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 Johnathan Moore. He's the owner of clean freaks. I want to say you're in North Carolina, if I'm correct. Yes, sir. All right. If you would tell, uh, tell everybody a little bit about your, about your background and what got you into pressure washing.

Nic Staton

Yeah, so I'm Johnathan. I'm 21. Today's actually my birthday. Fun fact. So my mom has MS, a little bit of a background to me. Before I got into this stuff, I was doing some steel construction work. And we were out in Louisiana, Baton Rouge to be exact, working on an Amazon building. And I would be, I mean, that's 12 hours in North Carolina from where I'm at. So I come home for a weekend or so, three days and then go right back out. And my mom's MS started getting a little bit worse and worse and worse. So I finally I came home and I was like, I don't want to go back. I want to do something else that's kind of close, I can stay close with. And I was welding for them, them out there. I came home, got a little job in a fab shop, but they weren't able to keep me busy all the time. Because, you know, production stuff, it's slower sometimes depending on what time of year it is. So I came back and I was like, man, I just want to do something where I can feel like my time's valued a little bit more. And my parents were getting ready to sell their house. So later that night, I prayed about it. I was like, God, what do you want me to do? What can I do? And I was on YouTube and I stumbled across this video. This guy went in the driveway and our sidewalks at my house were pretty nasty and our stairs. So I did a little bit of research and then I started doing our stuff at my own house and just fell in love with it from there and kind of just snowball. So everything I've got, I've just I've dumped everything I am into it.

Johnathan Moore 

Right. Nice. Um, well, how, how did you start your business?

Um, so I started, I still got the machine actually over there in the shop. It's a little, uh, Simpson two and a half gallon per minute machine. And I've got a, uh, 1995 Ford Ranger. I would put that machine in there. I had, um, I didn't even have a hundred foot of hose. I had the factory, like 25 foot of hose that comes with it. Right. I bought some, uh, a cheap J-Rod from off the internet somewhere that was ready for like a five gallon a minute machine. And then, uh, I have some Harbor Freight water hose. Uh, it was tan and I would just drag that machine around everywhere. I went to wash a house and, um, you know, those machines, they come with like a factory downstream ejector. Well, I ended up blowing that one up, you know, where the water's for shooting out of it. You can't really rebuild them. I saved up a lot of money and I got a little four gallon a minute. And same thing, just had it in the back of the truck and bought a hundred foot of hose then. And then I finally got to the point where I bought a cheap garden hose reel. Like now I got nice ones, but this was one that rolled around with the machine. I would just take the pressure line and I would just wrap it up on the ground. I'd be sitting down in the customer's yard, wrapping this hose up. But I mean, it worked. Let's see. I made a mistake. I bought the two wire Simpson hose. And I know if you're on like hot water and stuff like that, two wires better, but trying to roll it up on the ground is just a pain.

Oh, yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot harder to get a circle up. Yeah. Single wire is really easy and it's super light.

That's nice. A lot nicer than the double wire hose. I still have that hose to this day, man. It's never got a hole in it.

We run a lot of double hose and we don't we hardly ever get any holes in them where I see all these guys always getting holes in them and I'm like, oh no, what the heck's going on?

Yeah, I've had, um, so far this season, I've only had two single wire hoses bus. And it was, they were from last, last year. And, uh, they both booked it within about a week and a half. Dang.

Yeah, I do.

I do know the guys, uh, rub them up against the walls and stuff a good bit. So that does wear off the, the rubber stuff onto it that gets it down to the wire. And once I guess it gets down to that, then it really wants to start probably Boston.

Yeah. Or if you snag it on like the corner of a brick house and they get, I mean, they get abused, you know, it's just a consumable.

Yeah. It's the same thing with the one on the back of my, with the back of the zero turn. As soon as I get hit with a pillar or anything, it turns around and scrapes a big chunk out of it. You're like, dang, this is brand new.

I know you're looking at it, man. I just got this one.

