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 another episode of the Under Pressure Show. I'm your host, Nick Staton. Today's guest is Camden Madison. He is here locally out of Roswell, Georgia. He does some pressure washing. Camden, if you don't mind explaining to the audience a little bit about yourself and your background.

Nic Staton

So we do soft washing, pressure washing, commercial residential, you know, basically what everyone else does. I've been doing it for about five to six years or so. I can't really remember, but I've been doing it for a while for sure.

Camden Mattison

Nice. Um, so how'd you get started?

Nic Staton

Uh, so I'm young, I'm pretty young. I'm 24. I got started in high school. Um, and I just, you know, Went on with it. I stuck to it. You know, I put all my effort, time into it. You know, we, we have a bunch of trucks now and yeah.

So back when you were 17, did you, is that when you started or whatever, did you start with somebody else and then just kind of come off on your own?

So the funny thing is I never got into pressure washing, like on purpose. Like it was never like I saw it and I was like, I'm going to do that and make money doing it. It was like, so like for me, I was in school still and I was in COVID during COVID. No time. Time frame. It's right around COVID time frame. It's tapering off, I think. And we were doing online still. And so basically, basically, like I was, we were bored as shit at home. Like we had nothing to do. Three of my buddies, you know, it was like, they were like, hey, let's just start pressure washing stuff. I'm like, all right. Sounds good. Now, I live in Roswell, which is a very, you know, everyone has money here, which is right. There's nothing wrong with that. It's great for my industry. And so the thing is, is like, we started washing and we would put in like, you know, eight hour work days, and they would get tired of it. And so it started tapering off with them working. And so I was doing all of the work and everything like that. I was like, screw this, you know, you guys are taking a percentage of for me. Here, one second. And so I decided, you know, I'll go on my own. So right, bought a four gallon a minute pressure washer. Then, you know, that jumped up to eight. Um, I was mentoring with another wash company at the time, um, for about six months to a year, I learned how to house wash, roof wash, you know, every walk, everything to do. And then it just went on from there. Um, and growing it, you know, we do Chick-fil-A's Wells Fargo as we do every Wells Fargo in the state of Georgia. Um, so, you know, we do a lot of stuff for sure.

That's what's up. Those are some good accounts to have.

Yeah, Wells Fargo is a great account. I have.

I've cleaned a couple of them, but that was for a painting company. Really? Yeah, we just went out there and cleaned the buildings right before I guess that they had to do some painting on there or something like that or whatever that they had to do, but they they subbed it out to us.

That's interesting. Well, we handle like just all the maintenance work. If you're with a painting company, that's probably not our deal. Yeah. Like we get work orders like every week to go out there and clean drive-thrus or you know, basically You know, we've done it's a stage process like last year We were doing like all the curbs and gutters Right and whatnot and we did like a whole entire package. We did that building the awnings The sidewalks, the curbs, like all around the building. We did all of them. We did close to 200, I think. Yeah, it was a lot. We went down to Savannah. We went down. We've been in Noonan, Billerica, Cumming, Roswell, obviously.

So you travel around.

Yeah, we've traveled around for sure. Yeah.

That's what's up. That's good to hear. Somebody in thriving in this industry and doing very well. Yeah. Accounts.

Yeah. And then we do Chick-fil-a too. We like those. You like those? They're amazing. We love working with Chick-fil-a.

Nice. I've never really got into too many restaurants. The only restaurant that we have is a one Texas roadhouse.

Where are you from?

Noonan around that area. Well, I'm actually in Chattahoochee Hills. It's kind of in between.

Well, my dad lives in Noonan. Okay. My parents are divorced, but my dad lives in Noonan near Sergeant. I'm not sure if you know where that is.

No, I'm actually over near Lake Redwine, if you know where that's at.

I don't. I'm not too familiar with the area, but that's... I got you.

He's like, that's the only thing that I can say to people that, that, that they know is noon. And if I say Chattahoochee Hills, they're like, huh, where the fuck is that? So, um, so what made you want to get, uh, what made you want to get into this?

It was just on accident with my friends. You know, I was, I was never, I was wanting to grow, like have my own company one day. But when I was in high school, I always thought about that. Like, have my own company would be pretty cool. But the thing is, is like, I never thought about pressure washing per se. Like, I went in to pressure washing thinking it was like, just like a small little, time of my life, I would be doing it, you know, wash what dry was here and then never go to it again. Right. But, you know, I saw like what the money that could be made in it. You know, you can make a lot of money pressure washing. Right. And you can you know, it's pretty easy. It's pretty easy to do. And, you know, training people to do it is pretty easy to. I mean, it's not difficult to train people. Now, if you're getting into more meticulous work like decks that, you know, you're two-stepping with sodium percarbonate and oxalic acid, that's a little bit different. But, you know, it's generally, if you teach someone how to house wash, they're going to be able to teach that. I mean, they're going to be able to repeat that service on a different house. You know, it's pretty simple. You know, it's in that sense, it's, it's really easy for the money you make. It's really easy.

