Episode 13: How Much Can You Actually Make Pressure Washing?

The pressure washing world is crowded, and “buy a better rig” is not a business plan. Matt Jackson and Clay Smith get real about what actually makes money in a pressure washing business: the unglamorous stuff like picking a lane, marketing consistently, tracking your numbers, and building systems that make customers come back without you begging for work. If you’re part-time and thinking about going full-time, we talk through the fear, the seasonal reality, and how starting in the slow months can force you to level up fast.

We dig into how we approach competition without racing to the bottom. Instead of copying the same ads and bidding on everything, we focus on differentiation, referrals, and choosing verticals like municipal and commercial pressure washing that match our goals. You’ll hear why a CRM is a true game changer for customer retention, recurring revenue, automated follow-ups, estimates, invoices, and getting more Google reviews. Your customer list and your systems are what make a business valuable, not just equipment sitting in a garage.

Pricing comes up in a big way: rising fuel and chemical costs, service minimums, and how to package services so customers feel the value instead of fixating on one line item. We also share practical guidance for newer washers on keeping setups simple, moving faster, and avoiding costly mistakes like plant damage from overly aggressive soft wash systems. If you want a pressure washing startup to turn into a durable company, this one is all about execution.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, share this with a washer who’s stuck in the low-ticket trap, and leave a review so more contractors can find the show.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:34

What's up, guys? It's Matt Jackson and Clay Smith, and we are the Wash Bros. Thanks for tuning in. This episode is going to be season three, episode 13. We're going to talk about um what it really takes to make money, what we really make money with uh as far as pressure washing, and how much can you really make with this? This episode we're gonna try to stream it live. So if you guys are catching this right now, like it's live on our Facebook. Uh comment and all that stuff, and we can discuss what you guys talk about. And uh we're we're kind of trying something new this time. So let's uh let's kick this thing off and uh I'll let you get started as always, Clay.

Free Marketing That Actually Works

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Awesome. Yeah, so today we're talking about uh being a new pressure washer, making the jump. If you're a part-timer um and looking to go full time, we're gonna kind of talk about that. So um back when I first started almost six years ago, I was uh working a regular job and uh was really just getting tired of it, right? So uh couple conversations came about and I said, okay, I'm gonna give it a shot. And it was a very scary feeling um because I was having to uh find another way for income, right? So you're you you're not it, you know, I was in sales, so it's the same, it's basically the same thing. Um, so I was I was in the car business, and every time I went into work, I didn't know whether we were gonna make any money or not. So it was basically the same concept, and that's where I was really confident that okay, if I can go in and I could sell cars, I can go in and I could sell pressure washing, or I can find clients to that need their houses washed or need their driveways washed or find commercial properties that need uh any sort of cleaning. So uh we started, and I know if anybody's listening from the beginning, we actually started in the slowest season, like the hardest part of the year, which is October. So I started at the end of October, and it was really hard, but it was actually the best thing that happened to me. I had to work extremely hard to stay busy and pay my bills during that time of year through the winter, and then all of that hard work actually paid off, right? So um, when the spring came around, my marketing, um, all the people that I talked to and all the um marketing that I did online, it actually everybody knew that I was doing pressure washing. So when spring rolled around, I was busy as crap, right? And um, I think that that's a lot of lot that goes into it is everybody can know a lot about pressure washing, everybody can know a lot about the machinery that goes into it. You can look at all of the things online and watch videos, you can um listen to all the gurus, but if you're not actually out there hands-on doing it, you're really not learning anything. Um, so my biggest advice to people that are just getting going is you can actually go to um use Facebook. Facebook's free. Use the neighborhood sites, use the neighborhood groups, get a good connection of group of people that you know um that are other business owners, get with like-minded people that are trying to grow within each other, and then you can recommend each other. And that's how I jump-started my business. That's how Matt jumped started his business, and it's free marketing. And not a lot of not, I mean, I didn't when I first started, I didn't have any money to throw out towards marketing, but now it would probably make some people cry if they knew how much I actually put into my business. Um, considering we did um 90-something jobs last month, and we're gonna do probably 30 or 40 more than that this this month. So um a lot goes into it. Uh, you really have to study it. You got to eat, sleep, and breathe it if you want to be successful in it, because this is a very saturated market. Everybody's buying a pressure washer and they're all trying to do it. Um, so you got to make sure that you stick out versus um, you know, me and Matt, we have to we actually talk to each other and say, okay, if you're going this route with marketing, I'm gonna go the other direction and kill it the other way so that we're not looking the same and we're not blending in.

