This is Under Pressure, a podcast where we dive into the untold stories of entrepreneurs and business owners who have conquered adversity to achieve greatness. And now, here's your host, Nick Staton.

Welcome to episode 10 of the Under Pressure Show. I'm your host, Nick Staton. Today's guest is Tyler Bentz. Tyler Bentz owns Tyler Bentz Pressure Washing out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Tyler, if you could tell us a little bit about your background.

Nic Staton

Yeah, so I As far as my background goes, professionally wise.

Tyler Bentz

Basically, like where you came from, stuff like that. Just like where you came from generally as like a kid.

Nic Staton

Yeah. Yeah. So I grew up in Fort Lauderdale. I was born on the West Coast of Florida. And yeah, parents moved over here when I was five. My father builds homes, he's a general contractor and has been since I was a little child. So we moved about 17 times from house to house and he would just buy a house, they'd fix it up, they'd sell it, we'd keep doing that. And we found ourselves over here in Fort Lauderdale and he kept doing that. I was moving a lot as a kid, but grew up mostly in Fort Lauderdale. Went to high school, all that, all good here. Went to college in the West Coast of Florida, in Fort Myers, and then went out to college again out in Texas, in A&M, and didn't graduate with a business management degree. Got really close, about one semester away. Ended up getting in some trouble when I came back for Christmas break to Fort Lauderdale. Had to stay, couldn't finish out. So anyway, stayed. And then I found myself working with my dad in his business, building custom homes. And did that for a few years and really wasn't a fan of it too much. Didn't really have any drive or passion doing that. So I broke off of that and went and did my own thing, working at restaurants, working any odd job, tree trimming. I was good with my hands from working with construction, good on labor side, but Never really found a passion. Let's kind of go back a little bit. Growing up, it was kind of like a, I don't want to say like a perfect family, but my mom and dad were really good parents and they raised us well, my brother and I. So I was very fortunate. And as a kid, I grew up playing video games back when video games weren't really popular like they are now with all these streamers and stuff. I was on the very front end of that, playing Quake, playing Doom 2, playing old Counter-Strike, and I really took a knack to it, and I climbed that professional ladder, basically. I was flying all over the world to go play computer games. So I started off as a really, like, prodigy almost. you know, by the time I was 15, my parents ended up getting divorced. And, um, that was just like a huge slap in my face. I had, you know, it was like this perfect family that never saw my parents fight. And then all of a sudden they're getting divorced and I'm like, fuck, my whole world just flipped upside down. So I, um, met a girl, you know, 16 started dabbling, you know, and drinking and weed and partying and just kind of went down that that escape, you know, and took that, that, that, those habits with me, you know, I'm four, I'm 39. So I, you know, from, from 16 to that's, you know, about 30, you know, I was kind of just trying to find my way, man. And, um, I understand went through the ringer, lost everything, you know, it was a, it was a brutal road. So I went from this, you know, computer game player playing professionally, flying all over, doing great to, you know, going back down. And I went all the way down to as far as down as you can get. And, um, And, you know, and just never found my way. So it was, it was tough. Never had any pride in what I was doing. It was, it was a rocky road. So yeah, I, you know, it, yeah. So then I went and worked with, working with my dad and just doing random ass jobs and, and never really had, had it, had it together, you know, never financially got secure. So I, you know, yeah, so that's, that's kind of like my childhood little brief snapshot of it.

Um, okay. Uh, what, how'd you start your business?

So I, uh, about four years ago, um, I wasn't done with the party and I went to rehab. I was working for my dad at that time, super unhappy, just working as hard as I possibly could. I felt not appreciated at work. It was probably all me, but I just wasn't in it. I went to rehab and I got out and I stopped working for my dad. I pressure washed in the past about eight years ago and I really loved it. And as a kid, I was growing up, I was always playing with hoses, with water, just loved it, you know, for whatever reason. And so after I stopped working with my dad about four years ago, I was like, look, I had no money, dead broke. I applied for a credit card. Somehow I got a $4,000 credit limit. And, um, I went out to my local pressure washing shop, bought a four gallon per minute machine with, you know, in a surface cleaner, some chemicals and threw it in the back of my pickup truck. Luckily I actually had a truck. Um, that was the one, one thing that I had going for me was I had transportation and somewhere to put, you know, to put the equipment. So. Right out of rehab, I quit working with my dad. I went to work for a tile slash marble distributor, hated it. That's when I applied for the credit card. I'm like, I gotta do something. This is not me. So I jumped in. It was destined because it got a credit limit. I know. I thank God for that credit card, dude. Thank God. I had no money in my bank account. I was down to nothing. So anyway, I took that four grand, bought the equipment, spent about three grand on equipment, threw that shit in the back of my pickup truck and went and found work, dude. My first job, I landed a home run somehow. I landed a $6,000 job. I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I just went and sold it. And for whatever reason, these people hired me. And I was like, this is it, dude. I've found it, dude. This is great. This is it. So I took my equipment. I was at the house for two freaking weeks. And I did paper sealing on it. I had no idea what paper you know, no idea how to seal pavers, but I made it happen and I figured it out. And, you know, YouTube, just the Facebook groups just, I was in it 110%. I was like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to make it happen. And, um, you know, I just dug deep. And, uh, ever since that first job, man, I, I just kept going and going and going. And, um, yeah, the first, first six months were, were amazing. It was, uh, not amazing. It was hard as shit, you know, but I was somehow getting jobs somehow I was getting jobs and, and I just kept crawling up, man. And, um, and here we are, you know, almost three years later, three plus years later. And, uh, I got a full blown business going and it's like, I'm so proud of myself for doing what I've done. Um, you know, I, I look back and I'm kind of like, shit, you should be a lot further along than you are now, but it is what it is, man. And I'm happy with where I'm at and it's progress.

