Good Neighbor Podcast: Tri-Cities
Bringing together local businesses and neighbor of the Tri-Cities region. Good Neighbor Podcast hosted by Skip Mauney helps residents discover and connect with your local business owners in and around The Tri-Cities.
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Good Neighbor Podcast: Tri-Cities
EP# 122: Finding Fulfillment in Change: Richard Harbin's Journey from Finance to Top Notch Pressure Washing Service
What makes Richard Harbin with Top Notch Pressure Washing Service a good neighbor?
Can a career change bring unexpected fulfillment and lessons in living life to the fullest? Richard Harbin, the owner of Top Notch Pressure Washing Service, shows us it can. After years in the finance world as a VP and senior asset manager, Richard discovered his passion for pressure washing during a family gathering that would change his life forever. His story is one of synchronicity, where a simple observation of subpar work led to a thriving business driven by a commitment to quality and excellence. In this episode, Richard shares how this unexpected career pivot allowed him to teach his son the values of hard work and consistency, all while finding personal therapy in the art of pressure washing.
Journey with Richard through the scenic beauty of Kingsport, Tennessee, as he recounts outdoor adventures that have marked his path of personal growth, including the heartrending loss of his mother to cancer. Richard's perspective on cherishing life's fleeting moments is both moving and motivational. His enthusiasm for meticulous service in his pressure washing business is infectious, and he shares the challenges he has faced, including rebuilding his online presence. Join us as we celebrate Richard's resilient spirit and hopeful outlook for the future, demonstrating how life's unexpected turns can lead to a deeper appreciation for the present.
To learn more about Top Notch Pressure Washing Service go to:
https://business.google.com/v/top-notch-pressure-washing-service/05816585685368661071/b93a/_?
Top Notch Pressure Washing Service
(865) 455-7622
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Skip Monning.
Speaker 2:Well, hello everyone and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. So we have a very interesting guest with us today and I'm pretty excited to learn more about him and his businesses actually multiple businesses because today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, mr Richard Harbin, who is the owner operator of Top Notch Pressure Washing Service. Richard, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me in.
Speaker 3:Great privilege to be picked out of everybody in the Tri-Cities area to do this, so thank you.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for being here because I know you're a busy guy. You run multiple businesses, like I said, really interested to learn all about you and what you do. So if you don't mind, why don't you tell us about your business?
Speaker 3:Well, top Notch Pressure Washing. We've been in business for about nine years now. We're located. I live right here in Kingsport, right across the river from the Netherlands Inn, so we're about as down home as you can get. We service everywhere. I go all the way up to Abingdon. I go into North Carolina it just depends on the job and how bad they need it. So a lot of people. One of the reasons I started the job was because I noticed that there was some companies doing poor quality and kind of an interesting story. How I started this job was because I noticed that there was some companies doing poor quality and kind of an interesting story. How I started this job it goes back to my.
Speaker 3:I used to be in the finance business. I actually retired a few years ago as a VP of finance for an equity firm, but before I was a VP of finance, I was a senior asset manager. A senior asset manager, we manage notes and mortgages and things like that. We also get properties back that we have to maintain till we can resell them. So I have to hire property managers, I have to hire realtors, you have to hire lawyers. It's just a boondoggle of what you got to do, but one of the things I was doing was hiring vendors around the country to take care of properties. And I take the invoice to my VP of finance and he says, man, we're in the wrong business, we're paying these guys too much money. And so I kind of yeah, you're right. And so Synchronicity. I love the police, the band, the police and that Synchronicity song. I've always looked for synchronicity in life and this is one of them.
Speaker 3:My sister-in-law and brother-in-law bought a house in Churchill and we used to flip homes in Knoxville. So I've done so much painting of homes that, man, I never want to touch a bucket of paint again. And so when they said, hey, we're going to have a paint party, I said, man, I got a pressure washer sitting around here. Why don't I pressure wash for you instead of painting? They said, great. So I put my headphones in, put the pressure washer on, and, man, I fell in love with it. I told my wife. I said, man, I never knew this about myself, but I think I might be autistic, because I put the music on and I got the headphones and I'm sitting there like I just get this, I get in this trance and it's man, it's like, it's like therapy I mean it really is. And I get to sing loud pressure washers right there and nobody hears me. So it's a win-win for everybody as far as that goes. But so I get the hook everything up. I was just gonna pressure wash the front porch and sidewalk and stuff, but I end up doing the whole house the gutters, driveway, everything. I absolutely love it. They were in there painting all day long. They don't. They hadn't painted as much as I had and so it took them forever. So I end up doing the whole house. Everything took before and after pictures.
