S3:E8: If We Had To Start Over Today, Here’s Exactly What We’d Do

Spring flips demand from quiet to urgent, and that’s the perfect moment to build momentum that lasts all year. We share the exact blueprint we’d use to start a pressure washing business today—no fluff, no gear worship—so you can book jobs fast and grow with purpose.

We begin with a mindset reset: equipment doesn’t create revenue, customers do. From there, we walk through low-cost, high-impact marketing moves you can run this week—power base outreach, neighborhood Facebook groups, and scroll-stopping before-and-after photos framed the right way. You’ll hear how to craft a simple brand promise that people remember and reviews reinforce, plus why authenticity beats AI boilerplate when every feed is flooded with the same copy-and-paste posts.

Then we get tactical with local SEO and routing. We break down how to set up and optimize your Google Business Profile, earn reviews that name your service and city, and shift from broad targeting to zip code dominance. Tight routes, stronger topical authority, and a steady review cadence create compound wins: higher close rates, less windshield time, and more profitable days. We also cover when to pay specialists for a website or equipment build, how to train help before adding trucks, and why new services like roof cleaning or concrete sealing should come only after your core process runs smooth.

If you want a practical plan that favors action over theory—bookings, reviews, and repeat work—you’ll find it here. Stick close to your neighborhood, speak in your own voice, and become the name people recommend when someone asks, “Who cleans houses around here?” Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s starting out, and leave a review with the zip code you want to own next.

Transcript

Welcome And Season Setup

SPEAKER_01 0:32

What's up, guys? It's Matt Jackson and Clay Smith, and we are the Watch Bros. Thanks for tuning in. This is going to be airing on Sunday, March 8th, and this will be season three, episode eight. So uh we figured this is kind of the beginning part of the busy season. We're all ramping up. Uh, and what better topic than to discuss uh with you guys uh than how can if if we were just starting out this year, like everything we've learned over the last five to seven years doing this professionally full time, like if we had to start over today from scratch and you we're in your you guys' shoes where we're we're just starting out, we're just finding the wash bros, like we're what would we want to tell ourselves at that point? So I figured like this episode with everything we've learned, everything we know, and everything we use today, we can compile that into one topic, and that's gonna be help you new guys pretty much start the right way and save a lot of time. So you want to kick this thing off?

Spring Demand And Healthy Pipelines

Branding And Being Top Of Mind

Low-Cost Marketing Playbook

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Absolutely, appreciate everybody for listening. Um, all the followers, the loyal guys out there that listen to every episode. We see all your feedback, we appreciate you following, we appreciate your comment and we see your um messages and stuff, and uh it's fun interacting with all of you and kind of living in the past and thinking about how it was when I first started and where I'm at today. So it's very cool to be able to actually you can go back to our first episode and come along with us on our journey. If you're new here, this is the first episode you've logged into. Go back and listen. It's pretty cool to see our journey uh from the first episode to where we are now. I mean, I had one truck, an unmarked vehicle, and I was kind of just an operator guy. Now we have two trucks um and we run them full time. So pretty cool. Uh spring's kicking off. This is the busiest time of the year, the best time of the year, my favorite part of the year, because I've been sitting on my tail for the most of the winter, and it's just it goes from zero to a hundred very quickly. If you are um building a healthy business, you know, if you get your business to the point where it's very healthy, you have all your customers, um, you're able to farm those customers. This time of year is awesome because you basically just go from zero to a hundred. Once that warm spell kicks in, um, the weather's pretty, uh, you start seeing the flowers blooming, just that spring feeling. Anyone that's outside looking at their houses out in the yard, uh rotten by their house pulling into their yard, they can see that the winter has brought into that all that nasty gram and all the algae and the mold and stuff. And it's just it's just a natural thing. The phone just starts ringing. You know, if you've built a very healthy business, you build a good brand, everybody knows who you are, your phone's gonna ring. And if you're new, you need to understand how important marketing is as far as getting your name out there. You want to be top of mind when somebody thinks of pressure washing. And if somebody's having a conversation with somebody say, Oh, I need to get my house pressure washed, they're gonna be like, Hey, call Clay, call Matt. These guys, we see them all over the internet, we see them on TV, we see them on Google, and my friend used them, or my mom used them. It's just one of those things. How can you get inside of everybody's head? And Matt's the more creative than I am with the marketing. We'll let him talk about the marketing a little bit and kind of what you can do now. You know, it may be a little late right now, but if you consistently do that, you will be able to tell a big difference in six months on about what Matt's about to tell you as far as marketing goes.

