Ready to take your pressure washing business to the next level? Matt Jackson and Clay Smith tackle one of the most critical turning points every successful owner faces: when to expand beyond a one-person operation.
Clay shares his evolution from a two-gallon machine to building a multi-truck operation, while Matt explains how his employees now generate enough revenue to cover their salaries in just one day of work. Through their candid conversation, they reveal the mindset shifts required to transform from technician to true business owner.
What makes this episode particularly valuable is their counter-intuitive approach to competition. Despite being rivals in the same market, Clay and Matt demonstrate how collaboration between competitors creates exponential growth for both parties. Their relationship exemplifies their philosophy that "losers compete, winners collaborate."
Beyond the financial benefits of scaling, the hosts explore the freedom that comes with building a team. Clay speaks candidly about reaching the point where he's "aced the pressure washing game" and is ready to shift into a more strategic role. Meanwhile, Matt reflects on how his business survived a six-month health crisis specifically because he had built systems that didn't rely entirely on his physical presence.
The discussion also covers practical considerations for growth: when weekend work generates more referrals, how employee networks become valuable lead sources, and why maintaining consistent service quality is non-negotiable when expanding. They emphasize that there's no universal "right time" to scale—your business's needs and your personal goals will signal when you're ready.
Whether you're grinding solo and feeling maxed out, or simply planning for your future growth strategy, this conversation provides the roadmap for scaling successfully while protecting what you've built. Subscribe to the Wash Bros Podcast for more insights from two operators who've built six-figure businesses in the pressure washing industry.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
what's up, guys?
It's matt jackson and claysmith and we are the wash bros.
Thanks for tuning in.
This is going to be season 2,episode 15.
It's it's crazy, uh.
We've been uh going 15 strongso far since like we're just
talking about with Clay heresince February.
So we're knocking thesepodcasts out and we hope
everybody's got a great week.
They've wrapped up a great weekand they've got a great week
(00:53):
ahead of them.
So for this episode, we'regoing to be talking about
something that's relevant toboth Clay and I.
It's when to bring on extracrew members, extra teammates,
when to expand into another skidor another truck.
So you want to kick this thingoff, clay.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
As always, my pleasure, absolutely.
First of all, first andforemost, I want to thank
everybody for following us,listening to our podcast,
listening to what we ramble onabout, listening to the
knowledge that we have thatwe've learned from to be able to
pass on to guys getting started, whether they've been seasoned
in the industry and they see usdoing, you know, knocking out a
(01:28):
bunch of work and doing goodwith our businesses.
Um, we appreciate everybodylistening, even if they're local
or or whatnot.
I really appreciate everybodylistening, seeing what's going
on.
We've got some great feedback,always happy to help answer any
questions people may have, andif we don't have the answers, we
can find them for you with our,with our resources.
So, as Matt said, when is agood time to bring on help?
(01:52):
When is a good time to bring onmore workers or employees,
whatever you know?
So I'll tell you a little bitof my story.
I know that Matt already knows,but I want to tell everybody
that's listening.
I started this back in 2021,full time and I started with a
four gallon a minute machine.
(02:12):
Actually, I started with a twoand a half gallon a minute
machine, and this is where it'svery important to surround
yourself with individuals,because Matt's actually pushed
me to grow as he, the, the growas he's growing.
You know the things that he'slearned from and the things that
he's done to grow.
His business has actuallyhelped mine.
And the crazy part is where the, we're competitors.
(02:33):
We're probably one of the toptwo guys in our area and we
compete against each other.
So, um, you know that sayingthat the, the, the, the best
guys collaborate at the top, youknow, we're not.
We see ourselves as competition, but we're not like cutting
each other's throats at the sametime.
So you can sit here and you canlearn from each other, or you
can, you know, have a big egoand just do whatever, do
(02:55):
whatever you want to do, but Ijust don't see any growth in
that.
But so, going back to what Iwas saying, my two and a half
gallon a minute machine turnedto a four gallon a minute
machine.
I was doing three to four hoursof the day with a four gallon a
minute machine, busting my tail.
So then you know, mattbasically gives me an eight
gallon a minute machine when hedoes an upgrade and then I was
(03:16):
able to see okay, I can do evenmore work.
So the coolest part about thisis you can always grow.
It's never ending.
You can make it as big as youwant it to be, and that's just
the beauty of it.
Last year I had a skid, I had atrailer and I ran the trailer.
I brought in a smaller guy thatdid some pressure washing.
(03:39):
He maybe did it once or twice aweek and I said hey, why don't
you come work with me?
Why don't you come learn fromme?
Why don't you come see what youcan do?
And you could see that you cando this with the right equipment
and you can do four to fivejobs a day with the right
equipment and you can make greatmoney at it, even working under
someone you know.
So if you're in that boat, Iwould highly recommend that
(03:59):
Going and working for somebody.
Tell them the deal, tell themwhat's going on.
Tell them up front.
Do not click on their freakingads.
Don't start asking.
You know I have that every day.
I know you do too, matt.
Don't start clicking on theirads.
Don't ask, you know.
Don't call and click onpeople's Google ads and say what
are you?
Uh, I have one the other day.
What are you charging for?
A medium sized driveway?
(04:20):
Well, buddy, you know, a mediumsized driveway could be $200 or
it could be $2,000.
You know, a medium could bedifferent for anybody Like.
Those are stupid questions,call and ask for help.
But the coolest thing about itis Dylan.
He worked for me last year fora few months, then the busier
months, and then he went on hisway and he's doing great.
He moved in a different areaand he learned a lot from me,
(04:43):
learned a lot from my businessand started his own thing and
now this year we're ready tobring on a full time guy.
We're actually this is happeningright now, so it's live.
So I'll be able to you knowevery episode, tell everybody a
little bit about it.
But we are buying a single cab.
If anybody follows me, followsmy page, we're buying another.
I want all my trucks to be thesame.
(05:04):
I want them to be, you know,turnkey ready.
You hop in one truck, you hopin another truck.
Everything is the same way andkeep it simple.
So we've got a truck order fromtexas.
It's coming this week sometime.
Well, I've hollered at casey atc3 skids.
He's already starting on me askid.
We're going to pick the skid upand then, hopefully within the
next 10 days I'll have my newguy that I've hired.
(05:25):
He's already hired, we're goingto train him up and we're going
to be running two trucks that'sawesome.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
And again, like clay's point, uh, I love that
quote and I almost want to likecondense it out.
I'd be like losers compete,winners collaborate.
It's like how can you findsomebody in your area and,
almost like mentor, mentee themand then you both grow more than
if it's you and him competingwith each other?
And also to Clay's point aboutif you're a new guy and you're
(05:55):
trying to get into this business, maybe you could collaborate
with somebody and learn underthem and just be fully
transparent with that.
Because, like Clay says, we getpeople all the time.
They hit us up oh, priceshopping, us and the secret
shopping, just to get an ideahow the business is supposed to
work, as opposed to just beinghonest and transparent and
finding ways of adding value tothem.
And like there's jobs that Clayand I have jumped on and we
(06:17):
both learn from the jobs.
So it isn't like a one-sidedrelationship here inside a
relationship here.
Clay does stuff, he learns, hetells me about it, I learn, I, I
motivate and push myself andvice versa.
So like find that guy like Clayand I in your local market or
whether it's your localcompetitor or there's somebody
online that you find and connectwith and you guys can grow
together and share stories andlike if you guys have been
(06:39):
paying attention to the wash brosince the beginning of our
season one.
That was kind of the phase whereum clay's in the phase now
where I was in, kind of like inthat beginning part you bring on
your first couple guys fulltime.
You got the skid, you got thetruck.
You're kind of like the babythat you've grown and built,
you're handing off to somebody.
So it's kind of an excitingtime and it's almost a full
(07:00):
circle moment now where clay'sgoing from like maxing out,
banging out the one truck deal,putting up huge numbers with the
one truck, but then he'sgetting kind of tired of like
the physical part of the body.
You get storms that roll in.
You can say I'm going to workseven days a week, sun up to
sundown.
But what are you going to do ifyou got two or three rainy days
?
You got lightning?
That's going to slow you downand you're going to be limited
(07:29):
to how much you can make a month.
So like that next growthtrajectory which Clay's making
now and I made a couple of yearsback is is getting that other
truck so you can double yourproductivity and you don't have
to say, oh, if I'm, if I don'tdouble my productivity the first
year or the first week or thefirst six months doing it, it's
a failure.
