Transcription
What's up everybody? We are here with my good friend and fellow HSA member Josh Barber out of Utah. Josh, give us a brief rundown. What exactly does your business do and how old are you?
Yeah. Um, so I'm 23 years old. I um we mainly focus on just window cleaning. We do a little bit of gutter cleaning, but mostly window cleaning. And then we do Christmas lights.
Nice. Okay. So, bread and butter windows.
Yeah.
And then you'll get into gutters and everything else. And you're out of Utah.
Yep.
So, um, let's start with I think it's really interesting. The reason we want to have you on is you're one of the rare people in the group that actually built a sustainable business while in college. And what I mean by sustainable is you actually got a tech early to actually do the fulfillment for you.
So, let's start with like when you start off, you're doing everything yourself and you're in college. What does the day-to-day look like as you're going to class, going to school, and then also getting a exterior cleaning, window cleaning business off the ground?
Yeah. Um, last year was a little bit tough because I went through the whole summer just myself being the tech and doing all the sales, all the marketing, everything. And then school started and was a little bit rough. You had to do kind of best of both worlds doing 18 credits. So, it wasn't wasn't fun. But um this year we got a tech and it was just night and day difference because now my time is significantly freed up. I'm not spending hours on a house. And so it's nice cuz the hours I would probably be cleaning is now I'm just doing a little bit of school, homework, classes, whatever. And then spare time I have I'm marketing, selling,
right?
Doing everything else. So
Okay. So like when you were doing everything yourself and didn't have a tech, you were going to school what 20 hours a week?
something like that.
And then every other waking second you were
marketing.
Marketing or doing fulfillment.
Yeah. I did I did a little bit of online classes. So some of it I was like just 8:00 at night till like 10 11.
Okay.
Just put in the grind morning to night.
Yeah. And I know and I know I know your numbers but for everybody listening I think it's really good. We're super transparent on here. We like we like to just like give everybody exactly what's going on. So when you were doing it alone, what were you doing in like topline sales a month? And remember for everybody listening, he's doing this while being a full-time student.
Yeah.
So So last year what we were doing, we're probably doing like most months about um like during the summer is probably around 10k a month and then as school got into it, it's probably closer to like you know 8 to 10ish still.
Um but now we have a tech significantly freed up time. We're doing about 12 to 15K a month now.
Okay. Yeah. And what are you taking home on that? And keep in mind, you're not cleaning the windows yourself. So, what are you taking home on that while having someone else clean the windows?
Uh, probably about 50 to 60% margins. So,
nice. While in school?
While in school. So, it's better than a minimum wage. I think my minimum wage job I was working at a bank down the road. It's getting like 350 bucks a week. And I was working, you know, fulltime or not full-time. I was working like eight hour days. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and I have more time than that.
And you're making $350 a week.
350 bucks a week. So now I make that in a job.
Yeah, dude. That's crazy. And I I think it's really cool, too. So you're uh out of Utah and you've like, first of all, at the at the age you are, it's insane. But you've also while paying through school accumulated some real estate.
Yeah.
Talk to me about that. What's the strategy there? That's like that's very Utah. That's very Utah entrepreneur of you. But like Okay. So you're you're focused on like the long-term plan is get your education, accumulate real estate, grow the business.
Yeah.
So business funds the real estate ventures.
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah. So I mean my original plan is I really I love real estate. I like
I did doortodoor sales. It's a it's a Utah thing.
Um
No, there's some Arizona things.
It's it's Arizona, too. It's it's seeping in. But Utah is like everybody's done it and every sales company talks about it
and I just loved the idea of it of just like having that um
that rental income coming in and I bought it and bought one and I was just addicted and so I've just been doing that and that's why I started the business is because I was like I just want to fund getting more of these.
Okay.
Like it's just it's so nice having just that passive in or I guess it's not really passive but
yeah that's a myth, right? It's not passive. There's no such thing. It's It's significantly easier, but it's still active.
Okay. And are you like are you going multif family? Are you buying like single family and you're renting them? What are you buying?
We're buying single families right now, but we want to get into multif family.
And are they in Salt Lake City?
No. No, they're out um in the Midwest. They're out in Ohio. So,
so they cheaper houses out there. Is that why?
Yeah. Significantly cheaper. Still great cash flow. Love it.
What was like what do you mind sharing? Like what was the first like how much was the first house you bought? Because most of the time like if a guy's a lot of time the guys think in Arizona or if they're in Salt Lake City or somewhere else it means like they think they have to buy the house in their market.
Yeah.