So we, uh, we focus more on post construction cleanups.

We've done a bunch of post construction. Um, we work for a couple of builders do, you know, do jobs here and there for them. You know, we don't do a whole lot of post construction, but, um, you know, we work for a bunch of property management companies, uh, just doing like HOA signage, um, parking garages, uh, what else, you know, just little stuff like sidewalks. Um, you know, we work in a lot in Atlanta for this one management company and they have like a bunch of, No skyscrapers. Well, you know, you can only really wash like, you know, up to like probably fifth or sixth story on the skyscraper until you don't need like something else to be done. But, you know, we've done like, like small sidewalks, um, around the skyscrapers and stuff like that. Just small stuff for them.

Um, but how are y'all, how are y'all marketing?

We do Facebook ads, Google, and well, we just actually stopped Google. The reason why was we weren't getting the return we were wanting off of Google. It wasn't what we had expected, especially the money we're spending on it. We're spending close to three grand a month. You know, it just wasn't it. So, so yeah, I haven't ran any ads.

Oh, I have, but it hasn't given me anything. And, um, I stopped it and found out that my organic was doing way better and it just continues to grow.

Yeah. We're, I mean, we're growing the organic, obviously, like we do. I don't know. I would have to look at the analytics. I haven't looked at them this month, but organically, we're doing pretty good along with Facebook ads has been great. The ad person we have.

Is that for commercial? Is that for residential?

It's for both. It's for residential and commercial. It mostly targets the residential.

Right. But you know, commercial every so often.

Yeah, I mean, basically, I mean, it's nothing too, like, crazy. Like, we've gotten, like, a 10,000 square foot parking lot wash in Snowville off of that. And, you know, the money really wasn't worth it at the end of the day when we washed it. It took us all day and we made $1,500. And and that then that wasn't I wasn't I I wasn't satisfied with that. We should be more definitely if you're out there. Yeah, we I mean we hose for hoses were dropped at. 8 o'clock in the morning. Didn't wrap up those until 6 o'clock or 7 o'clock, so it was a long day and yeah, I mean guys you got. We have five employees total. 5.

Yep. How many trucks?

Uh, three.

Three? Yep.

Flatbeds, skids, trailers? Uh, we've got trailers. Um, I'm in my F250 right now, but, um, we have an F350 and F150, and then that's all we have is just my 250, the F350, the 150, and then I've got two trailers. Um, I have a 14-foot trailer with a 500-gallon tank on it, and then I've got a 12-foot trailer with a six-feet wide, and that has a 300-gallon tank on it. They're very simple setups. There's nothing crazy about them. I have a friend that's in the industry, and he does 12 mil a year washing. He has a location in Atlanta one in or Orlando and then one in Dallas I believe I haven't talked to him in a while about it, but I think it's in Dallas And he's kind of been my mentor to scale up. So that's what we're trying to do I'm trying to get off the truck. That's what I'm trying to do. I don't want to be on the truck anymore and Um, so that's the goal, um, in the next couple of years is to get off the truck. Um, for the time being, I am on the truck.

So that's where I'm at, putting people in positions, chugging away.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. That's the only way you're really going to grow the company. Otherwise you're just, otherwise you're just working a job. Exactly. I don't want to completely quit washing. I'll, I'll still go out and go wash and stuff like that when I want, but, um, I don't need to be focusing on that. I don't need to be waking up and going, well, I've got to go out here. I don't have anybody.

Well, one of my, one of my employees is a sales manager, actually. So I have a sales manager. It's kind of a lot different than a lot of people. I know a lot of people put a guy on a truck and then go sell. Um, but I hired a sales manager and it's been grateful for us. Yeah. Um, for me, I'm, I'm kind of an introvert. I don't like dealing with people a lot. Um, I mean, I can sell moderately, but the person I hired, um, sells has been selling for 30 years and they do a great job, um, at what they do. They came out of the car industry and it basically, This pass for them for selling is like a lot easier than the car industry. It's not as tedious and it's not as like, you've got to sell this many cars by the end of the month. And that sort of thing. It's been working out great for us. For me not having to deal with the schedule, not having to deal with talking to people all the time, following up with people about jobs, You know, we're sending out five plus estimates a day, you know? I mean, three to five, three on a bad day, five plus on a good day. And we're not the cheapest company around. Like I charge pretty good rate for us to come out. And so having Eddie, my sales manager with us has been great. We hired him in May, I think, May, second week of May, I think. And it's been working out great.

They're on commission or what?

They're on salary and then they're on commission.