Differentiate Instead Of Compete

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Exactly. And a big thing too, we're not trying to cannibalize each other's markets. So if if Klay's gonna bid on this job and it's better fit for him, or if he's gonna do his TV commercials, I'm not gonna say, hey, low, let me try to do the same thing, or let me let me try to undercut you on a job. Like, I have different goals than Klay does, so we often talk a lot about like, oh, hey, did you get this opportunity? Because we're both top-rated in the area. We both have referrals, we both are usually coming from like the top three Google searches uh if somebody's getting three quotes. So, like, for instance, I'm trying to push more into municipal jobs, into like city contracts. We got like a local city of ours, Greer. Uh, we're doing doing some work with them, trying to grow, expand into their. So, like, I'm taking on jobs to to grow the account. I'm not trying to be like super aggressive and like make every every penny I can on each individual job. I care about like growing the portfolio, growing the relationship, finding out the different departments and divisions where we can make money and then serve that account. And instead of saying, Oh, how can I this one charge that one one job that I'm gonna quote at, uh, how can I get every little penny out of that job and then miss out the whole relationship of the account. And so, like, for instance, there's like this courthouse job that we were both bid on in uh in in Greenville, so like in our local like hub city, and it's like, hey, I'm gonna go this price on it. He's like, I don't even really want to care to compete with you on that. Like, and that's the thing, like, know your direction and know where your strengths are so you know how to attack like everything. Don't don't view like, hey, Clay and I have the same blueprint, like we're gonna go after the exact same jobs and just try to like cut each other down on each opportunity. Like, we we kind of pick our own verticals, our own space, our own direction within what we go about doing, and like we know our expertise. Like Klay's killing it on the TV stuff. I don't have any interest in the TV stuff because he's already beat me there. Facebook groups too. He's killing it on the Facebook groups, he's got the uh referrals going really strong. I don't care to compete with him there. If anything, it's it's kind of funny. People will tag me in something, and then I almost just like respond with Clay's company because I'm like, hey, look, I don't want to compete. This is not my I don't I don't want to be like second fiddle on every post here to Klay because in my opinion, that like pulls my value down as a company if I'm trying to jump on and hijack somebody else's Facebook post and stuff like that. So like figure out what works with you guys, figure out like what your strengths are and how you're different than everybody else. Because if you're trying to just compete with every guy posting on Facebook, if you're trying to compete with every guy in a neighborhood, if you're trying to compete with every open like bid opportunity, like you're probably gonna lose. And you you gotta figure out how to differentiate yourself as a business, whether you're brand new, uh figure out like your power base, whether you're like your neighbors, your direct neighbors, your family friends, your your your job, all that stuff. You gotta figure out like how can you best position yourself forward so you're not competing with somebody and gonna lose. And that's that's the thing. If I was a newbie, I would I I'd stress that more than anything. Like, we're not just shotgun approaching everything. Like we're trying to be specific, identifying like how can we work smarter and not harder. Because like in our in our area, for instance, like we have so many owner operators, we have so many pressure washing companies, but everybody's kind of blending and doing the same thing. So you have to figure out like how can you take one slice out of the pie and be the best person you can be for that one slice. And like there's so many opportunities, new construction, HOA work, there's uh door-to-door stuff. Like, it's like you fit pick pick whatever you want to do, and then and then be the best version of yourself and your business that you can be to attract the ideal customer.

