How to Start & Scale a Pressure Washing Business (CRM, $16K Follow-Up, Profit)

Joshua Brown: Dude, we have, we have sold the entire. In two days, we have sold, uh, what we did the entire month last year. And I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, I've sold $16,000 today. He was like, and you're gonna punch me? Like, what? He says, when I tell you what I did to get $16,000 worth of leads, you're gonna be like, brady, you're an idiot. I'm like, well, no, I'm not. You got 16,000 worth of LE. I think it was actually 18. I said, what'd you do? He said, it's going to sound dumb. I said, just tell me. He said, I called all, uh, I started working through all the estimates that were open from this past year. Yeah. And I called them on the phone and I chatted with them. Let's go.

Narrator: 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 Washing. And every episode you're getting real stories from real operators. No fluff, just the blueprint. Whether you're thinking about starting a pressure

Joshua Brown: washing business or you're ready to scale

Narrator: from, from solo to multiple trucks, you're

Joshua Brown: in the right place. Hit.

Narrator: Subscribe. So you never miss a story.

Joshua Brown: Now let's get into it. Hey, welcome back to week four of Wash and Win with Friends. We're in the middle of a. Actually, we're at the end, David, of a webinar on everything we would do to start and scale a pressure washing company. And so if you've missed the past three weeks, make sure you go back, listen to each week because it's actually designed, um, to go week by week by week. And so you don't want to miss a step. And then we're talking about something and you started a business, but you missed the whole fact that, hey, first thing you need to do is order a market analysis so you understand what your total addressable market is and where your bucks are inside of your city and so forth. And so today we are actually on the last portion of our Wash and Win with Friends webinar and we're going to get into what's called a CRM. M and David, have you used multiple CRMs over time?

David: I have, uh, I've used Zenmaid Alcohol Pro Go High level Jobber.

Joshua Brown: Um, different ones from a high level view. How would you explain a CRM to somebody?

David: Yeah, great question. Um, maybe without getting Too nerdy. It's basically just how you organize your data m. How you organize your contacts and your schedule. And you make billing, uh, almost impossible to, you know, get errors around. Because that can be a huge thing when you're just starting out. You know, if you. If everybody's just sending you a zell. Well, did you forget about Mrs. Jones to Bill her? You know, has she sent you that zell? Like so having things organized, uh, makes your mind a lot clearer, and then you're going to be more profitable because you've just got all your ducks in a row. I remember when we started out, I don't know if you ever had this experience, but we were on Google Calendar and then my wife and I, and then when we got busy enough, that thing broke and just blew up in our face. And so we quickly switched to a real CRM and it made such a huge difference.

Joshua Brown: Yeah. Do you remember how long you went before you ended up making the jump to a real CRM?

David: Well, I think it was about a year.

Joshua Brown: Yeah.

David: Yeah, it. Yeah, go ahead.