Nice. So that's what's been the hardest part so far.

Knowing what to do, when to do it. You know, sometimes I get in my head like I need more equipment when I don't like maybe we have a huge job coming up. I'm like, I need to go buy another trailer. But I don't need to. I just we just have this huge job and I want to get done quicker than you know what we usually can do it. You know it's going to take us a little bit longer. Then we anticipated, but. You know that sort of thing. You know, it's, it's always, I don't ever know what I'm doing. I just keep doing it. Whatever I'm doing, I'm doing it. You know what I mean? And it's, and it's worked for me. Obviously I, you know, I have a lot of mentors, um, you know, and, and they're not like gurus or anything. They're just people in the industry I've met or I've talked to on Facebook or anything like that. and you know they've told me this thing that thing you know my sales manager thing that was a huge thing to me um last year and coming up on this year um was a huge thing to me should i hire a sales manager because we just have so many leads coming in i can't handle them all right and so my mom does my accounting um and whatnot she's my bookkeeper and my uh She does all that stuff for the company. And she was like, I think we should get a salesman. I was like, I don't know about that. You know, that sort of thing. And then we just did it. And it worked. Like, it just it worked. And so sales have driven up quite a lot. We're doing pretty good monthly wise. Um, this month has been slow because of the holiday. It's always, this month has always been slow. Like towards the end of June, it's always been slow, but you know, we're still working every day and I can't complain about that.

And you're in your, uh, you do both right. Commercial and residential more, more, uh, residential than commercial or more commercial, you know?

Uh, yeah, we probably do more. Um, more residential and commercial, but we do a quite a bit of commercial.

Needless to say, um, when you find yourself under pressure, how are you dealing with stuff like that?

Go to the gym, go to the gym. I go to the gym. I've, I've had. You know, I'm, my story is kind of interesting. I'm at a friend's house right now. We just got out of the pool, but, um, that's why I wanted to reschedule this. But, um, my story is quite interesting. I used to be overweight. Um, I used to be super unmotivated. I used to be, uh, you know, I didn't want to do anything, you know, and just a switch flicks, you know, I was made fun of in high school. I have dyslexia. I have every, You know, I have ADHD. I have everything. I never, I haven't gone to college. Um, you know, I finished high school. I finished high school. I graduated barely though. Barely.

I didn't finish high school. I dropped out in ninth grade cause the fucking, they didn't want to teach me shit. I have everything that you just explained here. It sounds just like me, but just a younger version.

Yeah. So the thing is, is, uh, We, you know, in school, they have people for me, I guess, if you want to call it, which is cool now. I graduated barely, you know, 70s in all my classes, barely passed. I mean, and the reason why is because I was working. Like, I would literally sit in class and I would tell my teacher, I have a call coming in. I need to go outside. and take this call. And that might have been with the property manager. I mean, that's the funny part with it. It might have been with the property manager. At one time, we did over 30 pool decks. When I graduated high school, the second day of graduation, after graduation, no, it was even before graduation, I remember this. and I'm not sure if you've ever heard of them.

There's so many, man. That's why I tell everybody that you can't be competition with each other, because at the end of the day, look how many companies there are of us. And then look how many fucking places are still fucking dirty. And why would any of us say that we're competition to anybody?

Because, yeah, I mean, it's it's it's ridiculous.

You know, I don't cover everything. I couldn't cover everything. And we would still be millionaires and still not be able to cover everything.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's literally, you know, there's, there's so much work in this area. And, you know, Atlanta is a great place to work. You know, the economy here is a lot better than other places. You know, it's, it's pretty good, needless to say, but Um, where were we, what were we talking about?

I was just about being under pressure and stuff like that and how you dealt with the stuff like that. So I just kind of let you go on a little bit.

Cause so, yeah, I was, you know, I, I go to the gym a lot. Um, when I'm stressed, you know, I go to the gym, think about things, you know, how are you managing your mindset? Um, you know, I, there's a saying called just keep swimming from finding Nemo. That's all. That's all I do. Keep swimming. Just keep swimming.

I don't know what I'm doing, just like a baby.

I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm doing it and it's somehow working. That's, that's, that's, that's what Ebola is down to.

Uh, you're making mistakes and you're just continuously pushing forward. You probably analyze a lot of stuff as well too.

Um, yeah, I mean, obviously all companies are going to make mistakes. Like, you know, we, we screwed up on a, uh, a deck last month. We stripped the stain right off of it. The customer got pissed off at us and that, and that happens to everyone. I'm sure it does.

Yeah, I mean, you're going to make mistakes, but here's the thing with you having dyslexia. You've had to learn from a little kid that, you know, how to problem solve and stuff like that in order to get by because you're not like most kids that just can. easily do things, you have to actually think things through and stuff like that. So you've made a lot of mistakes. So when you comes to run in a business, when you actually make mistakes, those mistakes aren't really going to take you out where a lot of people are scared to fail. That's the reason that they don't grow and they don't do anything.