Yeah. But yeah, we always keep an extra. Yeah. Yeah. I'm starting to stock up on hoses and stuff. I've got plenty of plenty of five, eight toes or whatever it is. There's probably still 1100 feet that the guys can still run through that we bought for. um a project we actually bought 2 000 feet of hose and and then you used it only for that one job and then I was like all right well it's ours now yeah because you can't rent it you gotta buy it yeah you had to do what you had to do I mean shit I was like I don't think I need hose for a few years yeah um what's been the hardest part so far of running your business

And I think just sometimes, you know, it gets stressful and learning how to deal with that. You know, at a younger age, I'd rather figure out a good way to deal with it now than be older and try to deal with it then. It's a lot harder to break a habit when you're, you know, 30, 40 than it is whenever you're 20, 21 and you're younger ages. So there's days where, you know, something will go completely south and then it's just a lot. on your head and you just got to find a way to get over top of that and move on and move forward. Because the goal is to keep consecutively moving forward. You can't stay in one spot or get mad about something that's not going to matter in five years. So I try to live by like a five by five rule. If it don't matter in five years, I'm allowed to spend more than five minutes worrying about it, stressing about it or nothing like that.

Yeah. That's a good one. How old are you?

I just turned 21 today. 21 today. Happy birthday.

Appreciate you. Yeah. Damn. 21. You're super young. Shit. I know it. You got a long ways to go, dude. You're starting off great because I mean, shit, by the time you're you're in your mid 20s or whatever, you're going to be you're going to be doing very well where most people your age are stuck in video games, lost and La La Land and everything else and don't know what they are or what's going on.

I mean, it's not like I have to give a lot of credit to my dad. Honestly, growing up like I didn't have an Xbox PlayStation out of that. I had a had a Wii, the very first generation of a Wii, but I never played on it. Right. So I have to give a lot of credit to him for for showing me at a young age. You know, we didn't grow up, you know, necessarily poor, but we definitely weren't. you know, very well off or anything like that. I've got three brothers and sisters, one brother, two sisters, and I'm the youngest out of everybody. So just growing up, my dad taught me at a very young age that you got to work for what you want. And then growing up and watching, you know, all my friends have all this nice stuff and yada, yada, yada. It made me at the point of like 15, I was working. I wanted to have something and I just fell in love with work.

Right. Nice. Um, when you find yourself under pressure and business, how do you deal with stuff like that?

Yeah. So the, the biggest thing for me that I like to do, um, you know, obviously if it's not in the winter time, I like to ride a motorcycle. I do that a lot. I've got a, um, a 2013 road team and, um, I mean, just get on that. It's not a fast, fast bike or nothing like that. Let's get on it, put my helmet on. Everything's just focusing on the road. It just clears my head for a good minute. I just built a spot out back here in the pasture with the cross. Have you ever heard of the Pretty Place? It's out in South Carolina. Me and my girlfriend, we had went there. It's just a nice spot where you can kind of sit, hang out, look at the cross. at the pretty places over top of a mountain, but at my house, it's just in the pasture with some cows and whatnot. But I just go out there and just really sit down and talk with the Lord and get my head straight that way. I like to read a lot. I used to hate reading as a kid, but now as I grow up and I'm learning what I like to read, I like to do that, kind of clear my head that way. Some people like fish and stuff like that. I've never felt myself to be a big fisherman. I guess I'm just not good at it. I've caught one fish, but. Hmm.

Insurance interest. Interesting. Yeah. A tongue. Yeah. That's pretty cool. I like that. That's a little different than what I normally hear of people saying. Yeah. But that's that's I like that. Yeah.

Oh, that's why I said again. You got to find a nice quiet place.

Yeah, you do. I don't like a lot of chaos anyway.

I mean, neither everyone. So like, it's weird because, uh, one of my guys, Zach, you know, he likes to listen to music whenever we're in the truck and I've got it at like two notches and that's it. I'm a very quiet person. I get tired of listening to machines run all day, whenever it's, you know, it's done and we're in the truck going to the next one. I just, a little bit of quietness is nuts. Right.

