From Mop Bucket to $3.5M: The 30-Year "No-Quit" Blueprint with Jim (Squeegee Pros)

Speaker A: What's the secret of your success and being able to be in the thing for over 30 years?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, it's a great question. Don't be a. Don't be a deer in the headlights. Just stay totally focused on what you're doing. Don't be starting around here and looking for the next best thing. Just take what you've got. Take the talent that you have, which may or may not be a lot. I didn't have a lot of business talent at all. You build on that. You stay focused on one thing. You have a dream, you have goals, you have targets, and you never stop. If I have a little secret to success, just don't quit.

Speaker A: Let's go.

Speaker C: Welcome to Wash and Win with Friends, the podcast where pressure washing business owners share their origin stories, the mistakes they made, and exactly how they built a profitable pressure washing business from the ground. I'm your host, Joshua Brown from Brown's Pressure, Washington. And every episode, you're getting real stories from real operators. No fluff, just the blueprint. Whether you're thinking about starting a pressure washing business or you're ready to scale from solo to multiple trucks, you're in the right place. Hit subscribe, so you never miss a story. Now let's get into it.

Speaker A: Jim, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker B: Well, thank you, thank you. I'm so glad I'm here. It's good to see you.

Speaker A: Uh, hey, you are an absolute blessing to have on, um, the podcast. We've been very fortunate to have a handful of great people that have been inside of business and experienced success inside of window cleaning, pressure washing, and landscaping. And you're as much of a. I don't know what word we'd want to use a legend, but someone that's been in the game for it is true. Um, for those who have never met you before, how long have you been inside of pressure washing window cleaning?

Speaker B: Um, yeah, I've had two companies done right window cleaning. I started when I was 19, had it for six years, and, um, and then I started Squeegee Pros. Uh, we're in year 29, almost year 30 coming up. This in a couple more months.

Speaker A: All right, so help, uh, me with some context. How many guys are, are still in the game when you started your pressure washing business?

Speaker B: Oh, boy. There's a small handful, Joshua. A small handful. Not very many. It's amazing. Even when I look at local franchisees that come into the marketplace, you know, 10, 15, 20, 25 years ago, they're like all out and, and someone else has taken Their place. It's very, very, very few locally, even nationally, just going to conventions and whatnot. It's uh, yeah. When you go back that far in time, not very many.

Speaker A: Well, what's the secret of your success and being able to be in the thing for over 30 years?

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, it's a great question. Don't be a, don't be a deer in the headlights. Just stay totally focused on what you're doing. Don't be darting around here and looking for the next best thing. Just take what you've got. Take the talent that you have, which may or may not be a lot. I didn't have a lot of business talent at all. You build on that. You stay focused on one thing. You have a dream, you have goals, you have targets. And you never stop

Speaker A: when you say don't be a deer in the, with, with your, you know, hooves or your eyes in, in the spotlight. What do you mean by that?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's uh, you don't want to be that person. Another, another way to say it is a smart fox chases after one rabbit at a time. And I've seen business owners, I think we all have at some point, maybe we've been even guilty of it at some point in time too, where we see a. Maybe the grass might be a little bit greener here. If I go do this job or this opportunity, or maybe not job, but this business or this business opportunity versus just totally focusing on what you have. When you look at our business, we're in the business of clean. We may not really understand how fortunate we are because anything that that's clean gets dirty again. And it's rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. Build up a nice customer base you have. It's not like you're going after the next job continuously because we're in the consumption business. And it took me a little bit, I had to pinch myself on that for a moment to say, you know what, I picked a great business to be in because all I need is X number of customers and if I serve them very, very well and I add a few, you know, build it to where I want to build it at. Yeah, there's going to be some attrition in my customer base. People pass away, they move away and whatnot. But if I can just continue to serve them. We've talked about this before at the absolute highest level. Why would they ever go anywhere else? So when you focus. So like, one of the systems that I like to talk about sometimes is, um, building a world class service model. And, and many don't. It's, it's almost like when you look at, like there's the Holiday Inn and there's a Ritz Carlton, they both do exactly the same thing, lodging. But one does it so much better than the other. The Ritz Carlton. But so many of us in our competitive landscape, we operate, or they operate at a Holiday Inn level. So world class service, for example, it's all about serving the customer, serving the client, serving the prospect to become the client, the customer for you. And when you. So we have 18 different elements that make all of that come alive to raise the bar in the marketplace that we serve. Um, and it makes a difference. You know, it's. I get excited about these things because I was. One of the calls I was on earlier today, we were talking about how AI is coming in chatgpt bots. We're getting away from that human touch. And that human touch is a unique selling proposition that a lot of people are starting to get away from. They want that human touch, especially, ah, our client avatar. So, um, yeah, that's if I have a little secret to success. One of my mentors, Richard Call back when I was in my 20s, I was in a network marketing company. And, uh, he said, jim, whatever you do, just. There's three words, just don't quit. And when I started Squeegee pros, I just put myself in a tunnel. I didn't pay attention to any of the noise. I had targets, I had goals, and I just didn't quit. I just kept doing the same thing over and over again. And I'm not to know me back then. I'm a totally different person today. I was not good at business. I didn't know marketing, but I never quit and I eventually got better at it.