Yeah. I mean, I, I know when a risk is too risky to take, but like, I'll take some risk out, you know what I mean? Like I'll risk something for the board, but you know, Like, like I've risked, you know, you know, learning how to bid commercial because like, you know, people can tell you how to bid commercial all day, every day, but you just got to figure it out for yourself. Um, and you know, when we started bidding commercial stuff, I would do stuff way too high.

Right.

And then I would go in and, you know, I'd be like, why aren't we getting approvals on this stuff? You know, that sort of thing. So you play around with it. And so I've had some commercial jobs where I've lost my ass on it. And then I've had commercial jobs like down in Union City. We made eighteen and a half thousand dollars in five days.

Right.

Right. I mean, like, I can't complain with that. You know what I mean?

Right.

But you know, we've had stuff like that. That was my biggest victory yet is that job right there. That was pretty cool. I'm doing that job. I bought a water buffalo. I don't know if you know what that is. Just giant water tank on trailer.

You bought one or did you rent one?

I bought one. I have one. It's nice. We use it on HOA jobs. And that's what sets us apart from a lot of companies. On these bigger commercial jobs, say $5,000 plus, we can usually do it a lot more cost effectively than, say, Joe Schmoe. or something like that. Like we have a HOA job coming up in Roswell. It's called, the HOA, it's a very nice HOA, a million plus dollar homes in it. And it's their sidewalk on the outside of the neighborhood going across the street. It's about a mile. It's 5,000 feet or something like that, give or take. And so, there's no way to get water to it with a garden hose. I mean, you can't push water a mile through a stickage. Like, that's not possible. And so, we have the Water Buffalo, and I've got two-inch hydrant hookups on all of my rigs. So, it's super easy to do this job for us since we already have the tools to do it.

Do you just go, you just go fill up the water Buffalo and then just come back and then fill up with the water Buffalo?

Basically. I mean, I'll have like a big gallons. Is it?

It's a 1500, 1500.

So I get, I'll get, you know, I can basically do almost two Phillips per truck with it.

You just pull that behind another truck and then just have that basically constantly going to go get water.

No, not, not really. I mean, I'll basically just sit there and like, I'll watch the guys work. I mean, this is theoretically in my head how this is going to work. Um, but basically what I'll do is I'll pull up in front of the trucks and then I'll basically fill them up with our really long fire hydrant hose and then disconnect and then go refill the tank basically.

So,

So yeah, we're also doing like, I think it's like close to 5,500 feet of fence for them, wrought iron gate fence, you know what I mean? Super tiny, half inch wide, basically. And then we're doing like a 12 foot wide sidewalk for them.

Nice.

It's pretty nice.

That's what's up. What's been the best part so far?

The money. The money. The money. Being my age and making the money that I do. Now I'm paid salary. I don't make all this money. I don't like, you know, this is a legitimate company. I pay myself salary and it's very low. I don't make a whole lot, but like, I'm trying to grow my business. That's all I'm trying to do.

What are you guys getting paid? If I don't, if you don't mind me asking, and then what do you pay yourself and stuff like that?

So we pay, I pay myself $500 a week to live on now, all my fuel, all my insurance, all of registration on trucks, everything is all paid for by the company. So I, I would live a pretty cushy life just driving around a truck. Um, But my guys make, uh, every week, um, one of them makes 800 bucks a week and then my sales manager makes 1300 a week. Um, that's baseline salary. Um, that's what they make.

One of my tech, that's what they bring home after taxes and stuff like that.

Yeah, basically.

Got you. Nice. I'm just trying to figure all this out because we're in the middle of doing all that because I had some subcontractors working for me, people from other companies. And now that we're going actually into W2, trying to figure all that out.

Yeah, W2, like we just made the switch now. My mom has been a super huge help in handling all that. That's along with my CPA has been a huge help.

That's what I have. I have a CPA that's helping me do do everything right now and we're trying to figure all that out, but basically set myself up on a salary. Yeah, it's kind of I feel like the same thing or it's actually a little bit more. Cause it was $1,900. I think it is after the taxes every two weeks, but I also have a lot of bills and stuff that need to be, I have a lot more bills than me.

I still live with my parents.

I don't live with my parents.

I live on a 20 acre farm goats and everything else. Yeah. I hear what you're saying. Um, but. Yeah, I don't have that many bills. I just kind of, I saved my money, you know, I buy toys and stuff like that, but you know, it's, it's nothing to be, are you looking to get out on your own and stuff and buy your own house eventually?

Or are you just going to ride it out as far as you can and see?

I want to move out probably in the next two to three years. I, the thing is I want to build my own house as my first house.

