21 Year Old Starts a $120,000 Monthly Pressure Washing Business

would you guys like to know how steven grew northwest softwash into a six figures per month soft washing business in just a matter of a year and a half you guys he started with fifteen hundred dollars and today makes more than a hundred and twenty thousand dollars a month with only 11 employees on this episode we're talking to the entrepreneur stephen who started northwest softwash when he was only 19 years old today they're doing about six to seven locations for their clients and their business generates more than a million dollars in revenue each year per day you know per truck could do anywhere from fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars a day and doesn't cost you an arm and a leg especially when you're starting out how you decide on what services to offer and what's the most profitable one there you go guys ask him a ton of questions he'll be there to answer a bad month we could be doing 80 to 100 000. stephen also went hands off with his business within a few months by hiring employees and he started focusing on growth we're growing so rapidly we're losing a lot of our cash to invest back in the business facebook is going to be a powerful tool for you let's talk about building a strong team and so if they start seeing your photos and your brand in those groups you'll have a lot more business how many jobs are you guys doing on average every day those are two things that go a long ways with clients so let's go and meet the man this is their warehouse right here it's about 1400 square feet they've got a little office right here so we're going to knock on the door and see what they're up to you stephen awesome paul stephen yes good to see you good to see you man look forward to sharing the story [Music] you guys make sure you smash that like button subscribe to our channel we appreciate you watching hit that bell so you don't miss anything and let's dive into questions with steven steven tell us about your background and how you started northwest softwash for sure so i started northwest softwash actually in 2020 um at the beginning of the year i previously had a pressure washing company and so i started as a pressure washing company then realized i didn't want to use the high pressure on homes i didn't want to pressure wash a roof didn't want to pressure wash siding and so i went completely into a different area of that field and started the soft wash company which is what it is now and we'll dive into the difference between pressure and sofa what about your background you're such a young man and you're successful year two in the business what did you do before high school university college what can you tell us about that yeah thank you so um yeah so i didn't really go to college um straight out of high school was doing a bunch of different things i uh flipped iphones i renovated rvs um i always knew that i wanted to work for myself it was never really something i did try working for others but it wasn't something that uh i wanted to do long term so knew i needed to do this and pressure washing was just a good gateway into what i wanted to do no story behind that no grandma pushing you and say hey go watch my house no no no crazy unique fun story behind the the choice of pressure washing yeah well my brother owns a window cleaning company and so um i was kind of looking for something what to do next and he said hey steven what about pressure washing you know he's specifically doing windows and i thought well that might be a great opportunity i kind of looked into it a little bit more and just went for it what was your initial budget when you got started and where did you get the money yeah great question initial budget you know i didn't really have one of course you know as a young 19 year old i probably had about two thousand dollars in my account but that thousand to fifteen hundred i knew that that was what i needed to at least start and then the rest i would work on marketing and trying to figure out how i would get customers for that okay say i don't have any money i want to do what you're doing i'm on youtube learning but i'm like man 1200 bucks two thousand plus i don't have it what would you do at that point with what you know now in experience great question i mean parents and grandparents are are literally family in general is the best place to start i mean going going to your parents and washing their house for them or pressure washing their driveway um there's neighbors uh there's so many people that are in your power base which are family members and relatives um and and neighbors that would be more than happy to help you and help kick you into into high gear so don't be afraid to ask 100 that power base is super important all right stephen tell our audience where we're going and let's make this exciting awesome yeah so we're gonna be headed to portland oregon which is right down the street from us in in washington and we're gonna go see our awesome crew doing a roof cleaning a house wash some pressure washing it'll be epic i'm excited to go check them out stay tuned let's go to the job site and check it out [Music] all right you guys we are in a pretty cool neighborhood in portland here sounds like we're it seems like we're surrounded by trees and everything we're gonna go check out a job site with steven here we're gonna take a look at all their crew all their equipment their trucks and really get down to the nitty and greedy so let's do it awesome let's go let's do it but as we're getting closer let's talk about profit margins that that you operate under and what are the industry standards that you can share with us yeah absolutely so typically for roof clean business and software business