Speaker A: Yeah, Jim, I appreciate that. And for our listeners, they're just trying to process. I want you to make sure. I want to make sure you hear them clearly. One thing has separated him from anything, and it's focus. And if you're a fan of sports at all and you talk to a wide receiver and if they're to say, why would they drop a ball? They'll come down with that one word. They weren't focused. And so your focus determines whether or not you're going to win or not. I love that when I play matching games with my kids, I'll be like, hey, uh, Judah, if you want to beat me, all you got to do is one thing. It's focus. You just nailed it. Um, why did you enter into window cleaning uh, at 19, I'm just curious. What propelled you? What interest? Was it your mom? You always had, like, ADD or, you know, obsessive compulsive disorder. Why in the world did you start with. With window cleaning?

Speaker B: There is just nothing like a clean window. Um, actually, what happened was I remember I was sitting at my kitchen table and my Dad's. I was 16 years old. My dad said, so what are you going to do with your life? And I said, dad, I really have no idea, except for one thing. I want to create my own income. And, um, I eventually turned 18. I went to college for two months. Computer programming. I'm like, this is just not for me. I, I'm not excited about it. I have no interest in it. It was kind of the thing at that time to, to. To be a part of. And, um, long story short, that was in Indiana. I'm a farm boy from Indiana. If we go back to origin, I moved to the Jersey Shore. And, um, there was an ad in the paper in the Asbury Park Press. Window cleaner wanted. Um, you know, it was a job that, you know, paid a salary. And I'm like, well, how hard can that be to wash windows? I'm 19 years old, just looking for a job. And I, uh, entered the ad. I met with the person at a shoprite shopping, uh, center. Um, I was in a suit and tie in my Volkswagen. Uh, I figured, you know, if you show up, right. I'm just trying to get. I had a couple of things kind of in my favor there, I guess. Not that I was really thinking about it, but I was trying to had the job within five, ten minutes. And, uh, I loved it. I just loved it. And this was route work. This was storefront window cleaning route work. So restaurants and beauty salons and stuff like that. And, uh, uh, this is up in Jersey. And I just had so much fun with it. I worked for m him for a year and I decided to take the plunge, uh, and go on my own. And, uh, it was tough. I was eating on $3 a day. I'd get up in the morning, go to Casey's Deli, 99 cent breakfast. I'd go to riggers, uh, uh, sub shop. I couldn't afford the turkey, but I got the bologna sandwich. And then I would go to this, uh, buffet thing. It was a nightclub. If I paid for a Coke for a buck, I got the buffet. And I lived like that for a while. Generic spaghetti sauce. You know, the generic aisle is my favorite aisle for a long time just to get my Life going, I was a kid, uh, to try to figure this thing out. And eventually things began to click, Click. And that business began to come alive.

Speaker A: Yeah. And well, what would you, how long were you grinding before things started clicking? And I want you to specifically think about the 19, 20 year old that has watched a YouTube video or listen to some podcasts and they're like, man, I want to start my own business. I want you to encourage them a little bit.

Speaker B: Yeah, I, uh, so dream one, let me have my own business. It cost not very much money to start a bucket, a couple of squeegees, three mops, a pole, uh, and I had a car so I could start. I uh, didn't even have a T shirt or anything at the time. Um, if I answered in one word, it was complete focus for sure to make it successful. But um, I, I, I, I'm a goal setter, I've always been a goal setter. And uh, and I set goals on how many stores I wanted to pick up a week, a month, uh, with that dollar amount would be. So I would, I would run that out over a year. If I keep doing this, you know, speaking to myself, if I keep doing this, I'll be here at the end of the year. And that was motivating for me, building my route. And uh, and that's uh, that's what we did. I had a handful of guys that began working for me. We, we got up to 600 storefronts and I had guys, uh, doing those. And then um, I was approached by a cleaning company to see if I would do residential window, uh, cleaning for them. I sure I can wash windows. Haven't um, doesn't have a lot of residential experience, but it can't be that hard. That opened the door to my little company done right window cleaning for residential. I jv ed with a second cleaning company. So I had two. We were doing 300 houses a year. And um, so that little business, getting that first store and then that second store and little by little that focus and that drive and I'm a pretty motivated guy. Um, I knew what I wanted and I just wanted to go after it. So those of you that are listening that are in a place maybe similar, um, and you're looking at this business model, the sky's the limit. It absolutely is the limit. We can talk about the bigger picture when, when we get to it, what this can really look like. But uh, but holy cow, it goes back to the model itself. We're in the consumption business. Right. Um, I build routes uh, it's, it's, they call it M.M.R. monthly, uh, recurring revenue. So you get X number of accounts. I had 600. They're all paying me every single month. As long as we show up, um, it doesn't get any better than that. And uh, and so on. So yeah, that was how, that's how that started. But it was that focus, it was that drive, it was the commitment. Um, and I was dead serious about it. I didn't have major, major goals. I didn't understand marketing or systems, um, hiring. I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I just looked for guys that wanted to wash windows. I didn't think about a million dollar company that was so over my head that stuff that I would just, I just wanted to make my own income. And I did. And you know what the byproduct of that was? I started understanding business a little bit better. None of that stuff that we just talked about. But I was beginning to understand that you can, anybody can do this. Anybody can start a business and make it successful if they just put the time and the energy and the focus into it. And that, that kind of became my life. There's more to that story after done, right Window cleaning. But uh, and, but it continued forward. That same commitment, focus and drive, the network marketing that I did after that and then eventually starting squeegee pros, it was so good.