Right.

Um, and that's been a huge goal of mine is like setting money aside for that. Since I'm W2, you know, I can't, I mean, I can take, you know, bonuses out of the company at the end of the year. Um, but without that, you know, I've been trying to save money for that, um, to do that sort of thing. I'm moving. I want to move either towards, I want to move north up towards Gainesville or Dawsonville. I don't want to live in Roswell. I don't like living here. I like working here. I don't mind it. Money's great, you know. But I can't, I don't want to move past Atlanta at all. Like I don't want to move, like our office is here in Roswell, but I don't want to move towards Noonan and then make the commute every day to Roswell because that's just going to suck. You know what I mean?

See that's why I haven't bought a shop and basically the shop is at my farm. Yeah.

Right now we're, I'm actually very close to it, but we're, we are waiting for the commercial real estate market to crash. My mother was in the mortgage industry for a long time. So she knows the markets pretty well. So we're looking at this one particular property we're renting right now. Um, but we are looking at this one particular property to buy eventually and I'm probably gonna put Like a five six thousand square foot shop on it with five bay doors And then I'll be able to put my f350 in there with my 14 foot trailer f150 with the 12 foot trailer And then as time goes on I I'm assuming I'll have more rigs and I'll put this in there as well um But yeah, so that's You know, it hasn't sold in two years though. It's been on the market for two years. So they want $2 billion for it. So we'll see. I know. Well, the thing is, do you know where 92 is, um, off the Holcomb bridge?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's on 92 of Holcomb Bridge. So it's about, it's about six to seven miles down 92 in Roswell, right on the edge of Roswell and it's on 92. So you would get great signage. So like if we put a sign up there for like the business, obviously it would get a call. And it's really close to where I live. It's a mile away. And the thing is, I don't want to move the company really anywhere else. I'd rather keep it here.

Right. Understand.

So I'm trying to, I would make the, and that's why my decision making for my house has led to Dawsonville or Gainesville is the commute from Gainesville down to here is a lot easier to make than it is, you know, from South up to up North.

Um, right. So, got you.

So what are you, uh, what are you excited about for the rest of 2024?

We've got a couple large projects coming up. We got a 155 driveway wash for HOA coming up. And then we've got a five level parking garage in Sandy Springs coming up. So that's what we got. Those are pretty good. Excited about those. We have a great relationship with this one guy that's a property manager. We just give him a price. He either says yay or nay and then we get him on the schedule or we don't get him on the schedule, right?

That's how most property management companies are, it seems like. I thought there for a minute that once you got in with them that you were locked in, but no, they'll just send you things or whatever and they'll accept or deny.

No, I've had, you know, so one of the contractors we worked for, they worked for Arden, which is a property management company. Now I'm going to tell you a horror story about this. And they were involved in the 30 plus pool decks we did, um, for them. Now, we had a meeting with them. We literally sat down in a meeting room, me and my stepdad, because I was underage at the time. So he wanted to be there just to make sure I wasn't getting screwed over or something like that. We sat down in a meeting room. and basically laid out like how the ground rules are going like we're gonna get this amount of pool decks here's the spreadsheet like what the address is here's the gate codes for all the HOA pool decks okay we got all this we're gonna get paid immediately upon sending the invoice all right so i'm gonna get paid immediately right so they lied and they paid us net 90 on these invoices, which is ridiculous. Ridiculous. I was like, it was so, it was, it was so irritating. It wasn't even funny because I was, you know, it costs money to run these jobs and go out to them, spend the fuel, the fuel and the pressure washers, you know, and all that thing, labor, you know, and that sort of thing. Um, and so, you know, basically, you know, You know, that relationship got trashed. And it was just their fault. They didn't ran things right. Their office people didn't know what was going on. Like, they call me every so often to bid something for them. And then I'll bid it. I'll go out there and I will bid it. And we'll never get the job. Like I have over $100,000 worth of work estimated for these people. And we're talking huge projects. We're talking whole entire HOAs, townhome complexes that are worth $30,000 that they just had me go out there, spend a day bidding this, and they never said anything, approved it, let me know if I was too high or too low, or something like that.

That's how the last HOA was that we are. They lost last property management company that we were running for. They had a lot of fuck ups inside their office, but they would send us out to go bid all this stuff and it'd be huge shit. I'd get some of it. But then a lot of it would never get approved, never said a fucking word. And then they were constantly sending me more stuff. And then eventually I got to a point where my insurance expires, you know, every year and then you have to renew it. Well, every time that it goes to expire, a lot of these companies will hit me up and be like, Hey, your stuff expired, or it's about to expire. You need to send us new stuff. If you want to continue getting work from us. And I finally got to a point where I fucking told them, I said, look, stop hitting me up because none of the fucking jobs that y'all give me ever go through and it don't seem like it's going to and i'm tired of paying extra insurance or paying extra on my insurance or whatever for y'all and there's no fucking point yeah that's that's basically what happened with us with this company and it's it's super irritating you know i came to find i came

A month or two later after we had bid the job, they said they hired someone else. And I was like, fuck it, I'm done. You know, screw you guys. Like, don't talk to me ever again. Don't ask me for, you know, if I want to work for y'all again. I mean, you know, I've been great with everything communication-wise, yada, yada, yada. I've done everything you guys have ever asked of me. It's just, you know, they treat me horribly.