Joshua Brown: No, it's okay. Um, when I started the pressure washing business, it was, uh, July of 2016. And the first five months, four months, I was just playing with it. And so I wasn't sure if am I going to jump all in on this? And so I did not have CRM in play. And what I found out is that napkins, your hand, your clothes, anything that you can write on trash bags. Ultimately you have people calling you and you have to say, hey, this is Joshua Brown's pressure washing. How you doing today? Oh, I need a wash housewide. Awesome. What's your name? What's your address? What problems are you experiencing? Excellent. Let me do this. So the whole conversation, you end up writing the most important information that you possibly can have. And that's a contact number, a name, address, and, um, a phone number. And if you don't record that properly or if you have bad handwriting, you just lost your leads. And if you're using PPC right now, pay per click or LSAs or generating leads, on average, people are spending anywhere from 35 to $90 to get your phones to ring or at least to have a conversion. There's. And when you think about writing one digit off or one email off, and then not knowing who called you, even if you got it on the phone number, if you had multiple calls that day, you look like a fool trying to figure out, okay, which one was James and no, it wasn't James. It was actually Johnita. CRM organizes all of that information and it makes you look at absolutely legit. And for me in 2017, in February, so I started in, in July of 2016. In February of 2017, I picked up a CRM and I have been using that CRM ever since. I never jumped. I looked at Service Titan, I looked at Jobber, I looked at the other CRMs and for what we needed, nobody was any better, um, for the price than where we landed. And that's housecall Pro. And for us, housecall Pro was able to do some things that other, other ones couldn't at the price we were getting it. And the number one thing was this. Tips. I remember, yeah, Service, Service Titan and Jobber at that time they didn't have tips as an option. So they may have had a, um, a maybe a better product, I don't know. But, but they did not give the permission for the customer to leave a tip. And at that time some of our guys were getting a hundred dollar tips on a job. And so how do you swap over? So let me quickly go over what a CRM should include. And when you're thinking about CRM, I would say once you're getting between two to three phone calls a day, that's a good indicator that, okay, I'm, I've got about 15 leads coming in a week now it's time to invest inside of a CRM. And so I'm going to go over a handful of things that a CRM does and that it needs to be doing inside your business. And one of them is your customer management. That's where you're able to put in all the information from John Smith, where they live out the history, their email. And the beautiful part about this is even if you don't sell the job. And this is how I was thinking, David, even if I didn't win Mrs. Jones next year, I've got their email address, phone number, M. I'm able to call them. I'm able to next year. And so you would not be able to do that if you kept things on a piece of paper or a napkin or in your bible because you're writing in the front page and back pages of your customers, daddy, you don't have it. And so you can do that. And then you can send email messages. You can do, um, there's so much good stuff with their management, um, job scheduling and dispatching. When we do a job here in Nashville, um, let's say someone clicks approved. It's all done through the app of Housecall Pro and so if we have a technician or a salesman that's on their way to a customer's house, they just click a button. That button notifies the customer with a message and a picture that says, hey, this is Brady. We're on our way. We're about 15 minutes out. And so you're constantly communicating and dispatching. And then also on the dashboard, you're able to see where all your trucks are located. You're able to get data over time of understanding that, hey, 50% of my jobs are all coming from this northern territory. Maybe I actually need to start spending more money here, advertising and stuff, spending money in areas that I'm raising my cog. So it gives you intel invoicing payments. Um, we do 30% down when a customer ends up approving a job. So the salesman right then and there gets credit card on file and it's able to take it right there inside of it. Nobody complains. When we started, people used to say, ain't giving you my credit card information. But now it's like, oh, yeah, here you go. It's normal. It's been normal, normalized.

David: Once you expect it and it feels normal to you, they don't question it at all.

Joshua Brown: You're able to keep up with a pipeline on where your customers are in and closing the deal. You're able to see average ticket prices, your percentages. It gives you a dashboard of everything that's going on, reporting and analytics. All these are, uh, involved in a CRM. And so if you're thinking about opening a business, I would highly encourage you. Once you get past 10, 15 leads a week, go ahead and pull the trigger. And we've got a three month, 50% off code that I'll put inside the show notes where you can sign up for Housecall Pro. Try it for three months. If you don't like it, you can cancel it. But we have never left. And now we've been doing housecall pro for nine years. Been in business this year for ten years. Um, anything else you want to say about CRMs, David, that I may have missed? I want to hit the pause button.

Narrator: If you're listening to this and thinking,

Joshua Brown: I want to start a pressure washing

Narrator: business, or I need to scale what I've got, I've got something for you. Every month we run a free webinar called Washing Men where we break down the exact steps to start a pressure washing business the right way.

Joshua Brown: How to scale from solo operator to

Narrator: multiple trucks, a custom market and 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.

Joshua Brown: This isn't theory.

Narrator: This is the system that helps hundreds of operators build six and seven figure businesses.

Joshua Brown: Here's what you do.

Narrator: Go to pressurewashingpasture.comm right now and reserve your spot. It's free and you'll walk away with a plan. That's pressure washing pastor.com and link is

Joshua Brown: in the show notes. Let's get back to our story.

David: Yeah, I, I want to ask you a question about this, Josh. And, and if you're listening to this, I want you to, as I ask Josh this question, I want you to think for yourself. Josh, what is the most. What do you believe is the most valuable asset in your company?

