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, Nic Staton.

Welcome to another episode of the Under Pressure Show. I'm your host, Nic Staton. Today's guest is Jake Stewart. Jake, if you don't mind explaining to our guests a little bit about your background and where you came from and stuff like that.

Nic Staton

Yeah, man, hey, it's a pleasure to be on with you, Nic. Real proud of watching you grow man. Just just you got a solid thing going on, but it's been awesome to watch you grow and I really respected your decision. I was interested in the Texas move. I was. I was following that pretty good and I was like, let's see what Nic's got going on in Texas. But then you it took a lot of maturity and a lot of lot of. I don't know, I guess a lot of knowing what's right, what felt right, what felt wrong, to know that, man, it's just not the time. And then I've kind of been following your spiritual walk a little bit, and I know that you probably heard God talking to you and telling you, hey, man, not right now, Nic. So you backed out, and I was actually impressed with that. But yeah, so I'm Jake Stewart. I run Southwest Kansas Power Washing Services. I'm here in Southwest Kansas. just right on the Colorado border of Kansas and Colorado. Started up last year, not doing it full-time yet, but had a real good first season. I'm kind of in that place right now where I'm thinking, do I go full-time or do I keep going part-time and kind of seeing where my second season takes me. And that's kind of the reason I wanted to join up with you and kind of see exactly what I could or couldn't do and try to try to pick your brain a little bit and see what the second year's, uh, what, what I can expect and what might or might not happen to me in the second year. But yeah, so if I, if, if I can get past that, that what if I go full time and stuff, I think I have the, the, the, the advertisement, the marketing and the business. And I think the people are interested enough for me to go full time. So I'm a little bit, I'm struggling with that just a little bit right now, but hopefully. Hopefully I can get some advice. I've been reaching out to a couple of people and being on this on this podcast with you is it's huge to me. I apologize for not being available at a couple of times. I had to reschedule, but busy. It's good. It's good.

Jake Stewart

It's all good, man. A lot of people sit there and book a lot of times and then not show up or have something pop up. And I mean, that's just part of life. Yeah. But that's why a lot of times I like to check in a little bit beforehand. So I'm not just sitting here going, OK, well, they were supposed to show up, and they're not. That would be me.

I've done that a few times. I'm glad you see me that, because that would have been me. I was actually, like I was telling you earlier, I was working on a garage floor. I'm doing epoxy, but I'm doing a polyaspartic clear coat on top. So trying to learn that process. I'm kind of new into that also, but I was finishing up the first day of that process. And when you called, I'm like, oh, I got this call, and I was like, man, I wasn't going to reschedule this time, man. I'm happy to get with you. And this is about as convenient as it's going to be for us. So I went ahead and made it work.

I'm willing to answer any questions that you have. I'm sure I can throughout this 30, 40 minutes. I mean, we've got plenty of time. But yeah, I mean, I definitely had to back out. There was just too many roadblocks that were popping up left and right. And I kind of just felt like, you know, I'd get past one roadblock and another one would pop up. And it was like, you know, God was going to be like, dude, I put so many in front of you and you just got past them and you got past them. And finally, it's just going to be like, screw you, dude, you're on your own. You got a new truck out of the deal. So, yeah, I got the truck. I got a new truck, and I got that here, and I'm going to figure out what we're going to utilize it for here instead of doing that. But it just, you know, the business credit side, I'm just not established enough on that aspect. So by having the truck, that's good because once that's paid off, then my business credit will be like really nice after that. I had no buying power. So once I got the truck and business credit, trying to get the trailer in the business credit. Man, they were trying to give me a 17% interest rate. I was like, you're fucking crazy with a $1,200 fucking monthly payment.

Yeah. No, man. Can't do that. That's ridiculous. Yeah. $60,000 truck would have been about $95,000 by the time they were done taking from you.

Yeah. So it's just not, it's just not worth it. So I did that and just kind of backed out on that. But, uh, other than that, you know, it's just things, things happen. It's just not the right time.

I'm impressed. I'm impressed with that decision, but I'm going to be honest with you. I'm a little bummed because my family's from Texas, right there in the North Richland Hills, Fort Worth. And I was raised around that area. So I go there pretty regularly. And I was like, man, I'm going to get a chance to watch with Nic someday. Watch. I'm going to go over there and ride around with you. But man, someday, though.