So one how are you finding these deals out there?
Yeah.
And then what was the first one you bought?
Yeah. So that was the myth I thought too cuz I I for you guys if you don't know loans or anything there's an FHA loan where you can put significantly less down.
Um and so that's what we were looking to do. But out in Utah, it's like cash flow is just it's it's very very hard to come by because it's just super expensive out there.
Mh.
And so we were looking in Utah like crazy, but just the numbers for us at least didn't make sense. And then one of our realtors just like, why don't you look at Ohio? Like, have you ever looked out there? And we're like, well, no. And we looked out there and it was just Yeah, it was significantly cheaper. Like I think the average home price in Utah is like 400, 450, something like that. and Ohio. We got our first property was 97K, I think,
and our second one was 92.
So, it's significantly cheaper and we're putting 20% down rather than just that three and a half. So,
dang, dude. That's crazy. That's super cool.
Yeah.
Yeah. And so, man, that's awesome. And so, to change gears a little bit, I want to go back to like what the plan is. So, you're going to graduate when?
Uh, next spring. So, early May.
Okay. So early May of 26 is the plan then like so right now for easy math like while you're a student
which is already you have half of your time taken away from compared to everybody else. While you're a student you're probably netting somewhere between like conservatively 75k a year to 100k a year while a student. Is that fair to say based on the profit numbers and the monthly?
Probably. Yeah. So once you're done being a student, are you going all in on the exterior cleaning business? Are you going to go use the degree somewhere else? Like what are you going to do?
That's the question. So we're kind of like we just want to get out of Utah.
Oh, okay.
Yeah. We don't we don't like I'm from Arizona, so I love Arizona. My wife's from Idaho
and we're just kind of like, do we want to stay here? Do we want to go somewhere else? So, I mean, right now my plan is to just grow it as much as I can and if I want to sell it and then use that to like start something else somewhere else or just keep it if it's going well, make another branch somewhere else. We're not 100% sure what we want to do. We just know we we think we want to get out of Utah, but
Okay. Interesting. So, yeah. So, let's if you did stay in Utah, do you think once you have the 20 hours that's kind of being taken away from education, you would just go get another tech and just go super aggressive and just double up pretty quick?
Why not?
Yeah.
Okay. Cool. So, do you feel like now because you've developed like it's very easy for you like you've developed a set of skills in the last year and a half to just like you could go plop yourself in any market and get a window cleaning business off the ground.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, you're like talking to your wife, you're like, "All right, it's doing good. It's cash flowing, whatever. But I could go build this in a two months in another market.
Probably. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. So, let's talk about it. Like, if you're going let's just let's let's pretend you're like, "All right, honey. We're going to Arizona,
right?"
Yeah.
Where do you start? So, you go to Arizona, you get you get a new spot. You're opening a window cleaning business from the ground up. What's your like give me step one that you would do?
Um, step one, I don't know. I mean, we'd obviously find a place to live. I'd probably want to be
not too far from like target markets. I'm okay being outside of the target market, but not too far. So, places that are around, you know, family homes or uh family incomes are over 100K a year. I want to say around there. If not, I'm okay making the drive, but
Okay. Let's dive into that. So, how are you finding that? So, let's say you plop yourself in Phoenix. You're like, "Okay, where are you going to find that?"
Um, so Phoenix I know pretty well because I'm from Queen Creek. So, um I just know a lot of the neighborhoods I'd probably want to target anyways, but um I can't remember the website. You showed us the website. It's
Yeah, the US Postal Service thing.
Yeah, US Postal Service to just go find who's making the right incomes. Kind of drive around the area, see if like, okay, they're making the income, but are the homes the homes we actually want to clean? Um and then kind of go from there. start targeting, doing flyers, yard signs, putting up some Facebook ads, something like
you just let it rip. So, okay. So, so you're going to go on. So, because remember like half the people that listen to this are like maybe they're just starting and then the other half they have businesses. Yeah.
And so I always like to just get super in the weeds on like exactly what you would do execution wise. So, you're going to go on the US Postal Services website. You're going to sort it. You're going to type in a zip code and then you're going to sort the zip code by like the little four-digit sub-zipped after. You're going to find like the pockets of neighborhoods that have high average income in the houses. And then for specifically windows, some of these neighborhoods, some of these areas you don't like the way the houses are made. Yeah.
Like what does that mean?
Like it's like they have a bunch. It's like old houses with like the multi-pane windows that are a nightmare to clean or like what does that mean?