Speaker A: Um, do you mind sharing your revenue numbers from last year?

Speaker B: Yeah, we're, um, we're about three. I don't know the exact numbers yet. That's next week's meeting. Uh, 3.2 to 3.5. Right in there.

Speaker A: Yeah. Million dollars. And you started with a, a mop bucket and uh, a very humble beginnings. And so what I want, what I want our listeners to know, or if you're even thinking about your son or somebody that you know that's starting a business, if they're willing to get in a ring and not quit 30, 40 years later, you can have this massive, massive imprint on your community and also be providing a lot of jobs for people inside of your, your city. Uh, when you think back over the last, and I don't know if you're going to be able to guess this or not, but how many team members. I don't use the word employees, I use team members. How many employees or team members would you say you've hired over the course of the last 30 years?

Speaker B: Oh boy.

Speaker A: I want to hit the pause button.

Speaker C: If you're listening to this and thinking

Speaker A: I want to Start a pressure washing

Speaker C: business or I need to scale what I've got. I've got something for you. Every month we run a free webinar called Washington Wind where we break down the exact steps to start the pressure washing business the right way. How to scale from solo operator to multiple trucks. A custom market analysis so you know if you're in the right area and if it's profitable. And we'll cover our in person boot camps where you get hands on training. This isn't theory, this is the system that helps hundreds of operators build six and seven figures your businesses.

Speaker A: Here's what you do.

Speaker C: Go to pressure washingpasture.com right now and reserve your spot. It's free and you'll walk away with a plan. That's pressure washingpasture.com and link is in the show notes. Let's get back to our story.

Speaker B: Uh, we have 45 to squidgy pros now approximately plus or minus there maybe 40. We're in a slower time of course. If I go back over 30 years, um, I would say probably have, have hired probably 300 plus. And that's a, that's kind of a, a reaching guess. Uh, we don't have a lot of turnover. I've had folks that have been with me 14, 16, 18 years, 7, 8, 9 years. Um, but we've also scaled and there is that turnover that we have over the years. So I, I would say probably more than 300.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I want the vision to not just be economics, but I also want people to think about, hey, as you grow your business, you're able to create jobs. And as you're able to create jobs you're able to mentor, you're able to disciple. There's a lot of beauty in helping young men, young women grow up and just learn the discipline of hard work. And so it's a beautiful thing to grow. So let's go ahead and transition to offering a ton of value to our listeners. And I'm going to just ask you some of the most common uh, questions that pressure washing companies have with you hiring over 300, I would say maybe 350, 400 people over the, the lifetime. I think the question that everybody wants to know, who's a harder worker, guys or girls?

Speaker B: I've had both. Wow, that's a uh, that's an open door question there for sure. Uh, I've had great gals working for me. I have one right now. She's probably the hardest working person I've ever had ever. Dina been with me for 18 years. She's so good, Joshua, that I vested her in as a partner at Squeegee Pros. She's that good.

Speaker A: Come on.

Speaker B: So, um, and she's also a COO of Window Washing wealth, my coaching company. She's that good. So I'd have to. If there was one person I were to pick, it'd be her. So, uh, the gals have it. Uh, but, um, I was being funny with that, Jim.

Speaker A: Uh, but I do want our listeners to know that when you're looking to hire, you shouldn't just look for dudes.