No, like just adding one or twoextra days of free productivity
due to like Just adding one ortwo extra days of free
productivity due to like we'retalking about this today, if
you're paying your guy like 10%,20%, say that Like when one day
(07:53):
my guy's making me his weeklypayout, so he's making that
$1,000, $1,200, $1,300 for oneday of productivity, I have four
free days of work off of him.
And that's kind of like thatowner mindset, the business
mindset.
And that's that's kind of theexciting thing.
When you start to scale andbuild into trucks because you're
(08:13):
buying yourself some time againand say you like clay and I, we
both like racing, we like doingstuff on the weekends.
You don't want to say, oh man,I'm I'm so slammed and stuck in
my business I don't haveavailability to step away for
one to two days.
So it was kind of an excitinggrowth period for Clay because
he can lean more into being likethe business owner and less
like being stuck on theequipment and whether he wants
(08:36):
to hustle too and double up andmake a lot of profit, which I've
been doing actually this pastspring, running one guy full
time and then me on anothertruck.
Or you can say, hey, I'm goingto take a week at the beach and
we're still going to make fiveto $8,000 without me doing any
of the work.
So it's exciting.
You can open yourself up togrowth and and then it just
becomes how much business canyou put on the books?
(08:57):
So it's exciting times.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Absolutely, and it goes back to the, like you said,
the freedom thing.
Everybody has different goals.
We talked about this time andtime again.
Me and you have talked about it.
You know when is the perfecttime, when is the right time.
Hey, we need to do this and Idon't.
I don't think there's any rightway of growing.
You'll know when it's time,like I know when it's time the
(09:24):
biggest.
I was just actually talking tosomebody about this a couple of
weeks ago.
What we had talked about was,you know, he had grew too fast
and it initially just screwedhim up.
And I've had a lot of guys, alot of advice being given to me,
but I try to learn every day,right, but you got to be very
careful on what you apply, whatyou're listening to.
Only you know when it's theright time.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Exactly right.
And then you got to decide doyou want a like a mental
headache of, say, I'm managingthe stress of running a business
with multiple things going on,with cashflow issues, if you're
taking on debt, with uncertainty, if you have other mouths to
feed besides your own, or do youwant to be the physical
headache or that you want to bein that like physical zone of
pain where you're like I worksix, seven days a week, I'm
(10:06):
physically drained, the summer'shot Like man.
I'm just starting to like burnmyself out.
So you just pick your battle.
And again, it's not one way orthe other.
It's okay to step back on thetruck.
That's kind of what I've beendoing this past spring packing
down a lot of profit in thebusiness, paying down kind of a
little bit of debt, like Claywas saying, as far as growing
fast, I kind of ripped off abandaid a couple years back and
(10:29):
doubled the revenue of thebusiness and by doing so you
have a lot of cash flow problems.
It's costly, and then you'retrying to like kind of correct
all that behavior.
But the beauty of havingmultiple trucks and employees
you can just cut it down and bea little leaner and then still
run a full truck yourself, andthen the extra guy you have is
(10:50):
just icing on the cake.
So it's not something to besuper stressed about.
You don't have to like oh, nowthat I've scaled, there's no
coming back, I'm only going tomake this much profitability.
No, it's constantly a jugglingact.
Luckily, when I scaled, I had ahealth injury last year that
took me out for six months.
So like if I didn't scale, Iwouldn't, I wouldn't have been
able to survive six months ofnot working.
(11:12):
And I don't know guys on socialmedia they're like oh I, I
worked so hard, I got all theseailments.
I'm like until you can'tlegally drive.
That's a different situation.
Like like stuff happens in lifethat's out of your control.
So you prepare yourself andprotect yourself and your
business by like naturallyscaling.
When it's like inside of you,you're like okay, you know what,
I'm ready for that next jump,and it may feel like a step back
(11:35):
in certain areas, but then onceyou get over that, you're like
whoa, never again, never, never.
Like your, your, your brain isgoing to like unlock a different
level and you're gonna see theworld differently.
So if you guys are in similarsituation as Clay or you're kind
of in my situation.
It's super scary when likeyou're like, oh man, this is an
investment.
But you have to think about it.
(11:55):
It's not expense, it's aninvestment and like it's the
natural way forward because youbuild up some momentum, so much
momentum growing a business.
I'm looking at our CRM we'realready at like 300 jobs for the
year, at like 150K.
So like that would beimpossible to do solo and it's
exhausting to even think abouttrying to do solo.
But when you have a businessand you have guys running where
(12:18):
you can, you can be more in theoffice and take a few weeks off.
You can hire people.
I've got some college kidscoming back in and that helped
me with the summer work and Ihad a truck running today.
So I was sitting here doingyard work, doing office work.
A thousand dollar day, chillday.
The guy made 200 bucks, sothere's an $800 day pretty much
for me, just kind of sittinghere taking care of my customers
(12:39):
.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
And that's just on a Sunday.
That's on a Sunday, yeah, andthat's I mean, even if it was
$500, it's a win.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Exactly.
It's like you want to keep thetruck moving because you got a
good guy in place.
Your truck's out there, it'sbeing seen, You're getting jobs
completed.
Word of mouth Somebody's likeoh, I saw you on the road, Boom,
You're just when.
I saw your truck out there.
And then you never know whosees your app, who calls you,
(13:09):
who's, who's the next doorneighbor or the guy's house that
your guy's washing.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
It's just kind of a snowball effect and and another
another cool thing about theweekends when you're, when
you're out working on theweekends, everybody's home on
the weekends, right Versus theweekdays you don't have many
people at home, so you can getall the neighbors together and
give them a neighborhood packagedeal.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Exactly right, and I've noticed that I get more
referrals from weekend work thanI do during the week.
Because, like Clay says, noteverybody's sitting at home,
like they are on the weekends,or they're not doing yard work
like they are on the weekends,and they see you, the guy down
the washing a house, and then,hey, I saw you're cleaning my
neighbor's house.
I want to be the next guy to doit versus like a monday or
tuesday, and you blend in witheverybody else absolutely.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, everybody's at work on the weekdays, so it's a
little different.
I have noticed that trend.
If I work a saturday orwhatever, and you know, so, yeah
, if my guys want to work asaturday or sunday, have at it,
we'll go ahead and put you somework down.
You need a little extra cash inyour pocket, we'll go right
ahead.
I can get, I can use a littleextra cash in my pocket too.
So this, this, this episode'sfor anybody that's listening,
(14:12):
even any new guys, this, this issome knowledge that you can put
towards the future.
You can think about this thingor you can go back and listen to
it later on down the road.
I think it's something thatneeds to be talked about,
because you really don't knowwhen the right time is.
Only you're going to know whenthe right time is, what your
situation is, what your personalbills are like, what kind of
money.
And my angle me and Matt wentat it two different angles my
(14:33):
angle and my angle me and mattwent out at two different angles
.
My angle was I just wanted towork hard, kill myself not
really kill myself, but justwork really hard.
Um, it's been exhausting.
You know, we we did almost athree thousand dollar day.
If you follow the the wash brosuh group, the group that we
have for the wash bros group,make sure you go follow that on
facebook.
We got a little private groupin there.
We share some things from timeto time.
If you go back in there you cansee the day that I did.
(14:56):
What was that?
Just the other day?
It was like this earlier thispast week, so I think it was
like $2,700.
One day.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Yeah, that's nuts.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
One truck and it's just me, right.
So I've pretty much aced thepressure washing game.
I can do it with my eyes closed.
You know what I mean.
It's just one of those thingsI've aced.
I've gotten tired with it.
I want to move on to the nextthing, like I've heard you talk
about previously, matt Ready, tomove on to the next thing and
(15:25):
be more of a businessman than apressure washer.
It's the same thing I'vealready been doing.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
It's just going to be times two.
And this is a problem.
If you guys are super new tothis, you don't really
understand, you don't face.
You will get to the point where, when the busy season hits like
it's hit for us and most of youguys out there you will have
too much work coming in and youcan't manage that work.
So then you start to losecustomers, and it's a trend you
see, all these guys do, and thenusually the result they have to
(15:50):
do is jack up their prices likecrazy or they book out three to
four weeks and then and thenyou're you're limited to what
your business can do.
And if you're okay with being onthat treadmill of this is what
I can, this, this is my capacity, this is what I'm going to do,
that's awesome.
But if you want to grow yourbusiness, if you want to say hey
, every year, like I'm strivingto be better, I'm striving to be
different and and and move theball forward in order to
(16:12):
maintain that, like customerservice, you're going to have to
grow.
And I saw a great quote.
It was like until you're at acertain amount of revenue,
you're the job of a business isliterally like sales and
marketing, and then it shiftsinto like customer maintenance
and like maintaining, and thenyou become more like placed as a
business owner, a manager, whatI find really cool.