Joshua Brown: Wow. If I get it wrong, you know, just be easy.

David: This is arguable, uh, this is arguable. But what would you say it is valuable in terms of monetary value?

Joshua Brown: It's either time or people. And so uh, at least that's what I would throw out. Do you have another option or did I get maybe halfway right?

David: Sure. Well, what I would say. And again we're talking monetary value. What is the most, what is the highest value asset that you have in your company that's worth money? I think that that's your contact list.

Joshua Brown: Okay.

David: Because it, uh, let's say your leads dry up tomorrow or you don't have any more cash to spend money on leads. But you've got a thousand people sitting in your bank over here that you can just send an email to like that and you can generate $10,000 worth of work like tomorrow or in the next week. That's huge. And so I think the reason why I asked that is just to, to kind of frame that, that a lot of times we're sleeping on that. And so to your point, having that CRM is going to really automate and organize um, all of that contact data, which honestly is like the most valuable real estate in your company.

Joshua Brown: Yeah. If you own a business right now, let me tell you something we learned this year. Year nine. So January of 2025 for the entire month. Brown's numbers were about 28,000 for the entire month. That is the worst month we've ever had since I don't even think year one was that bad. And it was because it was cold, it was wet, it's raining. It was 68 this morning. Right now on this recording it's like January 9th and it was so warm. And so Brady gives me a call on Monday and says, dude, we have. We have sold the entire. In two days, we have sold, uh, what we did the entire month last year. And I'm like, what? He's like, yeah, I've sold $16,000 today. He was like, and you're gonna punch me? I'm like, what? He says, when I tell you what I did to get $16,000 worth of leads, you're gonna be like, brady, you're an idiot. I'm like, well, no, I'm not. You got 16,000 worth of. I think it was actually 18. I said, what'd you do? He said, it's going to sound dumb. I said, just tell me. He said, I called all, uh, I started working through all the estimates that were open from this past year. Yeah. Called them on the phone and I chatted with them. So no email automation, no text message. He said, the reason I did it is because we need money. We. Our Breakpoint average, uh, for a company is 98, 000amonth. And so we got to do that unless we're in the red if we don't. And Brady said, we just needed money. So I started calling people. And you know what's happening? People are saying, yes. They're like, I've been meaning to call you this whole time. Thank you for giving us a call. Like, uh, let's go. And then Brady says, we're going to start doing this now. On. Without a CRM, you don't know who's hanging out there, how much the ticket was, and what kind of irresistible offer you should put forward when it's winter time. And you're like, I gotta figure out a way to pay the lunch. Pay for lunch. Anyway, to your point.

David: That's so good. No, I love that. That's such a good system. Um, I'm working on that with one of our private clients installing that right now. They do gutters and in slow season. Yeah, just call people. Call your people. Like, why not? You don't got anything else to do?

Joshua Brown: This has a hat that says call. The dang leads, I think is the way it says it, maybe differently. All right, let me move on to step 12. I think we've only got one more step after this, and it's get a financial dashboard. I'm going to share a name of a book that everyone that runs a pressure washing or a home service business actually needs to listen to or read. It's called simple numbers. Straight talk, big profits. David, I have been given some of the worst advice ever inside of Masterminds and with other business leaders. They. I've been around business leaders that had told me to do certain things with money, that it would save taxes, and it was actually fraudulent. And so some of the advice I've been given over time was not because I learned truth, but I learned from other business owners who eventually got in trouble doing things, but when they were doing, it wasn't. So you have to make a certain amount of profits in order to take distributions. I didn't know all of that. I thought you could take distributions based on whatever you want to pay yourself. And so three or four years ago, I'm taking distributions and paying myself X because I was told by a business owner, hey, just pay yourself a low minimum salary and then make distributions of what you want to pay yourself. Well, that only works if your profitability is above the distribution, uh, number that you're taking. All right, if everything that I'm saying right now sounds like Greek or, or Egyptian hieroglyphics, help me out with how, uh, to pronounce it. It's basically because you've got to educate yourself on understanding numbers, on understanding taxes, your responsibility. And so when it comes to your finances, grab that book by Crabtree. Simple Numbers, straight talks, big profits. Listen to it on audible, and it'll educate you. What you learn in there is that there are three vital reports you need every single day, every single week, every single month. They are cash in the bank. You should know whether or not you have enough to pay your bills, if you have enough, your team members or your vendors. That is your cash in the bank. And if you don't look at it, you might get shocked when you realize you ain't got no money, but you got a bunch of debt that's due. The next forecasting, it's your jobs, books, and leads coming in where, you know, oh, next week we've got $30,000 worth of work that's booked. This helps you have peace of mind to say, okay, that's going to bring in enough money to make payroll. And everything I'm saying is like, duh. But if you don't have it written down or you don't have a dashboard, it's not, duh, you don't know.

