with us, keep up with the things that we're doing, the trends that we got going on with different social media platforms. Um, make sure you follow the Wash Bros podcast page. We have a Wash Bros group. It's called DWatchPros on Facebook. It's the Wash Bros group. Make sure you get in that group. Um, and then we have our businesses. If you want to check us out, check out our um reputation online, obviously on Google. My business is C3Watch LLC, and Matt is Matt the driveway guy. We're out of Greenville, South Carolina. We appreciate everybody listening. Um, and then Matt's gonna tell you about a couple of things and we'll be out of here.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

Yeah, so make sure to uh if you guys have seen our Facebook group with the Wash Bros group, um, we got we're currently like running a little bit of ad into it, so we're trying to grow as many people as possible, but it's gonna be a great resource. I know uh like we've touched almost 11,000 downloads on the podcast, so it's great to connect with you guys, but like let's bring this off, let's bring this online and connect on our Washbros group. So if you're on Facebook, check us out on the Washbros. What is it? The Washbros Podcast. I'm trying to think what the group is.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

It's the Washbros group.

SPEAKER_00 33:52

Yep. Yeah, the Washbros group. Yeah, so it'll be like Washbros, the Washbros Podcast. So that's gonna be if you're on Facebook, just search the Washbros podcast, join the group. We have a special group in there called the Washbros where it's gonna be like more individualized attention. I think we got like 130 members in that now. So we're trying to be up to date. Say you guys have questions, you want to reach out and talk to us, just go to that group, leave a question there, we'll answer it. And there's also a link in there for our school page. So we're gonna have like courses and stuff like that up on school. So if you guys want to reach out, connect with us, the best places to do that are on Facebook, and you can find links to everything on there. And we have a website too that's gonna be like the one stop where if you don't remember what Facebook group it is or the school page, you can go to um washburrospodcast.com and you'll find all the information needed there.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

So can you explain to everybody what the school platform does?

SPEAKER_00 34:47

Yeah, so if you think of Facebook, Facebook groups are a great place for like connecting and all that stuff, but school is more of an interactive community where you can post stuff, you can engage, you can post like a classroom or like a course. It's just it's better for like tracking uh and and learning and like performance. So say, hey, we we all are trying to like keep up with each other, we want to grow together. We're not just like on a Facebook group and it's just a bunch of random posts. It's gonna be curated content. You're able to like track performance and kind of grow together. It's like an accountability group. So we're doing that, and there's no cost to it. So you can join the school community for free, and then you just find the Washbros group in the school community. And it's it's a it's gonna be a place where, like, hey, you want to engage further, you're serious about pressure washing, you're not just using this as a hustle. Get into that school community, and we're posting all of our stuff in there, and it's a good way to track and ask questions. So think of it as Facebook without all the nonsense.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

And the and the link for that is is within our Facebook group.

SPEAKER_00 35:50

Correct. Yeah, you go to the Facebook group, or even if you go to the wash, if you go to washbrospodcast.com, you can find it. But if you guys are on Facebook, it's super easy. Just go to the Washbros Podcast on Facebook. And that's how you can connect. That's how you can find everything. Our website, too. We've got like kind of a Spotify store too. So um we got some hats. I still need to get Clay his hat. Uh got some cool merch. If anybody wants it, you can find it on on on the the Shopify store where everything is there. So we got a couple books too. So, like every all the resources you can find on our Facebook group or that website.

SPEAKER_01 36:27

Cool deal. Uh, did you want to show them our books real quick?

SPEAKER_00 36:31

Yeah, let me see.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

Yeah, while he's grabbing those books, we have uh a book for more of the beginner platform, and then we have a book for more of the seasoned guys.

Storytelling, Human Touch, And Retention

SPEAKER_00 36:41

Yeah, so essentially this is what I put out in 2023. It's like no pressure pressure washing. If you guys Google pressure washing book, it's like what appears at the top of Amazon for that category. Got 315 reviews, pretty much. I think it's been sold almost a thousand times since since it's happened. It's gonna be your like 22 steps. Say you just start pressure washing, you don't know where to start, you don't know anything about business, you just say, hey, I want to make some money. This is your like 22 steps into getting into pressure washing. Now, we just dropped this book recently. It's the Wash Bros Blueprint. That's gonna be the same concept, like 22 chapters, 22 steps, but it's gonna be more relevant to you if you have a business. And if you're struggling with like stresses in your business, you're growing, you're in that cycle, that treadmill where you're like, okay, busy seasons are too busy, I can't keep up, and then in the winter I'm I'm stressed out for work, I don't know what's going on. So it's about like systems, processes, as well as the story of Clay and I. So we got learning lessons from like well, we mess up. It's funny, there's a couple chapters in here that especially relevant to me. I have one about um when the fire department shows up, and that's relevant to me because I'm currently going through a policy insurance claim on this. So super relevant, personal stories, and you'll learn a lot, and it's fun little read. So you can find those on Amazon. And um, if you have Kindle Unlimited, they're free. If you want to buy the paperbacks, they're like nine bucks. So good resources, and they're also available on um audiobook. So if you have uh Audible, you can get that on Audible as well.

SPEAKER_01 38:19

We appreciate you guys listening. We'll see you in the next episode.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

But yeah, see you guys, and I hope to catch you guys on school.