I have had Ryan, my main guy,for three years.
(16:34):
This is going on.
Let's see 20.
I brought him on 23, 24, 25,okay, so like, yeah, like three,
ish, three, three seasons,three seasons yeah this is about
his third season.
I'm having repeats request tohave him.
They're like, hey, can ryan doit again?
It's like they come to me aslike matt the driveway guy, but
they're requesting my lead tech.
(16:56):
That's been with me for thelast three years, so that's to
me that's cool.
It's like we were talking aboutin the beginning.
You're like, oh man, thatGoogle review.
They're like C3 Wash Pro, likeClay's the greatest.
The next level, I think is, iswhen they say, hey Kellen, hey
your guy, your guy is the bestguy.
I want to say I want him to domy house again.
That's when I think it becomescool yeah, man, I'm at.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Um, yeah, we're excited.
Dylan, uh, that worked for uslast year.
He got a ton of reviews as well, so it's always cool to see
that uh, mixing it up a littlebit, because you see clay, clay,
clay, clay, clay all over thegoogle reviews and then when you
get it mixed up a little bit,they're like, okay, well, they
got a couple good guys, not justone good guy.
Because then you get to thepoint where they just request
clay and I'm like, well, I don'twant to.
I'm getting to the point whereI don't really want to go out
(17:39):
there anymore.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
So yeah, and then like, obviously I still go out
on bigger projects.
If it's a big commercialproject, if it's roof washing,
if it's stuff that it's not thebasic cookie cutter, like 80 of
our jobs, and it's kind of like80 20 principle, you can still
be in your business 20 percentof the time and you say I'm not
going to show up unless it's a500, a thousand dollar job,
those, those like volume typejobs, the 350, 400 something
(18:02):
dollar jobs that are cookiecutter, have your guy do it,
they'll get tips.
I've found too a lot of timespeople tip employees just
because they know hey, this isnot the boss.
Man like you did a great job, agreat job Like here's a tip,
and it's just cool to keep theball rolling with things and
then invest your time on the funprojects, and that's like Clay
says.
There's so many different waysyou can do this.
(18:23):
And once you start buying sometime back, that doesn't mean
you're sitting in an officedoing nothing.
That means that you're able tosay run a truck, make extra
money, and then, instead ofturning away work, backfill the
work that you don't necessarilywant to do with your employee,
and then he's really good atdoing $5,000, $8,000 a week and
(18:44):
then that's how you really growyour business, because a single
truck can do about $30,000comfortably with an employee and
you think, hey, if Clay canbang out 40K himself and he's
got an employee that can do 30K,you can stack $70,000 a month
without with without like reallykilling yourself.
It's just continuing whatyou've done this month and then
you add on somebody else andthen that's when he can start
like really growing.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
There's nothing better than sitting on a cruise
ship or sitting on the beach orsitting in the Bahamas and just
you know.
You know you're making money.
You don't have anything toworry about, right?
So you know, I got a little bitof a taste of it last year and
I'm just ready to be able totake off when I want, do what I
want when I want to do it andactually have a more of a life.
(19:25):
Because, as a solo operator,you are.
If you want to be successfuland you want to do it right and
you want to grow, you want tohave a great business, you want
to have over.
You know I've done over 300Google reviews and since 21,.
If you want to do all thosethings, you want to have a good
reputation.
You truly care about yourbusiness.
You truly care about your brand.
(19:46):
You are going to be in yourbusiness 24 seven as a solo
operator and that's what ittakes.
You don't quit your regular jobfor freedom.
That's where a lot of peopleget their mindset messed up.
Oh, I made my own schedule.
I'm a boss.
I can show up when I want to.
If you don't make it easy onthe customer, you don't put a
schedule down date.
You don't have a CRM that makes, because people love the CRM.
(20:06):
I've said this in about everyepisode If you don't communicate
with that customer, you don'tshow up.
When you say you're going tothat customer, you don't show up
when you say you're going to.
You don't make it easier forpayment process and when it's
completed and you know, you justshow up and you're just a
pressure washing guy.
You don't provide any value.
They're probably not going tocall you back next time.
They don't even remember whoyou was.
That's very true, and and that'sthe thing you want to make that
(20:29):
customer feel like they knowyou before you ever pull up to
their job or feel like they knowyou before you ever pull up to
their job.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Exactly right.
And another thing to stressthis is just coming from
understanding capacity of work.
It's like Clay's grinded so farto get to the point where he is
now.
He's naturally going to growyear over year.
So if he's maxing himself outon his one truck, like doing
great numbers with a solo likewhat is he going to do next year
(20:55):
?
Speaker 2 (20:55):
like we're doing two truck numbers with one, yeah,
what are you gonna do next year?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
you're gonna have to tell people sorry, bro, like I'm
, I'm beyond full, I can'tcontinue this.
Whether you're like, hey, I'vemoved on to something else, or
mentally you're burned out, oryou're just like there's not
enough time in the day tofulfill all this demand that
I've created because I put sucha good business and a good and
brand out there.
And that's why I kind of seethis owner operator thing, where
(21:17):
somebody gets really hot andthen they fizzle out and then
they get back on that wheel andthey go really hot again versus
that slow and consistent growthLike you've got you built
yourself to that point ofcritical mass where you don't
have to worry about, oh, goingout of business.
Like everybody already knowsyou, you got a great reputation
and now it just becomes likethat slow and steady growth.
And then absolutely and thenyou're maintaining and then you
(21:39):
have a book of business of 800to 1000 jobs a year that you can
fit onto a schedule and you'relike I know my business is going
to make $400,000, $500,000 ayear, however hard I want to
push it.
And then you're buying yourtime back so you can focus on
adding other services, goingafter bigger types of projects,
(21:59):
or you can just kind of, likeClay says, make it more of a
lifestyle business.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah it's all about.
Everybody has different goals.
Everybody has different plans.
I mean, it's no secret I'vetalked to a couple of people
about it, I may have mentionedit in here, but my goal is to
have this thing making sevenfigures.
I want to be by the time I'm 40.
I want to be able to just dowhat I want to do business
running itself, be in somethingelse, have my hands in something
else and you know, 40 is maybea little too far out there.
(22:28):
You know that's just my goal.
I may hit it by the time I'm 35.
I'm only 30 now.
Right, I'm still young.
I've done a lot of things I'vehad.
I've been able to be in a lotof positions that people my age
haven't been able to be in, anda lot of people think I'm older
because of that.
I've been through a lot.
I've learned a lot aboutbusiness.
You can be the best pressurewasher out there.
But if, if you don with the,with the, with the mindset of oh
(22:48):
, I want more freedom than mynine to five job, that's just
the craziest thing I've everheard.
People got it backwards.
Basically, what you got to dois you got to work hard, to work
harder.
You got to keep grinding.
You got to keep going after.
You got to keep going andgetting the customer.
(23:09):
You got to keep providing thatvalue.
You got to keep creating thatbrand, creating that great
reputation, and just don't tryto stay consistent with it.
Don't be trying to do 10million things at once and we
see that a lot in our area.
A lot of guys have got theirhands in all kinds of crap
different services and then thenext month they're doing
something else and then the nextmonth they're trying to offer
(23:29):
something.
Find what you're really good atand be the master of it.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Exactly Be the best person you can be at one to two
things like you.
You look at places like amazonor you look at like elon musk
and all those guys and they'rereally good at like one or two
things.
They're not doing this, they'renot doing that, they're not
spreading themselves all over,they're not looking for that
(23:54):
next shiny object.
Because the secret is like itgets to a level like kind of the
level I'm at and probably whereclay's at, where it's boring,
he's like man, I'm gettingreally, really good at this and
you're like, okay, I'm ready forthat next uh level where I can,
where I can grow into adifferent, different version of
myself where I currently am,because I'm like an expert at
the current level I'm at now andthat's kind of that natural
(24:16):
growth upward and you start torealize you can delegate tasks
and then you're buying your timeback so you can take more of an
ownership and a leadership rolewithin your business and you
can, you can, you can focus onlike higher level activities.
You're not here Pressurewashing nothing wrong with
pressure washing, it's great.
But like you don't want to be40 something years old, still in
the wand because, as you see,people on the facebook groups or
(24:38):
just like I've had a herniasurgery from pressure washing
that probably was caused fromthat.
I had issues.
Sometimes you're in the sun allday long.
You could get like skin cancerissues, stuff happens, and if
you're just completely relyingupon your ability to spray water
and bleach, you're reallysetting yourself up to be in a
bad situation if something goeswrong.
(24:59):
We all know guys.
I know Pat Clark.
