Good Neighbor Podcast Northport
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of Tuscaloosa and Northport!
Good Neighbor Podcast Northport
Alpha Wash Pressure Washing: Justin Barnes' Tale of Grit and Growth in the Pressure Washing Game
Ever wondered what sheer determination looks like? Meet Justin Barnes, the dynamo behind Alpha Wash Pressure Washing, who joins us to recount a saga of ambition that turned a simple pressure washer into Birmingham's most acclaimed cleaning powerhouse. As we chat, you'll be whisked away on Justin's extraordinary path from an enthusiastic youngster to a visionary entrepreneur, learning how he juggled academics, a love for bass fishing, and the relentless drive to build a business that stands out not just for its service, but for its heart. This isn't just another success story; it's a masterclass in transforming passion into a professional franchise dream, all while setting the customer service bar sky-high.
This episode's raw and real conversation peels back the curtain on the life of an entrepreneur, where sacrifices and relentless optimism are the name of the game. I get personal, sharing the bittersweet tale of selling his boat to fuel his business dreams, revealing the gritty commitment needed to steer a company towards greatness. Join us as Justin makes his podcast debut, highlighting the ins and outs of the pressure washing industry and what Alpha Pressure Wash brings to the table. If you're inspired by tales of local heroes and want to give a shout-out to a business in your community, stay tuned for how you can nominate them to share their story on our platform. This is more than just a podcast; it's a celebration of the entrepreneurial spirit. #GNPBIrmingham# #AlphaWashBham #AlphaWashPressureWashing #AlphaWash #BirminghamPressureWashing #PressureWash #SoftWash #RoofWash #powerwash #powerwashing #softwash #clean #roofcleaning #cleaning #softwashing #windowcleaning #pressurecleaning #pressurewasher #housewash #guttercleaning #beforeandafter #homeimprovement #drivewaycleaning #cleaningservice #roofwash #commercialcleaning #buildingwash #patiocleaning #powerwasher #concretecleaning #smallbusiness #housecleaning #pressurewashingservices #cleaningservices #housewashing #softwashequipment
On with the show.
Speaker 2:This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Patricia Blondheim.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm your host, patricia Blondheim, and today we have Good Neighbor Justin Barnes, and Justin is the owner of Alpha Wash, which is the top-rated pressure washing company in Birmingham. Justin, how are you today?
Speaker 3:I am doing fantastic Shershow. I really appreciate you having me on today.
Speaker 1:Well, tell me all about your business. Tell me about Alpha Wash Pressure Washing. Did I get that right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so. Alpha Wash was developed the name Alpha Wash about four years ago. So I started pressure washing when I was 15 years old. I had an uncle that did some pressure washing and he hurt his leg and he couldn't go pressure wash. And I had a job at an engineering company and I was making $8.05 per hour. And I'm a pretty redneck guy. I like to do redneck things after school when I was in high school I like to go ride the four wheelers, I like to go hunting, I like to go fishing, and I couldn't do any of those things because I was working from school to dark. So he asked and I was making like 120 bucks a week after taxes. It was not very good, but I'd been there about a year and my uncle said, hey, would you want to come pressure wash this house for me? It pays 300 bucks and I'm like, wow, that's more than I make in like two weeks and I'm like, sure, I'll come pressure washing. He's like, good, come pick up my pressure washer tonight, take it to school with you, get off work tomorrow and go pressure wash the house. So my boss was cool with it. His name is Mr Berry. He's one of my mentors and a great guy.
Speaker 3:So basically I went and got the pressure washer, took it to school the next day. I got out of school every day early so I could go work. I got out an hour early so I went and pressure washed this house. Well, I got done with it two hours before I would have got off work and the lady gave me a hundred hour tip. So I got 400 bucks and I had two hours to go do whatever I wanted and it was like a light bulb went off, basically.
Speaker 3:So then I put the pressure washer back on the truck, I drove straight to my boss man's office, I quit my job and then I turned around and I stopped at Trek Supply. I took that 400 bucks. I spent $338.70 to buy the exact same pressure washer that my uncle had. I took his pressure washer back and I told him I'm going to start pressure washing. And then I went home. Both my parents are entrepreneurs, so I guess I get it naturally. But I told them. I said I will never work for anybody else and so far I have it. Let's knock on wood there, but so far I have it. So that's kind of the journey, how we got there. You want me to go more in depth to it, or is that a good?
Speaker 1:Tell me what is special you know about Alpha Wash Pressure Wash.