Power Base Outreach That Works

SPEAKER_01 4:01

Yeah, so in all honesty, this is the time of year where even if you don't pressure wash, you can get jobs pressure washing. Everybody jokes about like the handyman, the uh the landscape guys. Like, if you're gonna be at somebody's home or if you're friends with somebody and you're somewhat handy, they're gonna be like, Hey, can you pressure wash my house? Can you do that? So there's money on the table. And I think in the last five years plus, since this COVID boom, since all this pressure washing guru boom has happened, people are just aware of what pressure washing is. I remember when I started, this was back in 2017, 2018, uh, doing this part-time. It was kind of like a niche thing. I mean, it was more blue-collar, it was more like pressure washing, like, man, why are you doing that? But nowadays it's cool. Uh, the internet has showed people um ways of making money. We live in this gig economy where like most people have to have a second job, stuff like that. So, like, it has become acceptable and it's kind of become a thing where people um like appreciate and take pride in it. And with social media, it's very satisfying. So it's important that you take advantage of the momentum we have in the industry and not complain about oh, everybody's brushwashed and there's so much competition. Figure out how to carve a piece out of that attention out and then put your spin on it. So, like Clay says, with marketing and branding, uh him and I both do very similar things, and we're both successful because we do that. Um people are always always gonna be thinking about getting their homes cleaned, the businesses cleaned, uh, stuff like that. You have Facebook groups that are crazy, everybody is posting in them nowadays. Um you got Google pages, Google My Business, you got um uh Nextdoor, you got all these social media platforms. You got TikTok, Instagram, like there's so many ways of connecting with people. So, like if you're just starting out, I would figure out how to connect in one area and how to be really good at one area. If you don't have a lot of money, you can do the neighborhood group thing on Facebook. Clay's got things where you has groups where he talks to guys and they all kind of like vouch for each other, which is like a BNI group, essentially. So there's a a lot of a lot of ways that where if you don't have any money, you can kind of um grow your business, get the word of mouth, get into a referral network and and go off of that way. Number one thing I would tell you is just to hit your power base. So your power base is gonna be your friends, your family, uh, your coworkers, etc. So everybody that you went to school with, everybody that your friends are f on Facebook, everybody in your email contacts, everybody in your phone list, send them a message and be like, hey, by the way, like I'm pressure washing nowadays, like if there's anything I can do to help out, or if you want to help me grow my business, like that'd be much appreciated. But a lot of times the people would love to support you. So there's uh quick and easy ways of getting momentum, getting jobs off the books from that. Every time you do a job, take pictures of what you're doing, use videos, people love that, engage and then spread spread the awareness on social media. Okay. And to Clay's point, all it takes is like one or two viral moments. Or that doesn't even have to be like celebrity viral status, it just means to be like, hey, I got a thousand views on this. And that's a thousand people, that's all what you do. So just get out there, put your foot forward, take advantage of all the opportunities we have at hand that in 2017 we were all kind of shooting blind and we didn't know what to do. So that is kind of what I was suggested to kick off, to get your mindset in the right place, don't feel bad that everybody's doing this, say, hey, there's a great market, figure out how you can carve out a piece of the pie and work on creating your own unique approach.