Tracking Numbers With A CRM

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Absolutely. I see Carlos in here. He said he survived the wind today. I know all about that wind. You got to spray left to spray right. So uh I see you in there. Make sure, guys, we are live. So if you have any questions, go ahead and ask them. I see Cody Tanner just popped in too. So all of our local guys uh are in here. Um, but yeah, as far as competition goes, um I think when I first began in this business, um, I was in sales, I was a salesman in the car industry, and everything in the car industry is cutthroat. So I had to immediately cut that out of my mentality. It took me about six months to get out of that. But once I stopped worrying about my competition, I mean, I started doing so much better, right? And um, obviously between me and you and how we talk to each other and how we work together, I think that we have done a good job at growing our businesses together. But uh as far as, you know, the residential work, the commercial work, I know we've all talked about that, but I think one of the things that I struggled in the beginning was knowing like my what I was actually making, you know. So I was I was actually doing everything in pen and paper. I had one of those scheduling notebooks and there was a calendar for every month, and I would do my jobs out and I would have my number at the end of the day, and then at the end of the week, I would have what I did for the week and I would circle it. And then at the end of the month, I would add all those numbers off at the end of the week, and that's how I did it. But just like I was telling you the other day, Matt, I wish I knew the first two years of business what I did because I didn't have a CRM, so it's kind of hard to go off of and know exactly how much we have actually grown. So, anybody new, um, I think that the CRMs they're mainly free to begin with. I know I I pay like$200 a month for everything that we deal with now to keep track of everything and deal with our invoices and everything. But CRM is key. I know I've said it a million times on here. If you've listened to all of our episodes, it it is uh it is definitely a game changer. If you took that CRM away from me, I wouldn't know what to do tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Yeah, that's a hundred percent the same as me because like my first part-time year I was doing a Google Sheet. So it was the same as pen and paper. And you don't want to miss out on opportunities because you forgot the guy's email address, you forgot the guy's phone number. Like I remember I would just be like, it was a Facebook request, or I like I would just have them in the schedule and I'd show up and I didn't even have any way of tracking it. So like if the guy's not there, brush wash his house. I'm like, how am I even gonna get paid on this? So in the beginning, you're so excited to get everything, you're so excited to be like business owner. It's like you're you're almost like, oh man, I'm just excited for the opportunity. But like as soon as you can get everything professional, get that uh thing dialed in, get your systems dialed in, and then and then um get email addresses, get phone numbers, get everything you can so you can follow up with people down the roads, you can you can ask for Google reviews, you can get referrals. Like it's very important that like you create something that you can farm. Like, not only are we going out prospecting, bringing in new business, we're trying to farm what we have. I'm I talked about this with Clay all the time. I'm like, I'm thankful I started this business in 2018 versus 2026 because it's$80 for an LSA call for me, it's like$60 for a Google ad. It's a lot of money to just do anything in today's world. So, like the amount of volume we do, the amount of money we have to invest just to keep everything moving forward, like would be a lot worse if we didn't have everything over the last like six or seven years dialed in completely, have the 4,000 plus um uh uh contacts and our CRMs, have those reoccurring jobs, able to do the thousand jobs a year and really move the ball forward so we can like we can still push into new new verticals. I can still try to push hard into commercial, I can still try to build a third truck out that I can service like recurring work with like property management companies with cities, with uh try to get more into like new construction, try try to fill up that that third truck with exclusively commercial work, but at the same time, my residential is pretty much on um it's it's on like cruise control because the CRM's following up with people every year, it's getting the updates, uh 18 month uh call outs, 18 months or 12 months send sending reminders of it of jobs and stuff like that, and then just like staying on people because like if you ask people, hey, are you ready to have your house cleaned again? A lot of times they'll say yes. Make it easy for them. They become a regular, whether it's every two years, every one year, every 18 months. Like you're you're just at this point, you're you're just feeding trucks, keeping your guys moving, keeping your guys busy. Or if you're doing it all yourself, you're trying to say, How can I take 300 jobs that I do, condense that down into say 200 jobs, raise my price, I'm making the same money as when I was doing 300 jobs, but I'm more efficient. And whatever is your goal in this, it's super important to have the data, it's super important to have your customers because at the end of the day, like our customer list is everything. You want to sell your business. Well, if you don't have contracts, if you don't have a list of customers, you just have a bunch of depreciated equipment that's really worth nothing. So you see all the time people are like, Oh, my business is worth this, my business is worth that. It's like, but if you don't have anything like in writing, if you don't have systems in place of managing customers, your business is not worth anything. So you got to view your business in the eyes of an investor, eyes of somebody who's wanting to take over your business and and and say this is a true asset that I've built and implement all that into your business now. So you're not scratching your head saying, Man, I wish I the first four or five years of my business, I wasn't just uh relying on luck and word of mouth and like stuff happening to me. I was actively pursuing and growing the business that I could.