Speaker B: Uh, April comes to mind. She was on a route, a storefront route, uh, for ten years. Then I brought her in the office. Ashley, my first administrator, 10 years. She was 18 when she started. And these are a player employees, they, they were wired that way, but I had to build them and train them and, and help them get to that level of success in the company with their job, uh, position, role. Um, so many, so many I've had. God, that's a great question. Because now, now the memories are coming up and some of these people that was with me 18 years, uh, doing residential pressure washing window cleaning. And he just retired. Uh, Jim Blease, 16 years on one route. I have my storefront window cleaning division. I have my pressure washing window cleaning division. Um, ah, Brian, he's my VP of operations. He's in year eight, going on year nine, I think. Um, and just so many technicians and, and, and so on and so forth.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love it. I wanted our listeners to hear clearly. Sometimes we think this is a dude's industry, but women will outwork many of the men. And we've experienced that here at Browns is women are just hard workers. And, um, if you give them a task, they'll figure it out. And sometimes they'll, they'll do a lot better than some of the guys you hire. So here's the next question. When you think about what's holding most pressure washing companies back, you know, some think marketing, some, I think equipment. But you also, you coach and you've been coaching for eight years now. When you look into their businesses, what's the number one thing that's normally holding most businesses back?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's this right here. This is the bottleneck. Most of the time, almost most every time you m. Got where you are. So you got where you are, listeners got where they are. But where that got you won't necessarily get you to that next level. And, and we, we kind of termed this earlier prior to hopping on. There's a six figure hustler. And that's many doing a, you know, 50,000, 100, 2, 3, 4, 500,000, 600,000 a year. Their, their mindset is a, is as a six figure hustler, they're after the next job, um, they're, they're taking draws versus uh, being a W2 paid employee of the company, taking distributions. The shift that needs to occur. And this is my, this is, there's a big struggle uh, in clients that, that we work with. It's this right here, this, this bottleneck to shift from that six figure hustler mindset to that seven figure CEO mindset. What got you here won't necessarily get you there. And so you start thinking in that way. So I would start right there, uh, with that question. There's more to that, but that's, that's where it starts.

Speaker A: Uh, and you know, because this is the number one issue that, that you're bringing up as a coach and as a, a very successful business owner. How if someone says okay, and if you're, if you're not watching, he's basically saying what's up here in your head? Your mind is the, the number one thing for someone that's like, okay, what do I need to do? How do I level up my, my lid or my mindset? What do you normally, what do you normally encourage or coach in that area?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's um, one, you have to start thinking bigger. You have to start visualizing what your business is going to look like. Um, bigger, you have to think differently. Um, you, you have to think about instead of having a job you call a business, right? Most they have a job, they're out pressure washing, perhaps window cleaning, they're in the truck, they have a job with overhead. We have to break through that mentality and start thinking when it comes to leveling it up and, and raising the lid, what do we got to do to do that? We have to start shifting our thinking to start thinking. All right, if first, where do I want to go with my company? Do I want to have a million dollar a year company? All right, how am I going to get there? What do the steps look like to get there? What's my role going to be? You have to start thinking like that CEO, you got to get away from that, uh, that day to day thinking, right? Most they get stuck in that day to day of uh, I got to call this person back. I got to, you know, go to this job, I got to estimate this job. And that's as far as their thinking Goes, they're not thinking, thinking, having somebody else do it, have somebody else answer the phones. Having somebody else supervise their team and building up that, uh, going down that road map, if you will, of when to install this person, this person, this person so they can start separating themselves from the day to day of the truck. It's the, it's those people that begin to really understand that dynamic that you're only going to get so far working in the, the business. But as soon as you start to understand and visualize yourself working on the business, we hear this all the time. But how many actually, really, truly, truly try to go after that working on the business, that's when the game changes. When you get to a place where you can work on it, that's when you're working on the systems. That's when you're working, you're implementing strategies. This is when you're visualizing that seven figure, um, mark, and how I'm going to get there. Because now you have capacity to be able to get there versus, uh, when you're stuck in the truck eight hours a day. By the time you go home, you still got money to chase, you've still got this to do, and then you're exhausted. Then it's rinse and repeat the next day. And this goes on for many, for years. And some of these clients that we coach, I mean, I have one client, I'll share one story. 23 years in the business. Pressure washing, window cleaning. 23 years, 267,000 in annual revenue. His wife said, you might as well get a job because you're really not bringing a whole lot of money home after you pay all the expenses. He's in the truck every day. You don't have time. This, that and the other. And this was painful for him. And uh, so I began working with him. Had to go to work on this first. He couldn't think outside that. And it's not his fault, it's nobody's fault. I couldn't think like that. You probably couldn't either. But once we got through this part, getting his belief up, getting his vision right, understanding, uh, where he truly wants to go, he didn't know where he wanted to go. We had to define all those things. Next year, 530,000. Next year, 911,000. He's eclipsed 200. I know he's eclipsed at least $250,000 a month. Three years, everything changed because this changed. Once this changes, um, then the, the, the business person listening to this, once you get this change and you start to get it right and understand the big picture and what it takes to get there, then you've got. Then you got to bring the clarity forward to know what I do first, second, third, fourth, to get where you want to go and go and where you want to go. Yes, there's revenue, but there's also profit more important than the revenue. Uh, and there's also having a family life. You got to have that work life balance, and you have to be. And this is a tricky road for most to make that happen. So that's, uh, kind of a long answer to your question there. But, uh, yeah, a lot of it comes right back here. We got to get the head right to get where we truly want to go. We might walk, we might talk the talk, but we have to walk the walk in order to get there.