You're not in it for the overnight success.

Oh man, no, it's, it's, it's a long game and it is a long game, this pressure washing thing, man. It's, it's not fast at all. It's, it's, it's tough, but I love it. I absolutely love it. I love what I'm doing.

And, um, yeah, you got to keep building, you got to keep stacking and finding customers and you know, that customer service pays off really well.

Yeah, so, um, yeah, it definitely does. I've really kicked it up a notch and just in life in general, you know, since, since getting out of rehab, I've gotten married, you know, started this business and I'm rocking and rolling. It's, it's a total of 180 from where I was at. So good things that happened, you know?

So why did you start it?

Um, I started because I was tired of working for other people and I, I always had it in my mind that I wanted to be a business owner, you know, all my family, most of them are business owners and come from a very entrepreneurial, you know, family. And I have that gene in me. So, or have that trait, whatever you want to call it. Um, so yeah, it would, it would, that drive, you know, it was just, it was do or die for me, you know, it was do or dies like, Hey, I'm either going to do this or I'm going to fall flat on my face. And you know, I don't know, but yeah, I started it just from, pure will of wanting a better life, man. And what's it going to take to get there?

Nice. Uh, so this next question goes along with, uh, what you were originally saying through your first, uh, six months or whatever. Yeah. What's been the hardest part?

The hardest part. Um, cool. Um, I think getting customers probably is the hardest part. I'm in the South Florida market and there's hundreds of pressure washing businesses around. It's super saturated, but I don't let any of that get to me. But the hardest part is probably getting customers and getting that work, that cashflow coming in. And then, I'm at kind of a weird spot in the business right now of which direction I want to take it. Yeah. So I think the hardest part is probably getting, getting customers, getting, getting people coming to me, asking me to perform a service for them. That's probably the biggest hurdle.

What are you doing to, to get customers to come to you? Yeah.

So from the very get go I got on Google, um, I've always been pretty computer savvy or whatnot. So I knew Google was a thing that I should jump on. So I jumped on Google and I started just organically throwing pictures, just populating that. Google, my business is what it was called, now it's Google Maps, but just populating the shit out of that every day, going in there, making updates, posting pictures, really getting that going has been a huge, huge, huge thing. And then other than that, it's been a lot of word of mouth, just a lot of word of mouth, getting reviews,

Yeah. All right. That's what's up. Cause I'm pretty much organic. I, uh, post on every platform. I do all my marketing pretty much.

Your marketing is amazing. I mean, you, you kill it.

It's, it's inspired about content and stuff like that. And I've overheard somebody say one day, um, When you run ads and you stop those ads, that's when your marketing stops. But if you're organic with your marketing and you post on your stuff, doing reels and all kinds of things like that, that's organic. So all of that continues to stay going because you're always feeding that organic train where it never stops.

Yeah. A big thing that I do is I'm on Instagram and I post all of my stories, basically almost every job that I go to. Almost. I try to post, you know, a little snippet just of what I'm doing. Hey, I'm on the camera, you know, just, just getting my face out there in front of potential customers and it, it works. It works really well.

Nice. That's what's up. Um, how are you dealing when you find yourself under pressure?

I handle pressure pretty well. Um, you know, I'm not an emotional guy. I try to keep everything pretty, you know, pretty tight on that end. But, you know, I'm pretty good at handling pressure. I don't know. I like the pressure.