Yeah, French panes are are a nightmare. Sometimes I I'll do two things with French panes. I'll either price it super high. So, it's like I don't want to do this. So, hopefully they say no. But if they say yes, it's like it's good high ticket. But
okay. And just for everybody listening, a French pane is like if it's a big window and there's no little pieces of wood breaking it into like little windows.
A French pane would be the things where like you have this big window and then it's like these wood slats that make it like essentially four to eight little windows.
Yeah. the frame comes onto the window and it's it's it's sometimes a pain to clean, especially if it's wood and not like aluminum or vinyl or something.
Okay.
Wood is a lot harder, but um yeah, I mean I'd look for things like that. I mean, if they have French panes, it's not going to turn me away necessarily. There's just some homes where you can tell like they have the high income, but they're just older homes you can tell they're not that it's going to be very time consuming to clean. Um, and then just I guess in Utah it's more of an issue than Arizona would be, but I guess Arizona too. But some of the mountain uh homes they're like sometimes you look at the front and it's like a one maybe two story and then you look in the back and it's like three, four stories.
It's like yeah, I don't really want to clean four stories. That's that's uh a little bit nerve-wracking to get up on that ladder.
Got it. Yeah. Okay. Got it. So, yeah. I see what you're saying. It's built into the side of a mountain in the front and like in the back you're like using a waterfed pole to get up or even attempting a ladder.
Yeah.
No, I got that. Okay. Interesting. So, you're like if you're looking at a new market, you'll want to go high income and like probably newer build areas.
Yeah.
Cuz newer builds are going to have more of the modern look, probably less French paint. Is that fair to say?
Uh, yeah. For the most part. Yeah.
Cool. So, then if you go out and you get plopped there and let's say let's just do the exercise. I give you like I give you $10,000 $5,000 to start. So, let's say you have $5,000 of marketing budget in a new market.
Okay.
How many yard signs are you buying? What else is the strategy? So, let's start with yard signs.
So, that's strictly just marketing, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Let's assume you have, you know, four the $400 or $500 worth of equipment.
Yeah. All the equipment, everything. Just marketing. Okay. Um I mean, first things I would buy is probably yard signs. I'd probably do I don't know 250 of them.
Okay. What are you putting on the yard signs? Just generic window cleaning phone number. That's all you need.
Okay.
Um
so window cleaning and big bold letters. Phone number on the bottom.
Yeah. Yeah.
Um I'd buy 250 of those. I don't know how much that'd be like.
About a thousand bucks.
Thousand bucks. Yeah.
With $4 a sign with stakes is probably fair. Yeah. With shipping and everything. Let's just call it $4 a sign.
Yeah. Probably a,000 bucks. Yeah. So, um thousand bucks going there. I love flyer strategies right now. Um, so I'd probably buy 10,000 of those.
Okay. How much are you getting flyers for? Like 8 cents a flyer, maybe even less.
Uh, something like that. I bought I just bought another 10,000 and it was like 500 bucks.
Okay.
So, whatever that is, like 5 cents, five cents.
We We'll fact check it. I don't know. Something fact check it. Put in bold letters on the bottom. Something like that.
Okay. All right. So, okay. You're buying the flyers. Yeah.
And then let's talk about execution of the flyers. Where are you putting the flyers? Where are you like what how are you putting out a day? What are you doing with them?
Yeah. So, um right now our fire strategy is we buy 10,000 a month and I try and do about um like 1,200 to 2500 in a week. Um I just have a Segway so I go around put on door to door and then front of it is just it's basic. It's our name name, number, picture of my wife, me, our little puppy um and then a QR code to our CRM. Um, so they can just fill out a request form right there. The back of it, I have an offer and I write in the price of the home and then I also put in an expiration date for that price of the home.
Smart.
Um, so I I typically do it about 7 to 10 days out depending on um kind of what the schedule looks like in that area. If I know I'm going to be, for example, like in in Utah or in uh like Provo a lot. M
so like if I know I'm not going to be in Provo like end of next week, I'm going to put the last day we're in Provo. Or if we just don't have anything for the week, I'll probably put out 7 to 10 days. So
yeah. And so I Okay, there's so much sauce on the flyer. So let's start with the front, right? Like you say, you put a you put a picture of you and your wife and your dog on the flyer. I think that's a part where a lot of guys miss on print marketing. Oh yeah.
Is like So you do that because it's like the subconscious trust builder almost. It's like it's not just the generic company flyer. It's like it looks very family owned. Yeah.
Very like kind of authentic, genuine. Yeah.
And then on the back, you're putting an expiration date for the discount you have on the flyer.
Yep.