Farming Customers For Repeat Work

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Yeah, definitely. If you have the the CRM, you have the people. When Matt says farming, he means going back and actually keeping contact with those customers throughout the years. Even if you wash them this year, you may not see them for another three years, um, two years. It's not going to be every year. Um, and the longer you're in business, the more repeats you're gonna get. And the biggest thing that I have noticed is I will show up and I will wash houses and they won't remember who they used last time. So always make sure. I've said this before, make sure you leave them with a card. Um, if you if you don't leave them with anything, make sure you have that contact information. Double check, make sure you got the right email. Sometimes I fat finger them, and I'm I always go over it sometimes when I'm done with the job. Like, okay, do I have the right email? Are you getting our notifications? And that just allows you to stay in touch with those customers. We send out newsletters uh quarterly. Matt's better at that than I am, but if you stay in touch with those customers, always top in mind, top of mind, so that when they are ready for the pressure washing or they're walking outside and they see the mill deal on their house or whatever, they're ready to call you. They have your information. All they have to do is search at the top, see three wash pros or pressure washing or whatever, and your email will pop up at the top, and they'll, you know, it just makes it easier. People are lazy, make it convenient for them, stay top of mind for everybody. And uh, I just seen Cody Tanner in here. He said, I hope everybody raised prices this year. I definitely did, and that is a fact. Everything is going up. My gas bill, I think, doubled monthly since last year. Um, because we have uh fleet cards uh for our gas, for our trucks and everything. Um, gas has definitely gone up. I feel like bleach is about to go up some more, and just the cost of living in general. I mean, it goes up every year. If your customers can't handle another extra 50 bucks or whatever you want to tack on um that you did it for last year, then they probably don't deserve you coming out to do their property. Um, because they got to understand, you know, the cheeseburger at McDonald's went up as well. So they ought to be able to pay a little bit more for a pressure wash, especially with for a good service that they know that you can provide.

Raising Prices With Better Service

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Exactly right. And then, like, how do you how do you ask for a higher ticket by standing out from the crowd? If everybody else is status quo and everybody else is not sending the automated CRM notifications, my customers getting a notification the day before with an email with a text saying, Hey, we'll be at your house. Here's a picture of our technician that's going to show up and wash your house. Here's an email telling you everything you need to do prior to us getting there. Here's an email describing everything, and then we're also providing links to videos explaining everything in even more detail. So if there's any questions, they're like way more educated than a normal person. Think of how many people you compete with and they're like, oh, I use a pen and paper. Customer thinks, okay, well, the guy's gonna pressure wash my house, but he didn't show up. He doesn't have a they don't have a clue when you're gonna show up. So what you got to do is like structure it like a big company. You see all these big private equity owned businesses coming into town and they take over the market, it's because they implement these systems. And yeah, sure, anybody can pressure wash. My technicians are great. They pressure washed each guy who's pressure washed like a thousand or so uh pressure washing jobs. I even have a guy who ran a pressure washing business help out, and one of my guys who does ceiling ran another pressure washing business. So we're essentially like our own private equity company scooping up guys who are owner operators who don't have the systems, and then I'm kind of putting the systems together, which we talk about on the washer bows. Clay and I both share the same systems, so we're almost like like like swooping up other pressure washing company guys, and then we're growing all as as one unit, and that's kind of my objective as I go forward and grow. It's like, how can I take what works for everybody, and then like we're we're just moving the needle forward, and I'm like controlling the umbrella of it as like Matt the Dropway guy. But it's like too many people um are I'm and I'm also seeing like this pricing is is is becoming a big thing, and I've like dialed back like Facebook stuff, I've dialed back other approaches because I know it's like, hey, if I have like a$400 service minimum or a$450 service minimum, it's it's like hey, we're two weeks backed out. I got commercial jobs that we schedule out like a$3,000 day. We're getting more and more of those. I I have a limited amount of calendar space between my two trucks to get everything done in a month. And uh we're at this position in business where we raise our prices because like like everything's getting more and more expensive. So like it's like Clay's point, it's like if I'm filling up diesel in the F 250 and then I got diesel in my gas in my pressure washer burner, and then I got a a 2500 Chevy truck, and then I got pressure washer tanks to fill up, I'm spending 400 bucks off the bat, and then I go to pick up a drum of bleach for like 260 bucks. Like you're you're spending$500, like$600, like boom. We can't afford to go out and do a$300 house wash. We need to start pushing these tickets a little higher. And unfortunately, that$300 house wash customer is probably no longer gonna be around if you jump it to$450. Whether you so you're gonna have to figure out do I upsell them uh house wash? And one thing I've started to implement is like selling a package. And I know I I think Cody's talked to me about this, he commented here. Instead of just saying, Hey, we are looking at like a line item, everything, it's like, hey, we're gonna sell you a package. It's like here's your like the home run package, the total exterior cleaning package, the f the the property reset. Like we're giving you different options, and instead of saying, hey, I have a$400 minimum, you say, Hey, I can clean your house, you drive away your walkway for$400, versus just saying, I'm gonna have to jump from$300 for your housewash to$450. Like, you gotta you gotta package stuff, you gotta make it more appealing, and that's kind of what's gonna be required to grow in this economy because it's only gonna get worse. All the stuff in the Middle East, all this like uh back and forth with the oil and the gas, and it's gonna really start hitting everything hard here, I think. And you can't just keep eating losses and saying, Hey, we're gonna be$300 to clean a house, even if it takes 45 minutes, like like we'll do stuff in and out. And I'm like, these are almost getting to the point where it's too small of a job for us to take on. And I got employees that they gotta make good money. We're trying to be fair to everybody, but we can't uh cheat ourselves out because those low-cost customers expect us to do the work for what we did the work for in like 2018. And again, what I tell people all the time there's plenty of uninsured guys doing this, there's plenty of part-timers doing this, there's plenty of high school kids, there's plenty of 14-year-olds with like a four-gallon a minute pressure washer that will be more than willing to pressure wash your house for whatever much you want to pay them. That's not us. And then, like, we are just really positioning our company to stand out from those types of people. And like, because Clay gets this all the time. People are like, Oh, do you can you kill my plants? Or are you gonna hurt this or you're gonna hurt that? And then it's like absolutely like more times than not, somebody's gonna destroy everything because nobody knows what they're doing because they're all brand new. Like, you hire us because we have the experience, we're a different price point, we're not gonna take on that low ticket. So if you don't want to spend the money, you're probably gonna have somebody damage all your stuff. The choice is yours. You can't have cheap price and us. And it's it's kind of having to like shift away. I'm having to shift away from residential a little bit more than I have been in the past just because I'm trying to grow more into commercial. And yeah, you can be a little bit cheaper on commercial per job, but the volume of it's making up for it. And like I almost day rate it. And if I can if I can hammer out a$2,500 or thirty three thousand dollar day with one truck on a commercial project, I'm gonna much prefer that over trying to charge people a little bit more money and just get stuck in the residential trap.