I'll be out there. I mean, it's not over. It's just it's delayed. There's some gaps in the road that just need to be filled in. And once those are filled in, one of them is business credit. And then establishing a little bit more on this side where we got this side doing uh a little bit more monthly reoccurring business uh just so that they're um not comfortable but just you know guys know what they're making and they know what jobs that they've got to do instead of us depending on me to go out and go find more jobs and i kind of felt like it once i left that was not going to happen. So then that was going to decline and then there was no monthly reoccurring job. So once we build up the monthly reoccurring jobs, then you know, you can kind of back that other person away some where it's just not affecting it. And I just, I just felt like it was going to affect it in so many different ways.

Well, you did, you did what you had to do. That was the right choice. But man, you got a good thing going over there in Georgia though.

Yeah. Um, So get back to you on everything that you've got going on. How did you start your business and stuff like that?

Okay, so I'm working. I've been with the same place for going on eight years. I've been working with them. I'm real happy. I drive a truck, doing good, making enough in my My wife and I both we own a bunch of rental properties. So, we, we, we have 420 rental properties here in garden city. So, that's that's keeping us plenty busy, but I. I go to work and she goes to work and then I kind of wanted something to where when. We've been kind of discussing something I could do that we could do to kind of. Free up a little bit more time where we can travel a little bit more over time and. That's how the whole thing kind of started. Then we were driving to Texas and right about Oklahoma City, she said, she said, you know, we kind of started talking about it because it's about a 10 hour drive. So we have plenty of time to talk. So we started talking about it and I said, you know, I've been kind of looking at some videos, you know, I started watching Austin Davis, started watching some of his stuff on YouTube and I'm like, Stu's doing pretty good, you know, I mean, I'm watching this. And then, of course, I started kind of visiting with Heath a little bit and just trying to visit with people in the industry and got connected with a guy at Oklahoma City named Gary Trent. He has Oki Powerwash there in Oklahoma City. And I called him and I thought, let's just So I was bored. I was on the road. I thought, I'm going to give this, I'm going to call him. So I called him. He answered. I said, Hey, how's it going? This Jake Stewart. And, uh, he's like, Hey, how's it going? And he's, I said, well, I, I Googled your name and he was up there on the top. So he's got, he's got a good Google business page or whatever, but. So I called him. I said, you were the first guy that popped up and I'm just, I got some questions, man. I'm interested in the industry and just kind of curious as what, you know, what you could do. Well, one thing led to another turns out one week later, I bought a trailer off the guy. He was super helpful, just answered, I mean, just answered everything. And he wasn't calling me, he says, I'll be honest with you. At first, I thought you were a competitor. He said, I thought you were calling me asking kind of what your price is, what is this and what is that? I was legit. I was just asking him to kind of figure out before I got into it, what exactly I was looking at and what kind of money was in it and what kind of business and what was good for my area and stuff like that. And he was, Man, he was pretty legit in his answers. And he said, yeah, man, anything I can do to help. And so I said, let me come down. I'm going to drive down after I get back from Texas. I'm going to drive down and I'm going to meet you. I'd like to meet you." So I came down there and he had a couple of trailers put together. And he got me set up with just a 350-gallon buffer tank on a 14-foot trailer, two hose rails, eight-gallon-per-minute hot water machine. I mean, he set me up with a Whisper Wash 24-inch ground force surface cleaner and I bought it and just went from there. Started cleaning, things kind of took off and I had a pretty good year and built a lot of good reputations, got in with some people here in town with some good businesses, did a lot of good corporate work, did a lot of residential, did a couple of house washes, four or five house washes and I mean, things went pretty good. I was able to almost completely pay off everything that I had, the seed money that I had put in. So in the first year, I'm really close by the first of next year. I already have a couple of things booked in March already that will put me in the red or the black, whichever the good one is. I'll be making money after that.

You'll be making money after that. That's all that matters.

That's all that matters. I don't know if it's red or black, but I'm going to call it. But yeah, that's it. And then so I've added, I did some pressure wash and did some things like that. And I added a garage floor coatings, shop floor coatings and stuff like that.

Earlier today when you sent me that picture, isn't it?