Speaker A: Yeah. And for somebody that's throwing the excuses out, and I know I'm going deep in these, in these questions, I literally have way more questions to go, but I want to go deep. For someone that's listening and they're like, I just don't have time. You don't understand how busy I'm trying to do a work life balance. I just don't have time to think about scaling or growing or learning and being around other people that are doing big things. What do you tell them how they find time to think about their business?

Speaker B: Yeah, we all have the same amount of time, 24 hours in a day. Why are some people so much further down the pathway than you, the person that might be thinking that we all have the same amount of time. So number one is time allocation. You have to allocate your time appropriately so that you can get where you want to go. And I'll tell you what I did, uh, to help with that. With me, I mean, I'm a very motivated guy. My work is my hobby. I love it. It's. I enjoy it. So that's hard on the work life balance thing. So I had a family meeting. And I don't remember exactly what it was exactly, but I can, I can help in this regard. Um, Tuesday nights from 7 to 10, I'm in my office working on my business. Thursday night, same thing. Saturday morning, eight to noon, I'm working on my business. And that was a catalyst for me to be able to find that time, uh, to be able to do that. And the second part to this, uh, Joshua, is family. Once we hit X in revenue or whatever that goal might be, we're going to Disney World, we're going to Disneyland, we're going to Universal Studios, we're, we're going to the beach, we're going to Key west, whatever it might be. And those dangling carrots to my family was like, well, come on dad, uh, where you at with that? Where you at with that? So it was motivating me at the same time, but, but I also cultivated out that time allocation to be able to get done what I had to get done to get where I want to go.

Speaker A: So good for you. For those that are listening, we're talking about block scheduling. And if you've not practiced it, practice that. It's something that I would say as a leader or uh, and as a business owner, it's essential of learning how to break your days and your weeks into either themes or, you know, two hour, three hour, four hour blocks. And then you put the things that are most important in it. And so I love the way that, that you shared that. I want to move now into this. When you set that dude free or he set himself free, there's a, many of guys who have kind of, um, got stuck at a certain revenue number. You shared of a friend who you were coaching that was, got stuck at right over 200k. What if you can point to something that he fixed? So he started thinking, but what did he start doing that helped him scale to over, you know, $200,000 a month?

Speaker B: Yeah, great question. Um, one easy, quick, uh, one word answer to that is they implemented systems. Uh, another one word answer to that is delegation. Another one word answer to that is training. Uh, and when you put that trifecta together, uh, I'll add a fourth one in there. A player hiring. We don't hire somebody because they can fog a mirror. They can, they can physically get into a seat. No, I did that all wrong in the beginning. Uh, I did have a revolving uh, door in the beginning for sure. But as I learned, because that was a heartache for me because ah, uh, you know, you, and that's, that would be another. That probably Joshua. That is one of the bigger ones. The, the A player focused hiring. You get so far and then you stall because the revolving door is spinning so fast you can't get traction to grow. So those would be the. A player hiring, learning how to delegate, uh, as, as growth is occurring, bringing the right systems in. Um, those, those are the game changers that I look at when I look at uh, specific clients that I've coached that have had a, uh, phenomenal success. I, I was uh, alluding to a person earlier, prior to Our hopping on here, Blake, uh, 36, $3,800 a month, um, uh, to 100,000amonth, 18 months later. And that takes tremendous belief, tremendous vision, uh, obviously motivation. But it also, it needs, there has to be 100% clarity in what you do first, second, third in order to scale that fast. And uh, I've had. That's not an anomaly. Uh, Jeremy is another one. Um, zero. We started with his company name, his brand, getting everything right to uh, compete in the marketplace that he serves. He was over a hundred. He was 102, 000amonth. Month 37. Uh, Dylan is another one. He was at a, he did a thousand dollars in jobs. I remember like yesterday. Um, no, Jeremy was month 27. Dylan was month 37. A thousand to 100. 1,000amonth. Month 37. Jeremy, uh, did it in 27 months. Uh, from zero. And the stories go on and on like that. But this is the one common denominator that all of them had. We got this right and they knew where they wanted to go and then the steps just came in front of them that they had to implement. Problem is, with so many, if this is not right and they're still thinking like six figure hustler, even though they're doing a quarter million a year, if they're thinking like a seven figure CEO and they're thinking that way, they know where they're going to go and it's going to happen no matter what. Uh, they're going to figure it out, they're going to get there. Whether they have a coach or not doesn't matter. You're going to get there. Um, but that person, at a quarter million or 100,000 a year, whatever it might be in revenue, that's still thinking like the six figure hustler, you're going to stall, you're only going to get so far and that's going to become your life, which is going to be a rat race of chaos.

Speaker A: I want to jump in on a couple of things that you just mentioned. First of all, thank you.

Speaker B: Love this stuff.