So nothing wrong with that at all. Nothing wrong with any of that. Whatever that you find that works best for you, I feel like is, uh, is all that matters. We're all programmed differently. How do you manage your mindset?

So again, it comes back down to a lot of reading. So I try to build my mindset off of the people that I look into, that I look up to. And just like I said, keep my head on straight because you can definitely get tangled up and let it get to you. Um, whether it's, you know, letting the money part get to your, let the stress get to your, whatever it may be. Yeah. You start letting that get to you, start showing. Uh, so one thing that I do is like a bi-weekly self-evaluate self-evaluation, uh, which is kind of weird to like say out loud, but, um, I'll sit down, uh, usually just by myself. I'll sit down, I'll have my iPad worth of notes. all the decisions that I've made, the actions that I've made, figure out where I can improve on. And then I double back to even go to my girlfriend and ask her. She's usually with me most of the time in the afternoons and stuff like that. And I'll ask her like, hey, how did I act this this week? You know, how was my my mindset? Was I tired all the time? Was I like being kind of grumpy or whatever it may be? And then reflect on that.

We all work together. a lot. So she so

We work to not like in work wise, but as far as like in the afternoons and stuff like that. And then it even doubled back to like Zach. He's with me just about every day right there by my side. Like today he did his first house by himself, which was sweet. So I'm able to ask him to like, hey, what do you think I need to improve on it? And do the same thing back to him. Like we went out to a job one day and we forgot the, for our water fed pole, we forgot the pole part. Uh, cause we switched it from this truck to the, my F one 50 and we forgot the pole. And, um, wait, it's on, it's on both of us. Uh, it's really online because I didn't double check to make sure we had everything. So I couldn't even be mad at him and nor would it be worth it to be mad about something like that. Like stuff's gonna happen. You just gotta, you gotta get over it, move on, fix it, keep going.

Right. Yeah. That's something that I had to really learn was that, you know, mistakes are going to happen. You just kinda. Uh, address them and figure out how to, how to not allow it to happen again. But other than that, don't, don't trip about it and get upset. Yeah, exactly. Cause your frustration will turn around and wear off onto your guys in the field and everything. And then you don't want all of that. That's just going to turn around and cause a chaotic, uh, environment for everybody. Yeah.

Or they're going to walk and leave and then you ain't going to have no hell.

Yeah, or you're just going to turn around and you're just going to breed into them to be that way. And then it's just going to run all your clientele off and stuff because they're going to be like, well, dang, these are just a bunch of angry people.

Yeah. It's so crazy, you know, because like, especially if you're doing like a lot of residential work and, you know, the client's home and, you know, Zach, he can't really hear the best. So I'll be like, I'll be like, Hey, hey, trying to get his attention. But most of the time I'll just walk up to him. I don't like yelling across the yard or nothing.

I'd rather just go up and talk to you. Yeah. Just take that extra step. Yeah.

I don't want the client to be like, dang, he's out there yelling at his guys. In all reality, we're not yelling at each other. We're just goofing off. But, you know, I don't want anything to reflect the image in a negative way.

Right? No, you definitely don't. You're trying to build a culture at the same time. How many people work for you? Is it just you and Zach or?

Yes, we got me, Zach, and then Carson's part time. Uh, he works here and there, uh, between the summers. Uh, he's got a summer camp this week, so it'll be a camp, um, for that stuff and whatnot. And then he'll come back to work next week. And then I believe he goes back to another camp after that.

You have anybody answering calls or anything or you doing all of that?

It's all on me, which is kind of crazy to think about sometimes.

Do you eventually feel like you're going to, you know, fill those positions with other people or?

Yeah, that's the goal. My goal for the next three years is to get off the truck and focus mainly on what I'm supposed to do business-wise, the clientele, make sure everything's good. As far as answering the phone and stuff like that, I definitely want someone else to have that, but I just got to make sure I train them the way that I do it, I guess. Same way with sales. I guess you would call it a unique sales process. I don't really think it's that unique. It's just more of a personal connection. with the client and teaching that's going to be a little more difficult for me because I don't know if I'm the best teacher, I'll be honest. So I'm learning that part of it as well.