Yep.

Yep. Is that a couple of coatings or something?

Yeah, that's a polyespartic floor coverings. That was actually, seeing a couple of people in the industry doing that and making really good money at it. And I thought, man, I'm gonna learn that. So I learned that and I added it to my artillery. And now I got that to offer and that's been picking up a little bit. I got three jobs. I did the first one today. I had four total. I got three more jobs to do with garage floor coating. So that's pretty cool.

You don't never stop, do you?

No, tomorrow morning, tomorrow morning, I'll be at my full time job, seven to five. And then I'm picking back up and finishing the garage floor job after that. So it'll be dark up here. Okay. That's, that's what it's going to take us. That's what it's going to be.

Hey man, whatever floats the boat, whatever you like, whatever you like doing, you know, that's all that really matters in life. What's the hardest part of business? Because it sounds like you balance quite a bit of stuff.

Yeah. Yeah, I do a lot of stuff, man. Business is one thing. Very active in my church, do a lot of things. I play, I've been playing drums on the worship team for five or for 10 years now. I serve as a deacon in my church. So, you know, my relationship with God is very important to me. So I just pray. I do a lot of praying, do a lot of, do a lot of trusting and keep my faith strong. And if he tells me to move, I move. Hey, whatever, man.

That's it. Yeah. So what's, what's been the hardest part of business?

Uh, right now I'm trying to find out who, like, as far as I, you know, I'm, I'm trying to, I'm trying to get like the marketing side of it. Uh, you know, I, I signed on with footbridge media. Footbridge is out of, uh, Pensacola, Pensacola, Florida. Okay. There, they built me a website, a real nice website, and they were doing my SEO and CRM and stuff like that. And. great website, not getting any leads off of it. So I kind of started kind of looking elsewhere. I still have my website with Footbridge Media, but I signed on with Thrive and Greggs Levy. Talking to Greggs Levy and I liked a lot of the things that he had to But right now, the most difficult thing that I'm kind of just trying to get leads off my website, a lot of my leads are just by word of mouth. I'm looking for a good, like a lead generation of some kind that I can start getting calls and getting leads off my website and stuff. I've been talking to a couple of people. I'm struggling with who to trust and who not to trust. You know what I mean?

With a lot of people, a lot of people sell you a lot of bullshit. Yeah. And I've got a lot of that marketing stuff. Right. Um, I don't, I have one particular person that, that built out our go high level and then also built out our website and Website, it gets some, it gets traction. That's not how I get all my business really. Mostly how I get all my business is just like posting on Facebook, LinkedIn, different things like that. And being repetitively repetitive with it or whatever.

Yeah, that's what's been working for me. But I'd also like to learn, there's some really cool reels out there. Did you guys go to some class to learn how to do that the way you do it?

No, I do all that myself. So here's the thing when it comes down to making reels. A lot of times, we think that Someone's not going to like the way that we made it or something like that, if I'm explaining it right. So it's best really just to post whatever, just to record whatever, and then just post it. Because they want to see the authentic you. They don't want you to fake it. And that's what a lot of people do is they fake it. Right. Right. And that's why a lot of people don't like their content or me. I'm just real. I cuss, say whatever I want. I'm very raw with everything. I'm giving y'all the positives, the negatives, the in-betweens. I'm giving them a story with everything. Um, It just kind of is a lot more that goes into it than just. Opening up a company, having a name and expecting business to flow to you. And then another thing is. A lot of people get into business and then they want to pay all this money for somebody else to run it, to generate all these leads for them when they've never ever even built up brand awareness or anything like that. And then they wonder why when they dump all this money into a company to get ads going or whatever it may be and why it don't work. Well, it's like you need to turn around and put in the actual footwork of building up that brand awareness where people in your town and people around you all know who you are. Like, for instance, the hat that's on your head should probably be something to do with your brand. The hoodie that you've got on should be something to do with your brand. Somewhere on your profile or whatever, like on your main page, needs to be something to do with your brand. not just your business page. If you're working off of just your business page and wondering why you're not getting anything, that's exactly why. Is because if you notice what I'm doing is I'm posting off of my main page, but tagging my business page and just about every damn thing that I post. But that's cross tagging. It's just like when I turn around and go out and go do a job for somebody and I tag them in that post as well to thanking them or whatever it may be. Now I'm turning around, not only am I getting in front of my audience, but I'm getting in front of their audience.