And so some people listening are going to be like, "Oh, but what if like I what if they want to use me two weeks later? The expiration date's, you know, gone." your the point and this is very much an HSA thing like we've talked about this but for everybody that's listening
uh like your point is like no
the whole point of the flyer is to like the offer is there as like a lead magnet and then the expiration date is there to drive like a little bit of demand. It's like urgency behind it. Yeah, there's urgency because if you don't put I like ID had flyers all last year that didn't have an expiration date, didn't have a picture, just pretty generic. Had our our name, uh, services we did, and then like a tiny offer. I think it said like $25 off your first service.
Mh.
And I put out I wasn't too crazy with them, but I think I put out like six or 7,000
and I got three calls total on it. These ones I put out 250 and I get about depending on the area about one to seven calls for every 250 flyers. So it's significant difference just doing those simple little things.
Yeah. So
massive difference.
Yeah.
I mean that like the first way doesn't even make sense.
Yeah.
You're wasting you're wasting your entire day doing flyers and hoping you get a call after like three days worth of hanging them.
Yep.
Interesting. No, that's awesome. And then so that's like a huge strategy for you. And then once you're in these neighborhoods, you're putting out the A-frame, you're doing all that jazz.
Uh, you're getting reviews and all that. And then what is the offer on the flyer? So you said you was $25 off before. Are you still doing $25 off or what's the what's the discount now that you're putting on?
No. So the discount we have on our flyers right now is $50 off for life and then also a free screen clean, their first clean.
Okay. And are you getting any of these people on service agreements?
Yeah. Okay.
So that's that's kind of the caveat with the for life. Mhm.
is we we come out there, we do the clean, and we say, "Okay, to continue to have the $50 off, you have to be on a service agreement. Whatever that service agreement was will be, if you want to do quarterly, it's a little bit more. Um, but at least a by annual, which most people that's what they want anyways."
Okay. And then you're having them sign like some form or whatever and then you come out every six months.
Mh.
And then are you like you're doing the first job of whatever for the discount and then at the end of it you're like, "You like what you saw? Let's get you on it to get this keep to keep getting the quarterlys, whatever. What percent of the people that go uh on the service plans do a quarterly versus like a bianual?
Um I would say it's probably probably like 75% are bannual and then 25 or quarterly. The thing with with Utah that is kind of hard is uh January to March it's it's pretty non-existent because it's just too cold or snowy out. So a lot of people are kind of deterred from that. So what we've actually tried to start doing is trianuals as well where we just skip that quarterly appointment.
So it's that way we're still getting more jobs for the year but when it's a little bit too hard to do it in the winter we yeah skip that one. So what is it you do like April, September, December or like what would it
No, so a trianual I mean we we can do it that way but a trianual we we basically set it up as a quarterly. So we come out basically like once in the spring, summer, fall and then the winter is skipped and we try and hope and get just people for like Christmas lights for that time instead.
Got it.
So
Okay. Cool. And then let's jump into Christmas lights. Are you Yeah. So you know after that's that's a subject that's near and dear to my heart. So obviously it's very natural for window cleaners. So if you're in a cold climate almost every window cleaner and pressure washer gets into Christmas lights to kind of offset it everything else, right? Because like whereas you know if you're in Arizona it doesn't really matter. Like yeah same thing but a lot of the cold climates that's what they do. So are you selling your own book of business Christmas lights? Like you're reaching out to them pretty aggressively. Everybody that's got windows done you're reaching out to them to do Christmas lights.
Yeah. I mean we do email and text marketing and then every time we end um if I'm there I need to get better with my tech on this. My tech's kind of new, so I like I'm still teaching him things along the way. But as we finish up, I'm like, "Hey, we also offer other other services. So if you ever need us for like gutter clean, Christmas lights, you know, we're your guys type deal." Um, and so yeah, we're we're basically just doing text and email marketing back to them. And yeah, we got a couple people from last year to do it. So
nice. And then this year you'll get a lot more because you have an entire full year of window cleans that you can now market to.
Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, and yeah, we just need to be more aggressive. I should have been more aggressive last year. I think I talked to you a little bit about this. I was just terrified cuz Utah it snows, right?
And I don't want to be up on a roof when it's just snowed and, you know, I have to ice freezing. I was I was a little too nervous last year cuz I was like,
what if I don't know how to do it? What if it gets too snowy and I'm going to have to cancel the appointment or just reschedule it and it's not going to work? And I was two in my head and I did my first job and I was like should have done a lot more of these.
Yeah, dude. So, how many did you do last year?