What do you enjoy doing in the company the most?

So the thing I enjoy the most is talking with the clients. Everyone's got a different story and you can just about dive in as deep as you want to with that. I mean, I love the work, who doesn't? Well, I like it a lot, but just getting to talk with them and learn more things. Like I've got a client, his daughter just beat breast cancer. which was sweet. I didn't even know we had washed his house and another one of his friends had cancer. So I called him the other day just to talk for a minute. It was raining real bad here. And he had told me that his friends getting better and that his daughter had breast cancer. So that was a big win for both of them. You know, very nice. Yeah. So it's just nice to, you know, I don't know, keep in touch with him, I guess. Right. But it makes it a little bit harder as you grow and you get a bigger and bigger client list. It's hard to give everybody a shout every once in a while.

Oh, yeah. Yes. And then if you find yourself doing everything, it's even harder to do all of that. So you'll find yourself running out of work. You'll find yourself not touching base with the clients that you should be building the relationships with. but at the same time the residential side doesn't quite care about the relationship side quite as much as the commercial side because commercial is more as more relationship and the reason I say that is because you've got to touch base with that person at least Six to 10 times before they ever really want to do business with you, where a residential customer is calling you and wanting you to come out there and do the business that day or within a couple of days. And they already know that they want to do the business with you. And it's usually because they, they see something that allows them to like and trust you. And then when they talk to you, then, you know, that probably wins them over as well, too. But on the commercial side, you've got to like pamper those dang people. You've got to follow up with them. You've got to call them. They're forgetting. They're not remembering. And then finally, out of nowhere, they're like wet and wild. I got to call it wild. But I mean, I've had some customers, bro, that don't even call me for several years. And that's what just happened not long ago is a client hit me up and was like, Hey, I saw you on a job site on such and such. And I'm like, I don't even remember like that job. When was that? And they're like three years ago, I was like, I don't remember that, but okay. And he's like, dude, you just stuck in my brain this whole time. So once this person's account failed and I need to fill that position with pressure washing, I was like, I need to call wet and wild. I need to find him. So I looked you up and found your number. And I was like, damn, that's a good one right there. It's just stuff like that, man. Like you just got to get the brand awareness out there, put yourself out there and give give your customers something to remember. It's just like, what's his name? Robert that goes around and A1 pressure washing. Everybody knows them. Yeah. But it's just because that's just that's just who he is. He's being his authentic self. He's just being a goofball all the time. Everywhere he goes, it don't matter where he's at. He's going to be a goofball. That's that's brand awareness. He knows he understands that if he doesn't get out there and he doesn't get his brand out there, that nobody's going to get that brand out there better than yourself. Yeah, exactly. Everybody else that you're going to bring on is probably going to bring 80% to the table, you know? So you got to find where, where you can put those 80 percenters and stuff. And usually those 80 percenters, I feel like are, are kind of the people out in the field and stuff like that. And people that, um, sailing and stuff like that as well, too. But at the end of the day, I feel like you're, you're going to sell your company better than anybody. Yeah, exactly. Cause I know that you believe in it coldheartedly where most other people are not going to at all. If anybody. Yeah, no kidding. They're going to be like, well, how much is this paying me? Where can this get me? Yeah.

That's one of the strangest parts, because right now to me, this is still early on. This will be two years full-time in August, so next month for me. I look at it, I look where I started and the growth of it, but I always feel like I'm still behind. There's always more to be done. I'm never going to get to that point where I'm like, all right, I think I'm pretty good now. I just want to keep it, keep it going as much as I can. And then same way for the guys. I like for Zach. I want to, because you know, again, we're right here. So if we just stays with me, the position for him can go and go and go and go. Eventually there'll probably be some type of limit for him. I'm sure. But for right now, I don't think there will be for a good little bit.