Speaker 3:Great question. So I guess I'm just going to continue the story. So I lived in South Alabama. I was from Monroeville, alabama. If you've ever heard of To Kill a Malkin Bird, that's where the story was written. That's where the story was based Basically. Maycomb is Monroeville, alabama, and if you lived in Monroeville you would understand the book where they're talking about in Monroeville. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 3:So I did that all the way through high school and I was really big in tournament bass fishing. I mean, I'm the type of guy whatever I'm doing I'm obsessed with it like absolutely obsessed, and I would just pressure wash back then enough, so I could go fishing. Well, I ended up getting a full ride fishing scholarship to the University of Montebello. Well, I didn't take it the first year because I didn't want to leave my mama me and my mom pretty tight and I didn't want to leave from my hometown. So after a year I started a fishing team at the community college there. It didn't go very well. We realized it costed a lot to travel around the country and compete in these college tournaments. So I called the Montevallo coach, asked him was that still an option? He said yes. So I moved up here. I saved up some cash from pressure washing. I bought me a trailer out on Lay Lake. I had a dock it was awesome and I had a shed. I had my boat in there and I had my pressure washing trailer in there.
Speaker 3:And by the time I got to my senior year of college I had three guys off the fishing team working with me and I graduated college and I was like you know, I really think we could do something with this pressure washing thing. I think we could make it way bigger than anybody in the area. I think we could make a real impact on this earth. So I basically took all the money I had saved up, put it into the AlphaWash brand I think it was like $13,000 to get our brand design, get our core values design and our vision for the company is to be a nationwide franchise. So what Alkawash does differently than 99% of contractors is it's no secret contractors have a reputation for not providing the best customer service, not following through what they say they're going to do, kind of letting people down in a sense. That's kind of the trend you hear. So we really wanted to build a brand that is opposite of that. So we have worked really hard and I've got a really awesome team now. That is a perfect representation of our culture.
Speaker 3:But if you do hire AlphaWash, what you will see that's different than the rest of the pressure washing companies is our. So our number one core value is excellent. So I'm going to say our excellent communication. We provide an excellent experience for the customer. It's consistent. You're going to get the same experience every time, whether you have one crew or another crew. With our office, with our sales guys, you're going to get an excellent experience.
Speaker 3:And we're going to call and check in. We're going to provide you an excellent service. We're going to call and check in and make sure you're super happy with it. Guys are going to walk you around make sure you're super happy with it and if we do mess something up, that happens right. Things do go wrong. We are the guys that are going to answer the phone when you call back and say, hey, this is messed up and we're going to make it right. We care more about you as the customer than we do. Just, you know, getting paid, that's not our objective. Our objective is to build out the wash and something that provides value to people 100 years from now, when I'm long gone from this earth and operates from the same core values. So does that answer your question?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean so what you're saying is that you're elevating this beyond the chuck in a truck sort of business model that most people have.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And you're adding personalized, excellent service. So it sounds like you're right in between the chuck in the truck and the major corporate owned company where, if you call someone, you're going to reach a call center and they're not going to know who's running the company. So you're heading straight for that sweet spot in between those two.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we are so whenever we franchise. So I want to say, for each technician, we hire each person in general, whatever position they're in in the company. We're pretty big on tracking our numbers, so we know we go through 225 interviews in person for each one person we hire because they have to be aligned with our core values. So that's a really big deal for us. If you get a person with the right core values, we do not care what their experience is. If they have the right attitude, the right core values, we do not care what their experience is. If they have the right attitude, the right core values, that's who we want to work with.
Speaker 3:So yeah, and I don't really like the call center deal. We have the option we could probably make more profit if we went the virtual assistant overseas route. We're never going to do that. Uh, if we have a call center, it's going to be multiple call centers when we do franchise, because we want to keep the same culture. Obviously there's a different culture in different parts of the united states. Like, we want to keep the southern culture with the southern people. That's the people they're going to feel the most comfortable talking to. So that's kind of our goal there.
Speaker 1:So, Justin, you talk about doing extensive interviewing for people who are going to just generally, they're going to come in, they're going to pressure wash your house and your sidewalk, Isn't that? Isn't that a little overkill, Isn't it just running a pressure washer?