He's been on our show before.
Back in the day he broke hisleg with doing drag racing
motorcycles and he's like man.
That would have wrecked mybusiness if I didn't decide to
scale.
I had my health issue withhaving a seizure and having
encephalitis and not being ableto work for six months.
That would have completelybankrupted me.
(25:19):
And it's like, hey, you neverknow when you step on something
wrong and you break an ankle andthen what are you going to do?
You want to make sure that youposition yourself with a team
around you, not only so you cangrow, but so you can protect
yourself if anything were tohappen 100% and that kind of
opened my eyes.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
when that happened with your situation last year,
we kind of stepped in and said,hey, I don't mind helping, and
that's another thing, finding aguy that you can trust,
collaborate with.
And I was willing to help Mattout.
I was able to help him makesure he had some income coming
in.
If I needed to help him run hisshow, help him with his quotes,
help him with his employees,help him with his scheduling,
help him with all quotes, helphim with his employees, help him
(25:59):
with his scheduling, help himwith all that.
So if you've got a good guythat you can ride along and
collaborate because me and Matthave the same business model
Like the things that he does isthe same things that I do so I
was able to say, hey, man, ifyou need me to step in and help
you out, I know that he couldtrust me.
And you know it's not abouttrying to take any business or
(26:19):
any of that, it's just trying tohelp a good friend out.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
No doubt, and when you start, to like build a
business, you're buildingsomething bigger than yourself,
so your ego naturally dies off.
If you're stuck trying to doeverything yourself and be the
best person in the room, you'renot going to have good people
working for you and you're notgoing to have people that are
going to step up when you needthem to step up when you need
them to step up.
And whether you're like goingon a vacation, you're going on a
cruise, you don't have goodcell service and you or you got
(26:43):
a employee in the field havingto troubleshoot pressure washing
stuff, having to troubleshoot acleaning question on cleaning.
Or like uh, the guy I hadworking for me, uh, tom, he's a,
he's a college kid.
He worked for me last year.
I didn't ride with him.
He just showed up again afterhis last job was in august.
He shows up today, rocks androlls.
He's like, yep, it's easyfigured out a couple
(27:05):
troubleshooting issues of, likea clogged tip on a surface
cleaner, um, like an injectorthat just the belt, the ball
inside the injector needed to bereset, never called me, never
did anything, took advantage ofit.
So, like by empowering peopleon your team you, you're
building your team up, you're,you're acting selflessly say
something were to happen.
I know like the story with Clayand I, where he helped me by
(27:25):
giving him a surface cleaner, orsometimes I'll see him doing
something and I'm like, hey, trydoing this, because you see
stuff that you may have a blindspot to, because when we're so
stuck doing everything ourselves, we're burnt out.
We got all the pressures of theworld on us.
It's hard to see straight andthat's why it's.
It's kind of that naturalgrowth when you're you're being,
(27:49):
whether you're bringing on ateam or you got guys in your
area that can kind of have yourback and look out for you.
I found when you're not doingeverything yourself and you're
not stressed out as much andit's not as physically demanding
, you're kind of more cool withthings and like, hey, yeah, I'll
help you, or you want this job,like I'm not over here, like
trying to be the biggest, likedickhead in town.
I rather share the wealth andunderstand, like this isn't a
hustle that I'm going to burnout and I'm going to be afraid
(28:09):
for winters.
Like we've been at this forfive years.
Like I have a team in place, wehave a good idea of like and
good confidence in our business.
And, like, as you grow, you getinto that phase, you it's
easier to collaborate withpeople.
And then people will reach outto you and they're like hey, I
see that you got a crew now.
That's awesome.
And then, like you're likeKalei and I talk about, like
your customers are your friendsand your biggest cheerleaders.
(28:30):
So when they start to see likeyou got a couple guys running
trucks, they're like you're abig dog now and that's.
That's cool too.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Yeah, man Always love the growth.
I always love going back tocustomers and they can see it
and it's awesome.
It's almost like going back toold family members house.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Another thing you don't think about too.
Think about if you have anemployee.
They have friends and familythat have houses that need to be
cleaned.
You can get into their networkas well, and that's something
that you don't realize until youhave guys.
I've done work for people ofall of my employees and then
everybody's like oh yeah, my sonworks for you, clean my house,
(29:06):
or like their neighbor or thisor that, and then, before you
know it, not only are theymaking money for you doing the
work, but you're getting intotheir network and you're getting
almost a referral base out ofthat.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Yeah, so I've always talkedabout the.
You know there's always thissaying that I had from the sales
world is activity breedsactivity.
So you can make sure you keepthose trucks on the road, make
sure you keep them out on the onthe weekends and if they want
to work the weekends, I wouldn'tsuggest pushing the weekends
unless they really want to work.
(29:37):
But activity breeds activity.
Another thing that I justwanted to cover as we close this
is if you have an, pushing theweekends unless they really want
to work.
But activity breeds activity.
Another thing that I justwanted to cover as we close this
is if you have an employees.
Don't get pissed at the employeeif they make a mistake.
At the end of the day it's onyou.
You got to make sure you hitthe training.
You got to make sure you yougive them all the knowledge that
they need, take them under yourwing, say, hey, this is how
I'll do it.
They make a mistake.
Help them learn from it, butthey keep making the mistake.
(29:59):
Try to figure out why they keepmaking a mistake.
And then, obviously, if it'snot a right fit, it's just not a
right fit.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Yep, the technical stuff will come with time.
You want to find people whohave an ownership mindset, care
about your business and havethat customer service heart
where if the customer is goingto be like, oh, can you spray
this down over here, they're notgoing to say, no, like what
would you do?
Like you always want to do whatyou can to please a customer.
You don't want somebody to belike, oh, sorry, I can't help
(30:26):
you, and then that's, that's theface of your business to that
customer.
So like you could have greatcustomer service yourself.
But if you have employees thataren't of that same mindset of
you, then you're going to have alot of issues.
And I've had, I've had a coupleof guys where I had to let go,
where they naturally left.
And then I've had them followup year after year and like this
year we're booking jobs andthey're like, hey, can I request
(30:47):
a different crew?
And I'm like absolutely, youcan get whoever you want.
And if you have customers thatbelieve in your brand vision and
and know that you do good work,they'll say, hey, look, I
understand it's hard to haveemployees.
So what may seem as if like, oh, this employee is gonna ruin my
business customers see throughthat.
It's all how you handle thesituation and, like Clay says,
(31:08):
you take ownership of thesituation.
Somebody calls up mad.
Your employee did somethingmessed.
You gotta make it right becausethey'll call back the next time
.
You'll get a good review,you'll get word of mouth, and
I've noticed that too.
Like we've bombed jobs before,I've made it right and then they
call me the next year.
They're like hey, appreciateyou fixing it.
We'll call you next year.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
And then sometimes you'll even get a tip, exactly
right, I've had that happen too,so it's yeah, that's about a 30
minute mark, Matt.
Um, I think we've covered agood bit.
It's a good episode.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Yeah, good one.
It's relevant to both of us.
I've got guys coming back forthe seasonal help and then
Clay's got us skidding a newtruck on the road.
So exciting times ahead of us.
You guys hope everybody has agreat week.
Comment and, like Clay says,get in that Wash Bros group and
keep grinding.
This is the time of year tomake money, so just keep the
(32:02):
pedal down and have faith andkeep working.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Time of year to make the money.
For sure, Get after it.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Yep, you got any closing statements?
Speaker 2 (32:11):
No, just make sure you follow our social media page
Clay Smith, my personal page.
Matt Jackson personal page.
Matthew Jackson personal page.
Matt the driveway guy llc.
On facebook.
C3 wash bros llc on facebook.
The wash bros podcast facebookpage.
Follow us on all the platformsyoutube, apple podcast, spotify
all those guys I think mattwants to show you.
(32:32):
Do you get your book?
You want to show for amazon?
Speaker 1 (32:35):
oh yeah, let me see where it is.
I got it right here so yeaheasy.
We need to come up with a newone.
I'll come up with a new one.
I actually had to write thisone myself.
Uh, but with AI nowadays, uh,it's pretty cool.
You can, you can.
It can help out writing a book.
I'm thinking about doing this.
This is a great kind of a 22steps to your first six figures.
(32:55):
Good basic business lessons.
Say you're a technical mindedperson and you don't really
understand business, marketing,sales, how to grow your business
.
That'll give you pretty muchthe blueprint to do your first
hundred thousand.
Pretty much fill yourself up asan owner operator on a truck.
Go full time if you're a parttime.
But I was thinking about doingone kind of like a wash bros
theme with like summation of allof our episodes, what we talk
(33:17):
about in our growth.