David: Well, and also that that metric right there helps you see, oh, gosh, we're, we're short next week. Let me get on the phone like your guy did and just start calling people. And so it's like it really, a lot of times people are not looking ahead enough. They're just trying to Take care of today. And it can be a disaster, especially when you have employees.

Joshua Brown: Yeah. And this is why businesses go out of business, is because of the numbers. And, uh, the last is your P&Ls, your profit and loss statements. And let me share with you a couple of mistakes I've made over the years. I assumed a cpa, A bookkeeper, an accountant, a fractional CPA or, you know, um, tax advisor. I thought these people would care about my business as much as I cared about my business. They don't care. At least 90% of them don't. And when I say they don't care, not like you do, because you're not the one that's going to get. They're not the ones getting stuck when things don't work. And so you hire these people thinking, as long as I get an accountant, I'm gonna, everything's gonna be okay. But they don't think like you. They don't think like a business owner. They're not in the daily grind. You're just a dashboard with one of their VAs. And they're not looking necessarily out for it. I'm not saying everybody there are good people that you can find. We love who we've landed with today. It took us 10 years to get there. David, is there anything you want to share to this point on your P Ls, your forecasting and money in the bank? CPA taxes, anything like that?

David: One quick trick that I learned, uh, from one of my mentors that was really, really helpful with reading our P Ls was using a tool like QuickBooks. Um, it'll allow you to see your P L with a percentage of revenue next to it. So let's say your income or your revenue is 100%, right? And then, um, your, your COGS is 45% or whatever that is. You know, your taxes 15%. But you need to know what those percentages should be for your industry so that you can track every month when you look at your P. L. Um, are our cogs on target or if they off target, like, so If I'm over 5, 5%, why is that? Then I can see, okay, this is what I need to adjust for next month. So having just reading it that way and knowing what those benchmarks need to be for your industry is absolutely huge. So that every month you can know if you're on target or off target and make corrections really fast.

Joshua Brown: So good. And when you start a business, you're thinking, I just want to make a little money. Pressure washing. Ah, a house and you don't know that. Okay. You also, as you scale, you know, 1002-003004-00500 million, 2 million yearly, it's like there's a lot of things that you need to know or a lot of who's that you need to know that can take care of you along the way. And that's the beauty about growing a business is you can bring other who's into inside your business. So we have finally reached step number 13. This is the last portion of the 13 things that you need to do to start and scale a business. And it's creating a budget. And what a lot of people might get wrong is they think that as they're making money they can keep the money or spend the money. And in reality your first two to three years of starting a business is your most expensive. Um, if you're going to run out of cash flow, it's probably going to happen in the first two to three businesses. Uh, two to three years or it's going to happen as you get excited about scaling and then you hire too many people, buy too much equipment. But when it comes to starting and scaling, just think like this. The majority of your cash flow that comes in needs to go to future fruits. So as you see money coming in, upgrade your equipment, upgrade your market, upgrade your team. If you need to hire somebody, start replacing yourself in different positions, look for a player because you know your mission, vision, values and goals. Um, start optimizing your website, your Google profile, get that money working for you. So your first two to three years, I'm going to throw out there a very high percentage. You need to, in my opinion, 20%. This is what we do. 20% in the first two, three, four years of whatever money you make goes back into your marketing, back into improving your equipment. And so as you're seeing profits come into business, don't think let's, you know, Johnny Manzella, you know where you're like I'm rolling bro. Use the money to end up improving all of those other things and in the future the, the, the art of sacrifice is going to pay back nine, 10 years down the road. Uh, would you end up creating a brand in your community and then you can drop your Google Ads down to 8% because you've got such a great relationship with people and now you're making more money, you can pay your team more money and so forth. Anything you want to add to this on the budget? Starting and scaling a pressure washing business is hard. And one of the reasons it makes it hard is because you really don't have have the leadership, the marketing, the sales, the operation, the services and the

Narrator: cash flow that's required to scale a business. This is why I started a Wash and Win academy.