Action Over Information Overload

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Yeah, when it comes to social media, right, none of us have really any money. I think I have five grand saved up. A lot of us have less than that. Um, if you don't have any much money set up um for the business, if this is something you're going straight full speed towards, the biggest thing that I could tell you that helped with me was, like Matt said, the Facebook groups, the neighborhood groups. So basically, if you're unaware of these, you go on Facebook, you search for these groups in the city and the town that you're in. So, like Greenville, South Carolina, all about Greenville is the topic, is the group name. And there's like 40,000 people in there. So that's everybody mostly that lives in Greenville, owns a home, uh, resides in Greenville, lives there, or they work in Greenville. And you what you do is you create you a nice little ad. And once you create that ad, you put a nice before and after picture, or you can take a picture of yourself in front of your equipment and say, Hey, my name is so-and-so, and this is what I do, and we'd love to earn your business. And what that allows is you're getting you're creating that brand awareness. And if you do a different post like that every other week or every week, and you stay on top of these people's minds, they're gonna message you, they're gonna call you, they're gonna um at least you're gonna have an opportunity to earn their business. And the reason I know this is that's because of how I built my business until I was able to spend the majority of my money on marketing to keep on staying afloat with the revenue.

Define Your Niche And Promise

Authenticity Beats AI Slop

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Exactly right. Again, we live in the information era, so like the the problem you you face nowadays that we didn't face back in the day was like the resources available. At hand, I had a couple forums that you you maybe could figure out like YouTube videos of pressure washing, but you had to search and dig deep for it. Nowadays, you guys have Chat GPT, which is amazing. You can create AI. Um AI can write a business plan for you. But however, I'll say one of the biggest issues we're gonna start running into is at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you know, it matters what you do. So if you're not doing and implementing what's important, then um it's worthless to have all this information, it's worth worthless to have all this data and um and know everything about like whatever chemical draws there are or or what machines you need, like you want to start from scratch. It's almost beneficial to not pour a lot of money into this in the beginning because that's a lot of distraction. That's a lot of complexity. You don't need your number one focus, like Clay says, should be your marketing, it should be connecting in the community, should be making relationships with people, and then it should be like focusing on and dialing in like how you can be the best at at whatever piece of that, like we were saying, that pressure washing pie out there that you can be. Like for me, it was the pressure washing. Um I wasn't going into roofs, I wasn't doing window cleaning, I wasn't chasing commercial work. I was saying how can I be like the friendly neighbor down the street and how can I deliver like excellent customer service and always over-deliver every time. And that was the brand behind the driveway guy that I made, and that's still the motto, and that's still how we run our business today. Like that's what we're known for. If you Google or AI nowadays, what people are known for, it's like, hey, AI pulls out like we have a friendly focus, uh, we have a customer-centric, like friendly approach. That's what the brand is, and it's been put out there so many times, and then with reviews, it's it's congruent with what we originally started. So that would almost be like our mission statement. So instead of jumping into things trying to copy everybody, like get some introspection, figure out okay, like what are my strengths, what are my personal what is my personality, like what type of customer do I want to work for? What what is my market value? That's the big thing. Everybody thinks they're like the big bad. I can do everything, I can chase jobs of like what Klay and I are doing. I'm sure you can, but like know the strengths and weaknesses. Klay's got uh multiple trucks, he's got trained guys, he's got himself. Like there's a huge skill gap there. So instead of trying to compete with us, figure out how you can compete with the people who are either just starting out or or you can tap into like we were saying, like that power base. Tap into your friends and family. Go you may go door to door. That may be beneficial for you guys if you're literally just starting out. But connect with your neighbors, like don't just randomly door to door, like go through your neighborhood where people already know you, they already trust you, and they already like you. That is how you can really grow this ahead. Don't just copy paste generic stuff and then just blast the town and spam people. Like, you really want to dial everything in with a personal approach and take all the information you have. Like in and I was just saying, like, with AI and Chat GPT, it's super cool. It it can pull you from like not knowing anything to being pretty proficient in something. But the problem is if you don't have the focus and the controls to like implement action and do stuff, you're just it's almost like mental masturbation where you're not really getting ahead, you just feel like you're doing stuff. And that's that's the trap I think we're gonna run down to with all this information with AI and like, oh, look at my business plans, and then look at all these social media posts where everything's AI written, it's just slop. So, like, come back to that humanity, come back to like what makes you unique and really take that and and like hit your market hard with that.