Speaker A: If you're, if I'm like, hey, how Jim, I want to hire a players. What is your advice to me on how I set up a culture or set up a business where a players are knocking on my door or they're, they're, they're being hired left and right.

Speaker B: Yeah, great question, great question. Uh, I struggled with this for years, banging my head against the wall. You know us as guys, dudes, we're, we're solution finders in, in Business we have to be solution finders in order to continue to grow and scale. So my strategies for a player hiring one is what's your ads look like? Your post, wherever you're posting at, what does it look like? Because I can bet you 99.9% of you that are listening, it looks like everybody else's. So right there you've already failed because there's no separation between you and the competing service companies, whatever they might be, uh, that are out there looking for a players also. So one is you got to rewrite your ad, um, to speak, this is the operative word, speak to the A player. Don't speak to anybody and everybody speak to the person you want to hire. My ads are long form ads. They're long, they're like eight pages. But they speak to exactly the person that we want to hire and we're not speaking to the person that we don't want to hire. The person that reads it that we don't want, they're not going to respond to it. The second thing that we do is we don't do one on one interviews. Takes too long. Time is important. We do hiring events and because of the questions we ask, the engagement that occurs, the cream rises to the top. Cream being the A player, we can just see them start popping up. And if we've got 10 people in uh, a hiring event, there's going to be 1, 2, 3, that, that we can just see it because of the engagement. The question, you know, these interviews that we do, there's very specific questions we're asking to get this engagement, to get, get that person, ah, to pop up. This is the beginning. We haven't hired anybody yet, but we're trying to identify our employee avatar. So you have to have a system or a microsystem behind that to, to have an attraction mechanism in place to at least try to get more of the right people in front of you that you can choose from. I mean think about it. Those that are listening, if you're doing one on one interviews, for example, and you have no system behind how you're finding the right people, these one on ones, they can go on for days, weeks, months, and eventually what happens? You go into desperado mode. And if they can fog a mirror, if they physically are able to get into a truck, you hire them. And then what happens two weeks later, two months later you're like oh, uh, this person, uh, what am I doing? And then they quit or you let them go and you're right back to that hamster Wheel where you're just stall. So I went through this and this is how I like, I got to figure something out here. I got to figure something out. So then, uh, going back to the words that you were using, it is so, so important to treat your employees. These are special people there. No one's a number. You go to my company. No one's a number. They're part of a family there. We have such a dynamic company culture. You need to design your company culture so that your team wants to come to work versus having to come to work. And that's a pretty powerful sentence right there. And you have to define what that looks like for you that are listening. Um, but when you, when you figure that out, watch what begins to happen. And this is why we've had some of these people that I mentioned before. We've had them for so many years. And, and so company culture, incredibly important. I'll tell you something else. When, when you hire that person and they, and they go through the onboarding process, um, onboarding. Part one of onboarding is almost like a second interview. We're making sure this is the person that we want to hire. But you know what, you got an A player sitting in front of you. They're making sure this is the right company for me. Yeah, you'll see where I'm going with this. Most companies, they're not even ready. They're not equipped, they're not prepared to hire a players that will stay. They don't have the brand, they don't have the systems, they don't have any policies. Most don't even have a company manual. They don't have a certified training program. They don't have pathways to advancement. I'm an A player and you're having that conversation with me. I'm already out. So it works both ways. So that's kind of how that leads up. And then once you have hired them, I, I cannot say. We, we have a 72 point certified training program. They have to go through every one of those points. It's got to be dialed in. Um, but you know what, their confidence is building and they're seeing how they're part of a team now. Um, we have roundup meetings every morning when, when all the, the guys come to hop in the trucks. We've got music playing, playing it is upbeat. We're giving out gift cards based on reviews that had occurred to, um, um, just accolades that are flying out the window. And if there was an issue with somebody, it's never public. We. Hey, Johnny, can You come over to the side for a minute. I got to talk to you about something. But see, how can you visualize kind of what I'm saying here? It's fun. We make it great. Sometimes we'll say, hey, get to the, get to the office 20 minutes early. We've got a round of cornhole, uh, going, uh, $100 to the, to the winning team. We'll disperse it to the, to the people or whatever. And we make it fun. We will do things like we'll cater in Outback, we'll cater in Cracker Barrel for, for our morning safety meeting, which we do every single month. Well, there's so many things that we do. Uh, you come to my office and anybody's welcome to come to my office. Squeegee pros in, uh, Mooresville, North Carolina. Um, we'll give you a tour. Um, it's a world class facility. You go down to my tech lounge. We got leather seats, we got gaming, we got ice machines, we've got video games, we've got, uh, it's just, they want to come to work because when you think about it, eight hours sleeping, eight hours at work, and then eight hours doing something else. It's a big chunk of their life. At your place of business, you better have it right. Because if you don't have it right, you're going to struggle and you're going to stall. And uh, and if you want to get to the seven figures in a multi million dollar stage, these things that we're talking about, hey, I didn't know any of this stuff. 30 years I've been doing this almost 30 years. Uh, it just got better and better and better. As I began learning stuff, I feel