Speaker 3:Well, this is where the synchronicity comes in. So that's my boss saying hey, we, we're in the wrong business. Um, the neighbor across the street from my sister and brother-in-law's house sister-in-law and brother-in-law's house they are getting their house pressure washed the same day I'm doing this. So the guy finishes up, I'm guessing, and he leaves, and so I go across the street and I say, hey, man, how much did he charge you for that? And she said $354. I don't remember the cost. It was almost 10 years ago, you know. So $354 or something like that. And I said when is he coming back to finish? And she said what do you mean I said, well, look at this and look at this and look at this. I said, surely he's not done. She said, well, I paid him. I think he's done. And once I pointed it out to her she was like, well, now I can't unsee it. Can you fix it, because I don't want to go back to fix it? And I said, sure, a hundred bucks, I'll fix it for you, right? So that gave me the idea of this little sidebar.
Speaker 3:My son is about nine years old at the time. You know he's a product of our society, getting wussified a little bit, but one of the reasons I learned hard work and learned how to do things. I grew up in Chicago, the city of broad shoulders, and I was cutting lawns. I grew up by a marina. I was working in my uncle's garage. So I grew up, you know, learning how to work and you know one of the things I always teach my son is do anything like you, do everything. You should approach everything the same way as far as how the quality of work you put into it. And I didn't really have an avenue to teach my son that, and so I thought well, you know what? I'm going to start a pressure washing business. Judging from what I've seen, we need to step up in service and a reduction in prices. And I get to do this and not be in a studio. My job now is I'm a TV producer for Motorhead, garage and some other shows. I produce TV for TV and I'm in a studio or an office all day long, so after work I get to come out, put my headphones on, be outside work with my hands, make something old look new again, and it really is rewarding and that's one of the reasons I also do it.
Speaker 3:But the main reason I started doing it was to teach my son hard work how to run a business. You know now, at 17, he can do all the. He can do the bidding on it. He knows how to do the supply, what we need for the supplies. He can do any of the jobs that I do. I trust him completely to do that. He knows about the cost of doing business invoicing, taxes, marketing. He's learned all this by 17,. But more importantly, he's learned hard work. And that's you know we. We pressure wash the side of the fence that people don't see, the same as we pressure wash the side of the fence that people do see. It's us who will judge? Not the other people, right? We, we have our own bar that we established and very few people come up to that and we don't judge our bar by other people's bar. And so I've got to teach him that by 17 years old.
Speaker 3:And another thing I got this was I didn't think about this when we were talking earlier, but he's learned project management from this also Because, like, we do a big driveway. I'll never forget it was about 10, 11 when I had him start doing driveways first, because it's hard to screw up concrete, right, so you can do it, but it's really hard to do it. So I said, hey, you're going to do this big driveway. He's like I can't, how am I going to do this whole driveway? I said this is what you're going to do. You're going to take one section of this driveway, a six by six, 10 by 10 area, and you're only going to do this area. You're not even going to worry about the rest of the driveway, You're just going to focus on this area until you get exactly right and then you're going to move to the next 10 by 10 area and you're going to do that. So, as a result of that, he's learned how to do project management and prioritization of skills and what you have to do. So that was like football spike right.
Speaker 3:But then something else happened. You know, god blessed me in the fact that, because of the way we do work and the professionalism we have in our business man, I started getting calls from commercial, from, you know commercial companies PALS, eastman, credit Union, popeyes, t-mobile these are all places that we pressure wash now that I didn't even plan on doing commercial when I went into it. It's just that there was a void there because of poor service and overcharging that I was able to step into. So now, nine years later, we are and I started doing Google ads before anybody else also. So I was the first one in the Tri-Cities. We had Tri-City. You put in pressure washing in Tri-Cities. I was actually sponsored. I was the only sponsored one. So as a result of that, I've had a huge you know, huge following and a lot of people come in through that way and that's where the commercial business came in. So I've been pretty fortunate that.
Speaker 3:You know, it was just one of those things the right place, right time, paying attention to your surroundings and then filling a void to teach my kid how to do hard work and run a business. All three of those things came together into doing something. I absolutely found out I love to do. So I'm 56 years old Now. People are like man, you've already retired as a VP, you definitely don't need the money.
