To A Million And Beyond

#007: Blue Gander Window Cleaning - A Coach Can Make All The Difference

• Matt Willis

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In this episode of To A Million And Beyond,  Matt Willis from Wizard of Ads talks with Bow Angemi, the owner of Blue Gander Window Cleaning. From washing windows with his dad since he was eight years old, Bow's journey took a transformative turn in 2018 when he decided to expand the family business into a seven-figure enterprise. Discover how mentorship, mindset shifts, and strategic hiring played crucial roles in this incredible growth story. Bow shares insights into company culture, customer service, and leveraging technology to ensure excellence. Tune in to learn about Bow's future vision for Blue Gander, including potential franchising and impactful community contributions.

00:00 Introduction and Mindset Shift
00:33 Meet Bow Angemi: From Family Business to Empire
01:21 Early Years and Family Influence
02:16 The Turning Point: Hiring and Mentorship
07:19 Rebranding and Scaling the Business
08:32 Key Hires and Business Growth
13:37 Building a Strong Company Culture
18:36 Foundations of Integrity and Professionalism
19:40 The Magic of Pixie Dust in Business
20:40 Building a Positive Work Culture
23:04 Employee Development and Growth Pathways
24:55 Leveraging Technology for Customer Experience
26:57 Comprehensive Service Offerings
28:20 Community Impact and Charitable Contributions
33:45 Awards and Future Plans
36:21 Conclusion and Contact Information

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Bow Angemi:

that mindset Shift happened when we joined that group because we had a mentor, and, he had been through, he had a window cleaning business. He grew and sold. And mentored a table of about five businesses from around the country. And, uh, and as I went through that mentorship, that really shifted my mind as to think of, not just getting outta the field, but growing a business that's sustainable, long term and sellable.

Matt Willis:

Welcome to To A Million And Beyond. This is Matt Willis, partner with Wizard of Ads. Today we're talking to Bow Angemi, owner of Blue Gander Window Cleaning after washing windows alongside his dad since eight years old in 2018, something clicked. Bow decided to grow the family business into an empire. In this episode, you'll hear how shifting one's mindset and seeking out coaches transformed a sole proprietorship into a seven figure business with over 15 employees and over 1000 raving reviews. I hope you enjoy.

Bow Angemi:

So that's kind of interesting. You don't know. Pretty un unorthodox for your, your ex set you up. But it worked so

Matt Willis:

A, it makes for a good story. That's wonderful. And so at that time, if I'm not mistaken, you were working with your father in a window cleaning company, correct.

Bow Angemi:

right. up in the industry. I was so I started working about eight or eight or nine years old. dad had his business here in 1977. And, uh, we started working together and I just grew up in it my entire life. I did a few other things like some roof, and I helped my uncle we're an entrepreneur family, so my one uncle had a hydro seeding business. Helped him a little helped my dad, but it was the mainstay was just helping my dad run his business. Frank's window cleaning for many years, actually for many years. And, I had a business on the side pier, clear window cleaning. And then when he retired at 70 years old, he was still running up and down ladders. And I was in my forties at that time. We were busy raising kids and I was just concentrate on that more. And I don't think I had the mindset of growing it at that point. But, when he retired I was I gotta get outta the field.'cause he's in good shape. He was a little dinged up, I mean, he was 70 and I was like, I gotta get outta the field. I've been doing it most of my life. And that's when it started the journey of, hiring people and the learning curve that comes with that. It's been quite the journey.

Matt Willis:

How did you shift in mindset from I am a practitioner, I am a technician to. No, I'm an entrepreneur who is going to employ multiple people, grow this beyond myself, et cetera.

Bow Angemi:

I would say I was just looking at my first hire, which happened to be my, daughter's boyfriend at the time. And that was my first hire. He's actually still with me, seven years later.

Matt Willis:

Hmm. I.

Bow Angemi:

but yeah, I was just like, what can I do to get outta the field? To get outta the field? First step, I gotta get some people to do the job I'm doing. So I hired my first guy. And really the mind shift didn't happen until I would say. I brought my wife in a year later, which was a game changer.'Cause she had been in the commercial construction space for many years, for 20 years or so, you know. So she brought a lot of expertise on the office end of it. And just the spreadsheets, all that sort of stuff. I think the mindset mind shift happened, I would say when she convinced me to join a group. Of, entrepreneurs, a coaching group. And she convinced me, I really didn't wanna do it. I was like, no, I don't need to do that. What are you talking about? But joining that group, and

Matt Willis:

Yeah, I've been doing window cleaning forever. I don't need that.