So if that one was my growthinto expanding into a couple
trucks, it's going to be likeokay, how, how has it been with
a couple of trucks doing likehalf a million dollars a year in
revenue and going a littleheavier into equipment stuff,
because I know people like toknow like equipment and
technical stuff as well.
But if you guys are interested,go to amazon.
Amazon Got like 315 reviews onthere.
(33:39):
There's an Audible book outthere for free too, if you like
to listen to audiobooks, or youcan get the Kindle Unlimited,
too, for free.
So check that out if you guyswant more information.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Good job, I'm good man.
I appreciate everybodylistening in.
We'll see you in the next one.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Sweet, we will drop the outro and we'll see you guys
next week.
See you guys, peace.
what's up, guys?
It's matt jackson and claysmith and we are the wash bros.
Thanks for tuning in.
This is going to be season 2,episode 15.
It's it's crazy, uh.
We've been uh going 15 strongso far since like we're just
talking about with Clay heresince February.
So we're knocking thesepodcasts out and we hope
everybody's got a great week.
They've wrapped up a great weekand they've got a great week
(00:53):
ahead of them.
So for this episode, we'regoing to be talking about
something that's relevant toboth Clay and I.
It's when to bring on extracrew members, extra teammates,
when to expand into another skidor another truck.
So you want to kick this thingoff, clay.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
As always, my pleasure, absolutely.
First of all, first andforemost, I want to thank
everybody for following us,listening to our podcast,
listening to what we ramble onabout, listening to the
knowledge that we have thatwe've learned from to be able to
pass on to guys getting started, whether they've been seasoned
in the industry and they see usdoing, you know, knocking out a
(01:28):
bunch of work and doing goodwith our businesses.
Um, we appreciate everybodylistening, even if they're local
or or whatnot.
I really appreciate everybodylistening, seeing what's going
on.
We've got some great feedback,always happy to help answer any
questions people may have, andif we don't have the answers, we
can find them for you with our,with our resources.
So, as Matt said, when is agood time to bring on help?
(01:52):
When is a good time to bring onmore workers or employees,
whatever you know?
So I'll tell you a little bitof my story.
I know that Matt already knows,but I want to tell everybody
that's listening.
I started this back in 2021,full time and I started with a
four gallon a minute machine.
(02:12):
Actually, I started with a twoand a half gallon a minute
machine, and this is where it'svery important to surround
yourself with individuals,because Matt's actually pushed
me to grow as he, the, the growas he's growing.
You know the things that he'slearned from and the things that
he's done to grow.
His business has actuallyhelped mine.
And the crazy part is where the, we're competitors.
(02:33):
We're probably one of the toptwo guys in our area and we
compete against each other.
So, um, you know that sayingthat the, the, the, the best
guys collaborate at the top, youknow, we're not.
We see ourselves as competition, but we're not like cutting
each other's throats at the sametime.
So you can sit here and you canlearn from each other, or you
can, you know, have a big egoand just do whatever, do
(02:55):
whatever you want to do, but Ijust don't see any growth in
that.
But so, going back to what Iwas saying, my two and a half
gallon a minute machine turnedto a four gallon a minute
machine.
I was doing three to four hoursof the day with a four gallon a
minute machine, busting my tail.
So then you know, mattbasically gives me an eight
gallon a minute machine when hedoes an upgrade and then I was
(03:16):
able to see okay, I can do evenmore work.
So the coolest part about thisis you can always grow.
It's never ending.
You can make it as big as youwant it to be, and that's just
the beauty of it.
Last year I had a skid, I had atrailer and I ran the trailer.
I brought in a smaller guy thatdid some pressure washing.
(03:39):
He maybe did it once or twice aweek and I said hey, why don't
you come work with me?
Why don't you come learn fromme?
Why don't you come see what youcan do?
And you could see that you cando this with the right equipment
and you can do four to fivejobs a day with the right
equipment and you can make greatmoney at it, even working under
someone you know.
So if you're in that boat, Iwould highly recommend that
(03:59):
Going and working for somebody.
Tell them the deal, tell themwhat's going on.
Tell them up front.
Do not click on their freakingads.
Don't start asking.
You know I have that every day.
I know you do too, matt.
Don't start clicking on theirads.
Don't ask, you know.
Don't call and click onpeople's Google ads and say what
are you?
Uh, I have one the other day.
What are you charging for?
A medium sized driveway?
(04:20):
Well, buddy, you know, a mediumsized driveway could be $200 or
it could be $2,000.
You know, a medium could bedifferent for anybody Like.
Those are stupid questions,call and ask for help.
But the coolest thing about itis Dylan.
He worked for me last year fora few months, then the busier
months, and then he went on hisway and he's doing great.
He moved in a different areaand he learned a lot from me,
(04:43):
learned a lot from my businessand started his own thing and
now this year we're ready tobring on a full time guy.
We're actually this is happeningright now, so it's live.
So I'll be able to you knowevery episode, tell everybody a
little bit about it.
But we are buying a single cab.
If anybody follows me, followsmy page, we're buying another.
I want all my trucks to be thesame.
(05:04):
I want them to be, you know,turnkey ready.
You hop in one truck, you hopin another truck.
Everything is the same way andkeep it simple.
So we've got a truck order fromtexas.
It's coming this week sometime.
Well, I've hollered at casey atc3 skids.
He's already starting on me askid.
We're going to pick the skid upand then, hopefully within the
next 10 days I'll have my newguy that I've hired.
(05:25):
He's already hired, we're goingto train him up and we're going
to be running two trucks that'sawesome.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
And again, like clay's point, uh, I love that
quote and I almost want to likecondense it out.
I'd be like losers compete,winners collaborate.
It's like how can you findsomebody in your area and,
almost like mentor, mentee themand then you both grow more than
if it's you and him competingwith each other?
And also to Clay's point aboutif you're a new guy and you're
(05:55):
trying to get into this business, maybe you could collaborate
with somebody and learn underthem and just be fully
transparent with that.
Because, like Clay says, we getpeople all the time.
They hit us up oh, priceshopping, us and the secret
shopping, just to get an ideahow the business is supposed to
work, as opposed to just beinghonest and transparent and
finding ways of adding value tothem.
And like there's jobs that Clayand I have jumped on and we
(06:17):
both learn from the jobs.
So it isn't like a one-sidedrelationship here inside a
relationship here.
Clay does stuff, he learns, hetells me about it, I learn, I, I
motivate and push myself andvice versa.
So like find that guy like Clayand I in your local market or
whether it's your localcompetitor or there's somebody
online that you find and connectwith and you guys can grow
together and share stories andlike if you guys have been
(06:39):
paying attention to the wash brosince the beginning of our
season one.
That was kind of the phase whereum clay's in the phase now
where I was in, kind of like inthat beginning part you bring on
your first couple guys fulltime.
You got the skid, you got thetruck.
You're kind of like the babythat you've grown and built,
you're handing off to somebody.
So it's kind of an excitingtime and it's almost a full
(07:00):
circle moment now where clay'sgoing from like maxing out,
banging out the one truck deal,putting up huge numbers with the
one truck, but then he'sgetting kind of tired of like
the physical part of the body.
You get storms that roll in.
You can say I'm going to workseven days a week, sun up to
sundown.
But what are you going to do ifyou got two or three rainy days
?
You got lightning?
That's going to slow you downand you're going to be limited
(07:29):
to how much you can make a month.
So like that next growthtrajectory which Clay's making
now and I made a couple of yearsback is is getting that other
truck so you can double yourproductivity and you don't have
to say, oh, if I'm, if I don'tdouble my productivity the first
year or the first week or thefirst six months doing it, it's
a failure.
No, like just adding one or twoextra days of free productivity
due to like Just adding one ortwo extra days of free
productivity due to like we'retalking about this today, if
you're paying your guy like 10%,20%, say that Like when one day
(07:53):
my guy's making me his weeklypayout, so he's making that
$1,000, $1,200, $1,300 for oneday of productivity, I have four
free days of work off of him.
And that's kind of like thatowner mindset, the business
mindset.
And that's that's kind of theexciting thing.
When you start to scale andbuild into trucks because you're
(08:13):
buying yourself some time againand say you like clay and I, we
both like racing, we like doingstuff on the weekends.
You don't want to say, oh man,I'm I'm so slammed and stuck in
my business I don't haveavailability to step away for
one to two days.
So it was kind of an excitinggrowth period for Clay because
he can lean more into being likethe business owner and less
like being stuck on theequipment and whether he wants
(08:36):
to hustle too and double up andmake a lot of profit, which I've
been doing actually this pastspring, running one guy full
time and then me on anothertruck.