Yeah, that's how a lot of, a lot of those places do. You just got to kind of find your niche of stuff and just kind of double down on those.

And now we've had, we found some great property management companies to work for. You know, we found some great ones to work for. Like the one I said, um, like the property manager that we worked for Sean, he's a, he's great. Uh, you know, We've been working with him for the past year and we either get a yay or nay on something on the spot. He's like, either do it or not. That relationship with him is pretty good. Some of them are just looking to get a quick price on something. When you're bidding something for $30,000 or $40,000 worth of work,

That takes a lot of time to put together, you know, a lot of mental thinking, analyze everything and how you're going to do this and you know, how much time you're going to have in it, how much chemicals.

Yeah. I mean, you could either like losing money on a 30 plus thousand dollar wash project is that's not good. You know, I mean, if it could take you a month to complete that, you know, 30,000 or it could take you two weeks or a week.

You're losing money on a project like that. And then fucking, you got some big problems, especially after that. Yeah.

Yeah.

But, uh, how can, how can everybody find you and reach out to you and stuff like that on social medias?

Uh, the older generation couldn't reach me out on Facebook. Um, but. I think a lot of people know me already. I'm not sure, but you know you can reach out to me on Facebook. Camden Madison. And then you know Instagrams Camden Madison. I have Snapchat too. That's Camden Madison. But yeah, for people to reach me at.

Sounds like they can reach you at on on a lot of different platforms by the same name. Hard at all.

Yeah, pretty much. No, it won't be hard. Just came to Madison. My name is very unique. That's why I chose the company CM Pro Wash to start with. That's been working great. We're actually getting all of our trucks wrapped right now. It's been pretty cool.

Who's doing the wrapping?

MC Wraps out of Holly Springs.

Okay. Nice.

I use the decal doctor. He's over there and like Marietta I think or something like that or Alpharetta.

Yeah, we have. We we got three quotes we want with like. the most moderately. Well, the thing is that like, we're not doing full truck wraps. I only buy white trucks, white, you know, XL trucks. My truck that I'm sitting in right now is a King Ranch white F250. It's kind of nice for work, but I barely use it to wash in any water I used to. But, you know, it's white along with my F-350 is white and then my F-150 is white. So, you know, we just basically all we do is just sticker it up. We don't actually like full wrap it. And the great thing about that is, is like, we can change stuff super easily. Like if we wanted to add like something little here or, you know, like when we got the F-350 back, we were like, oh, we should add a logo on the back tailgate. And so, um, you know, we're doing that too. Um, but it's been, that's why I like doing like the matte colors, you know, like just, just white background and then our logos. Um, and that's been super cost effective along with super easy.

I mean, trucks get in and out.

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's been now this truck, If we were on my phone, I would go out and show you, but this truck has a lot of different colors on it. It has gold, white, that's the only color, and black. So we're wrapping over the gold. It has a gold stripe that's probably 12 inches wide, and we're wrapping over that just to keep it one. We're not trying to have 12 different colors on the truck. We're just trying to keep it simple, plain, get the message out there, what we do, you know, that sort of thing. Um, big letters so people can see it.

So, yeah, but that's all they need to know is they need to see the letters and they need to see the brand and the number.

That's right. So Richard works for you, right?

Yeah.

So I had a friend, um, sell his pressure washing company, got into drugs. He's in rehab, yada, yada, yada. Um, I see he's in his thirties. I'm not sure how old you are, but he was a friend of mine in the wash industry area. Um, and me and him bounce ideas off of our heads every now and again, you know, that sort of thing. Um, and so he got, he's, he's into drugs, kind of lost them to that. I don't really talk to him anymore, but Richard. Uh, Richard's friend bought his rig. Um, and so I know Richard, um, from that. So I know he works for you.

I see that Richard mentioned something about you and I think he tagged you in something or whatever and said, this would be a good person for the podcast.

Yeah.

Yeah. He lives out your way in Ackworth or whatever.

Yeah. Um, but Richard's cool. Um, you know, you know, the guy that you helped with the tennis court washing it.

I don't really know him and I don't, I don't even remember his name, but yeah, I know what you're talking about.

It was Matt.