like us profit margins be anywhere from 25 to 30 percent okay net profit um and that's just general terms um it depends on how you know what your payroll is like what your overhead is like there's a lot of different things that affect that is that about where you're operating as well or did you find out somehow find a way to increase that yeah so um i we're right around 20 25 because we're growing so rapidly we're losing a lot of our cash to invest back in the business however 30 is usually a very good number to be at so eventually we would like to be in that in that range okay now i know we keep talking about you know the word pressure washing your business is called soft wash tell our audience what the difference is what the benefits are because you ultimately switched from pressure washing to soft washing i'm clueless what that is tell us the difference for sure so pressure washing is the idea of of using very high pressure when you're cleaning the driveway but we switched to soft wash in 2020 and soft wash is the idea of using chemical and soap to clean the surface instead of high pressure so we can spray it on there it dissolves all the the dirt the the algae and then we rinse it with a low pressure that you can actually put your hand in front of wow so it's a very different technique that utilizes low pressure what made that switch for you you know it's just a really it's really important that that we aren't pressure washing siding we aren't pressure washing roofs um it just damages so much so the switch was when i have a better idea this can clean way better you don't have to get up on high ladders you can do it mostly from the ground and customers love the idea that we're not damaging their property in the process you guys are if you're enjoying this video make sure you smash that like button and subscribe to our channel also stay tuned to the end of the video where stephen is going to share an incredible hack for you guys on how to be successful in this business [Music] the monthly average overhead for your business right now yeah great question right now it's anywhere from 30 to 40 000 a month okay um but i could be off on those numbers a little bit but typically you know you have your shop expense you have all your vehicles um and you have your staff that's on salary so those are those are things that affect the overhead but i don't have that percentage exactly dialed down right now off the top of my head but it is a significant amount that adds to that that total revenue yeah i was gonna say you're dealing with some pretty serious numbers i mean that's good [Music] what is your current monthly revenue what is the seasonality look like for this kind of business right when is it most busy less and what's a good day or a good month bad month for for this business sure so in the busy season which is usually spring through fall okay um right now this year um we're doing right about 120 000 a month wow yeah yeah wild especially for our second year in business wow but a bad month could look at you know in the winter times for us this year specifically we could be doing 80 to 100 000 a month so that would be november december winter time uh area so um you know per day um per day you know per truck could do anywhere from 1500 to 2 000 a day so you can multiply that by how many trucks you have you can you can get the numbers pretty quickly okay so tell me about your structure with the trucks because you mentioned that earlier and that's something to the extent where you're trying to get a certain dollar amount per truck yeah so share that with us that model yeah yeah so basically we have kind of our our scale on each truck we'd like to be anywhere like i said 1500 to 2000 a day sometimes it's more sometimes it's less depending on what kind of job we're doing is it a big roof is it a big house or is it just a small little job you know or if we're using a lot of chemical are we not using a lot of chemicals there's a bunch of different things there uh but yes right in that range is usually a very sweet spot for us okay how many trucks you have right now we're running three this is 2021 um and we're running three trucks full time and next year is is the year for growth we're planning on putting three more okay so growth is good stephen how long did it take you to break even in the business yeah so with pressure washing like i said we only had about a 1500 startup cost so really right away it only took a few jobs that's really that's true to really pay that off or to you know at least break even on that and then going forward so i really used a lot of that cash flow just to keep going throughout the year okay stephen let's talk about forms of advertisement when you first got started what was the most successful let's dive into that because i think it's really most important yeah no i i already thought of when you're asking that um facebook so for listeners and that they're just starting their business and just getting out into the marketplace facebook is going to be a powerful tool for you and i'll kind of explain a little bit on why so when i first started i went into all the community groups in my area so this is you know different cities like battleground vancouver and they all have these little community facebook groups and i would go into those groups and i would apply to be inside of it because most of the time you have to apply to get inside of it so i'd apply to all of the groups around me and then i would go ahead and every time i'd finish a job i would take before and afters and i would upload those into all of the community groups around my area and i wouldn't be spammy the idea is to not be spammy because people do not like you know they're just that's not what what you're