Joshua Brown: If you're interested in finding out more about the academy, you come first into a free webinar where we go over

Narrator: all the systems that you need to put in play in order to scale your business. Tomorrow simply go to pressure watch washingpastor.com and sign up for our Wash and with friends webinar. Hope to see you on the inside.

David: Peace. Okay, I'll say this. So uh, when it comes to spinning ads, make sure that before you just go crazy with your ad spend that you have a CRM in place and that you have optimized your sales process and that you have good follow up and like all those things because your systems and processes, if they're not in place and if they're not clear, it'll feel like that ad spend is just going out into the ether and you never see it again because your, your systems are not tuned. So make sure that you've really optimized things so that when you do spend money on ads you're actually getting a good roi. And honestly the majority of it comes from follow up. Have some either good automations in place or make sure that you're manually calling all of your leads. You know, you double dial in the morning and the evening until you get a hold of them and just bang down the doors and, and make it happen. Like people think that they're afraid, you know, they're timid when they start and they think you're going to annoy the crap out of people. I literally. Josh had a lady, I called her for like two weeks straight almost every day. Uh, and, and she um, she finally said, she finally picked up the phone one day, it was like day 13 or something. She said thank you so much for calling me. I've been getting your voicemails, I've been out of the country. I really you guys. And so I'm just so appreciative that you, you know, were diligent in following up with me. And so you just, the fortune is in the follow up. Like it's, it's a real saying and so that's what I would say on the adspin is just make sure you're really optimized on your back end so that you can get the best roi.

Joshua Brown: Yeah, hungry dogs eat.

David: Uh, there you go.

Joshua Brown: Brady said hungry dogs don't eat. I'm like, no, they, they eat. He says, I know what you're thinking of talking about, but that's not how you say it. I'm like, no, if you're hungry, you're gonna go eat. And so successful people are busy people, so you have to be aggressive and hunt them down so your family can eat. Um, yeah, so, and if you're not

David: doing it, somebody else is going to do it. You know, like, if you're not the one following up, then you're going to lose that business to the guy down the street who is following him.

Joshua Brown: Hey, I'm closing on this. If, if you're listening and you're not watching on YouTube, I'm going to describe a little bit on the, um, screen what we're showing. This is actually what a tapestry map looks like. I didn't know what a tapestry map or target total, uh, addressable market was. This is a city right outside of Atlanta. It's, uh, it does have some of our bucks inside their city. And we're actually able to identify where the density and the population and how many live in each, um, zip code. And so, um, you're seeing a picture of all the zip codes in these three counties. And then you're seeing colors which reflect either density or overall population. So on the left is our density. We're trying to figure out where does, if there's 10 people here in this zip code, uh, does nine of them match our avatar? And if nine out of 10 match, we need to be door knocking business networking groups, building relationships. We need to spend all in. So on the left you see that red little area there, David, on the map, that is, uh, Beverly Hills of this area. And when I say Beverly hills, they're spending 10 to $15,000 a year on Christmas lights, pressure washing, roof cleaning, driveway cleaning and ceiling. Well, guess what? Somebody's going to be eating. There's a dog that's going to be eating over there, the hungry one, Brady. Um, but that's where, when you look at it, you're like, okay, that's where I need to spend my money. Do you see how many other colors are around it, David?

David: Like just, you mean right there around the red? It's like there's nothing.

Joshua Brown: There's nothing.

David: So, honeyhole.