I like, I like having, you know, people depending on yourself into those predicaments where you have no choice to either basically, uh, succeed or, or, or, or fall on your face. Like you said, yep. I got you. Um, so how are you dealing with like your, your mindset? How are you managing that?

Um, well, what I feed myself, I feed all the stuff I put in my brain. It's, it's, it's all high quality, positive mindset stuff. Um, you know, listening to podcasts, a lot of pressure washing podcasts, listening to, um, not only pressure washing, but business owners, entrepreneurs, um, really trying to get into their mindset and how they operate and trying to adopt what they, what people that I look up to, what they do. And, um, you know, so far it's been working, it's been working well.

Are you a part of any entrepreneur groups or anything like that?

At the moment, I'm not. I have a lot of people that I talk with that obviously are entrepreneurs, but no groups. I've been considering joining some local groups, BNI groups, and just business networking stuff. It's definitely a goal of mine that I will be getting into for sure.

There should be like a chamber of commerce or something like that. That's usually like, that was more of my alley because you don't have to necessarily show up. You can show up when you want, you're a part of it. And usually when people, when you're a part of things like that, they keep other people that are a part of those kind of utilize people that are in those groups. And once you start doing business with some of those people, then it just kind of spreads out like a spider. You have to. Show up at certain times, you got to give referrals and stuff like that. And if you don't give X amount of referrals, then they kind of shine against you. Uh, and it's kind of like, well, I'm kind of building up my own business and focusing on my own shit. I think I have to go fucking out every single day for referrals, for every business that's sitting at this table, then shit, I would never have nothing on my own.

Yeah. So hard to find time to do, do those things.

And yeah, 11, 11 AM was the time that they wanted to start it. And I'm like, well, fuck, I can't even do a job before. And I can't do a job after.

Yeah, man. It just kills your day. Exactly.

And I'm just, it got to a point where I was like, nah. And then that money that they wanted you to join and there was like a thousand dollars or some shit. And I was like, no. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, I'm not a firm believer of spending a ton of money on stuff. You know, you can do things lean and if you do it, if you do it right. So yeah, I've dumped money into marketing and advertising, man. And it's just, uh, it's, it seems like I've wasted some money myself. It's a waste, I feel like.

You have to narrow it down and find out what's actually working for you. I mean, the organic shit was working the best. It's like, why spend all that money on all that stuff when you can dump more into your organic flow and actually do better business. And those people will turn around and talk and tell everybody else about your business.

That's it, man. I found the organic way is by far the best way, but it takes time. I'm three years and I'm just now starting to get calls somewhat regularly from Google.

Four years into my revamp and finally starting to get to where it was consistent enough to actually hire people because before it was like, why hire anybody when jobs are so scattered out that, yeah, you might make X amount at the end of the year, but fuck, I didn't work, but maybe a hundred days out of 365, nobody's going to want to come work for me.

Exactly. It's a huge hurdle to get over. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. That, that job flow, you know, and to have an employee that is counting on you for their life, you got to have work for them five days a week, at least, you know, cause they're expecting that paycheck.

And if they ain't got that paycheck, then fuck they're going somewhere else.

Exactly. So I've been very frightened. Yeah. Since 2023, I hired my first guy in January of 2023. And, um, and since then I've had somebody with me, he worked with me for my first guy worked with me for eight months. Um, and then had to unfortunately get rid of him and hired another person. And, um, he's been with me for about six months now. Um, and I've had him working basically every day, but it's been such a stress on me. You know, I'm just in a weird spot in my business right now with, with, um, uh, you know, It's just a weird spot. It's a weird time. You know, I, I, I understand. Do I scale it or do I keep going, you know, with one guy, with myself and another guy and keep, just keep, it's hard, it's hard to scale.

And then it's, you know, and then you kind of like, should I, should I not, because the more that you do it, It's just kind of, it's kind of hard really, uh, to really scale up because getting the right people in the right spots is the hardest thing and getting people to believe in what you actually got going on as well. And not somebody just wanting to come over and just milk the cow. Yep. And I feel like that's what a lot of people do. They just want to come over and milk the cow. And it's like, man, if y'all motherfuckers would take half the shit that y'all do fucking serious, y'all would actually have something in life. Why go get a job that you ain't going to be serious about? I don't get it. I mean, it's no fucking sense to me.

I know, I know. It's such a weird spot. Like January, February, March of this year, I've been our absolute highest revenue months since I started the business, but I have less in my checking account or the business checking account than I've ever had it less. You know, my expenses have just been like, well, trucks have been kicking my ass this year.

I've seen. I had nothing extra. It's all gone into fucking every truck for damn repairs. And right when I think that I'm going to get to use the beast truck, that motherfucker breaks down again. And I'm like, I got sixty one thousand dollars worth of equipment that I've used fucking two or three times.