Right. Um, How, how long have y'all really been going? You said a year, two years.

Yeah. So this'll be two years full time in August. And then, uh, we had about six, seven months, somewhere in there of like part time. That was me getting a proof of concept, make sure everything was going to actually go the way that I wanted it to actually prove it to myself. And then after that, I just fully dove in. I dove in, you know, right towards the end of the season, right before winter time. That's whenever I quit my job and just went in for it. And, uh, Not exactly the best move on my part, but there's a sink or swim mentality that I try to live by because I'm young. Like to me, the worst thing that happened, what happens to invest is that they don't work out and I get another job. So there's like the fear factor wasn't really there. It's just sink or swim. They got to take the floaties off eventually.

Are you, are you, are you doing better than what you would do if you was working a regular job? Oh, are you? Yeah, most definitely. Yeah, most definitely. OK. You seem busy. You seem like you're always doing something. You're always cleaning something. So.

Yeah, there's always something to be done.

Nice. What's been the best part so far?

The best part, man, I think the best part is that there's no limit. You get what you put in. So like I was like a regular job whenever I was working at that shop and whatnot, you know, I could put in as much as I wanted to work all the time. Yeah, I'd make a little bit more money where you're looking at a paycheck that's maybe nine hundred thousand dollars a week, if that. And then, you know, you got to take your taxes out, health insurance, all that stuff. And then you're like, well, I worked all those hours and this is where I'm at. Or you go, you know, let's say I go wash three driveways, you know, Saturday or something like that, whenever I was still working there and make, you know, let's say $400 a driveway, make $1,600 or $1,200 in one day versus, you know, all week plus overtime. So that was, um, I think the best part to me is that there's no limit on myself right now. I can take it as far as I want to, but it all comes down to me. You know, it's all it's it's on me. If it fails, it's on me. If it works, it's on me. That's a part that I like. I guess it's like the chase. Like a game. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. He's trying to get to the next level and the next level.

Your dopamine goes pew pew. Yeah, exactly. Next sale.

That's exactly how it is, man.

It really is. Let's see. What are your plans? What do you see the company doing in five years?

So my five-year plan as of right now, I don't know all the logistic details and out of that, but what I would like to do is eventually get everything built up again to where I can step off the truck, slowly start diving more into the commercial side of things. I want a nice 60-40 split. 60% commercial 40% residential. So we always have constant cash flow coming in. But then I want to take my time and effort and build a power wash supply store of my own because I've had a few really, really good ones that are close to me that I really enjoy. I've been going to the same one ever since I had that little Honda four gallon a minute machine. And obviously, there's a few others that bring me my my sh and bleach and whatnot, stuff like that. Um, but just going in there, that environment, I fell in love with it. And so that's one of the goals that I want to have. I want to do both have the Washington side of the business and, you know, supply store. Cause then you can make money on both ends of it.

Right. So then you basically can just say, Hey, we're coming out there. We're cleaning with household chemicals and all of this and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And there's a better way for you to network and everything else too. There's a lot of people that do stuff like that. And some of them were very successful and some of them aren't.

Yeah, that's very true.

Some of them are successful and some of them aren't. The way you said it. My mind, my mind was like, well, not all of them are successful, Nick. So you got to say that some of them aren't. You going to the Hughes this year?

Yeah, I'll be there. Me and one of the guys I met down there last year, we're actually in a room together. We do a little bit of work together. I did a So last year was my first time at The Huge whenever I met you there. I came home from The Huge and then sold a nice commercial building about a week after I got home for right around $11,000. So I was like, all right, maybe it's just a good luck charm. You know, everything built up high, man. I was feeling good whenever I came home. And then I got that call and I was like, all right, I'm going back again next year. Nice. So, so I just kind of worked out, I guess I didn't get it from going to the huge, but I definitely think the huge had a lot of impact on how I acted to. you know, having the opportunity to bid on something like that.