Speaker 3:Can't? Can't a monkey do it? Tell me about that. Yeah, great question. So it really boils down to what kind of standards do you have? Do you want to have the same standards of everybody else? Do you want to say, I can just get anybody in here working, or do you want to provide a service where you have the best of the best people? And I choose to go that route. I mean, I probably spend way more than any of our competitors do on as far as like hiring advertising, like on Indeed or LinkedIn or something like that. Indeed's really big for us, but I think it's completely necessary because of my standards and not everybody has the same standards as me and I won't lie and say that we've never had some low performers on the team. And, as the famous Nick Saban says I know you said you're from Tuscaloosa. I assume you're an Alabama fan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I have to be.
Speaker 3:Heck, yeah roll tide. But Nick Saban says high achievers get along with high achievers. High achie achievers get along with high achievers. High achievers cannot get along with low achievers. Low achievers cannot get along with high achievers. So anybody that says my standard is too high, they're a low achiever and it's probably not a good fit anyways. So I want the best of the best and I want to be able to provide the best service.
Speaker 1:So I feel it is necessary, with what our goals are to do, the amount of interviews that we do. Well, now you're a young guy, right? How old did you say you were?
Speaker 3:I am 26.
Speaker 1:26 years old, been doing this since you were 15. You're a bass fisherman. It sounds like you've just got it made. Have you encountered? Any sort of any sort of hardship. I mean, everyone wants that life. You know where you work and fish and you're successful, but that's, I've got a feeling that's not. That's not the way your life rolled. Tell me a little bit about how you got here yeah for sure.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to answer what you asked about the bass fishing. So of course, that's what I would rather be doing every day. But, like I mentioned to Patricia earlier before we got on the call, I'm a pretty obsessive guy. Whatever I'm doing, I want to be the best at it and I'll put in more work than everybody else and I feel like that's where you can get ahead of people, that's where you get get ahead of people, that's where you can get ahead of the competition.
Speaker 3:So I intentionally made myself sell my boat, uh, four years ago and I actually don't bass fish other than just some ponds, like on Sunday afternoon. But I used to fish 300 days a year in college. I was also, uh, I also had a guide service on lay late and I would do guided fishing trips. So I just know myself well and I know that I couldn't do both and do them to the level I wanted to do them to. So I said, hey, I'm going to put everything I got in this company for the next seven, eight years and then hopefully it can provide a lifetime of freedom for me and my family and some of the people on my team, and then I can go fishing a lifetime of freedom for me and my family and some of the people on my team, and then I can go fishing a lot more than I do now.
Speaker 3:But, uh, have definitely faced some hardships. To be honest, building this company has been the most challenging thing that I've ever did in my life. Uh, you hear a lot on social media. Being an entrepreneur is the sexy thing to do. Well, it's not that sexy. I'll be honest with you. It's basically a big compilation. However you say that word I'm probably saying it wrong but of doing things that you don't want to do, that have to be done every single day. Nobody's ever going to care about your company that works with you to the level you do. It's on you. At the end of the day, if one of your teams fell, it's on you. It's not on them, it's on you.
Speaker 3:So probably the biggest challenge I've ever faced is I dated a girl a while in high school and college and we kind of started the company together. She pretty much handled the office admin side of things. Uh, we, we got married, stayed married for a short period of time and and we figured out it kind of wasn't the best fit for either of us and um. So then basically I had the company all, some all on my own and at this in time I was just really good at pressure washing. I didn't know anything about the pressure washing business or being a CEO or business owner, so I kind of had to figure it out. Yeah, I had to figure it out and it was super tough because the phones don't stop ringing and I'm like out there on a roof trying to wash the roof and trying to answer the phone at the same time I'm trying to hire people at the same time and in those situations like that it's really easy to let the negative thoughts spiral and just take over.
Speaker 3:Can't do that. That's why you got to have a strong vision of where you're headed and you always got to. You've got to let the optimistic side of you make your decisions. It's so easy. We're all humans. Human nature is typically to be pessimistic and you really have to be intentional about being optimistic. And the thing about being pessimistic is like 99% of it never happens. Like 99% of it never happens. So like you stress yourself out, you get yourself in this bad spot for no reason. So if you just look back at the facts and look back at the track record of where you've been and how you felt. Like most of the things you're worried about, they never happen. So there's definitely going to be some hard times along the way.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't say being an entrepreneur is for everybody. I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with working a job and I think that you can provide a great, great income for your family and be really happy and have a really nice work-life balance. Work-life balance is something I typically struggle with. Like most entrepreneurs, I'm pretty ADHD. But obviously for the company to evolve, it follows you as the leader. So you have to level yourself up and the company will follow suit. It's not you grow the company and then you get better. It's no, you have to get better and then the company follows. You have to get better and then the company follows you, and it requires you to do things different. And doing things different for humans are uncomfortable. It is because we're we're creatures of habit. We like to do what we do because it's comfortable. We can predict the outcome, and being a business owner is opposite of that.