there to do is to advertise but you can put little things in here and there do a post a week or something like that and a lot of people will start commenting you can get you know some interaction that way it's a great place to start because a lot of the community will start to see you around and so if they start seeing your photos and your brand in those groups you'll have you'll have a lot more business attract attraction from that tell us maybe your top three four services how you decide on what services to offer and what's the most profitable one and why sure so we started out doing pressure washing of hard surfaces so that would have been concrete fences and things like that as we switched to soft wash from pressure wash as we found out that difference we started doing washing of siding and cleaning of roofs in the pacific northwest we have a lot of moss that grows on the roof oh yeah as you see so um it was important that we really focused on our roof cleaning and so roof roof cleaning for us is definitely our biggest service that we offer every day we're cleaning roofs it's just a very big deal and and by far one of the most profitable ones as well okay does roof cleaning include gutter cleaning obviously yeah a lot of times we package it up that way to where when we're cleaning the roof we like to clean the gutters out it's just while we're up there it makes it very easy at the same time [Music] as we smell all this chlorine and all the cleaning and the bleach right let's continue on with the interview and i think the next question is really how many hours are you investing now versus what it was when you got started you know what's the expectation what what should we be putting in and what does that look like yeah that's a great question when i first started i put in a lot of hours as you imagine you're working you're working the truck you're doing all the estimates you're following up with customers via email you're calling people yeah so in the very beginning you know expect to put in 10 hour days um 10 12 hour days i mean really the sky's the limit how fast what are your goals where do you want to get right and now i started structuring it to where i have team members that help on different things i have an office staff they take all the calls they take all the emails our service manager michael he deals with the customer satisfaction making sure the crews are are where they should be and doing doing what they should be so now it's structured just a little bit differently [Music] for somebody starting out what would your suggestion or advice be in terms of what services to offer what to focus on right instead of 20 different things yeah what would be what would be your advice yeah for someone just starting out i know that i focused on just one or two easy easy services to at least get started get your feet wet figure out where you fit in this whole realm of business services you know are you gonna be doing house washing what kind of equipment are you gonna need for house washing right so it's really about starting small getting your getting your feet wet a little bit start to understand how this business works and then start looking at what else can i offer while i'm there right what else can i package up to make it worthwhile experience for the customer so okay my advice start small and then eventually you know go go from there and figure out what else you can claim any other form of advertisements besides facebook that's really at up top or just facebook for the for now i really just went straight into facebook i mean um you know some craigslist ads if you can mess with craigslist a little bit there's some craigslist ads that you can put in and that also can do very well but for just starting out usually word of mouth doing door knocking that's super easy in your neighborhood facebook community groups as well as getting with your relatives having them share the word of you starting a business right it'll get you a long ways okay now you are a walk-in advertisement as well um when did this t-shirt happen and this branding up here and really who helped you and i think that's a loaded question so what can you offer our audience in terms of how you can help provide those resources to them yeah for sure you know branding is going to be very important starting out you want a clear concise brand that people will remember and and it's a trust it's a form of trust right so we decided to go with these shirts they're chemical proof so we don't have to worry about our chemical getting on here and staining it or anything like that as far as designing i will actually be commenting down below on our designer that we use that designed our logo designed our brand it's very professional and doesn't cost you an arm and a leg especially when you're starting out you don't need a ten thousand dollar logo right so i'm gonna be posting his um his information down below so feel free to comment i'll reply to that and we'll be on our way there you go guys ask him a ton of questions he'll be there to answer we'll be there to answer as well stephen let's talk about your monthly advertising spend and what's giving you the best roi yeah so in our company like i said earlier sales and marketing was our biggest thing i focus heavily on it so for for our advertising spend um we spend anywhere from 10 to 12 percent of our overall revenue so right now they can look at we're anywhere from 10 to 12 thousand dollars a month we spend on advertising so that's um you know facebook ads google ads that's yard signs that's direct mail uh there's other things that we do as well that but um as far as the best roi yeah what is the best product i would say facebook by far okay so social media has been by far some of the