Bow Angemi:

me to do? But I think that mindset Shift happened when we joined that group because we had a mentor, and, he had been through, he had a window cleaning business. He grew and sold. And mentored a table of about five businesses from around the country. And, uh, and as I went through that mentorship, that really shifted my mind as to think of, not just getting outta the field, but growing a business that's sustainable, long term and sellable if you want to sell it, you gotta think in the mindset of, not necessarily that you have to sell it, but if you're gonna sell it. Is everything in place so you can sell it and walk away. Or on the other flip side of it, if you get injured, is your business gonna be able to go on without you? And if the answer's no, you need to make some changes to make that happen. Otherwise, once you're hurt or injured or something happens to you, your business collapses. It's not a business, that's the way you gotta look at it.

Matt Willis:

Yeah. No, that's a great point. So was there a season in life where you pushed back on, my grandfather's a window cleaner, my father's a window cleaner. I am not going to be a window cleaner. Or were you onboard and eager the whole time?

Bow Angemi:

particularly through my twenties, I was like, I don't wanna, travel the country. I wanna do things right. But then I did have a daughter at a young age. It was unplanned. But I'll never, you know, I'll never regret that. I love having my daughter, of course. But, so that made it more of a sense of, you know, I gotta raise her, I gotta provide for her a job. And that was the most stable, easily attainable job for me. And and that's what I did through a lot in my twenties and thirties. Clear up until my, they grew up and I we're empty nesters in early forties, so it was basically raising the kids through that stretch. Just it was a stable job. And that's how it went. So yeah,

Matt Willis:

Yeah. At what point would you say it clicked from This is what I need to do in order to provide for my family to, this is what I get to do?

Bow Angemi:

I would say once that coaching mentorship happened, that's when the mind shift really started clicking. And it's just been a, it is been a, the journey of course, with the, hiring it and hiring people and just, it, it's been, it's been quite the journey for sure. There's so much to it, but just hiring and getting to know personalities and really mentorship of other people, you know, and raising them up and the long answer is, yeah, it took a minute and then it's been more, I get to work. It's been more and more that way now because we've got so many systems in place. I would say. It's been feeling more that way. You know, we got people in place, we got the right people in place and you know, we got all our office team that helps. I can focus on just being more the visionary and that's when I get to work more than I have to go, more than it coming into work as a struggle,

Matt Willis:

yeah.

Bow Angemi:

But that's kind of the long way

Matt Willis:

That's wonderful. So, then fast forward to 2018, 2017, 2018. You and your father both have, it sounded like adjacent window cleaning companies, and then it sounds like he sold his to you, his book of business, if you will in 2018, correct?

Bow Angemi:

And we were still working together, but I'd also have that on the side. Really? I was helping him run his, his was the primary but he, when he retired, he was just like, here, know, he just gave it to me basically. And because I didn't work with him so many years, so, and it was, it was valuable because we had a lot of commercial accounts, like Albertsons and stuff that we've been doing 35 plus years. There's

Matt Willis:

Oh wow.

Bow Angemi:

And so that helped for, you know, getting the base going.

Matt Willis:

Yeah.

Bow Angemi:

he's, really excited. I've grown it well beyond his wildest dreams, so he's cool. He's super stoked about it,

Matt Willis:

that's wonderful. So yeah, talk to me about those early years, like when you took over that business and you rebranded as Blue Gander, give us a feel for what the picture of the business looked like and what your initial steps were in order to take it to the next level.

Bow Angemi:

The initial picture for the business at that time was the rebrand was always to scale and grow it, into a sustainable, self sustaining entity, where I could walk away. And the ultimate goal was just to, in my mind, was I wanna be gone for 30 days a month traveling come back and the business continues to grow. And that's when, you know, without big holes or big problems, then I know that the systems are correct and in place and that's a long term visionary goal. And then with the rebrand Blue Gander, I wanted something scalable and also to the point where if I want to franchise or multiple locations, it's easily

Matt Willis:

Mm-hmm.

Bow Angemi:

Have done that with this. We haven't franchised, but we've trademarked it. We've got all the domain names. And, so it's, it's got things in place and when we get our system dialed in, then we got more opportunities to that decision. Do we wanna franchise it out or multiple locations, or what do we wanna do going forward?

Matt Willis:

Sure. So what were some of the key hires around that point? You mentioned? Bring on Robin as one. What did she bring and what additional hires would you say had the biggest impact on the trajectory of the business since 2018?

Bow Angemi:

I would say the big hire, of course, was Robin.'cause she's the implementer, so she's good with systems, she's good with the, of course, all the books. She's like a Gusto pro, and she just knows a lot of that stuff. So that's been a great'cause. I'm the visionary and, and she's more of the implementer and it works well and having us both. In our lanes for the most part, most time. That's been a key aspect. And the other key hires I would say would be my having a really good, office manager. could take all the calls off plate and my plate and do all the followups and do all the office things. And the other key hire would be the operation manager.'cause he would be able to, he took off, I was a direct, all the technicians, I was the direct for them. So once I got the operation manager in there, it freed up my time a lot to where I could focus on other things.