Packages And The Commercial Shift

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Yeah, going back to what you were saying about the uh price and everything. Um the thing that I have found is a lot of people will only ask for a house wash because they're they're thinking that it's gonna be so much more to do that driveway, or it's gonna be so much more to do the roof, or it's gonna be so much more. So sometimes it's good to just give them that peace of mind that hey, for an extra 150 bucks, you can have your driveway clean too, you know, on the subdivision type driveways, or for 200 bucks, you can have your driveway clean too. And they don't realize it's gonna be that cheap because sometimes even we'll get out to jobs and they'll be like, How much more? Just curious, how much would Be extra do our driving, I'd be like a hundred bucks. They're like, Go ahead and do it, right? So they're thinking, you know, it's cool that you give them that option and it raises your uh average ticket too. So it's good to go ahead and quote everything because you just never know. Um, you never know what people are gonna say. It's going back to my car sales days, you know, somebody wanted a 250 payment and I closed them on a$500 payment. You just never know what people are gonna say yes to, right? Um, and then you know, as far as the commercial stuff, yes, it is easier to go out to do the commercial stuff just simply because you don't have a Karen breathing down your neck the whole time, right? And uh the biggest thing that I can say to anybody new that's listening, I have noticed that a lot of these gurus and a lot of people on the internet are teaching new guys to pressure wash with a 12 volt or pressure wash with a gas pump or pressure wash with whatever softwash, you know, whatever, however you want me to say it. Um, but washing houses with these gas pumps and 12 volts is the quickest way to kill plants. If you're inexperienced and using it in soft washing, I highly recommend you downstreaming um for the first couple years before you get comfortable with doing anything else.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