Social Proof And Better Before-Afters

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Another big thing that I noticed with the social media is, and I had trouble with this in the beginning. I get back and I look at my pictures on my social media, and if you're not taking these pictures in the same frame, in the same the before and after pictures, if they look like you're taking them at different points of view. So if you take your before picture at the front of the house, and then you kind of go back like you're trying to take a picture of a side of the house and you're taking it from the front of the house, and then when you do your after picture, if you're taking it from the back of the house, trying to get that same side of the house, it's not as appealing as it should be if you were to stand in the same spot every time. And I mean, that's something that I've learned, and that's something I've this is it's just the smallest things that you can ever imagine that make the biggest difference. And that's what I've learned over the last six years. I mean, this the small things matter. You gotta look. Um, you don't want to be post, you don't want to keep you don't want people to become post blind, like the AI stuff that Matt was talking about. If I type in to AI that I need a post for social media from Facebook for my pressure washing business, and Matt goes and types the same thing in, we're both gonna get the same post, right? So we're starting to look the same using these social media posts, and that's what Matt's saying. You've got to you gotta learn how to stick out, you gotta make these videos like I just posted one when we watched a NASCAR driver's house, like right. So that makes me stick out. Who else out there can say they press to watch a NASCAR driver's house, right? So just different kinds of things that make you stick out and make people earn your trust. Um, you build that reputation, um, and you just constantly put that stuff on the internet and builds your data, and then Google can scrape from that. If you don't have a Google, I say this in almost every episode. If you don't have a Google page yet, you need to go ahead and do that as you're listening to me. That is the most crucial thing. That is where I make most of my money. And just from organic searches, I do run some ads on there, but just from organically, it has taken me almost five, five to six years to become relevant on Google organically. And when I say organically, I'm meaning for me to just be relevant because there's so many businesses in our area that it's taken me that long, six years of hard work of posting stuff on the internet to become you know in the game.