best things that we've ever done and focused very heavily on what are important must-have skills and getting going and really getting going successfully yeah i would say just starting out sales and marketing those are the the two main things if you have all the equipment if you don't have sales if you don't have people that you can sell to what's the point having equipment right so the idea is where can you go where can you prospect what neighborhood can you knock on doors get the get the lead flow coming in and then you can buy the right equipment maybe you can have just small equipment at first but then you can buy the right equipment to service those customers so did you learn sales and marketing all on youtube as well and you mentioned just sitting there learning everything or were there other sources that you that really helped you yeah great question early on it was sales was was my main focus i knew that i couldn't get anywhere without selling so youtube was a big part of that there's there's a bunch of guys on youtube that that have this info a lot of videos um that teach you about sales and you know door fly door hangers flyers knocking on doors those are all all good things but yes youtube was a big part of me learning sales exactly why we're doing this you guys for you [Music] how many jobs are you guys doing on average every day yeah so we try to do about about two jobs per truck so right now we have three trucks that puts us at about six jobs a day so pretty consistent during the busy times or it's consistent um you know it could be it could be a roof cleaning that it could be a gutter cleaning um it all just depends so the prices definitely fluctuate depending on a package that the customer chose but we do definitely try for two jobs a day in a specific area let's talk about building a strong team you know what can you share with us what have you learned and also what do you look for when hiring new employees yeah it's a great question so building a team it's it's tough if it was easy everyone would do it right that's why you see so many people just doing work by themselves so what i look for when new new team members are wanting to get hired here is their attitude that's like one of the first things that i look for they have a positive attitude do they want to grow as a person because i am willing to give them all the tools for success but i need them to have a positive attitude and attitude for growth pretty simple yes any tips or tricks about building a team other than you know having a positive uh attitude well it's hard what else but leaders have to understand business owners have to understand that when you have people working with you you need to work for them you need to lead up front um give them something give them a leader that is um that is worth working for right worth being around someone who is is has big goals and dreams for you as well so there's a there's a lot of different things that that kind of wrap up into that yeah but that's kind of the short version awesome sounds amazing [Music] all right steven what's important is must have equipment for getting started in pressure washing businesses tell us what must have yeah absolutely so when you're first starting out really getting a good pressure washer i would say four gallon a minute machine is where you want to start anything before that isn't going to give you enough flow to clean the surface so a four gallon minute pressure washer a few hoses and a surface cleaner which is a little round disc that you can clean driveways with okay best place to start that's it okay what what kind of brands stand out to you and cost wise yeah honda is a great type of engine you know it's very reliable i would definitely start with a honda and that's just about it i mean the honda your honda generator is going to get you exactly what you need love it okay now you mentioned well how much does that cost by the way yeah i mean you can go on craigslist facebook and buy buy one for 500 bucks 600 bucks in your area that's i know it's a lot but it's part of that startup cost i talked about about a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars okay now you talk about four gallon i'm not you know super savvy in the pressure washers but how much psi do you need is it a 1500 psi up to 3 000 what's the sweet range yes for that four four gallon minute machine typically it's right around 3 500 psi 3000 psi you wouldn't really want to go any lower than 3 000 psi for that got it gives you enough power and enough flow to clean that surface okay as you step away from the business hands-on and you run it as an organization right how do you make sure that quality stays the same and continues to improve as you give it over to your employees and that's a really tricky question huge yes very very tricky i was doing a lot of the the quality control um at the beginning of this year i went ahead and hired our service manager who's michael and he takes care of all the quality control so okay now i can step away focus on the business growth as an organization and he really takes takes control of the service and to make sure that it it's you know given at the highest quality possible and so that really helps me helps take me out of that position and puts someone better suited for that in that position so you step away but another person obviously has to fill that role yes and that's mike yes and it's it's beautiful you know being able to delegate that to someone who is invested in making sure that's the best experience and i can keep focusing as a business owner on the things i need to focus on okay do you have any systems tools that you also use that help you you know get client feedback fix some issues if so and stuff like that totally so