It does. It gives you a pump. It gets you around all these people. You get motivated, you hear things and you go out there and you're like, I can do this. What are you talking about? I got the confidence to talk to you about all of this. And then you get it and you're like, how the hell am I going to do this?

That's pretty much exactly what happened. Because I had a service truck and that's the one in front of me. You can't see it, but it's got an eight gallon on it and only a hundred gallon water tank. And I knew the water there was a little slow. So I called, his name's EJ and I met him at the Hughes and he was bigger, a lot bigger than I was. And I called him, I was like, hey man, could you, could you help me out on this? He actually helped me bid on it a little bit. Because when it comes to that stuff, I was still I mean, I'm still getting my toes wet on all the commercial, right? So I help me, you know price it out. He's out in Sparta where I'm, you know closer to Winston Moxville area and He ended up coming out and helping me and I've went up there a few times in Sparta helped him print some windows and stuff like that So, I mean it kind of just keeps the money in a nice little circle nice Oh

How can people find you and stuff like that on social media?

Yeah. So I'm mostly active on Facebook. That's going to be your, uh, your best option to find me. It's just Johnathan Moore. Uh, but my name's spelled a little funny. It's J O H N A T H a N. All right, and then that's I've got a tick tock, but I'll be honest, I slack pretty hard. I'm not posting on that. I've got a question for you, though, if I can ask you one.

Ask me whatever you want. You got a little bit longer.

So for the, for you, I know you post, you post all the time. Do you like schedule it out or you just be in the middle of work and be like, all right, hold on one second. Let me post real fast. Or how does that work out for you?

Nothing that I do is on a schedule. I don't have, I don't set up a Facebook to automatically do my posts for me and stuff like that. I probably could, and it would probably save me some time. But I'm dyslexic. I just get into these routines of different things or whatever, and it just becomes natural to me. So just throughout the day, I just randomly post the stuff. I'll get to job sites, I'll record myself, and then I'll immediately either find a way to post it right then in the air. Or I'll get a break somewhere and then I'll just turn around and start posting because once again, that is how I market myself. That is how I land pretty much. I would say probably 100% of my jobs come from, come from me doing stuff like that. But I am on like a 500, 600 day streak of me constantly posting, whether it's reels, whether it's regular posts, I post probably three to four or five times a day sometimes. Yeah. I post on Facebook. I post on LinkedIn. That's my two main platforms. Every so often, I might go on TikTok and put a video on there, but I don't get no traction. So it's just kind of stupid for me to post on there. Yeah. Next door app. I could really post on that and really kind of draw in maybe an extra few thousand or ten thousand or whatever a year from that app. But then there's times that I don't even want to do that. But I do everything pretty much just naturally, just whenever I want to kind of do it. You might be somebody that wants to set up schedules and stuff like that, but that's just not how I kind of run. Yeah, that makes sense.

I always find myself, uh, just getting, I'll get working and then I get on, you know, just going and going and going and going, and I'll take the photos and the videos. And then whenever I get home, that's usually whenever I post them and I'm like, well, I could have done this during the day. Uh, and it's trying to find that, that timeframe gap and when I can do that. That's why I'm trying to get better.

What are you, what are you, what are you doing? Like when you have, um, um, Breaks and stuff like that throughout like jobs and stuff.

Yeah. So most of the time, I mean, every once in a while we'll take a lunch break. If it's like, if we're done at the day, let's say we get done at like two 30 or something like that. And then we'll take lunch after that, then we're pretty much done. So those days are really easy for me to post, but whenever it's a day where. Let's say we've got three or four to get knocked out that are nice size projects and we're getting down to like 630. Throughout that time from the day my break is driving the truck to the next job or talking with the customer for five or 10 minutes at the door or talking to him whenever we go to leave or something like that. I try to just keep myself moving pretty fast, which is probably something I should probably take and just slow down a little bit as far as let my brain run. Cause I think I have some like ADHD or something where I'm always wanting to do something. And I just got to keep myself, you know, the RPMs up high.