Right on. It's good stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's just it's a lot to it. And it's kind of a game. But a lot of people don't want to they don't want to put in that work to do that. And then when they do do it, you'll see them start and then they just stop. And then they'll start again and then they stop. And it's like you can't do that. That's why Facebook pays me is because, I mean, I did this shit for like over 600 days consecutive. just making reels, making posts, doing whatever, not getting hardly any traction, not doing nothing, not getting paid for nothing. Then out of nowhere, they're like, we would like for you to be a beta for this thing or whatever. And it's like, okay, the next thing you know, I'm starting to get paid for everything. And that was good to me. Yeah. Now it's like, there's seven different things that they pay me from. And it can be anywhere from, you commenting on there, me making a post, me making a reel, me sharing that into a group thing. And all those group pages get pissed. And they're like, why are you sharing this to us?

I've been watching. I've been following that stuff. And you're like, dude, I'm just posting content to get paid.

We're not your customer. And I'm like, shit, I'm getting paid for it.

The best comment I saw the other day was, hey, man, I'm just posting this comment. I'm posting stuff to get paid, yo. Working this shit. Yeah, that's awesome Try to get this truck paid. Yeah. Yeah. It's a 19% APR they said That's cool man, so yeah Everything's been good. It's been a blessed year and I really didn't expect it to be as good as it was. Gary told me, he said, hey, you'll make money, but it's up to you as to how busy do you want to be? How much do you want to put into it? It's how much you're gonna get out of it, pretty much. And if you wanna go, and I went all out, man. I was just a one-man show. Ended up hiring a guy and he turned out to be pretty good. So I'm trying to, next year my goal is to teach him to run the rig. Teach him to, like when I'm at work, like right now it's just, man, it's frustrating for me. Like after five, I start a job at 5.30 and on the weekends, that's all I got. And I'm getting like, I'm afraid next year is gonna get to the point where I'm like, No, I got to work, man. Sorry, I can't make it. And that's going to kill me because if I'm turning away business, That's not good. That's not going to help. Or just, I'll get you in two weeks, you know, that kind of deal. I don't want to be that guy. I want to get you in a couple of days at the latest. And so I really would like to, I got a guy that's been working with me and I trust him, but I, you know what I mean? I want to be able to trust him enough to where he knows everything well enough to where he can go do a job or two if he needed to without me. So, but that's that's the goal for next year. That's I'm hoping by the end of 2025. I'll know for sure. Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to go full time. Or I'm, I don't know, man, I hope I don't still have doubts at the end of this year, this next year. Right. But that's the goal, man. That's, that's the goal for next year. The goal for this year was to get the trailer paid off, come real close. But I think if I'd have been full time about it, definitely had it. And then some, but it is what it is.

I wouldn't rush it. I mean, at the end of the day, it's a long-term thing. It's not, it's not a rabbit race. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of people out there that hit it off real, real fast. And some people take a little bit more time. Um, I mean, shit, my eight years into it really didn't even take it serious until 2020. So, and then you didn't see any traction until probably I'd say this last year, real big. Cause I mean, my following went from. 3,000 to almost 10,000 in just one year, which is crazy.

So this- I'd like to build relationships. I'd like to get, you know, I'd like to go networking. I've been watching you guys talk about networking and stuff.

If you're in real estate stuff like that, then you should be really big with like a lot of property management and stuff. Know a lot of those people, right?

It's it's just the area, man. The area is just it's it's not.

I don't know how. What do you say, Kansas and Colorado?