Uh, we didn't do anything crazy. I think we did like 13 jobs.
That's pretty good. Do you remember what you made total off the 13?
No, I remember our average ticket was uh 1,800 though.
Okay. So, you did over 20.
Yeah, it wasn't anything crazy. I definitely should have done more, but it was just like we we installed like almost end of October and then going up to November, it was just like, yeah, marketing efforts just wasn't where it should have been, so we didn't get as many people as
I mean, that's pretty good. Most guys would kill to get 20 to 30,000.
Yeah, I'm definitely happy with it. So,
yeah. And then it's it's actually funny. I was in Utah uh like maybe 6 months ago or something and I saw a lot of the new builds in Utah have these like weird squiggly line black things on the edge of the roof line and it's like a it's a heat for the snow. Is that what it is?
I know what you're talking about.
It's like this little like black snake that's laying on the edge of all the pitch roofs.
It's like a heat strip so the snow melts. I think it's so that like stuff in the gutters doesn't get frozen in there. I don't really know the point of it. I think it looks hideous. No, it does look terrible. It looks terrible. We said that. But I imagine that would that's a dream scenario if you're doing Christmas lights cuz you know that there's no snow on the roof.
Yeah.
In that spot.
Is that But is that not every house? Cuz where the neighborhood I was in, it was every house had them.
Um I think maybe some new builds like have that as an enticing thing to put it in. But from my scene, no, it's not every house. A lot of Utah doesn't really have HOAs. They're just kind of wherever. But the ones with HOAs, yeah, I do see that a little bit more.
Okay. So, it's not like every single place you go. But, no, I noticed it. I thought, you know, we were there when there was no snow, and it was very hideous on the roof,
but it would be a dream for a Christmas light installer to know that there's no snow hanging on the edge where you're pinning your ladder up against.
Yeah, I get I guess it doesn't get hot enough, but I was a little bit worried about them like melting the wire or melting the socket, but
No, I don't think they get that. No, I don't think they get that hot,
which makes sense. It's on your roof, so
Yeah, exactly. Set a house on fire. Uh, by the way, going back. So, like now you're going to have you're obviously going to still go out and do some installs this year. You're going to have your tech, too.
Uh, where did you find your tech? So, for a new guy that's like starting out, that's the biggest hurdle they're going to jump through, especially in Windows exterior cleaning is like,
yeah,
hiring that first guy. So, where did you find the tech?
I got I'm not going to lie, I got really lucky with this tech. He So, I have an Indeed post up.
We had a couple texts that way
and they were they were all okay. There was always just something it it just didn't quite work. And I'm not saying Indeed can't work. We only hired like again a handful. So the
sample size isn't big enough, but he just called us from a yard sign.
Interesting. Yeah. Okay. And he he called for employment from a yard sign.
Yeah. So our tech, a little bit of background on him, he he just moved here from Oregon. Um and he he was working for another window cleaner. kind of same situation as our business right now. And he just wanted to get out and so he just he went to Utah and he called to sign and yeah, he was awesome. We did an interview. He's just
absolute a player.
Okay.
We loved him. We hired him immediately.
And what are you uh what are you what's the comp look like for the tech? How do you pay him?
Like how do I pay him? So we pay him 25% each job. Um it's pretty awesome. our our average ticket for a window clean right now uh we're jumping up a ton from when we started. Um so our average ticket right now is about 331. Um and he can do a clean depending on the home he can do it sometimes less than an hour but probably most around maybe 4, but most homes are about probably an hour to two hours. So he's making pretty dang good money
off that. I think that's like I don't know 25% of 300's like 75 bucks. He's probably making like 80ish. Okay. So, he I mean, it's it it feels like essentially like almost like a sub model. Like you're just basically like you're just giving him 25% of the ticket
because we tried the hourly, but the thing we saw was like
on harder jobs or just like the quality went down a little bit. Guys weren't really motivated to go quick. They just kind of were like, well, if I'm here a little bit longer, I make a little bit more money. versus this. It's like one we So, one thing that we we do as part of it is any call backs, they're not getting paid for it. So, like for example, like they go clean a house, they do it super quick, but the windows look just awful.
It's like we're not paying you for that. Like, you got to go back and clean it, right? Touch it up and do anything like that and then you'll get paid for the job. Um, which improves quality for the first clean and then also just improves time. They just find ways to to cut time to make it where they can do more jobs in a day.
Yeah. And do you have him set up as a 1099?
Uh, no.
W2.
W2.
Okay. Gotcha. So, he's making decent money.