So Matt, um, his last name was, uh, D uh, uh, R and D or whatever, pressure washing or DNR that, uh, older guy does a landscaping. Nope. Okay.

No, but I said, I called Richard about the, um, the tennis court that you guys rinsed off.

Yeah.

And you were like somewhere in Atlanta or something like that. And I called Richard to see if you guys could go rinse it off. Cause it's all right. Yeah. And then, uh, the city found out he was pulling water off of the hydrant.

I asked him and he said, man, they came out and they said something to me and I said, man, you're supposed to have a meter. And he was like, Oh,

Man, like, so you want to hear a funny story actually about Atlanta city of Atlanta pulling water out. I'm sorry if this is going too long, but this will be, we can go just a little bit longer and then I'm about to cut it. Um, but, uh, basically, um, so we go down to an HOA to go wash, you know, a couple stone monuments, just some simple stuff, a little common area, that sort of thing, last week actually. For the HOA that we're gonna do the 155 driveways, um, in Atlanta. And, Basically, we go down there, we do the work. Now, we don't pull water off of a hydrant whatsoever. The property manager calls me up and is like, Camden, did you pull water off the hydrant? I'm like, no. He's like, well, the city is bugging me saying someone opened up a fire hydrant in the city of Atlanta. I'm like, that is super weird. I've never experienced You know, like, you know, we do some illegal stuff occasionally. We hook and dip. I'm sure you've done that before, but, you know, we call it hooking and dipping. And, you know, we've never had an issue with the city or the county allowing us to pull 500 gallons of water off the hydrant for free.

It just all really depends on where you're at. Everybody has different regulations and stuff. But Atlanta is one of the hardest motherfuckers to get a meter from. I'll tell you that. I mean, the guy on the answer machine thing or whatever, if you're calling about a meter, just leave a message and I'll call you back. You're like, yeah, fuck you.

Yeah. So what do you do in those cases?

Right now, the way that our company is structured, we're on a contract with a company and we travel the whole Southeast of the United States doing post-construction. So when we pull up to jobs most of the time, they already have all that set up. So we just plug and play off of the fire hydrants out there. And then most of the times I have to call and get a meter from places. So like our jobs in Alabama, we're doing some breezeways, some sidewalks and some curbs. All I do is call that water plant and just basically say, Hey, we need to rent a meter. So I had to make a $1,500 deposit. $25 fee is non refundable, but out of the $1,500, If we use, she said, if we use like 3000 or 4,000 gallons or whatever, that I'll get, you know, a big chunk of that back. And she was like, it's only if you start, you know, exceeding five to 10,000 gallons. And I was like, I highly doubt we would use five or 10,000 gallons. We use that. There's a fucking problem.

Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure how much work you're doing, but five to 10,000 gallons for a couple of breezeways is, uh, yeah.

Yeah, I couldn't see the guys, you know, maybe going and filling up maybe like Three times four times or something like that. It's like ten buildings and the breezeways aren't even really that big They're actually some weird-ass breezeways. These are old-ass apartments.

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing about So we've run into a bunch of issues with hydrants especially the counties we've worked in and like Bartow County, that's towards Ackworth, that's near Richard's area. I mean, yeah, Richard, Richard's area. And we worked there one time on a apartment complex and it's super small, like low income. It was nasty. Literally, there was raw chicken In the parking lot, in the package open, in the parking lot. I was like, and it's been sitting there for a week. I was like, holy shit, I can't believe people live like this, but they do. And so they had us out there washing. And basically, we had to go down to the water treatment plant to fill up. Yeah, which luckily the water treatment plant was less than a mile away from the project. And I literally just took the water buffalo and carted back water back and forth, back and forth all day. And it only took us one day to complete the job. I mean, it was super small. You know, I think there was seven sections, seven breezeways. Each each building had like four apartments in it. It was super small, but we got it done in a day, needless to say. But the whole entire water thing was an issue. And it's nothing but problems with getting water for these big projects. I swear, getting a permit from City of Atlanta to pull water for our $18,500 project that we did, in Union City last year, that was a pain. I actually had to truck in water like a mile away from a different county to the project, which really didn't cost that much to do, but we still got the job done, needless to say.

Yeah, that's the hardest part of finding, um, kind of feel glad that I go after a certain type of, uh, customer and most of them have all of that already. Um, I'm finding it, you know, the more that we go after existing projects that are already there and it's not builders, then yeah, you run into some problems.

Yeah. I mean, that's, that's the only thing about it too. Yeah. Yeah. So, but yeah, if you like for you, I, do you have a water Buffalo trailer?

No, I'm actually about to look up and look that up and actually look into that. Cause that's something that we actually could really utilize with the way that we're already set up. That's one thing that we just don't have.