Yeah, it's Western Kansas. It's it's a lot of it's a lot of farmland. And, you know, I think if I was in the like farm equipment. Pressure washing business, I'd be doing really good. Why don't you get into that? I'm not, I don't know, I'm not really in, there's a guy that does it here and I kind of like, it's kind of like, all right, you do your thing and I'll do the, you know, the residential, the house washes and the parking lots and all that stuff. I kind of, it's kind of a stay in your own lane type of deal right now until I start getting really comfortable and getting really good. I have been kind of, Messing around with learning to step truck washes and stuff like that and just been researching like farm equipment degreasers and the industrial stuff that you know the stuff that works. I'm not going to be out there trying to pressure wash every square inch of a combine stuff like that. I'm not going to say I'm not ever going to do it, but for right now, it's kind of a stay in your own lane slash. I really don't know the most effective and efficient way to make it make sense to where I'm not out there spending 3 hours on a machine. Making 300 bucks, so that's kind of why I'm. Not really rushing into it, trying to learn the house washing the commercial stuff, trying to learn the residential commercial aspect of it and then. I have had a couple of people ask me, and I just told them, I'm just not ready to do you a good job yet, to be honest with you. And I know there's a lot of insurance, a lot of liability stuff that goes into, I'd have to add that to my insurance and get covered to wash farm machinery and stuff like that. It's a couple of reasons. I mean, I'm definitely not ruling it out, but long-term, I think I'll probably ease into it a little bit here and there. Right now, like I say, I'm just, I'm trying to learn a lot about the process of washing stuff and doing a damn good job. That's pretty much what it is. I don't want to go out there. I could pressure wash and just, you know, spend three or four hours on a combine and not make, it wouldn't make sense. So that's pretty much why I'm not really pulling the trigger on that as much.

Do y'all stay busy all year round? Out that way, or is it snow?

It does it like, right now? I mean, it's it was 65 degrees today. So it's that's and that's pretty odd. Normally, we can probably watch all through December and in January, it just kind of drops off man. It gets too damn cold to even function January, February, March, January, February, and then probably. I'd say about half of March, and then you kind of kick it off pretty good around 1st, part of April.

That's usually that's the way February marches are worse.

Yep. Yep.

Because it gets so damn cold. Right before it gets hot again.

Yep. Yeah. And it'll snow here. It'll snow, you know, it'll snow 9, 10 inches and stay on the ground for.

three or four days before it melts off. We get ice. Yeah. People call snow. That's not snow. That'll hurt you if you go out and play in it. Yeah. How do you manage your, manage your mindset and stuff like that with everything that you got going on?

Man, just, you know, uh, it's just my wife and I, we got kids in college and, uh, we just kind of lean on each other just Just take it one day at a time. I don't get too discouraged about much. I know that everything that's happening in my life, whether it be good or bad, is part of God's plan. And I just take it like that, man, just one day at a time and know that God, everything that's going on is part of God's plan and process. And I know that he's taking me to a place where he wants me to be. And that's just a part of it. And I really don't get too frustrated or upset. I take things pretty easy, laid back. I'm actually enjoying it. And I told my wife, I said, if I enjoy what I'm doing, it'll blow up. But if I get to the point where I'm like, man, this pressure washing thing just ain't I don't like it. I don't like doing it. And I said, all right, the worst that could happen, we got a damn nice pressure washer. Pretty much it. Your house always stay clean. Yeah. Well, yeah. Our house is going to be clean as hell. worst case scenario, your driveway is going to look great. You're always going to have a nice clean car. But no, I really, it really, it really, I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. And that's why I'm doing all this. I signed on, started paying for marketing, started doing certain things and taking the time to talk, talk to guys like yourself that have, that have, I mean, that are damn sure where I want to be. So that's pretty much what I'm doing, man. Yeah.