Yeah. He's I think couple weeks ago he I think the average is like 35 bucks an hour, which is insane. I was like, every time I'm sending it, I'm like, dude, I was making like 350 bucks a week as working at this other one, and you're waking you're you're working probably the same hours. So,
yeah. And if he if he works a 10-hour day on a busy day, he's getting it all up front in one day.
Yeah.
Yeah. That's really interesting. I think it's like
on like the small scale, that kind of comp structure makes a lot of sense if you're trying to maximize the performance out of a new employee without like shackling your business to like paying somebody a flat 40 hour a rate or 40 hours a week rate without knowing whether they're going to perform. So, like,
yeah,
essentially if you because the the inverse is if you hire somebody and they completely suck and he's only getting one job done a day, you're still not going to like lose your ass after like two or three weeks because you can just let them go and be like, "All right, well, you're getting paid 25%."
Yeah.
So, that makes a lot of sense. So, okay. Very interesting. Very interesting. So, uh Okay, we I'm going to go back to the marketing a little bit. So, you did the yard size, you do the flyers, and you're going to run Facebook ads.
Facebook ads. Yeah. Okay. Give us the strategy on on like your Facebook ad strategy. What do you spend like what do you when you're peak into a new market, what are you spending a day on ads?
Um I I would probably spend anywhere from like 30 to 50 bucks a day probably.
And when you're in Utah spending 30 to 50 bucks a day, what do you get? What's like a cost per lead and then cost per actual booked appointment?
Yeah. So right now our Facebook ad
um I want to say we're getting around like 16 bucks a lead. So and we close
um in good in like peak season we're closing about half but in like rough summertime like July and August we're probably closing one and three.
So probably about like 35 to 40 45 bucks. Uh
book job.
Yeah. Book job.
That's really And your average ticket's 350 bucks. uh 330, but basically so you're b you're like consistently getting like an 8 to 10x.
Yeah, it's pretty nice.
That's really nice. Yeah, that'll work. And you're running like the the pretty much the strategy we talk about. You're running video mostly.
Yeah.
Okay. You're on camera, you're branded.
Yep.
And then Yeah. And then how many creatives do you run when you're doing Are you doing three?
Uh right now we're actually running two.
But you but you have the winners now. Like you know kind of which one works and which one doesn't.
Yeah. Exactly.
Interesting. Okay. All right. Cool. So, this is how I always like to end. So, we've got the marketing, we've got the sales down, we got everything else down. Now, I'm going to go into like when you started it, what is one thing that you regret in the way you started the business that now you know you do any different?
Um, yeah. Uh, probably hiring.
Okay.
Yeah. I I just should have hired earlier. My my I love my wife. She is awesome. She pushes me to do a lot of things and last summer I just wasn't listening to her. She the whole time
she was she was pushing you to hire her.
Yeah. She was like because she So a little bit of background last summer she quit her job and she was helping me and she's like why don't you just hire somebody? Like you could do way more with your time. And the whole time I was like I don't know if we could do it. Like that's a big jump. Scary dude.
I don't want to hire somebody and then like have one full week and then the next week be like
sorry dude like I can't pay you this week. We just don't have any jobs. But that's just that's just not how it works. Like you just have so much time on your or you have so much off your plate, so much time to do so much other things to build the business. It was like, man, I should have done that when I started. Like this whole week, we've been we're at the huge right now. And this whole week, like money is still coming in the bank account. The guy is still working and like nothing's falling apart.
Yeah.
So it's it's Yeah.
Yeah. And I think that's the scariest part for a new guy. And so it's kind of funny on here because you know we have like guests that are doing you know having nine figure exits on the podcast and it's like
it's like very
it's it's it's that stuff is for most of the people listening it's like it's very aspirational and like inspirational because like you obviously want to get proximity to that to see what's possible. Then I think it's really cool to talk to guys that are like young getting it done and like this is like the reality of it is like a lot of guys are like terrified to hire their first employee whatever else. But most of the time like if you do the basic math it's like if you're cleaning windows or doing whatever trade you're doing for, you know, 40 to 50 hours a week. You're going to be really bad at marketing and sales. Or if you're doing a lot of marketing and sales, you're going to be really bad at fulfillment. Yeah.
And so you hire a tech even if you're giving them 20 to 30 hours a week to start out. You don't have to give him 40, 50 hours a week right away. Yeah.
What happened to you is then now your time is bought back and you're just doing more marketing and sales, keeping him busy.
Exactly. Yeah.
And then when you're not a student, you're going to keep going and
probably have even more time to do that and probably have multiple texts
probably.