Well, I can help you do it. Um, it's, it's basically all you need is like. like a three or $400 Harbor Freight water pump, plumb it up. I'm not, do you run two inch cam lock fittings for your Heidner hookup stuff? Well, just plumb it up for that. And then you're going to want to, you're going to want to air dam. Um, and you're going to need a pretty heavy duty trailer, like skids to your trailer or something like that. Um, try as small as fine. Try to get as small as you can, like a 16 foot trailer.

I've got a 16 foot one outside that just needs to be redone.

Yeah. You just, uh, you just gotta have the right axles. That's all. That's all you gotta have.

Let's talk more about that. Cause I'd actually like to get that set up for us. Cause that would actually benefit us tremendously when it comes to a lot of situations.

Yeah. Yeah. We can talk about it on Facebook or you can give me a call. I'll give you my phone number. talk about it and then uh it's super easy but there's a guy on youtube i can't remember the pressure washing channel or something like that uh I don't know his name, but I got the idea from that. I was like, I need that. And so, and so, and so I, the funny story is that I drove three hours away to go buy it and I bought it for $1,500. You can buy the 1500 gallon tank literally for over $2,000 brand new. So I got a smoking deal on this thing and I've paid for it like four times already. I mean, I don't use it as much as I wish I would use it because when I use it, I'm making a lot of money usually using it.

Oh, there's been situations where I've turned down things. So if I could just have an extra 1,500 gallons on top of the five that we could pull in, that's 2000 gallons. That's nice.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can do that. Don't get me wrong. You can definitely do that. Like your trucks are skids. So you have like F three 50 F four.

I have F four fifties. They could actually pull the trailer with the.

Yeah. Yeah. The thing is, I can't do that. I have to have two trucks go to a job site. to be able to do exactly what you're going to do. But like if you have your F-350 towing, I mean F-450 towing a trailer, a 1,500 gallon tank, I mean that's sweet. But the thing is also with us is like our F-350, my F-350 and my F-150 don't have to move at all. when I go to get water. So that's the only downfall of it. I mean, uh, plus about it for you.

Yeah, that's a plus.

That's not a downfall for you. That would be, you know, a downfall. Obviously if you ran out 2000 gallons of water, um,

But I saw pretty much if I did that water Buffalo, I just have a separate truck that would just follow her around and just leave the two F four fifties positioned where they need to be. So they ain't got to move. That's the main thing is keeping your, keeping your production going and not able to stop. And that was kind of one of our problems that we had just here recently with me and Richard, we were at a job site and we actually had to go back to it the next day to finish up because it was just taking so long. Cause he had to travel back and forth for water.

Yeah, that's the, that's the only issue is like, uh, was it the Emory project you guys finished up? Yeah. Yeah. That one. Um, yeah, that's, that, that's the sucky part about like pulling water.

And now that you said that, that's actually going to come into play. Cause we're about to start taking over that whole entire thing that they have going there and water.

So my mentor used to wash that.

Yeah.

He owns an enhanced power washing been in the industry 30 plus years.

He's a veteran. They couldn't get in touch with whoever it was.

That's that's probably him, but they quit all of their like washing contracts during COVID for some reason. Like Right.

I know this place hasn't been cleaned. And that was one thing that they said is they switched over management and all of that. And they're basically focused on the inside and haven't been focused on the outside, but they can't just have the inside clean and not the outside. So now they're running a program and want us to come in and start cleaning everything up. And that was one of the first things that they had us do is just those entries ways to see what. Yeah.

Yeah, and that's how it goes. Usually, for us, we've done a bunch of small work, small $500, $700,000 jobs, the people we've worked for. And then we get bigger work out of that. And it just scales up from there. After they see what we're about, I mean,

You know, they don't want to have you come in and do something big and then you fuck up everything.

And then that's basically what happens. You know, there's not a lot of companies in Georgia that a have a water Buffalo. I don't know a lot of guys that have a water Buffalo. and then B, you know, you have the beast, right? That's pretty cool. Like, I want to get that. You know, I've been thinking about getting it.

It helps out tremendously, especially if you're doing big, large volume, it might as well.

Yeah, in the next couple of years, I'll probably bite the bullet and get one. But, you know, there's not a lot of companies in Georgia or in the Southeast that have that stuff. And that's what makes this bigger work over, say, I think over $10,000. If the work order is over $10,000, that's what makes this work so niche. There's not a lot of companies that can do it. And so that's the great thing about it.

Well, let's, uh, let's get up at a later date and, uh, let's talk a little bit more and I'm definitely going to get up with you about the water Buffalo and I appreciate you coming on here and talking.

Yeah, of course. No worries. All right.

Yes, sir. All right, guys, that's the end of this episode. We're going to end it right here and go subscribe to all the platforms and we'll talk to y'all later. Peace. Bye.

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