It's frustrating, man. It's it's what I mean. It's a tough business, dude. It's not this shit is not easy. People make it out to be easy. It's it's.

Oh, they do the Internet and YouTube and all that shit, bro. It'll confuse the hell out of everybody. That's the reason so many people jump into it and so many people leave.

Exactly, man. This industry is for some warriors, dude.

You got to be a rival of the fittest.

That's what I like to say. Survival of the fittest. It definitely is. It definitely is because you get weed out in the jungle for sure. It is, man. You're trudging through a jungle and it's, it's brutal, man.

But, uh, down your way, isn't it? Um, I hear a lot about like Florida market or whatever to where it's like a lot of people just don't show up. So if you just show up to people that call you, you know, you pretty much got that person locked in because it speaks volume to them, you know,

Florida is so sketchy, man, especially South Florida, Miami, Fort Lauderdale area, man, the contractors are flaky as all flakes. And if you just do what you say, show up, call people back, pick up the freaking phone, literally those things are super simple to do. But for whatever reason, most don't do it or can't do it, or they just don't care. It blows my mind. And I think that's one of the main things that really... We try to be very professional and have some systems in place and really try to communicate with our customers and just let them know that we care, man. That's really what it, what it comes down to. You got to care. And I really do care, you know, and I really care about my customers, about what I'm doing, the work I'm putting out, the quality, um, you know, it's my time.

My time is that passion speaks to people or whatever, you know, they see that you actually care about your business and care about detail and stuff like that, and go a little bit over and beyond and not necessarily just nickel and diamond every single person. Always, always above and stuff like that. Checking up on them and stuff. Do you have to do stuff like that?

Little things, man, little things will just separate you so much from everyone down, at least in our area, in our market, you have a CRM system and stuff in place. Yeah. I use market. I've been using market since I started and I've stuck with it. It's been solid. You know, that was the, one of the first things I did. It was the first thing I did was Google and market, um, a CRM and I'm super glad I did it. Um, Yeah, I highly recommend a CRM if you don't have one here. I mean, I don't know how you would do this without one. It'd be impossible.

I think I talked to so many fucking people that are still writing shit down on fucking pads and shit. I'm like, why? How? You don't even have a website. You don't do none of that stuff. What the fuck? How do you keep up with people? I don't think that would be mind boggling. You're like, oh, I got to go dig through this pile and fucking find Susie fucking hair.

Yeah. It's it's wild. I don't know how people do it, but Hey, you know, that's if they're not willing to do it, that's what's up.

That's what separates the, that's what separates us from the others is because we actually put in those steps to actually do that stuff.

Yeah. And it's not, it's not complicated.

It's, it's just, no, it's very simple things. It is. Um, what's been the best part of 2024 so far?

Best part of 2024, um, personally got married, which was awesome. Got a beautiful, awesome wife. She's super supportive and helps me out a ton. She's pretty much saved my life. So she's been the best thing that's happened to me as far as personal work wise. Um, obviously having the highest revenue we've had so far, it's been great. You know, that's cool. It means that I'm growing, that we're growing, that we're doing things right. You know, so it's been very, uh, um, it's given me some confidence basically that, Hey, you're onto something, you're doing things somewhat right. You know, you got returning customers, you got the highest revenue you've had, you know, it's, we're doing, doing things right. So it's given me a lot of confidence basically to keep going and keep, keep going on the path that I'm on.

Do you have a lot of, you have a lot of repeated business, don't you?

Yeah. I got a lot of repeat customers. Yeah. We, especially now being three years in, we're getting a lot more, a lot more calls from repeats. Yeah. Some, some people we have on guys, some people we have on, on reoccurring, you know, every three months or whatnot. Yeah. So I've been pushing the maintenance program a lot more.

I've started that and it's getting dirty really fast down that way. It depends.

But yeah, most places do, you know, if it's shaded on the North, you know, the North side facing surfaces. Yeah. It gets pretty, pretty mildewing nasty algae, um, pretty quickly. Um, but you know, the way, the way we clean, you know, using bleach and stuff, it keeps surfaces cleaner for longer. Most people should be cleaning.

What do you focus on residential commercial?

Mostly high-end residential is really what I focus on. I live in Fort Lauderdale, and very affluent area, and I try to go where the money's at. I go where there's neighborhoods where the money's at.

Yeah. What services do you provide?