Speaker A: like every business needs to look like a squeegee pros. I mean, just listening to how you operate in the culture that you've created, it's like, who wouldn't want to work there? And for our listeners that are process and be like, man, that is way farther down the road than you could imagine. It's okay, you don't have to start there, but you have to work there if you desire to be in the game for 30 plus years. And I'd also say it's coming. You know, there's going to be more leaders like Jim that are developing these businesses that have great company culture. And I think they're going to beat the ones that don't. And so if you're going to be in the game, make sure you're doing everything you can to surround yourself with great People like Jim.

Speaker B: Um, I'll tell you something else, Joshua, just on that same subject real quick, we will spend, we will, um, send a bouquet of flowers to the spouse of the technician that came on board. We put a card in there. Uh, thank you for having trust in us, uh, and, and, and allowing us to help support your family. And, uh, and it's a beautiful bouquet of flowers. It's a beautiful card. It's signed by my team because they are part of the family and we want to extend that to the family, their family also. Um, these little things, it's almost like a small hinge can open up a big door if you have the right hinge on the door.

Speaker A: You know, I feel like going away from this conversation is the wrong decision, you know, because you just open up everyone's imagination to what business could look like if you're in it for them instead of just being in it for you. There's something about you, Jim, where you genuinely care about other people. And, and that's not always the case for people who are starting businesses, especially those that are seeing it on YouTube and trying to add AI to automate every single part of the business. When you think about AI and I'm going to ask you one question about a CRM in a second. So I've only got two questions left, um, for today. When you think about what's coming in the future, how do you plan on your business being a business separator from almost every other business around you? Starting and scaling a, uh, pressure washing business is hard. And one of the reasons it makes it hard is because you really don't have the leadership, the marketing, the sales, the operation, the services and the cash flow that's required to scale a business. This is why I started a Wash and Win Academy. If you're interested in finding out more about the academy, you come first into a free webinar where we go over all the systems that you need to put in play in order to scale your business. Tomorrow, Simply go to pressurewashingpasture.com and sign up for, uh, our Wash and Win with Friends webinar. Hope to see you on the inside. Peace.