So why don't you do this as you're leaving a job, pull out and just park somewhere in the neighborhood or something and just pull off for a second, open up that app, make your, make your, Make your caption, put up your stuff, post that to Facebook and then turn around and go over to whatever other apps that you're using. Copy what you put as your caption, put this same picture or a different picture, same caption.

Yep.

And allow, allow you just to continue doing stuff like that. It'll take you a few minutes out of, out of your, out of your day, but then you're giving yourself a slight little break or whatever, before you're going to the next place. Okay. And I would maybe do that once a day and to see how that does. And then continue doing the other stuff that you're already naturally doing, but don't overly flood your market with just pressure washing. That's the thing that I told you at the event that time. And you do very well at it. I saw you go back and literally implement everything that I told you. And I was like, look at this shit.

Hey, if someone's doing better and they're giving you a free game, you got to take it, man.

Most of the time, nobody does it. I see them start and then they quit. And I'm like, well, no damn wonder it ain't fucking working.

I was like, it works for this guy. So knowledge is power, but it's only power if you implement it.

Yeah. But yeah, I would just do that and then continue doing what you're normally doing. But maybe you can get in an extra extra post or something like that of your actual work. Yeah. And, you know, you. You give a great story about everything on all your stuff. I love reading all your all your captions on all your all your things. You're not just like, well, here's my before and after and call. Yeah. You actually build relationships with these people, and then you go back and you tell everybody else. And then that shows everybody else that's around your area, which I'm sure you've got a huge church community and stuff like that. Yeah. So a lot of those are seeing that, and they're seeing the type of work ethic that you have, and the type of relationships that you're building with people, and the things that you're saying. All that goes hand in hand. That's why you're drawing in. those type of people because they're seeing that and they're automatically liking and trusting you. Yeah. So then they automatically want to do business with you. You know, your equipment and all of that doesn't matter. You yourself is what really matters. And that's what, that's, what's allowing your company to thrive. And that's what I try to tell people is you got to find your authentic self, stick to that script. Don't change it. Don't be fake. Don't lie. Do what you say. You're going to do be there on time. And don't give them another damn problem. Yeah, exactly. Be a problem solver. The more problems that you can solve, the more money you're going to make and the better off you're going to be in life.

Yeah, I have a few guys that are, you know, they always ask about the equipment. None of this stuff matters. You can give me a four gallon a minute. You could give me my 95 Ford Ranger truck bed set up back. Yeah, the jobs would take me longer, but I would still be doing the exact same amount I'm doing right now.

It's not as bad. Right. You know, cause that's what I tell people all the time. You know, you see these people that bash on those guys that are going out there with those cheap units and stuff. But at the end of the day, they're selling. Yeah. It doesn't matter. Granted, you know, they might be doing a shitty job, but they sold that job.

Yep. They got the customer to choose them for some reason.

Yeah. Even if they sold it for cheap, whatever it is, they sold themselves. Now they might hate themselves when they get done with it, but at the end of the day, they sold themselves on that. And that's just the type of customer that that is. So that falls back on not every customer is your ideal customer. Find your avatar, build that avatar out, and go after that person because there's hundreds of thousands of that person that you have an avatar of.

So you can't beat that. I mean, that's the nail right on the head because there's some people where, when they're calling, we'll go out and quote it. I'll get, I'll get a feeling this probably isn't going to work out, but I do my best to try to make it work out. And sometimes I prove myself wrong. It'll work out perfectly. And then there's other times like, ah, this other guy is going to do it for $150. Okay. Have fun.

Call me. If anything goes wrong, I'm still here. We'll be open.

Yeah, that's what I tell him all the time. OK, I appreciate you. If you need any advice or any advice or help, or if you need anything in the future, I'd love to be able to help you out if I can.

Right. Let's leave it at that because at the end of the day, no matter what you say is going to matter, that person's already got their mind set that I want to call and find out who's going to give me the cheapest rate. And then I'm going to turn around and call everybody else back and be like, well, you're like $200 higher than so-and-so. Why is that? And how come you won't come down on your price, man? We have, um, we have this thing called a minimum and we have to stick to it. And that minimum allows this truck, as it pulls out of this place, to get to that job and to at least make some kind of money. Other than that, we would be doing the job for free and we don't do that. Exactly.