Interesting. Okay. And then what's something you think you did right early on that you're like, I nailed that early. And I like when you look back, you're like, okay, that was one thing I've seen other people do wrong or something like that that you like feel like you nailed early.
Yeah. Um, not a plug at all to everybody watching, but definitely getting into your program.
That's good.
Yeah,
that's good.
Like, I don't know if you remember my numbers when I first started. I didn't really like go all in on the business, but we technically started in 23,
2023.
And I think that first year just by myself doing doortodoor,
also doing school and working uh that bank job, but I think I made like 6K. nothing crazy.
And I got into HSA and yeah, 10x the whole
Oh, dude, I I appreciate the plug, dude. That wasn't even what I was pitching, but I appreciate it.
Well, it was just nice cuz like like all these things, all the marketing avenues, like I've seen it before. I've seen yard signs. I've seen flyers, but in my mind, I'm like that doesn't work, you know? Like just doesn't work. And then like the first thing you said or the first like jump start was like go put out the yard signs, go get an A-frame, go do flyers, go do Facebook ads, all this stuff. And I was like I was a little bit skeptical, but if I didn't have somebody there saying like hey it works probably wouldn't have done it.
So this is a really interesting thing about it like most and this is this is why I think it has been so successful is most guys know conceptually what to do.
Like most guys know it's print marketing, it's ads, it's whatever else. But then when it comes to like you're sitting in front of your computer on a Tuesday night and you're like where do I start? It's the execution that people want and then they want the support to know like the little stuff like hey man I'm about to click order on the signs. How many do I order? Do I need double-sided? Do I need singlesided? Do I put my phone number on it? Do I put my logo on it? Where do I put them? And it's like so it's like one thing to say conceptually do yard signs. It's another thing to say this is where to order them. This is how many to get. This is what to put on them. This is where to put them out. This is where to not put them out. This is what time of the week to put them out. like all that stuff. Exactly.
Um, so yeah, that's been a common trend. So, I appreciate you saying that. Yeah,
that's uh Yeah, that's been pretty cool. So, okay. So, now
you're going to graduate. You think you're going to move to a new market? Do you have any interest in getting into a different trade if you go into a new market or do you think windows are it?
I don't know. I've thought about other trades. I So, what I love about window cleaning is it is low ticket, but it's recurring.
Yes. Like once you once you clean somebody's house, like for the most part, they're probably going to call you back. Or you just put them into your list of people to text and email and you market them back and they're going to like you back, especially if you did a good job. Like why would they not, right? That saves them the hassle of doing something else. I do like the high ticket stuff. I really like Christmas lights for that.
Christmas lights gives you the taste. Like once you start getting like four figure contracts, you're like, "Oh,
yeah." Like I was like I I think our highest ticket we did a job last year just under 4K was like 3,800.
I was like
that was nice
dude. Yeah. It's like that's that's 12 window cleanings.
Yeah. Exactly. And it's like wow that's like almost what you can do in a week just solo as a window clean in one afternoon.
Yeah.
Yeah. That's always the That's always the battle. Like once you start getting better at running a business, you start to evaluate other businesses and you get this little like kind of the Matrix woman in the red dress thing where you start getting distracted like, "Oh, maybe I add this service or maybe I do this, whatever." But most of the time, I feel like if you look at the businesses that like explode, they focus on the same thing. Yeah. and like the same basic services and then they just keep doing it and keep doing it and keep doing it and they just get better based like just off of just natural like chops at the tree.
Yeah.
And so like even for us it's like you know we're doing Christmas lights is like oh I only have two months to to make money. But if you look at like one of the exercises we do in home service accelerator too is like we show uh my Christmas light companies uh how much of our percentage of our work came from paid ads versus organic yearbyear and it was like first year was 95% second year was like in the 80s third year was like 70s something percent came from paid fourth year was like 50 something percent came from paid ads and the fifth year 45% came from paid 55% came from organic or referrals. Yeah. And so for us, it's like all that's showing is like hammering and doing the same thing over and over again over a long period of time, you're just going to win.
You're just going to build so you're going to build a massive book of business. The thing I see a lot of young guys, which I think like the reason you're continuing to be successful is like you don't get distracted like, oh well this customer asked if I could do a handyman thing and I could make an extra $300 for that. And it's like you're just like you're just going to dilute yourself. It's like not all money is good money in a business. The businesses that win do the same things over and over and over again.
Yeah.