Our biggest ticket item has been roof washing. That's been- How roofs? Yeah, barrel tile, flat concrete tile, not too much asphalt shingle. Very rarely will we have an asphalt shingle, mostly barrel tile, clay tile sometimes, Spanish tile. Those are a pain in the ass to clean. Yeah, so roofs has been our biggest ticket item so far, but I'm trying to get off the roofs. I'm moving more into paper ceiling and more flat surfaces, and I really like paper ceiling. I really like the outcome that it gives, and my customers are like, killed it. It looks so good. They're super happy. Paper ceiling is a big focus of ours right now.

I saw that you went down to Mike at High Low Solutions.

Mike's awesome. Mike's helped me a ton. As I said, he's one of the other guys that I speak with somewhat regularly. Mike Mike's really helped me out. He's a great resource as far as equipment, business knowledge, how to get customers, just an all-around great guy. He's a man of God. He's just a fantastic dude. Yeah, I got all good things to say about Mike.

He's changed our game with the commercial side with that zero turn and stuff like that.

That thing is freaking serious. If I had more bigger commercial jobs like that, I will probably in the future consider it. You know, I've thrown out some big quotes for some big parking garages, you know, 600,000 square feet stuff, you know, 800,000 square feet and haven't gotten the jobs. But if I do probably going to go to Mike and get, you know, get a rig built up. Yeah.

They're definitely worth it. And then time savers, even having that 17 gallon per minute and just running around with a 36 inch surface cleaner that hovers on the ground.

You're like, I'm jealous, dude. It's it's it's amazing what you got. I've used I've gone up there and used all this equipment. It's like, dude, top of the line.

The new paper fucking surface cleaner that came out has like the big bucket on it.

And it's a strippinator. It's got turbo tips inside. So I got four turbo tips in this huge, you know, canister basically. And dude, things just rips sealer, you know, or, um, rips, uh, stripping, you know, it strips fucking papers. Obviously you got to use the chemical, but yeah.

It's a lot better than just using the turbo tips. You're getting actually protected from all this stuff. That's probably splattering out everywhere as well, too. Yeah. Stripping a stripper doesn't, doesn't feel too good when it hits your skin.

I bet. No, it's, it's a nasty stuff, man. It's anything and it destroys it. So yeah, we got a big stripping job coming up in two weeks and it's a very high end home and, um, lots of very nice finishes. And, you know, we got to, I'm really thinking about going up there and buying one of these stripping leaders from freaking Mike for this job, because man, I don't want to be flinging boogers, you know, 20 feet in the air and damaging, you know, $30,000 ceiling or something, you know, it's, it's very possible.

So, um, yeah, I see some of these guys out there with those turbo tips on that stuff. And I guess they're doing the stripper because it's all solid white and then they're just sitting there going a little bit at a time.

It's just, it's going everywhere, everywhere and any vegetation that touches that fries it right away. I mean, it's, it's nasty stuff.

How the hell are they not fucking up more yards?

Yeah. They do. And people do. That's the thing. I mean, people. Yeah. They just annihilate them. Don't care. Yeah. We care. We try not to. But there's guys out there that do not give two shits and they they destroy stuff that gives that gives the whole industry a bad look. It's unfortunate. You know, it's it's hard.

I like the whole scene with the bleach thing. As soon as you tell a customer that you're using bleach or whatever, they're like, oh, my God, don't kill my plants.

Yeah. Yeah. And that, and now I have to go through this whole spiel of, you know, what we do and why we do it and how we do, you know, perform all this stuff and how we're not going to damage your stuff. And we care more about your home than you do actually, you know, that's why we're here. Like we really do.

We're actually here because we care about people, but we want to care about people and give a service in a good way instead of a bad way.

So many people have bad experiences with contractors just in general. And it's like, if you can be just a good human and people will be like, do what you say you're going to do.

Just do what you say you're going to do is show up on time and fuck. I mean, yeah. How much more else you really can ask for?

Yeah, man. It's a, yeah, it's a not too difficult. It's hard, hard for whatever reason.

So, uh, how can people find you online and stuff like that?

Yeah, you can find me on Instagram, Tyler underscore Bence underscore I think is my username and then Tyler Bence pressure washing another Instagram account that I post to pretty regularly. You can find me on Facebook, Tyler Bence. And yeah, those are the main platforms that I'm really, that I put myself out on mostly just because my Facebook audience, my personal Facebook audience, they're actually potential customers. And I just throw myself in front of them somewhat regularly and it really helps. So yeah, Facebook and Instagram really. And you can always send me an email, tybents at gmail.com is my personal email. So yeah, anybody can reach out to me.

All right, nice. I guess we're going to go ahead and end that right here. Guys, that is the end of episode 10. Go follow us on all the platforms. We would love to have you follow us and we will be back with another episode here soon. Peace.

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