Speaker B: Yeah. One is to have unique selling propositions. What is it about your company that truly separates yourself from the competition? Most don't have them. Had a call earlier. We talked about this very topic. Well, I'm insured and bonded. Uh, 100% satisfaction guaranteed. Uh, we do quality work and I said stop right there. Now, I want you to add this phrase after each of them. I'm Mrs. Smith the customer 100% satisfaction guarantee Mrs. Smith says well I would hope so um insured and bonded well I would hope so. So none of those count. So those listening what is your unique selling proposition? I'll tell you a couple of mine. One you guys can do the same thing um we guarantee your estimate in 72 hours or a steak dinner on us and yes we've given out steak dinners we're not 100% all of the time we have more Angie's list a rated reviews in the category of window cleaning than any other company in the country. That's a unique selling proposition. Nobody can say that we have more 5 star Google reviews than almost all of our competitors combined. Nobody can say that. So that's the operative word what can nobody say that you have to elevate yourself uh because that's going to take you into the future uh AI chat, GPT and all the automations that are going on everyone especially the younger generation they are so so so just energized by all of that Nothing wrong with that There's a lot of great stuff out there but and it's a big but don't forget the human touch it is so important especially think about your client avatar these are million to ten $15 million homes uh they want to talk to somebody uh we train on this we have weekly staff meetings where we role play constantly inbound script, outbound script objection overcome up cross sell suggestive sale cross selling all of these things because we are we're engaging with the customer but you know what our conversion percentage goes up lead to job conversion our customer job average tickets are high uh we have a very robust customer uh and prospect database we have 20,000 in our database we can make money anytime we want to Remember consumption business what gets dirty gets cleaned again should get cleaned again. Um these are things that will take you into the future with that look at your wheelhouse of services a lot of pressure washers, soft washers they do that and it's great but they won't add, they don't add on window cleaning that's foolish as a businessman that's foolish or they water fed pole outside windows okay you're in the right direction but they don't do any inside windows that's foolish. You know how much revenue it's going out the window because you're not adding simple services on that can be easily trained. Don't think about you doing it because you're not going to be doing it. Every task, every project, every role position is temporary. On your seven figure CEO mission to multi million dollar operation. Everything is temporary. Most get stuck right here. Well I don't, I don't want to do that. Well it's not, I, it's, it's your team's going to do it. You got to teach and you got to train them. So look at your wheelhouse of services. How much revenue are you missing that you could otherwise have if you added on these in the wheelhouse. They got to fit together. You can't be pressure washing and add on uh, a maid service. It doesn't fit together. That's a separate entity. Um, so those would be things that I would think about for future. Look for leadership inside your company because, and I don't want this to sound like it probably going to sound but I do nothing with the day to day with squeegee pros. Zippo zero. It is a machine. And I would probably write that down that, that word. When that came into my vocabulary in the form of business, that's all I wanted to have. I wanted a machine where I just changed the oil change the park spark plugs. And that's looking at a financial profit and loss statement every month. That's looking at marketing tracking every month. That's looking at SWOT analysis. That's looking at where's our weaknesses and our strengths. It's those four or five questions. When I meet with Christina and, and my, and Brian, my team, my top two. Once uh, a month we, we, we sit down for three or four hours. Those, those four or five questions come out. That's our meeting and I'm completely dialed in. But here's the backdrop to that. This never would occurred for me unless I built out the systems. And one of the biggest systems that we're talking about right now is what I, what I call an enforced policy system. These are the checklists, the processes, the uh, employment agreements, the contracts, the training programs, the videos of training programs and whatnot. Uh, and most important accountability reports. When I would go into the office, uh, Tuesday morning at 8:30 would have, we have a conference table in my office. We would have my uh, staff, like my administrative staff and my supervisors, um, and um, my vice president, we would all be sitting there. Everyone brings their accountability report from the week. In fact uh, when I was at the office they would all go on my desk 30 minutes prior at 8 o' clock and I would go through them and I would take a pen, like a red pen. I would put a smiley face or a frowny face on things that I needed to bring forth at my weekly staff meeting. And this is how we kept moving the needle forward. Our staff meetings are not just fun conversation. Yes, we have fun with them, but they're workshops. They're workshops. How do we make the business better from the week before? And so looking at your future and bringing leadership into your operation, either from the inside or the outside, you have to have the, the, the, the systems in place. Each job role has its own system that has to be dialed in and checked every quarter to keep make sure that system's completely on point and so that the machine runs flawlessly. And we have a pretty daggone good machine at Squeegee Pros. You really, really do. It's, it's uh. I'm so proud. So, so proud of them. So proud of them. I told Christina she was a VP at the time. And I um, whole backstory to this. But I said I'm going to promote you to president, but here's what that means for you and here's what that means for me. Um, and I went through her additional job scope as president and, and, but I said here's what it means for me. I'm stepping away from the day to day. Yes, I'm a text, an email, a phone call away if you need me. But the systems are built now. The machine has been built. Are you ready? Can you handle it? And it was an immediate knee jerk reaction. Of course I'm ready. Because she was ready. And uh, I mentioned this before, she's been with me for 18 years and is now a partner. So that's look at your future that way. What is it that you want to build and then there's a lot of building blocks in there to get you there.

Speaker A: Um, it's kind of exciting. It's like I kind of want to move somewhere and start a window cleaning business from scratch. Hey, if somebody wants to find out more information about I have, I work on. I'm going to ask you for another interview in the future. I, we went through maybe a couple of questions out of 10 that I wanted to ask you today. If someone wants to get to know more information about you or even take you up on your offer to come visit your, your place. How can they get in touch with you?

Speaker B: Give me my cell number, you can call me, you can text me 704-451-0409 and my email is jim@squeegee. That's 4E's squeegee pros.com and then you can get on social media. Jim Dubois coach. Jim Dubois coach. Facebook, Instagram. Ah, YouTube channel. If you search window washing wealth. Uh, we have a school, we have a YouTube channel. Pretty easy to find.

Speaker A: Jim, thank you for your focus. Um, you know, I know that as a business owner you started so you can provide for your own family or, you know, to be able to own your own business, provide your own income is why you started the thing. But not only that, is you've, you've really marked out a legacy inside of your community, inside the lives of many people. So just thank you for being a friend. Thank you for being kind inside the community and, and also making yourself available for other people to even give you a call. So thank you for, for being here.

Speaker B: Thank you, Joshua. I've had an absolute blast at this and this is my jam. I love talking shop. I love, love, love talking about this and I'm happy to talk to anybody if you're stuck, stalled, you're not sure what to do or anything from this podcast. But, uh, but thank you. You've got a great thing going here. I salute you. Uh, it's just wonderful what you're doing here for, for, for everybody nationwide with your podcast and the community that you serve as well. So don't stop. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Speaker A: Yeah, I appreciate you saying that. And it's not about me, it's about you. So thank you and until next time, let's go.

Speaker C: Before you go, if you're already running a pressure washing business and you're serious about scaling with purpose, we need to talk about Wash and, and Win M Academy. If you want to build a business that provides, uh, for your family and impacts your city, for the kingdom, this is your home. You can even try a free seven day pass and bring a friend. No credit card, no questions asked, Simply go to pressurewashingpastor.com, uh, and click on our Start Here link. That'll lead you to a webinar and you and I will have a conversation from there. If you want to get directly to me, just send me an email. Joshuaownspressurewashing.com today.