Speaker 3:Why do you do it? I said you don't understand when I tell you that it's like therapy. I don't want to go to a gym after work. I've been in a studio or an office all day long, so I don't want to go inside another building. I'm an outdoor person, right. I get to go outside, I get to listen to music, I get to dance a little bit. I actually thought about doing some TikTok while I'm pressure washing on my, while my my dancing, while I pressure wash and I get to make something old look new again. The looks on people's faces when I come. They go, wow, that's amazing, right, that's. That is totally. I mean, that's it right there. So all those things colliding into something I love to do. It just turned into top-notch pressure washing and you know, it's like I told my son. I said I'm not teaching to run a pressure washing business, I'm teaching you to run a business. You know we approach this business the same way we would if we had a bank.
Speaker 2:Right. And so that is yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 3:Well, all those things have worked together, and then you know, god blessed me with a good health, and and and good son.
Speaker 2:Well, congratulations on nine years. So you're coming up on 10, apparently. And and is that something your son's going to take over the business eventually?
Speaker 3:No, no, no, I'll beat him if he does. No, I'm just kidding. No, he's actually. He's a techie like me. So he's actually he's got a 3D printer right here. He's taking a drone pilot you know the commercial certification for drone pilots. So he's going to actually get into. He's going to ETSU, he's going to be doing robotics, coding, that type of thing, and so I want him to get into drones also, because if you can fix drones, program drones and work on drones, you're going to have 10 years from now. You're going to be in demand.
Speaker 3:Yep, maybe even before that. Yeah, I agree, but 10 years, when he's sitting in in the middle of life, he'll have a job skill, that's. That's nothing else he can fall back on if he doesn't want to do whatever he goes to school for. But he's a, he's a computer kid, he's a tech guy and he's really smart. He'll, he'll be doing that stuff, I imagine. In fact, you know my goal, my thought process of doing this whole thing, is that he gets good at IT and doing that type of stuff and he starts his own business. Now he knows how to run a business. It doesn't work for somebody else.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. Well, richard, what are some myths or misconceptions in the pressure wash? You kind of touched on a couple of things, but in the pressure, washing business.
Speaker 3:what's a misconception that you run into? That it's easy, that you can do it and do it as well as I can. Right, yeah, for everybody listening. If you're not aware of what the 10,000 hours thing is, go ahead and Google it. But when you spend eight hours doing this a day and you've done over 500 homes, you learn certain things and certain tricks and certain trouble spots that you don't as a homeowner. And so I think the biggest misconception is I can do that. In fact, my most rewarding things are like well, you know, my husband did that, but it didn't look this good. Or even when the husband says, man, that looks a lot better than I can do it, I'm like that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2:That's right Quality is everything that's right. That's right. Well, outside of work, Richard, what do you like to do for fun?
Speaker 3:Well, we live right on, like I said, we live right on the river here across from Nelland. So, man, we do a lot of kayaking. I've got a pool table right here, we play a lot of pool. We have a pool out back. So our house is actually called Wasserhaus Harbin, which is German for water house, and so we spend. We're either down at the river fishing, we're kayaking, we're in the pool, we play pool here. We've got upstairs on on our outside deck we have a foosball table, so we play foosball. Just a lot of, just a lot of fun stuff and uh, wow, what kind of fishing.
Speaker 3:Do you do just, uh, whatever, just basically for bass and whatever we can pull out of here. We really don't get much out of here. We get catfish once in a while. In fact, one of the coolest things I saw is not totally not related at all. They were doing some night fishing over here about a year ago and, man, they were pulling out these six foot catfish. It was unbelievable. I didn't know they were in this river, right, so uh, but we, we like to kayak a lot.
Speaker 3:If you go up up from our house, if you go up to Ridgeport Riverport and put in right by the water treatment plant, it's about an hour and a half cruise back down, go through like two or three cool rapids that, if you go at the right time, they're really tough to get through and a really challenge. So we do a lot of that. And then there's a basketball court here, so we're always trying to do something outside. I try to get my kid out of the bedroom as much as I can Say let's play some foosball, let's go shoot some food.
Speaker 2:Let's go down the river and just talk some BS.
Speaker 3:Well, it sounds like we're in a great place.