Exactly. So like for us, I even umped it. So I started the year like a $200, then I went to a $250 and now I'm at a $350. Because the main thing I was seeing was I would start getting a phone call and be like, Hey, well, how much usually does it cost to wash a single story house? Well, our minimum starts at 350 and that usually goes up from there. I was like on average, you're looking between 350 to on the higher end, say $900. You know, if they're going to be the cheaper customers pay like 200 bucks, then I automatically just kind of steered them away. But it also gives the room for people that are like, okay, let's see how much it's actually going to cost. It gives me room to go out in person and sell it there. Right. So I try to, you know, save myself a little bit of time and fuel money and headache, I guess.

Yeah. I mean, you get that, you get to a certain point where you know that that's what you're, you're, you need to make in order to be out. It doesn't matter if, if they hit you up wanting a damn porch clean, it's three feet high, but I'm going to come out there and I'm going to do a flawless job for that porch. You want to add on something else. You can add on something else that sticks within that price range. I have no problem with you doing that. And I tell people that all the time too. You know, granted, you know, we might have this minimum, but do you have like a walkway or something like that that we could potentially add in? Because I have no problem cleaning that, too. I actually like, well, can you hit my garage door? Yeah, I'll add that in just so that they don't feel like I guess that, you know, you're just coming in there and just doing 10 minutes worth of work and getting 200 or 300 dollars. Yeah, we did that. I don't know what they see in their eyes.

Yeah, exactly. You know, I always be upfront and honest with them. I'll go out like, uh, last week we had a small little patio where she had these leaf guard gutter guards, you know, those things get nasty, simple story house. And, um, she really only wanted the back patio down. I mean, it wasn't a big pad at all. Maybe like a 10 by 10. It was so small. And, um, I was like, well, our minimum is three 50, but I'm going to throw in these gutters that I saw that are all nasty going around the home for you. Um, and we'll make it three 50 there. Cause it wasn't going to take us long to do either one of those things. She was happy as a dog. So it made, it made her trust me even more because I was upfront and honest to begin with. And I feel like something like a lot of these guys just are not doing it that way. They're just either like, for me, I like always to go out and look at something in person. Uh, not necessarily always look at the job itself. It gives me a good scope, but it also just helps me build that relationship with the client, you know, and people lose commercials because they don't go out in person.

I can't tell you how many times I hear people go, you're the only person that showed up. Yeah. Everybody else gave me a quote over Google earth.

Yeah. We've got one. We've got one, uh, one big building that's actually just finished up maybe two weekends ago now. And, um, I went out there in person and I mean, it was never, some people always told me whenever I started, oh, your age is going to get in the way. My age has never once gotten away. If anything, the only thing it's ever done was help me. Because people like seeing a young person that's got the hustle and the knowledge to go with it, you know, to get stuff done for them. I went out in person last year for this job, it was for window cleaning, started it off there, got the windows done, they fell in love with it, ended up upselling the whole building and all the sidewalks because I saw that it was dirty while I was there. And they already knew I did great on the windows and they already liked me. So there was a pretty much no-brainer, yeah, go ahead. But now they're getting ready to build four more buildings on this lot all under the same company and all those are greater than me too. So it's playing out like there's a huge picture here that's playing out. There you go.

That's what you got to do. But it's getting right there at that 45 minute mark. So it's probably going to cut us off. So I don't want it to cut us off. I appreciate you coming on here tonight and explaining to everybody on this show a little bit about what you got going on and how to get in touch with you and stuff. Yeah, it's been it's been very interesting to hear what you do and everything. And I'm curious to hear more about what you got going on at the huge. I'm sure I'll see you there. Yes, sir. I'll be there. All right. Well, that's the end of this show, guys. I'll catch us on the next one and go subscribe to all the platforms. Peace. See you.

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