You can make plenty of money with a four-gallon minute machine, a 2.1 uh injector for your your machine, and connect that hose to the house without a buffer tank or anything like that. I think that's more you can make more money quicker doing that than you can with a 12-volt system or with some fancy soft bar system. Like we we have all the tools. Like I got hot water, I got the eight-gallon machines, I have a four-gallon machine, I have the 12-volt, I have the AR-45, like everything has a place. Like we love to use the AR-45 when it comes time to doing a tall roof that we can hit from an A-frame ladder, or we can spray a ton of volume on something. I don't want to get on the roof, or when we do the TPO roof, or we do something that requires like a huge spray, but that's not something that we would pull off the truck more more than like one or two times a month. Like, those are exclusive jobs where, like, hey, it's a minimum of like 500 bucks for me to take this hose drill off because there's a lot of maintenance required in them, they use a lot of chemical, and like Clay says, you can damage a lot of stuff. All these gimmicks and tools and toys are are great, they're kind of owner operator focused, they're not necessarily set up for people who run businesses where you need like a repeatable thing over and over again. It's retard-proof where your employees can go out in the field having been trained for two weeks and then they know how to troubleshoot it. Like speed of speed is more important in this business than like how efficient or how efficient you can be. And and by I mean, I mean like how fast can you get through the day repeated? Like, how fast can you be like consistent? I wish it, I should say. It's not about like, oh, I could clean this driveway faster if I had more gallons per minute. It's like, well, what do you do when the machine's down all the time? What do you do when you got to fix this? Or what do you do when you got to figure out where the air leak is? Like we simplify stuff. Keep a bunch of spares of downstream injectors, throw them on when you start losing pressure. Don't worry about trying to like rebuild it in the field, strap a new one on there, keep it moving. And when you're running a business, you got employees, you you start getting to a point where you got eight to ten jobs a day, like Clay and I do, where we're running a truck on the weekend, we're burning through oil changes every two weeks because we're putting a ton of hours on our equipment and everything's being used a lot. Like, this is not a game for the week. So if you're trying to like be hyper-fixated and hyper-controlling and hyper-technical and live on the online space of like, oh, what should I do here? You're gonna get outrun by somebody like Clay and I, who we've got guys constantly moving in the field. Because you make your money by keeping your trucks moving, you don't make your money by your fancy rig sitting in your garage, but you know everything about like how much gallons per minute you have on the machine or what's the mix ratio of this. It's one of those things. If you guys have listened to us for a while, we always kind of joke about like mix ratio. It's like, okay, it's pretty simple. Don't overcomplicate things, just go out and do it. Oftentimes we overcomplicate things because we're insecure about like not knowing what to do, so we rather just overanalyze and do nothing.

Equipment Choices That Prevent Mistakes

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Pretty much, yeah. The mix ratio, oh, I'm one of those. When we first got started, I literally thought that you were supposed to 12-volt houses. So it took me a minute to figure that out. Uh, the downstream, that's why I'm telling people, that's why we're here. We're here to help new people. We're here to help you.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

Do that to a bunch of blue hardyboard houses and tell us how you feel.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Oh, yes. Yeah, and and you you want to make sure you stay away from plants, um, especially using a 12-volt, because uh don't be that guy, don't be the reason that my customers are calling me scared to death because I use bleach. So uh basically you make it make our jobs a lot harder whenever you go out and kill plants and uh use bleach or whatever. Um, but yeah, I think this has been a great episode. If anybody in the comments got any questions or anything, since we're actually live here doing this live live, uh please ask any questions. Any any new guys that have that are in here listening, please ask a question before we hop off here. But uh yeah, if you haven't yet, make sure you uh you follow us on the not so Reggie says not knowing what to do, so you overanalyze and do nothing.