Speaker 2:What river, what river are we on? We're right here in Holston, right here in Kingsport, holston. Oh wow, port, oh wow, some big trout in there.
Speaker 3:I'm a fly fishing guy, so oh yeah, yeah well, right where we are, we're right where the there were, the sleuth and the south fork come together. I mean I literally live like if you out my window, right there is another one in. So we literally live right where those two come together and that's great fishing. I mean that's where you know all the shoals are. So if you're gonna do fly fishing, those shoals are perfect for you.
Speaker 2:I'll be there shortly.
Speaker 1:Come on down.
Speaker 2:I'm just kidding. So well, let's change gears for a second. Richard. What could you describe a hardship or a life challenge that you've overcome at some point, either professionally or personally, and how it made you stronger?
Speaker 3:I guess, losing my mom. You know, about 12 years ago, man, I was a mama's boy and I wasn't prepared for it, man it was. She died of cancer and she died within six months of getting it and finding found out and it was really hard for me not to be mad at God, and you know, and fortunately I came to grips with it and got some good counseling and and and through you know, help with scripture and good counseling I was able to. You know, it is a part of life and deal with it and go on. But it did it really. You know the Tim McGraw song Live Like you Were Dying, Right, you hear that song and until something like this happens, it's just this kind of words Right, you get it, but you don't get it.
Speaker 3:And then when something like your mom dies, your dad dies or you know, heaven forbid a killer. You really. I mean, I was always kind of seized the day anyways, but after that I really really turned it up and try not to have any wasted time, as the eagle says.
Speaker 2:Amen, really that's super important. So good, good thing, good thing, richard. What's if you could think of one thing that you would like our listeners to remember about top notch pressure washing, and you, what would that be?
Speaker 3:That we are excellent in the excellence in service. I'm literally as a former VP of finance. You can't miss a single detail. You understand and you take that same thought process. Pressure washing it literally is. And my wife says I'm OCD and I tell her no, it's CDO, because that's the way the letters are supposed to go. But so you know, I have a little bit of OCD and so I'm really, really, really. I mean, I don't need the money, I don't do it for the money, I do it because I love to do it and I love the result I get at the end of it, how great it looks. Especially when I come up to a house that's kind of clean. I'm like, yeah, ok, we'll do it. But if I come up and your house hasn't been touched in 10 years and it's a different color and you don't remember what the original color was, man, that's the house I want to pressure wash. Right, you want to make a difference.
Speaker 2:Yes, Absolutely Awesome. Well, if somebody's interested commercial or private household is interested in calling you getting a quote, how can they get in contact? Well, we have.
Speaker 3:Richard's 865-455-7622. It's Richard, 865-455-7622. And then just top notch pressure washer on Google. We're a-star rated, top rated Google ads company. Also same on Facebook. Facebook deleted my old account because of political posts, of all things, and so I had to start a whole new Facebook page. So there's two Top Notch Pressure Washing pages out there. They're both mine, but the newer one, you'll see it says this is the new page. I got blocked by Zuckerberg. So that's top pressure washing and 865-455-7622.
Speaker 2:All right, very good. Well, richard, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you taking time to spend some time with us, Appreciate it so much and I wish you and your family, your son and top-notch pressure washing all the best moving forward.
Speaker 3:Thank you and Happy New Year to you and your family, and God bless you and everybody out there.
Speaker 2:Same to you and maybe we can get you back on the show to talk about some of your other adventures in life.
Speaker 3:I tell you, producing shows for Motorhead Garage and for Motor Trend Network is an absolute blast. I could tell you a whole bunch of really cool stories from that one, in fact the other one. I'll tell you my other job. I got stories about where I was a server, an asset manager I'm talking about like where we couldn't sell properties because the FBI were coming in looking for bodies from where it used to be a gangster's, a mob member's mansion. We got two other podcasts that would be really interesting stuff. But the pressure washing I love to do it. I do it because I love the end result. I love teaching my kid how to do hard work and it's just fun being outside.
Speaker 2:All right, well, again, thank you, and we'll definitely get you back to talk about your, your gangster stories and the TV show as well. Outstanding, I really appreciate it All right. Thanks so much, and happy new year to you as well.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the good neighbor podcast to nominate your. I really appreciate it. All right, thanks so much and Happy New Year to you as well. Happy New Year. Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnptry-citiescom. That's gnptry-citiescom, or call 423-719-5873.