Okay. So, and we're going to wrap it up with this. You have a you have a new guy. You have a new guy coming into your market and you're moving out of Utah, so you're not a you're not a competition anymore. And he asks you like, Josh, what's the what are the three things that I need to do right away? What do you tell them?
Um, three things they need to do in the market.
Yeah. I first thing I'd say just stay consistent.
Okay.
I'm not gonna lie. When the start of the summer, like May came, the amount of window cleaners in Utah just exploded.
Oh, for sure.
It was like you saw all these Facebook ads, yard signs, like crazy. Like places I put my yard signs, there's probably like three or four there now.
Okay.
Insane. But you just got to stay consistent. Now, all those window cleaners, like they're just they're not there anymore. Like you go on Facebook Marketplace and you just see like all of the pure purification water systems, the deionized water systems, they're all for sale. So it's like it's it's definitely a hard game to get into, but if you stay consistent, it's, you know, it's it's well worth it.
It's actually interesting. It's an easy game to get into. It's a hard game to win at. Yeah.
With all the competition.
Yeah. I think there's a lot of good information on social media these days that say it is. It's super easy. It is to a certain a point, but it's definitely not easy to keep quality to keep consistency with with customers. And so, just stay consistent, keep the quality up, and you'll continue to like have word of mouth referrals grow. Yeah.
Continue to have like good marketing for your business because there's a such thing as bad marketing. Oh, for sure.
Right. Like you did a bad job on that neighbor, well, the other neighbor's probably not going to want you out.
Yeah, for sure. Okay. Consistent. Consistency is one. Just chops at the tree.
Consistency one. two, like don't be afraid to invest into your business. Um, you know, spend the money for marketing. That was the hard I think to this day the hardest money or the hardest decision ever spent with money at least in the business was the first time I bought yard signs
because I bought a hundred and I think it was like 300 bucks, something like that.
Yeah.
And I'm just like sitting at the computer like is this going to work?
Because you have to because you you essentially have to give your business a loan from out of pocket and hope that you execute on it. Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like, yeah, it was just it was nerve-wracking. It was like like I I might just waste 300 bucks right now and I'm gonna have all these yard signs I don't know what to do with.
And it's funny, you have to remember the frame that you're in at that point is your business wasn't working yet.
Yeah.
Like, and so $300 then
is like it hurts.
Now you're spending, you know, $300 a week on Facebook ads some week. So now it like that feels like nothing to you. But in the frame that you were in then, that's a big deal.
Yeah. And so for a new guy, that's a big deal. If a guy has an existing business now and they hear that, they're like, "300 bucks, I spend that in a day on advertising." You know what I mean?
Exactly.
But it's the frame that you were in at that moment.
Yeah. It's just it's just a state of mind you're in. Yeah. So it's it's definitely something you got to hurdle over. Um
and then third, I guess this is kind of going investment, too, but just make sure you got the right equipment. Like if like it took me so long to clean a job because
I would just I got the cheapest stuff, right? I got the cheapest uh squeegee. The mop doesn't really matter, but I still got the cheapest mop. I had the Home Depot bucket. I had the Home Depot microfiber uh cloths, right? And that's not a bad place to start, just to say. Like that's where I think pretty much every window cleaner starts.
Um but definitely get out of that as soon as you can. Get the right equipment, get the the tools you need to make a job quicker, safer,
higher ROI per job. It's just you got to get the right equipment.
Interesting. So, you say like if you're looking at the $200 piece of equipment and you're like, "Oh, it's serviceable." And then the other one's $400. If they do the homework on it and really realize that the $400 one's going to be a better piece of equipment, just invest in it.
Exactly. Yeah.
Interesting. So, there's a trend here and the trend is don't play scared. Like you got to, you know, what's the what's the Matt Damon ads for that crypto ad? The what is it? The fortune favors the bold or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, you got to, dude, you got to put your you got to put the nuts on the table a little bit. So, dude, thank you. So, thank you so much for coming on, man. It's been an honor becoming your friend and everything else through HSA. You were, I think, dude, I think in Homesters Excel, you were like probably customer number.
I think I was first like one of the first.
Very early. You were at least like you were one of the first maybe 15 people.
Yeah, I think I was cuz I started or I joined like April last year. Yeah. Or May somewhere around there.
So, I think you were probably like our maybe our second or third window guy. And so, dude, we appreciate it, man. It's been it's been super cool watching you grow, too.
So, dude, thanks for coming on course. And, uh, we'll put your socials in the bottom if you want it on YouTube and everything else, and we'll let everybody reach out to you and get some free advice.
Okay. Not much advice, but
All right, man. Cool. Thank you, man. We're good.
Of course.