Own Google And Local Authority

Zip Code Strategy And Routing

Tools As Helpers, Not Shortcuts

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Exactly. And and then just and then the like the biggest thing is this is like you always have to nurture what you're doing. You can't just say, Oh, I'm like number one on Google, or I'm number one on this, I'm number one on that. You constantly have to continuously keep that maintenance. And I've noticed and to Clay's point, with like a uh with Google search, like Google is always changing their algorithms, and they're now uh looking to like view your total brand across all platforms as important. Like your reviews on Google, they're looking at your location on Google, they're looking at your uh services, make sure that you're completely filled in. You don't want to say, like, I do pressure washing, I do painting, I do landscaping, I do this. That's gonna kill your score. Like, we want to have topical authority to Google. Google wants to know that you are the source for the customer's question. So if they say I need a pressure washer in Greenville to clean my vinyl siding house, Clay's location is in Greenville, he's got a lot of reviews commenting that he did a great job pressure washing vinyl siding in Greenville and everything on his website's lined up correctly that shows that he's the pressure washing guy, but he's gonna rank way more, way above anybody out there who's just like trying to like fake stuff. Like the more AI is out there, like the more it's important for you to be real, be authentic, and be relevant. We used to be able to just say like pressure washing in Greenville, pressure washing in South Carolina, whatever. Rank like broadly for stuff. But with with what's going on nowadays, with all the data we have and all the competition we have, we have to say, hey, how can I rank in like almost zip codes? Like, hey, how can I rank in 29605? How can I rank in 29615? How can I rank in 29607 and be the authority in these certain zip codes? Because it's so much more important now to be like hyper competitive at a low level and in a neighborhood and like have a strategic map in those areas where you can dominate than it is to try to spread it all thin and you're pretty much just gonna be like diluted with all the noise out there. Okay. That's a shift that we're making this year. That in the past I'd just set like a 30 mile radius around my ads and just throw a hundred something bucks a day into my ads. But the more I've been doing research into it, the more I'm noticing like that's that ad spend is really thin. But if I can spend like a hundred bucks in like a core zip code area based upon like where most of my customers are uh previously, where I rank pretty well already, you can really like crank up the heat and get a better return on investment on your marketing. And you also got to think about your trucks and your routes. If we're driving around town all day long, that's taking time away from us pressure washing. And when you have employees like Clay and I do, it's non-productive uh performance. So like we're having to pay our employees, which is an expense, to drive around town, to unreal your hoses, to set everything up and back and forth. And when you get to the business of like time is everything because you have a limited window of daylight to make as much money as you can, like those things really matter. Okay. So instead of trying to be the biggest and the best, figure out how you can be the best in your neighborhood, in your zip code, in your like school district. What what are the areas where you are different than everybody else? Like are you great into your local community? Are you big into sports? Do you work for the hospital? Like where's your where's your um power base? Where's your friends? Where's your community? Like, are you big in the in the corporation you work at? Do you have a lot of friends there? Tap into all that stuff, get get some word of mouth, get some referrals, get some free work. That is a great way to start out, as opposed to just scatter braining it out because AI is awesome, but even me, like I can notice like you can go down these like AI rabbit holes and then it's they call it like hallucinating, where it just kind of comes up with randomness. And then you can feel productive, especially if you don't know what you need to know. And like you just say, Oh, look at what all I did today. I was like, Yeah, but at the end of the day, if you're not putting revenue on the books, if you're not building your brand in your your market, and if you're not like moving forward in your business, you're just wasting time. So it's it's all about focus focusing, and then it's all about like not trying to chase everything and don't chase a miracle. Because if somebody's trying to sell you an AI built website and they're saying it's the best thing since sliced bread, it's probably crap. So like use these tools you have, like AI, as tools, not as a shortcut and excuse to avoid the hard work.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Yeah, I tell everybody every day I went to YouTube University. I literally learned how to pressure wash on YouTube. So um anything that I ever struggle with or anything that I need to put together or any kind of system that I need to put in place, I YouTube it. I like that personal. I like that personal connection.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

You're good.

Business Over Gear Obsession

SPEAKER_00 19:40

I'm still good. Okay, I like the personal connection that I can get. Um just seeing somebody talk and teach me and show me, you know, I'm more of a hands-on learner. So that YouTube, um it it's it's been a game changer for me because anything I struggle with, I can look at it right. So uh the AI thing, it's good. If you need some quick answers, pretty quick. If you need to, you know, uh step by step on how to do certain things. I use that a lot too, as far as SEO and stuff like that. If anybody's listening, they don't know what SEO is, it's just search engine optimization. Um, Google is obviously a search engine. So when someone searches for pressure washing in your area, if you have good search engine optimization, then you're gonna rank very well. You're gonna be relevant in the space, yada, yada, yada. The biggest thing, and I'm gonna close on this. Um, the biggest thing that I messed up on when I was younger, uh, well, younger, I guess, but younger in the business world. In the pressure washing industry is all I cared about was my equipment. So when another pressure washer caught, I was, you know, bragging about what kind of equipment I have. Oh, I got this, I got that, I got this, I got that. And I wasn't necessarily really worried about the business expect. I was more concerned about what kind of equipment I could get. Oh man, I wish I could get one of those uh mini mondo surface cleaners one day. I wish I could get this, I wish I could get that. That is the last thing that you need to worry about. I don't even care about equipment anymore as long as it's working. The biggest thing that you need to worry about is the business exponent. So if you could really nail, you know, if you're not really business savvy and you're mechanically savvy, don't worry about that anymore. Don't worry about the equipment that you can get. Don't worry about, you know, whatever it may be that you're worried about on that side and trying to brag about the nicest, biggest trailer that you can put together. Worry about the customers because you're gonna outlast that guy that's worried about the equipment, more so the guy that's more business savvy like Matt and myself.