Joshua Brown: If you're, if you're hunting. If you're hunting. Oh, Peter's calling me. I'm gonna have to tell him. One second. Um, if you're hunting, let me tell them. Actually, I'll answer it on the phone. Hey, Peter, I am live on a I'm not live, but me and David are filming a webinar and we're almost done. I'll call you right back. Nope. Love you. Um, if you're hunting or fishing, you need to know where the fish are. You need to know where your, your customers are. Well, that's what this thing gives. It shows you where the 10, $15,000, it's huge. And then the orange represents the guys that are spending $5,000 a year. And so you know exactly where to go. In the pink you see over there, those are do it yourselfers. They're low income families that they're renting a piece of property, they're not going to be paying for it. And so if you want to compete with the $99 housewash guy, go to all those other territories. If you want to sell five, uh, ten, $15,000 jobs, get a market analysis and know exactly where to go. And then this top right map up here, this shows more of a population, not density. So our customers are here, but they're not in a density. So it shows a much m. Like, you know, if you've got 10,000 people in a zip code and a thousand of them are target avatars, it shows, hey, there's a thousand up here. But they're smaller in percentages. And so it helps you a business plan based on where you live. Because if you live way over here on the map, you may want to make this your plan because driving 45 minutes to an hour all the way up here doesn't make a lot of sense. So let's spend your time, your money, feeding on these minnows, feeding on these basses. And then over time, as you grow, you make more money. Then you can spend money over here and then you can end up going over here. So it's a strategic way of growing and building out your business. And then let me show you one other document you get. You actually get everything broken down into a spreadsheet where it shows you the total population. And this number right here kind of represents the population. And then it breaks everybody down into a different demographic of who you're looking for, how much money they're going to spend in your business. Then you end up getting what's called a total addressable market of each zip code. And what you do is you multiply the total addressable market by your average ticket, which then gives you the ability to know how much money you could make in that zip code if you did 100% of the business. Your goal really isn't to do 100%. Your goal is to get 10%. If you get to 10% you have built yourself a brand and now you know, hey, if we get to 10% of the zip code, we can do about a million dollars a year. That lets you know that, hey, I'm going the right direction. I need to do this. So, um, if you're interested in getting a market analysis, you can get one inside the as you go network. And so just get into the gated community at as you go dot network and reach out to me and say, hey, I'm interested in ordering a market analysis and then I may even have a QR code right here. I think that will lead you to our website where you can find out more information. So I uh, want to thank you for joining us over the last four weeks. If you missed anything, please go back and and watch it. If you have any questions. Everything we do is inside of our gated community, the as you go network. And so I hope this has added value to you. David, thank you for being along on the journey. He is one of my pleasure. Yeah, he is one of our coaches inside the Wash and Win Academy. So if you want to get frapp training and learn how to grow and scale your business, we offer all of that after you order your market analysis because it would be doing you a disservice if we did not first understand your abilities, your skills and also your market to be able to encourage you to drop 20k on a piece of equipment. Um, yeah, let's start with $500 and let's go into that county right there or that zip code and, and that's all I want you to do. So we're able to coach you if we know the information. So that's all I've got for today. Joshua Pressure washing. Pastor David, is there anything you want to share?

David: And I'll just say that market analysis is fire like it go order that. Um, it's like having a heat seeking missile because you can start your business off knowing exactly where to go. Whereas if you don't have that information, honestly you'll spend years and you'll spend a lot of money just trying to figure out where those honey holes are in your, in your market and having that spreadsheet, uh, if you notice there are zip codes on there and it's going to highlight the hot zip codes and you can then target those on Google Ads for example, or Facebook ads. You're going to make so much more money, have ah, way more roi and so do yourself a favor and go get that. UM is one of the best tools you could have starting out.

Joshua Brown: And until next time.

Narrator: 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 Wind Academy. This isn't just business coaching. This is where Christian business owners learn to create jobs, make disciples, and serve their city through pressure washing. If you want to build a business that provides for your family and impacts your city for the kingdom, this is your home. Simply go to pressurewashingpastor.com and click on

Joshua Brown: our Start Here link. That'll lead you to a website webinar

Narrator: and you and I will have a conversation from there.

Joshua Brown: If you want to get directly to

Narrator: me, just send me an email. Joshuaownspressurewashing.com today.