You just got to, what I like to say is like I raised goats. And when I got into goats, it taught me a lot about business. Yeah. Because when I went and got these goats, I thought that you could just listen to them and they'd tell you exactly how they were raising on them. You'd listen and you're like, okay, I'm going to go back to my house and I'm going to do exactly what that farmer told me he was doing with his goats because I got the goats from him. So it's going to be the same at my place as it is. Yeah. No. Not it, they started dying. And I'm like, shit, man, I probably, I've probably buried about 10 or 12 goats in five, in five years, four years. And finally it clicked in my brain that they have a system and their system is, pretty much checking these goats on a regular basis, rotating these goats into different places and stuff like that, maintaining them to the way that they've set those goats up to be maintained at their place. So when you go get a goat from somebody, you're supposed to quarantine those goats for a little bit so that you don't just bring on parasites or whatever it may be to your herd. So until I learned all of this, all my goats were dying. Now in the last year, I haven't had, but just a couple of babies die. and one adult but the one adult that died was just of old age pretty much and a storm came along and no telling what happened in the storm. But now I've gotten them on a system. So then I was like, well, once I got them on a system and learned that, then I can implement that into everything else that I do in my life, whether it's a relationship, whether it's business, whether it's my personal life, all of that. So then I implemented it into my personal life. And that's why I'm on a system where usually I'm in bed by nine o'clock, 10 o'clock at the latest, up by four o'clock. four o'clock to eight o'clock is my time to myself. I go to the gym. I don't receive anything, but I'm in offensive mode where I'll turn around and push out things that I need to push out. Then at eight o'clock, then I go into defensive mode and basically start receiving all my emails and all of that stuff. And I'm at the mercy of everybody else's problems because then I'm trying to solve them because the more problems that I solve, the more money that I make. So then that's pretty much how my brain works and how I run. It's pretty much off a system. So I find that the more that you can dial in a system for your company and whatever it may be, the better that it's gonna be. So go out and ask as much as you possibly can from every person, but then turn around and take pieces and add those back into your puzzle. And then just keep implementing different things into your puzzle. and making your system better. And when it comes down to the CRMs and stuff like that, I would actually get your own CRM, whether it's on Jobber, Housecall Pro, Marquee, anything like that so that you have your own database. And I would work off of something like that for a CRM so that you're not relying on another company to have all of that information to where whenever something happens to them, y'all's relationship goes south, they have all your information, you don't have none of those customers no more. And I'm not sure if that's part of their marketing or whatever it may be. And if it is, then that just tells me right there, that's a red flag right off the rip that whenever you do leave, you're not going to have none of those customers that they got you. So I would turn around and figure out that part, get your own CRM, start building up your own database, and start rolling from that. Because at the end of the day, you want to make sure that you're building this and that whatever you're building that you continue keeping because you want those repeat customers.

Yep. That makes a lot of sense. I think I need that busy with them next time I talk to them.

Because that just just from hearing, hearing from what you were saying or whatever, it's like it's all of that. They have everything all built in and one. So like you're paying a monthly thing or whatever, and they take control of everything. So all inboarding calls that come in and everything, they're in control of all of that. And you're just out working. No.

No, it's basically an estimate invoicing. You can do email, text campaigns. They boost your Google presence. I'm number one on Google right now. Signing on with them has gotten me a lot of out-of-town leads, which is cool. You know, and I don't the thing that concerns me is what you just said, like, what if it comes time where I'm like, I'm ready to part ways, do I get to keep my database, my customer database, or is it an app or whatever that you that you log into? Yeah, it's all a program. It's all through their program. And it's a. There's a lot of different stuff I haven't been with them very long so I'm not real sure what all it does, but it's, they do AI generation they do different things they offer a lot of stuff but it's all wrapped in the it's a fee you pay every month and the way I justify it is if. If they generate one lead, just one lead every month for all the other stuff I get to do, I mean, I got a good organized professional looking invoicing system and all that. I mean, and then you'll schedule that your job, you know, you set an estimate, they accept, you put it on the schedule, then you go do the job. And then afterwards, it'll send you an email and it says, Okay, you've done the job. Do you want to send a message? Thank you. Do you want to read or asking them to read, you know, book every six months or how often do you want to do this? And it'll send all that out automatically to where I'm not trying to follow up with that customer in any other way. It's, I mean, I, I think it's justifiable for me right now, because I mean, for what I pay a month, one job, it'll, it'll pay for itself.