um when the crew goes out to do a job they have a customer service checklist we call it a personal home report and so they go through and they have to check off on every item that they did to make sure it's clean make sure things were cleaned up correctly and that is eventually given to the customer and then the other portion of it is filed in our end as a company so we're able to see okay was a job completed if we have a complaint we can go back there to that checklist and make sure it was completed and completed properly okay awesome okay let's talk about what your monthly overhead is specifically break it down for us what's the most expensive uh you know cost for that sure i think the biggest one of the biggest things is payroll you know paying employees paying team members to get the job done as far as what our payroll costs look like typically every every other week it's about ten to fifteen thousand dollars right now okay so that's kind of our payroll cost for admin and our crews out in the field are hourly's for the employees yeah what are you paying them yeah so for assistant technician it's 18 an hour currently and for a lead technician's 20 an hour so the lead gets a little bit more as he's you know in that position of leadership for the first time do you do any salary setups as well for like mike who runs the you know the what's his title you mentioned yeah yep he's a service man service manager yep yep so michael um it deals with the quality control make sure all the crews are getting the work done um as scheduled um and he is on a salary a salary based as well so of course his is structured a little bit differently but we do have a couple salary positions as well gotcha you guys blitz time with steven let's dive into it our audience know exactly what it is what's one sentence you'd like to hear from your employees i would love to hear how can i make more money okay yeah now at the stage of your success what would you tell your younger version i know you're a baby still but let's say you're 11 years old sure um you know enjoy your enjoy your younger years you know uh how i wish i would have flipped more things maybe you know done a little more entrepreneur things as even younger okay what's the weirdest thing that you've seen in somebody else's house inside outside doesn't matter um the only weirdest things i've seen is pulling spatulas out of gutters and like uh you know little rubber duckies and stuff out of people's gutters that's been pretty whack but yeah okay what is your morning routine morning routine uh wake up at 5 am do do a little bit of exercise usually i just do some stretching and then i just go deep into my sales training do training every single day um and then i'm usually ready by like 6 37 okay what's one book that you would recommend to our audience a really good book that i absolutely love is sell or be sold by grant cardone fantastic book for any entrepreneur that book is going to be amazing so i would highly recommend reading that awesome thanks steve [Music] all right what's the best thing about being your own boss steven and what are the you know downsides as well so many great things and there's so many downsides so of course not everyone's cut out for it i believe as me as a person i was i was cut out for it i was made for this so that was easy for me to choose this route the upsides are you know you've got this great team around you that can help pick things up when needed and i don't have to do it all myself as far as some downsides i mean you know you're working 24 7. your mind's always going um not everyone can handle that and so as cut out for that i understand that the pros and cons the pros definitely outweigh the cons in my book for for what i'm doing but um those cons are definitely running 24 7. i'm always thinking about

it know my wife at home is always uh is always wondering why i'm always thinking about the business but it just is what it is it is what it is okay that's awesome stephen what role does social media play i know we've touched on this very little but what about instagram anything else you haven't mentioned about facebook that you can share with us sure yeah i i would my best advice for viewers and people wanting to start their own pressure washing business is figure out where your clientele are figure out are they are they on craigslist are they on facebook are they on tv you know everyone's got a different clientele base so figure out where that is and then just go all in so for me i found our clientele base on facebook and instagram and so they're a certain age group that we focus heavily on and um and that's just really where we found our client client base what is that age group yeah the age group is anywhere from 30 to 60 plus okay um and most of them are homeowners of course so we we deal with a lot of homeowners a lot more residential than commercial as of right now so um they own homes and they're they're usually above 30 years old okay you didn't mention instagram what's going on on instagram for you if anything yeah instagram is tied to facebook so when we run at our advertisements on facebook our instagram is tied and connected to that however instagram as you can imagine has a more younger generation on there so that may work for a different type of service versus what we're doing but that could change and it will change it's just right now facebook has been has been the hit okay tick tock no no guys jumping with pressure washing wands and business in return for that a lot of tick tock i mean tick tock is blowing up the pressure washing space is an awesome place to be so as for tick-tock you know a lot of a lot of satisfying videos of things getting cleaned it's great so you guys do use tick-tock you know it's