Delegate Specialists And Train Teams

Add Services Carefully And Sustainably

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Exactly. Because as you get business savvy, your your money increases, and then you can go to the place like C3 Skids, and then you can buy the fanciest stuff, and then you can pay a mechanic who knows what he's doing. Doing and somebody that actually is building the top quality stuff, and they tell you exactly what to do. And then as you keep going, you build your business even more, you train employees, and then they can run on that kind of equipment. So it's it the the focus needs to be how can I be the best business owner or business operator in the beginning? And then it's a customer-centric world. Everything is AI nowadays. Like you want to avoid the slop. Don't just jump onto stuff and be like, oh, this is going to replace me. I'm just going to use it. Because, like, I don't know if you guys noticed, but it seems like every comment nowadays is like, I guess everybody's writing all these long form posts on AI because they all start to sound the same. They have the same syntax, like the sentence structure looks the same. They've got the same verbiage almost. You'll notice certain words that people don't use in normal language, and then all of a sudden they're speaking at like a college plus level. And it's like, come on, guys. Like it's important to use use these tools at hand, but like there's only so many AI-generated images or AI generated infographics that you can post before you just start blending in with everybody else. And if you're jumping into trends like this and you're jumping into AI stuff, just it can dilute your brand. So at the end of the day, make sure you're still personal about it. Make sure you still carry your own like make sure what you do is important. Because like I was just looking at, I got a website refresh from 180 sites, and they're great. I could have gone online and got some free AI thing and played with it and done it, and it would look okay. But it's a nine-day difference, in my opinion, and in the eyes of a customer, to have somebody who's a professional and proficient at something build it. And and kind of to the point of what Clay's saying, like, as business owners, we need to focus on like our number one priority is like how do we serve the customer and how do we grow our business? And then from there, we delegate out everything else. So instead of trying to know how to be the web designer, instead of trying to be the mechanic, instead of trying to do this, focus on the key importance that separates you from everybody else. Like we're business owners. And sure, like there's 20 ways of washing something. Don't fight over the certain way that you wash because that's just your ego. Figure out how you can be like the best customer focused driven company in town, have great employees, have great reputation, and then go to a couple training classes if you if if there's a skill gap there. Like build enough money, build enough business where you can hire somebody to consult you. You can you can carve out some time once your business is going and saying, hey, I want to invest in figuring out a different um like uh a different uh let's say like add-on to my services. Like we do concrete sealing and and certain things like that. We get we're getting more into commercial work, like we didn't jump straight into these higher ticket things because I saw on Facebook somebody could make 10 grand by sealing a driveway. Like it's taken years of perfecting the craft that makes us consistent and grow steady. And then we started bringing stuff on as I have employees that are able to fill in and continue the same type of like customer-focused, relationship-based pressure washing business that I was doing personally.

Community Links, School Group, And Wrap

SPEAKER_00 25:02

Yeah, I mean, like I said, the biggest mistake I made was the the equipment side of things versus the business side of things. I think that's where I got everything confused because I'm like, okay, if I have the biggest, baddest equipment, then the customers will come to me. So um if you if you swap those mindsets, I promise you it'll take you a long way. Um, like I like I've always said, I appreciate everybody listening, following us on the Wash Bros podcast page on Facebook and uh Spotify on the podcast, YouTube. We have our school page that people are starting to jump on into as well. Um follow me on Clay Smith, my personal page, C3Watchbros, my business page, Matthew Jackson, um his personal page, and then Matt the Drama.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

Yep. And you can follow all of our links on our website at washbrospodcast.com, and you can also check out our books on Amazon and um just connect with, like Clay said, connect in our school group. We're adding information, we're adding videos and stuff like that. It's one of my goals this year to get heavier into YouTube, uh, kind of repurpose content that not only helps your business, but it helps help helps helping everybody else out at the same time. So if you guys are doing YouTube, especially with Google nowadays, it helps you on SEO. So post videos on YouTube as well, tag your local keywords, tag your business, it'll help you grow your business as well as educate and connect with other pressure washers. But that's everything I got. Um we'll catch you guys on the next one. Appreciate you guys. Peace. See you guys.