Speaker 3:Like just before I got on this call, uh, one of our rigs broke down. I had a guy that was really upset on one of our teams and like I had to reschedule three estimates and I had to go make sure, because your team comes first, your team comes first. If you take care of your team, they would take care of you. So I had to reschedule the estimates. I had to go help him. I had a line blow up in my face with got chemicals all over my head, so I was like rushing through the shower trying to make it on this call in time. So you never know when stuff like that's going to happen. So you got to be able to handle it when it happens. So that would be my answer to that.
Speaker 1:That was like a TED talk. Have you thought maybe you need to be a motivational speaker?
Speaker 3:I have not thought that at all. But I have had several people on my team and several people back when I used to fish in college I was the president of the team. They did say that I should do that, but I don't know. I mean, it's hard enough to motivate myself. It's easy for somebody to sit here and say all these things. It's like we can. It's easy for somebody to sit here and say all these things, but watch them, like what do they do? How do they act when they don't feel like doing it? How do they act when everything's going wrong? You know and that's where tenacity comes into it Like how bad do you want it? How much do you want to get that vision that you created in your mind? If you don't want it that bad, you're going to quit. Simple as that.
Speaker 1:That's not an option I think you've given us a lot to take away about um alpha alpha wash yeah, for sure obviously you're, obviously you're the alpha of the rushing business. What would you like our listeners to take away about alpha wash?
Speaker 3:What would you like our listeners to take away about AlphaWash? Yeah, great question. So one thing I would want to educate the listeners on as far as exterior cleaning in Alabama. So I want to put it into perspective. So you're right as a customer is to have the choice of who you hire to bring into your home. Okay.
Speaker 3:So when you hire an HVAC company, an electrical company, they all have certifications they have to pass. You can't just have a Joe down the block come and be an electrician, unless you want your house burned down, but I wouldn't recommend that. But with pressure washing there is no certifications. Anybody can go in to Home Depot or Lowe's, they can buy a pressure washing company I mean a pressure washer and they can say, oh, I'm in the pressure washing business now. So that's what I would want to educate the people on is know who you're hiring. Don't just go for the lowest price because I promise you you can hire Joe down the street that goes and buys a pressure washer the day before and goes into business the day before you hire. Are you not going to get a very good experience, more than likely with Joe, because I mean experience. Having experience is something, is is what gets you there, that's you learn from your mistakes, you evolve. So I would say, don't go for the lowest price, go for the best value. Go for the people that are the most educated.
Speaker 3:We have certifications that we have built ourselves. We've bought into coaching programs, we've taken our guys out of state, we've got them trained. We want to provide the customers of Birmingham. This is our first location for where we want to build the franchise, so this one's got to be the best, got to build a good reputation. And, yeah, we put a lot of effort and a lot of money into what we do and honing in our craft. So just be wary of who you hire. Don't go after the cheapest guy, because you will probably end up costing more money down the line where you have to rehire another company to fix the cheap guy's problems. And that's not to say there's not some cheap guys that do great work. I'm not throwing off on that. There's nothing wrong with that. I respect the hustle. But if you want a legit company that has systems and operations and it's going to be consistent, that is what we're about.
Speaker 1:Justin, give us some contact information. Tell our listeners how they can get a hold of AlphaWash Pressure Washing.
Speaker 3:Absolutely so. If you wanted to contact alpha wash pressure washing to get your home washed, we come out. We do all of our estimates in person. We provide you a hard copy of the quote right there on site. You can give us a call at our office. Our office manager's name, sarah. She's going to take great care of you. Our number is 205-784-0068, or you can go on our website and fill out that get a free quote form and our website is call C-A-L-L alpha wash, a-l-p-h-a-w-a-s-hcom, and we will reach out to you within uh, typically within two hours at the max, but usually we try to get right on it. If you call us Monday through Friday eight to five, you will be answered at that time. So we answer our phones here.
Speaker 1:Awesome, justin. It's been a pleasure getting to know you. Thank you so much for coming by and introducing Alpha Pressure Wash Pressure Washing and you. It's been a pleasure getting to know you. Thank you so much for coming by and introducing Alpha Pressure Wash Pressure Washing and you. It's been a delight.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I appreciate the opportunity. This is my first podcast, so hopefully I didn't ramble too much. You aced it.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPbirminghamcom. That's gnpbirminghamcom, or call 205-952-0148.