something that we need to be doing i think everyone needs to be doing it but we haven't been we haven't done it yet you guys we've interviewed other companies like this in the pressure washing world make sure you check those out they're there for you like this video subscribe to our channel we appreciate that let's get back to steve and steven let's talk about tips tricks that our audience can hear from you that they can implement today resulting in better results what can you share with us yeah especially for me you know having a great team it really is just about taking care of your team we're all working together in this big in this big business you know i call it a big business but it's this atmosphere we're all working together and so taking care of each other is really very very important one thing that we do before all the crews head back to the shop is we ensure everyone is done out in the field so if one crews come back early it's important that they go help the other crews before uh before they head back to shop so everyone gets done in a timely manner it's very very important to keep that that culture as a team team work you know teamwork right and so we do that it works out really well it's great for people who have team members and employees working with them [Music] steven tell us a little bit more specific like think of specific mistakes that you feel like you've made that you could have done different with what you know now yeah for sure i think a big one was not having the apparel when i would go um knock on doors to ask for business or when i would show up to a job to complete i didn't have my logo on my shirt i didn't have maybe my name on my shirt those are a lot of those are two things that go a long ways with with with clients they want to know that you're professional if you show up in a raggedy t-shirt and some ripped jeans and tennis shoes you might not get the same look as you would with it with a nice shirt with your logo with your name maybe your badge with your name right those are things when they look at you you're the professional something about appearance that resonates with people yes 100 100 percent they're they're not going to trust you as much doing the job versus if you if you do have that uh your branding on you so would you be in agreement that you know if you've got the extra cash start out with day one you've got some form of brand and this kind of fancy t-shirt this fancy t-shirt is a little bit more expensive i would probably recommend going to your local t-shirt shop um getting a couple logos printed on some t-shirts even if it's even if it's some low quality t-shirts yeah at least it's something to get started what's one important crucial skill that you think every entrepreneur should have i think it's sales hands down sales um you know of course no good business can run without sales so or no business at all really right um sales is the driving force behind every company so the i believe every everybody should learn that skill and even if you're not directly in sales it's just it's very very important like you said sell or be sold right that's right how do you know as a business owner that it's the right time to grow and the second part is tell us about scaling businesses what's some tips and tricks there yeah i'm new to this space but what i've learned in just the short time that i've been doing this is you only can grow as fast as you have sales right people that want your service if you don't have enough of that how can you scale how can you buy new equipment so i like to i like the rule of being a few weeks out booked before you start before you start putting more trucks on the road so it's important that you have work scheduled before you just say i'm just going to grow and scale you've got to have clientele you got to have a plan and you have to stick to that you know things may change you know economies change but you can't scale if you don't have sales so sales and marketing if you really want to scale that is what you have to have dialed in that's the driving engine yes 100. stephen give us the hack absolutely so my biggest thing and my biggest hack for you guys especially starting out and growing a business is when you're offering a price to your customers always give them three options always give them an a a b and a c and the reason for that is um you know when you go and just offer one price it's either a yes or no right when you offer three different options when you offer you know maybe the window cleaning maybe it's it's not so detailed and we don't clean the insides but just give them three options on your on your service and then what'll happen is it'll give them options it'll give them the base price of package a maybe it's not so expensive package c is your biggest package and package b is right in the middle right yeah so it gives them some options and you can it's better than a yes or no situation maybe you can find a package that better tailors and better fits their needs that's awesome we're looking for that yes right that handshake to get the business 100 serve the customer and earn some money yes awesome steven this has been incredible thank you so much thank you paula what a cool business you're doing thanks for coming out appreciate it my pleasure well there you guys have it i hope you enjoyed this incredible episode with stephen the owner of northwest softwash what a young guy at 18 started this business built it to more than a million dollars in revenue per year so i hope you guys took out a lot of awesome lessons from it please like this video subscribe to our channel and check out all other videos that we've done for you as well thank you

2021-08-25 13:57

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