And then I'm not saying that the, It's not that. The only thing that would throw me off as a red flag is just me having a CRM inside of their stuff and not having control over that CRM. Yeah. I have two CRMs. I pay over 600 bucks a month for my CRM systems. One's called Go High Level, and Go High Level links to everything. And GoHighLevel is my call center, so that's where my phone numbers are bought out of. They're not an actual tie to a cell phone or anything like that. They're just on that CRM system. Then you have Housecall Pro, and Housecall Pro is a scheduler. And they are linked together. So everything that comes through our lead generator, goes straight over to Housecall Pro to where when someone goes into Housecall Pro to do an invoice, all that information that they gathered on the phone or on our lead generator is automatically on Housecall Pro to where they can just type in their name, all their information pops up, and then they put in the invoice. But let's just say you go to sell this company, I'm going to sell the company and the go high level because the go high level is going to have all the data. So, anytime that I run campaigns, anytime I run anything out to where, you know, I'm capturing something for a free house wash or anything like that and someone's scanning a QR code or anything, and they're entering their email address, they're entering their first name and their last name. It's the same shit as when you're out in an event. They're doing the same damn thing. They're capturing your capturing that data to where basically now they can turn around and later on start sending you emails and stuff like that to let you know, hey. We're a pressure washing company. We can pressure wash your house. And then eventually you're either going to op out of it or either you're going to continue letting that stay in cycle, and eventually you're going to give us a call. And it's kind of like planting seeds. But you want to keep all that, is what I'm getting at, is basically you want to keep all that information. You don't want to put in all that money and all that work, and then not being able to keep that information. So even if you stay like what you're doing, I would be like, hey, is there a way that I can get Jobber or something like that to start using as my scheduler? But I don't know, it sounds like they already got like a scheduler system inside of their thing.

I think there's I think there's more involved with what they have to offer than like I'm in the process of still trying to learn what I mean. It's a lot. It's a complex situation.

But I'd like to understand more about that offline or whatever. I'd like to sit down with you and see if maybe that is something that you need to stay with, or if there's something that maybe there's an alternative or something to where you can capture that data and keep it. Because you don't want to put in all this work and then not keep none of that shit. That would be a world headache right there, because then you'd just be starting all back over at zero again. But yeah, anyways, what are you most excited for going into 2025?

I think I think repeat customers. I'm, I think that the thing that I'm definitely I mean, the first thing I'm going to do is read like over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to reach out to all the jobs I did this year and just kind of touch base with them. But the thing that I'm most excited about is getting in getting everything paid off and kind of getting into the end of the the good side of making money and just learning. I would like to attend like I was going to go to that deal with that panhandle power wash put or whatever, Trudy. Yeah, Florida. I was I was I had I was ready to go to that. Some came up and I had to. But I'd like to get a little more involved in really learning, meeting people, networking. I'd like to do, you know, getting Involve with some of those those, uh. So, what are the trainings and training stuff like that to where I can go and just bounce some things off of people I'd like to. do some networking. I'd like to travel and do some networking this year. Of course, hopefully I'm busy enough to where it doesn't, where I'm not allowed to do that or not able to do that. But I really, I'd like to, I'd like to meet, I'd like to meet a few, there's a few people on my list and I'm like, I'd like to meet them. You know what I mean? You are one of them. The Fresh Rinse, Mike Carmody is one of them. I'd like to meet Heath, but I'm not really, he's on the list, but he's not real high on the list. Just because he knows a lot and I'd just like to meet him. I'd like to meet Austin, but he's kind of taken off on a whole other level. I'm not sure if he's, he might've got too big, but there's just a list of people. I don't have it in front of me, but there's a list of people I'd like to meet. Maybe in the next year or two, just maybe go on a job or two with some of y'all just try to see how y'all do it.

Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much how I like to learn is his hands on on different things instead of somebody telling me how to do it. Yeah. And pretty much what I did is just get out and just. Get to a job and be like, I think I can do this and then call my buddy and be like, what chemicals do I need?

I mean, I'm in that, I'm in that stage.

And then he's like, all right, this is what you need. And then I'm like, okay, I got this. And then I get done and I call him and I'm like, look at the after he's like, damn, you did a great job. I'm like, hell yeah. Confidence. All right. Now I know what I'm doing on this one. They get to the one thing. What chemicals do I need?

One thing I reached out to you a long time ago, I'm saying a couple of months saying a long time ago, I hadn't been that long, but I, uh, I commented about your red dirt removal and you never responded. So I was like, all right, man, he's going to keep this a secret. But now that I got you on the phone, it's just me and you. What's your, what's your process on red dirt? Okay.

Yeah. One restore, anything like that? A lot of, a lot of companies make their own, uh, Morotic acid stuff called mud away or something like that And that's that's what four to one downstream or what? One it just really all depends. I mean you can downstream it. Yeah It works this downstream in it. I would just dump your thing inside of the jug and downstream it straight from the jug If I was doing that, but we usually do like 12 volts or pump ups or AR-45.