Or you can say, hey, I'm goingto take a week at the beach and
we're still going to make fiveto $8,000 without me doing any
of the work.
So it's exciting.
You can open yourself up togrowth and and then it just
becomes how much business canyou put on the books?
(08:57):
So it's exciting times.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Absolutely, and it goes back to the, like you said,
the freedom thing.
Everybody has different goals.
We talked about this time andtime again.
Me and you have talked about it.
You know when is the perfecttime, when is the right time.
Hey, we need to do this and Idon't.
I don't think there's any rightway of growing.
You'll know when it's time,like I know when it's time the
(09:24):
biggest.
I was just actually talking tosomebody about this a couple of
weeks ago.
What we had talked about was,you know, he had grew too fast
and it initially just screwedhim up.
And I've had a lot of guys, alot of advice being given to me,
but I try to learn every day,right, but you got to be very
careful on what you apply, whatyou're listening to.
Only you know when it's theright time.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Exactly right.
And then you got to decide doyou want a like a mental
headache of, say, I'm managingthe stress of running a business
with multiple things going on,with cashflow issues, if you're
taking on debt, with uncertainty, if you have other mouths to
feed besides your own, or do youwant to be the physical
headache or that you want to bein that like physical zone of
pain where you're like I worksix, seven days a week, I'm
(10:06):
physically drained, the summer'shot Like man.
I'm just starting to like burnmyself out.
So you just pick your battle.
And again, it's not one way orthe other.
It's okay to step back on thetruck.
That's kind of what I've beendoing this past spring packing
down a lot of profit in thebusiness, paying down kind of a
little bit of debt, like Claywas saying, as far as growing
fast, I kind of ripped off abandaid a couple years back and
(10:29):
doubled the revenue of thebusiness and by doing so you
have a lot of cash flow problems.
It's costly, and then you'retrying to like kind of correct
all that behavior.
But the beauty of havingmultiple trucks and employees
you can just cut it down and bea little leaner and then still
run a full truck yourself, andthen the extra guy you have is
(10:50):
just icing on the cake.
So it's not something to besuper stressed about.
You don't have to like oh, nowthat I've scaled, there's no
coming back, I'm only going tomake this much profitability.
No, it's constantly a jugglingact.
Luckily, when I scaled, I had ahealth injury last year that
took me out for six months.
So like if I didn't scale, Iwouldn't, I wouldn't have been
able to survive six months ofnot working.
(11:12):
And I don't know guys on socialmedia they're like oh I, I
worked so hard, I got all theseailments.
I'm like until you can'tlegally drive.
That's a different situation.
Like like stuff happens in lifethat's out of your control.
So you prepare yourself andprotect yourself and your
business by like naturallyscaling.
When it's like inside of you,you're like okay, you know what,
I'm ready for that next jump,and it may feel like a step back
(11:35):
in certain areas, but then onceyou get over that, you're like
whoa, never again, never, never.
Like your, your, your brain isgoing to like unlock a different
level and you're gonna see theworld differently.
So if you guys are in similarsituation as Clay or you're kind
of in my situation.
It's super scary when likeyou're like, oh man, this is an
investment.
But you have to think about it.
(11:55):
It's not expense, it's aninvestment and like it's the
natural way forward because youbuild up some momentum, so much
momentum growing a business.
I'm looking at our CRM we'realready at like 300 jobs for the
year, at like 150K.
So like that would beimpossible to do solo and it's
exhausting to even think abouttrying to do solo.
But when you have a businessand you have guys running where
(12:18):
you can, you can be more in theoffice and take a few weeks off.
You can hire people.
I've got some college kidscoming back in and that helped
me with the summer work and Ihad a truck running today.
So I was sitting here doingyard work, doing office work.
A thousand dollar day, chillday.
The guy made 200 bucks, sothere's an $800 day pretty much
for me, just kind of sittinghere taking care of my customers
(12:39):
.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
And that's just on a Sunday.
That's on a Sunday, yeah, andthat's I mean, even if it was
$500, it's a win.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Exactly.
It's like you want to keep thetruck moving because you got a
good guy in place.
Your truck's out there, it'sbeing seen, You're getting jobs
completed.
Word of mouth Somebody's likeoh, I saw you on the road, Boom,
You're just when.
I saw your truck out there.
And then you never know whosees your app, who calls you,
(13:09):
who's, who's the next doorneighbor or the guy's house that
your guy's washing.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
It's just kind of a snowball effect and and another
another cool thing about theweekends when you're, when
you're out working on theweekends, everybody's home on
the weekends, right Versus theweekdays you don't have many
people at home, so you can getall the neighbors together and
give them a neighborhood packagedeal.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Exactly right, and I've noticed that I get more
referrals from weekend work thanI do during the week.
Because, like Clay says, noteverybody's sitting at home,
like they are on the weekends,or they're not doing yard work
like they are on the weekends,and they see you, the guy down
the washing a house, and then,hey, I saw you're cleaning my
neighbor's house.
I want to be the next guy to doit versus like a monday or
tuesday, and you blend in witheverybody else absolutely.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, everybody's at work on the weekdays, so it's a
little different.
I have noticed that trend.
If I work a saturday orwhatever, and you know, so, yeah
, if my guys want to work asaturday or sunday, have at it,
we'll go ahead and put you somework down.
You need a little extra cash inyour pocket, we'll go right
ahead.
I can get, I can use a littleextra cash in my pocket too.
So this, this, this episode'sfor anybody that's listening,
(14:12):
even any new guys, this, this issome knowledge that you can put
towards the future.
You can think about this thingor you can go back and listen to
it later on down the road.
I think it's something thatneeds to be talked about,
because you really don't knowwhen the right time is.
Only you're going to know whenthe right time is, what your
situation is, what your personalbills are like, what kind of
money.
And my angle me and Matt wentat it two different angles my
(14:33):
angle and my angle me and mattwent out at two different angles
.
My angle was I just wanted towork hard, kill myself not
really kill myself, but justwork really hard.
Um, it's been exhausting.
You know, we we did almost athree thousand dollar day.
If you follow the the wash brosuh group, the group that we
have for the wash bros group,make sure you go follow that on
facebook.
We got a little private groupin there.
We share some things from timeto time.
If you go back in there you cansee the day that I did.
(14:56):
What was that?
Just the other day?
It was like this earlier thispast week, so I think it was
like $2,700.
One day.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Yeah, that's nuts.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
One truck and it's just me, right.
So I've pretty much aced thepressure washing game.
I can do it with my eyes closed.
You know what I mean.
It's just one of those thingsI've aced.
I've gotten tired with it.
I want to move on to the nextthing, like I've heard you talk
about previously, matt Ready, tomove on to the next thing and
(15:25):
be more of a businessman than apressure washer.
It's the same thing I'vealready been doing.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
It's just going to be times two.
And this is a problem.
If you guys are super new tothis, you don't really
understand, you don't face.
You will get to the point where, when the busy season hits like
it's hit for us and most of youguys out there you will have
too much work coming in and youcan't manage that work.
So then you start to losecustomers, and it's a trend you
see, all these guys do, and thenusually the result they have to
(15:50):
do is jack up their prices likecrazy or they book out three to
four weeks and then and thenyou're you're limited to what
your business can do.
And if you're okay with being onthat treadmill of this is what
I can, this, this is my capacity, this is what I'm going to do,
that's awesome.
But if you want to grow yourbusiness, if you want to say hey
, every year, like I'm strivingto be better, I'm striving to be
different and and and move theball forward in order to
(16:12):
maintain that, like customerservice, you're going to have to
grow.
And I saw a great quote.
It was like until you're at acertain amount of revenue,
you're the job of a business isliterally like sales and
marketing, and then it shiftsinto like customer maintenance
and like maintaining, and thenyou become more like placed as a
business owner, a manager, whatI find really cool.
I have had Ryan, my main guy,for three years.
(16:34):
This is going on.
Let's see 20.
I brought him on 23, 24, 25,okay, so like, yeah, like three,
ish, three, three seasons,three seasons yeah this is about
his third season.
I'm having repeats request tohave him.
They're like, hey, can ryan doit again?
It's like they come to me aslike matt the driveway guy, but
they're requesting my lead tech.
(16:56):
That's been with me for thelast three years, so that's to
me that's cool.
It's like we were talking aboutin the beginning.
You're like, oh man, thatGoogle review.
They're like C3 Wash Pro, likeClay's the greatest.
The next level, I think is, iswhen they say, hey Kellen, hey
your guy, your guy is the bestguy.
I want to say I want him to domy house again.