Stop Overthinking And Fail Forward

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Yep. And that's the thing, it's like you have to change your mindset. And I guess like Clay and I kind of come from the same boat. Like in sales, there's no blueprint, there's nobody that's gonna say, okay, you have a college degree. This is the blueprint to do. Like, in like when you're selling cars, you walk up to a customer and you got your manager staring at you from like the the manager office, and he and then he's just like, no, close them. And then there's nobody that's gonna hold your hand through the process. Like, they're telling you through like trial by fire, like, you have to learn, you have to fail forward, you have to do it, you sink or you swim. And that's big in this business as it is in with everything else. And there's only there's like, and again, it's not like we're doing surgery here where we're gonna hurt somebody, somebody's gonna die. There's nothing to come, like no real negative downsides. Like everything we we do, even the worst case scenario, we can fix it. So if you're new and you're unsure what to do, like just try stuff. There's so many silly situations where like I didn't understand that like my bleach mix was too diluted, like we were just talking about mix ratios when I first started. I I didn't understand why I wasn't cleaning, and then okay, I learned from that one job, that was a bad experience. I felt embarrassed, I gave the customers money back, but I learned and I never made that mistake again. Like, Clay and I's success is due to the fact that we have six to seven years of failure bundled up into one giant learning lesson called experience. And if you don't allow yourself to get that experience and fail for it and be silly and be stupid and get those one-star reviews and then get those callbacks and feel like an idiot, because like anytime you're pushing forward, you're gonna feel like an idiot, and that's how you know you're being successful, is like it's stressful. You got a new challenge, you got employees, you got new guys. Like, it's hard. Like, I but now I can bring a guy off the street and it takes me a week. And just like Clay, he's got his guy. Like, in the beginning, you overanalyze hiring, and then like, shoot, you get a few guys under your belt, and then you're like, cool, we got this, and then like everything ends up working out. So, whether you're trying to figure out how to wash something, you're trying new equipment, you're struggling with something, just like keep plowing through it because before you know it, you're gonna figure it out, and that giant mountain you thought was is just a mole, uh, a molehill. So, like, it's it's really nothing. Like, you get paid, you move on, you get a bad review, you get another lead. That's a happy customer, rinse and repeat. It's all good. It's like the only thing that you can fail at is by stop plowing forward and stop living and stop growing. Because like I'll we'll go through seasons where like, man, I just want to quit. Like, this is terrible, like cash flow is terrible, like I have no money in the bank, I got all this stress over me. Like, what am I doing? And then all of a sudden you'll have like a crazy month, almost like coming out of the slow season, where you're like, oh man, this slow season sucked, but but now we're making money again, and then now we're getting bigger contracts, and now we're getting bigger jobs, and then you're like, wow, I was able to like clay and I now we're making 20% more than we did this time last year. It's like it's kind of funny. We're not even trying to push, and and it just starts showing up, starts it starts growing, and then you're like, I can add another truck if I want to. So it's always always evolving, always growing. You just got to keep your head down and keep pushing forward.

Where To Follow And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Absolutely, consistently moving forward, consistently doing the same things over and over, and then trying to grow at the same time. So uh definitely pays off for sure if you stay with it, you keep digging. Um, but yeah, like I was getting to earlier, we appreciate everybody's listening. Make sure you follow uh the Wash Bros podcast page, the Wash Pros group we have in here. We have the school uh community, um, we have YouTube. Um, we're everywhere. Spotify, Apple Podcasts. Make sure you subscribe to everything. Uh Clay Smith's my personal page, Matthew Jackson. Um, that's his personal page. My business is C3WatchPros. You can find us everywhere. Um, and then Matt the Driveway guys, Matt's. Um you can find him everywhere as well if you want to see the legitimacy of our business. And I'll let Matt close us out.

SPEAKER_01 30:57

Yeah, and like for for instance, like we're failing forward with this. We're trying to figure out how to do this podcast, how to grow, how to connect. You can tell we're running an ads to our page. We got like six six thousand followers now. So, like it's one of those slow, consistent things. And then you you zoom out, you look at it. Oh, cool, we have 14,000 downloads. Oh, cool, we're connecting with people across the country and even the world. Like, you gotta give yourself kind of a pat on the bat in whatever stage you're doing in business and and then connecting and growing, and then just like not and like Clay says, not giving up. Like, don't sprint to try to do something in six months, and if you don't do it, you fail, and then you you get frozen, and then you move on to something, you feel stupid. Like, there's there's there's no like trophy you get at the end of life. It's pretty much like what is your experience and and are you able to help others and are you able to like make do and make your own money and live and provide for your family and provide for yourself? Like, that's all that matters here. So, like with the Wash Bros, we're trying to connect and grow and do what we do in our local pressure washing business and share that with everybody and make an impact in the industry and really grow and like hammer it home and and like rate rising tides, raise all shit. So, like the more we help you, the more you help us. Everybody wins, and that's the goal here. So make sure you guys like what you hear, go and subscribe on our podcast, whether it be on iTunes, as Clay says, Spotify, uh, all that stuff. Give us a like on our page or like check out our our Facebook group or or the school community. Like, as we get more people in there, we be more active, we ask questions and just share stuff. Like Clay and I have grown tremendously over the past few years we've been doing this. So we hope you guys who listen are grown as well. But that's that's all I got. I hope everybody kills it this week. And uh let us know in the comments what you think about this episode and let us know how we can help you and what your wins were for the week.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

Peace out. See ya.