I'd say that that's a goal. I'd like to buy a good softwash system.

I like the Moflo. The Moflo has been the best, but at the same time that's stainless steel, so you don't want to use an acid out of that system. That system only gets bleach or degreaser ran through it where an AR-45 is plastic. So you can run the acid through there and not have the problem. But we cover so much ground that it just makes sense to use the AR-45 to spray it out a lot of times. But then we're about to get over to where we're just using these 12 volt systems with buckets and just rolling around and just has a wide fan and just spraying it down that way. Because at the end of the day, that way, if someone ends up messing up something, they're just messing up like a $60, $70 pump instead of a $2,000 pump. Yeah. So right on.

But, uh, go ahead. There's a lot of things, man. I just asking me to pinpoint one particular thing that I'm, that I'm trying to set goals for in 2025 is it's hard to pick just one. Cause I got a whole bunch of them, man.

Yeah. Well, as long as you stay focused and stay consistent, they'll come true. Just focus on one at a time. Don't get scattered out too far. Don't look at everybody else and where they're at, because like I said at the beginning of this, we don't see the years that were put in way before a lot of people's success. And then a lot of people sometimes that do hit off with a lot of success right off the rip, have a lot of money to just be able to, you know, shoot out that way and hopes that something happens. And sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it don't. And then sometimes whenever it does, we turn around and we see that and we're like, well, that person ended up making all this in two years or three years. And it's like, not everybody's stories that way. You just got to find what's best for you and what lane is for you and zone in on that. And, uh, it'll all come together eventually.

Yep. Well, I mean, I'm not in any hurry. I mean, I'm, I'm enjoying it. I'm not doing this to get rich. I mean, I mean, I'm doing it to make it make sense, but.

Employees will come along as well, too. That takes time. That's the hardest part, man, honestly.

I was following you when you said it's taken me, and I think it was just here recently where you were able to turn somebody loose on your stuff. Yeah, dude. Yeah, this whole time I've been trying to do it myself.

Yeah, you also got to get out of that mentality that I got to do everything or nobody's going to do anything like me. Because at the end of the day, yeah, you're not going to find 100% you, but you can find 80% of you. And that's what you want is those 80%. So then you also want those. You want a, a players, B players and C players, but at the same time, you want to weave out those C's and you want those C's to start moving up to B's and B's moving up to A's. And then eventually you have nothing but A's and B's and you ain't got those C's and you have a solid culture, but. Until then, I mean, you just got to put puzzle piece by puzzle piece and find out what you do best and what you don't do best. And what you don't do best but still is keys to help you move forward, you need to hire out. And then start training on the things that you're really good at and start hiring and duplicating yourself in those aspects as well too. And that's where I'm at right now is pretty much is duplicating myself in the work field and stuff like that. And then also when it comes to sales, because my sales is more commercial. I'm not really residential. I'm learning the residential side all the time where I can go out to commercial and sell commercial way faster.

I'd say the first 10 jobs I did were commercial. And I mean, I'm just like, that's exactly the opposite of what I expected. But I'm like, I'm OK with it because they pay. It may not be right away, but you'll get your check.

That's the heart. Another hard part, too, is is is money flow because we're 90 percent commercial. And, you know, there's times, man, I'm fucking waiting for nineteen, twenty, thirty, forty thousand dollars to come over. And it's like 30 days. But yet I've got to pay everybody plus everything in the trucks and all of that to get those jobs done. So you have to keep a nest as well too. And I found that once we went W2 that it started helping out a lot because running everything 1099, doing all that stuff, it was the hardest damn thing with managing money. Yep, right on. How can everybody find you on social media and stuff?

www.swkspowerwash.com. That's my website. And I got a Facebook business page is Southwest Kansas Power Washing Services. That's pretty much it. Got a good website.

What's your website just in case somebody wants to visit it?

www.swkspowerwash.com. There you go, guys.

Well, it was a pleasure having you on tonight, listening to everything that you have going on. It'll all come together. It's just your first year into it. You're just getting your toes wet.

Yeah, for sure, man. I appreciate your time pretty much.

Yes, sir, Jake. Anytime, man. Well guys, that's the end of the show. We'll get around to another episode. Until then, y'all have a good one. Peace.

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