That's when I think it becomescool yeah, man, I'm at.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Um, yeah, we're excited.
Dylan, uh, that worked for uslast year.
He got a ton of reviews as well, so it's always cool to see
that uh, mixing it up a littlebit, because you see clay, clay,
clay, clay, clay all over thegoogle reviews and then when you
get it mixed up a little bit,they're like, okay, well, they
got a couple good guys, not justone good guy.
Because then you get to thepoint where they just request
clay and I'm like, well, I don'twant to.
I'm getting to the point whereI don't really want to go out
(17:39):
there anymore.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
So yeah, and then like, obviously I still go out
on bigger projects.
If it's a big commercialproject, if it's roof washing,
if it's stuff that it's not thebasic cookie cutter, like 80 of
our jobs, and it's kind of like80 20 principle, you can still
be in your business 20 percentof the time and you say I'm not
going to show up unless it's a500, a thousand dollar job,
those, those like volume typejobs, the 350, 400 something
(18:02):
dollar jobs that are cookiecutter, have your guy do it,
they'll get tips.
I've found too a lot of timespeople tip employees just
because they know hey, this isnot the boss.
Man like you did a great job, agreat job Like here's a tip,
and it's just cool to keep theball rolling with things and
then invest your time on the funprojects, and that's like Clay
says.
There's so many different waysyou can do this.
(18:23):
And once you start buying sometime back, that doesn't mean
you're sitting in an officedoing nothing.
That means that you're able tosay run a truck, make extra
money, and then, instead ofturning away work, backfill the
work that you don't necessarilywant to do with your employee,
and then he's really good atdoing $5,000, $8,000 a week and
(18:44):
then that's how you really growyour business, because a single
truck can do about $30,000comfortably with an employee and
you think, hey, if Clay canbang out 40K himself and he's
got an employee that can do 30K,you can stack $70,000 a month
without with without like reallykilling yourself.
It's just continuing whatyou've done this month and then
you add on somebody else andthen that's when he can start
like really growing.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
There's nothing better than sitting on a cruise
ship or sitting on the beach orsitting in the Bahamas and just
you know.
You know you're making money.
You don't have anything toworry about, right?
So you know, I got a little bitof a taste of it last year and
I'm just ready to be able totake off when I want, do what I
want when I want to do it andactually have a more of a life.
(19:25):
Because, as a solo operator,you are.
If you want to be successfuland you want to do it right and
you want to grow, you want tohave a great business, you want
to have over.
You know I've done over 300Google reviews and since 21,.
If you want to do all thosethings, you want to have a good
reputation.
You truly care about yourbusiness.
You truly care about your brand.
(19:46):
You are going to be in yourbusiness 24 seven as a solo
operator and that's what ittakes.
You don't quit your regular jobfor freedom.
That's where a lot of peopleget their mindset messed up.
Oh, I made my own schedule.
I'm a boss.
I can show up when I want to.
If you don't make it easy onthe customer, you don't put a
schedule down date.
You don't have a CRM that makes, because people love the CRM.
(20:06):
I've said this in about everyepisode If you don't communicate
with that customer, you don'tshow up.
When you say you're going tothat customer, you don't show up
when you say you're going to.
You don't make it easier forpayment process and when it's
completed and you know, you justshow up and you're just a
pressure washing guy.
You don't provide any value.
They're probably not going tocall you back next time.
They don't even remember whoyou was.
That's very true, and and that'sthe thing you want to make that
(20:29):
customer feel like they knowyou before you ever pull up to
their job or feel like they knowyou before you ever pull up to
their job.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Exactly right.
And another thing to stressthis is just coming from
understanding capacity of work.
It's like Clay's grinded so farto get to the point where he is
now.
He's naturally going to growyear over year.
So if he's maxing himself outon his one truck, like doing
great numbers with a solo likewhat is he going to do next year
(20:55):
?
Speaker 2 (20:55):
like we're doing two truck numbers with one, yeah,
what are you gonna do next year?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
you're gonna have to tell people sorry, bro, like I'm
, I'm beyond full, I can'tcontinue this.
Whether you're like, hey, I'vemoved on to something else, or
mentally you're burned out, oryou're just like there's not
enough time in the day tofulfill all this demand that
I've created because I put sucha good business and a good and
brand out there.
And that's why I kind of seethis owner operator thing, where
(21:17):
somebody gets really hot andthen they fizzle out and then
they get back on that wheel andthey go really hot again versus
that slow and consistent growthLike you've got you built
yourself to that point ofcritical mass where you don't
have to worry about, oh, goingout of business.
Like everybody already knowsyou, you got a great reputation
and now it just becomes likethat slow and steady growth.
And then absolutely and thenyou're maintaining and then you
(21:39):
have a book of business of 800to 1000 jobs a year that you can
fit onto a schedule and you'relike I know my business is going
to make $400,000, $500,000 ayear, however hard I want to
push it.
And then you're buying yourtime back so you can focus on
adding other services, goingafter bigger types of projects,
(21:59):
or you can just kind of, likeClay says, make it more of a
lifestyle business.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah it's all about.
Everybody has different goals.
Everybody has different plans.
I mean, it's no secret I'vetalked to a couple of people
about it, I may have mentionedit in here, but my goal is to
have this thing making sevenfigures.
I want to be by the time I'm 40.
I want to be able to just dowhat I want to do business
running itself, be in somethingelse, have my hands in something
else and you know, 40 is maybea little too far out there.
(22:28):
You know that's just my goal.
I may hit it by the time I'm 35.
I'm only 30 now.
Right, I'm still young.
I've done a lot of things I'vehad.
I've been able to be in a lotof positions that people my age
haven't been able to be in, anda lot of people think I'm older
because of that.
I've been through a lot.
I've learned a lot aboutbusiness.
You can be the best pressurewasher out there.
But if, if you don with the,with the, with the mindset of oh
(22:48):
, I want more freedom than mynine to five job, that's just
the craziest thing I've everheard.
People got it backwards.
Basically, what you got to dois you got to work hard, to work
harder.
You got to keep grinding.
You got to keep going after.
You got to keep going andgetting the customer.
(23:09):
You got to keep providing thatvalue.
You got to keep creating thatbrand, creating that great
reputation, and just don't tryto stay consistent with it.
Don't be trying to do 10million things at once and we
see that a lot in our area.
A lot of guys have got theirhands in all kinds of crap
different services and then thenext month they're doing
something else and then the nextmonth they're trying to offer
(23:29):
something.
Find what you're really good atand be the master of it.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Exactly Be the best person you can be at one to two
things like you.
You look at places like amazonor you look at like elon musk
and all those guys and they'rereally good at like one or two
things.
They're not doing this, they'renot doing that, they're not
spreading themselves all over,they're not looking for that
(23:54):
next shiny object.
Because the secret is like itgets to a level like kind of the
level I'm at and probably whereclay's at, where it's boring,
he's like man, I'm gettingreally, really good at this and
you're like, okay, I'm ready forthat next uh level where I can,
where I can grow into adifferent, different version of
myself where I currently am,because I'm like an expert at
the current level I'm at now andthat's kind of that natural
(24:16):
growth upward and you start torealize you can delegate tasks
and then you're buying your timeback so you can take more of an
ownership and a leadership rolewithin your business and you
can, you can, you can focus onlike higher level activities.
You're not here Pressurewashing nothing wrong with
pressure washing, it's great.
But like you don't want to be40 something years old, still in
the wand because, as you see,people on the facebook groups or
(24:38):
just like I've had a herniasurgery from pressure washing
that probably was caused fromthat.
I had issues.
Sometimes you're in the sun allday long.
You could get like skin cancerissues, stuff happens, and if
you're just completely relyingupon your ability to spray water
and bleach, you're reallysetting yourself up to be in a
bad situation if something goeswrong.
(24:59):
We all know guys.
I know Pat Clark.
He's been on our show before.
Back in the day he broke hisleg with doing drag racing
motorcycles and he's like man.
That would have wrecked mybusiness if I didn't decide to
scale.
I had my health issue withhaving a seizure and having
encephalitis and not being ableto work for six months.
That would have completelybankrupted me.
(25:19):
And it's like, hey, you neverknow when you step on something
wrong and you break an ankle andthen what are you going to do?
You want to make sure that youposition yourself with a team
around you, not only so you cangrow, but so you can protect
yourself if anything were tohappen 100% and that kind of
opened my eyes.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
when that happened with your situation last year,
we kind of stepped in and said,hey, I don't mind helping, and
that's another thing, finding aguy that you can trust,
collaborate with.
And I was willing to help Mattout.
I was able to help him makesure he had some income coming
in.
If I needed to help him run hisshow, help him with his quotes,
help him with his employees,help him with his scheduling,
help him with all quotes, helphim with his employees, help him
(25:59):
with his scheduling, help himwith all that.
So if you've got a good guythat you can ride along and
collaborate because me and Matthave the same business model
Like the things that he does isthe same things that I do so I
was able to say, hey, man, ifyou need me to step in and help
you out, I know that he couldtrust me.
And you know it's not abouttrying to take any business or
(26:19):
any of that, it's just trying tohelp a good friend out.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
No doubt, and when you start, to like build a
business, you're buildingsomething bigger than yourself,
so your ego naturally dies off.
If you're stuck trying to doeverything yourself and be the
best person in the room, you'renot going to have good people
working for you and you're notgoing to have people that are
going to step up when you needthem to step up when you need
them to step up.
And whether you're like goingon a vacation, you're going on a
cruise, you don't have goodcell service and you or you got
(26:43):
a employee in the field havingto troubleshoot pressure washing
stuff, having to troubleshoot acleaning question on cleaning.
Or like uh, the guy I hadworking for me, uh, tom, he's a,
he's a college kid.
He worked for me last year.
I didn't ride with him.
He just showed up again afterhis last job was in august.
He shows up today, rocks androlls.
He's like, yep, it's easyfigured out a couple
(27:05):
troubleshooting issues of, likea clogged tip on a surface
cleaner, um, like an injectorthat just the belt, the ball
inside the injector needed to bereset, never called me, never
did anything, took advantage ofit.
So, like by empowering peopleon your team you, you're
building your team up, you're,you're acting selflessly say
something were to happen.
I know like the story with Clayand I, where he helped me by
(27:25):
giving him a surface cleaner, orsometimes I'll see him doing
something and I'm like, hey, trydoing this, because you see
stuff that you may have a blindspot to, because when we're so
stuck doing everything ourselves, we're burnt out.
We got all the pressures of theworld on us.
It's hard to see straight andthat's why it's.
It's kind of that naturalgrowth when you're you're being,
(27:49):
whether you're bringing on ateam or you got guys in your
area that can kind of have yourback and look out for you.
I found when you're not doingeverything yourself and you're
not stressed out as much andit's not as physically demanding
, you're kind of more cool withthings and like, hey, yeah, I'll
help you, or you want this job,like I'm not over here, like
trying to be the biggest, likedickhead in town.
I rather share the wealth andunderstand, like this isn't a
hustle that I'm going to burnout and I'm going to be afraid
(28:09):
for winters.
Like we've been at this forfive years.
Like I have a team in place, wehave a good idea of like and
good confidence in our business.
And, like, as you grow, you getinto that phase, you it's
easier to collaborate withpeople.
And then people will reach outto you and they're like hey, I
see that you got a crew now.
That's awesome.
And then, like you're likeKalei and I talk about, like
your customers are your friendsand your biggest cheerleaders.
(28:30):
So when they start to see likeyou got a couple guys running
trucks, they're like you're abig dog now and that's.
That's cool too.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Yeah, man Always love the growth.
I always love going back tocustomers and they can see it
and it's awesome.
It's almost like going back toold family members house.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Another thing you don't think about too.
Think about if you have anemployee.
They have friends and familythat have houses that need to be
cleaned.
You can get into their networkas well, and that's something
that you don't realize until youhave guys.
I've done work for people ofall of my employees and then
everybody's like oh yeah, my sonworks for you, clean my house,
(29:06):
or like their neighbor or thisor that, and then, before you
know it, not only are theymaking money for you doing the
work, but you're getting intotheir network and you're getting
almost a referral base out ofthat.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Absolutely, absolutely.
Yeah, so I've always talkedabout the.
You know there's always thissaying that I had from the sales
world is activity breedsactivity.
So you can make sure you keepthose trucks on the road, make
sure you keep them out on the onthe weekends and if they want
to work the weekends, I wouldn'tsuggest pushing the weekends
unless they really want to work.
(29:37):
But activity breeds activity.
Another thing that I justwanted to cover as we close this
is if you have an, pushing theweekends unless they really want
to work.
But activity breeds activity.
Another thing that I justwanted to cover as we close this
is if you have an employees.
Don't get pissed at the employeeif they make a mistake.
At the end of the day it's onyou.
You got to make sure you hitthe training.
You got to make sure you yougive them all the knowledge that
they need, take them under yourwing, say, hey, this is how
I'll do it.
They make a mistake.
Help them learn from it, butthey keep making the mistake.
(29:59):
Try to figure out why they keepmaking a mistake.
And then, obviously, if it'snot a right fit, it's just not a
right fit.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Yep, the technical stuff will come with time.
You want to find people whohave an ownership mindset, care
about your business and havethat customer service heart
where if the customer is goingto be like, oh, can you spray
this down over here, they're notgoing to say, no, like what
would you do?
Like you always want to do whatyou can to please a customer.
You don't want somebody to belike, oh, sorry, I can't help
(30:26):
you, and then that's, that's theface of your business to that
customer.
So like you could have greatcustomer service yourself.
But if you have employees thataren't of that same mindset of
you, then you're going to have alot of issues.
And I've had, I've had a coupleof guys where I had to let go,
where they naturally left.
And then I've had them followup year after year and like this
year we're booking jobs andthey're like, hey, can I request
(30:47):
a different crew?
And I'm like absolutely, youcan get whoever you want.
And if you have customers thatbelieve in your brand vision and
and know that you do good work,they'll say, hey, look, I
understand it's hard to haveemployees.
So what may seem as if like, oh, this employee is gonna ruin my
business customers see throughthat.
It's all how you handle thesituation and, like Clay says,
(31:08):
you take ownership of thesituation.
Somebody calls up mad.
Your employee did somethingmessed.
You gotta make it right becausethey'll call back the next time
.
You'll get a good review,you'll get word of mouth, and
I've noticed that too.
Like we've bombed jobs before,I've made it right and then they
call me the next year.
They're like hey, appreciateyou fixing it.
We'll call you next year.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
And then sometimes you'll even get a tip, exactly
right, I've had that happen too,so it's yeah, that's about a 30
minute mark, Matt.
Um, I think we've covered agood bit.
It's a good episode.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Yeah, good one.
It's relevant to both of us.
I've got guys coming back forthe seasonal help and then
Clay's got us skidding a newtruck on the road.
So exciting times ahead of us.
You guys hope everybody has agreat week.
Comment and, like Clay says,get in that Wash Bros group and
keep grinding.
This is the time of year tomake money, so just keep the
(32:02):
pedal down and have faith andkeep working.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
Time of year to make the money.
For sure, Get after it.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Yep, you got any closing statements?
Speaker 2 (32:11):
No, just make sure you follow our social media page
Clay Smith, my personal page.
Matt Jackson personal page.
Matthew Jackson personal page.
Matt the driveway guy llc.
On facebook.
C3 wash bros llc on facebook.
The wash bros podcast facebookpage.
Follow us on all the platformsyoutube, apple podcast, spotify
all those guys I think mattwants to show you.
(32:32):
Do you get your book?
You want to show for amazon?
Speaker 1 (32:35):
oh yeah, let me see where it is.
I got it right here so yeaheasy.
We need to come up with a newone.
I'll come up with a new one.
I actually had to write thisone myself.
Uh, but with AI nowadays, uh,it's pretty cool.
You can, you can.
It can help out writing a book.
I'm thinking about doing this.
This is a great kind of a 22steps to your first six figures.
(32:55):
Good basic business lessons.
Say you're a technical mindedperson and you don't really
understand business, marketing,sales, how to grow your business
.
That'll give you pretty muchthe blueprint to do your first
hundred thousand.
Pretty much fill yourself up asan owner operator on a truck.
Go full time if you're a parttime.
But I was thinking about doingone kind of like a wash bros
theme with like summation of allof our episodes, what we talk
(33:17):
about in our growth.
So if that one was my growthinto expanding into a couple
trucks, it's going to be likeokay, how, how has it been with
a couple of trucks doing likehalf a million dollars a year in
revenue and going a littleheavier into equipment stuff,
because I know people like toknow like equipment and
technical stuff as well.
But if you guys are interested,go to amazon.
Amazon Got like 315 reviews onthere.
(33:39):
There's an Audible book outthere for free too, if you like
to listen to audiobooks, or youcan get the Kindle Unlimited,
too, for free.
So check that out if you guyswant more information.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Good job, I'm good man.
I appreciate everybodylistening in.
We'll see you in the next one.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Sweet, we will drop the outro and we'll see you guys
next week.
See you guys, peace.
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