Matt Willis:

It sounds like, even though I think this book is fairly recent, if you've heard the book buy Back Your Time by I think Dan Martel, he talks a lot about, you know, replacing yourself in your business instead of hiring for cookie cutter templated roles, think about what are you spending your time doing and hire that, and that's kind of the theme that I've gotten from you from the very first hire you mentioned to your daughter's boyfriend being, hey. This guy can help me get outta the field.

Bow Angemi:

That's right. It's hire your replacements in each position. You start out with multiple hats, right? You're the one answering the phones. Servicing the job. You're the one bidding the job. You're the one, doing all the callbacks, if there is any callbacks, you know, I mean, you're just taking their, all the hats. So just hiring your replacement for each position, and you keep taking off the hats until you're Looking at the vision from 30,000 feet versus, being in the weeds. So that's where the hat, the ultimate hat is, being the visionary and just looking at the big picture without having

Matt Willis:

Yeah.

Bow Angemi:

coming at you all the time that cloud your memory, you know, cloud your thoughts. You can have a much clearer focus on things.

Matt Willis:

Yeah. So what does the day-to-day look like for you as the visionary who has been able to delegate so many of your

Bow Angemi:

So right now now the, the role for me is I'd still, you know, I do a couple of the I'll do some of the big, I'm still caressing the bigger commercial account. I'll do some networking, you know,

Matt Willis:

Sure.

Bow Angemi:

you know, get our name out there, some more networking stuff. I'll do that. But of time it's just spin on focus time. Like what do we need to progress and excel our business forward? What steps do I need to make? And that's been, that's a big part of it.

Matt Willis:

Yeah, so you have over, meaning Blue Gander has over 1100 reviews averaging 4.9 stars. I am very curious how you have ensured high quality of service in a high turnover industry.

Bow Angemi:

kind of a cool story. So, so we've designed a whole hiring program that's, automated, everybody that applies for the job there's a test they take and it scales'em on a one to 10. And and anybody under a seven it's designed for trades and anybody under a seven will get bumped out or they'll get reviewed anything, seven or above. they will, go onto the next phase so they can schedule an interview. We do group interviews, so we bring in a whole group. They don't know at the time, that we bring in a whole group. We'll interview'em all. We'll tell'em our story, where we're going, what our vision is. Then you get a look at everybody. You get a, a kind of vet who you really want to keep. And, this worked well. We go through and find the people that are the key hires that are right for that position based on their test scores.'cause it's a, it's designed for lead technicians, you know, technicians, office manager service, all those things are on the test score and it's really accurate. I mean, it, it's a game changer and just bringing in those right people and keeping'em longer and, building a culture and treating your employees well is another key aspect to keeping people around.

Matt Willis:

So I wanna get into technology, but before we pivot toward technology, diving deeper into employee stuff like. Every business says, Hey, we, we have a great culture. We strive for a great culture. What are some specifics that you guys do to help make that actually happen?

Bow Angemi:

Well, one of the key things is you, hire for culture fit. Not only just can they do the job, but somebody that it's gonna fit into our culture with the team that you have. And that helps assimilate'em easily into it. But one of the things we do, some of the things we do that are fun with the team is we'll do quarterly outings. So we did paint balling with them last time. We're going camping with the group. So we get everybody involved in team, aspect of things. And uh, and that's been great. And it's just keeping that positive vibe. If you have a rotten egg in the barrel, or apple in the barrel, they can ruin it for everybody. So, so we try not to, we try not to keep those around or promote'em to another business. You know, we try to keep the culture high and the people, you want on the team that exemplify, we got like core values and they gotta we live and die by all these core values, you know? So if they don't exemplify those

Matt Willis:

Mm-hmm.

Bow Angemi:

Then they're, we gotta promote'em to another company. But we try to keep that morale high. And when we do all kinds of, I supply like all the snacks, you know, drinks they want every week, I'll supply to'em. Just little things like that make a difference to you. But just

Matt Willis:

Yeah.

Bow Angemi:

in a positive atmosphere.

Matt Willis:

What are some of your primary core values and what are some of the means by which you. Ingrain them in your employees.

Bow Angemi:

I'll tell you our core values. The first one's integrity, it take pride and be honest, and, uh, accountability and always do the right thing even when nobody's looking. And then there's growth. Embrace learning, innovation and, continuous self-improvement. Dependability, basically in a nutshell, take ownership and always follow through on your promises. then there's kindness, building lasting relationships. Through respect, care, both within the community with in the company, and then our last one is Unity, you know, supporting each other to strive for a common good. So those are important things for us, and we, a lot of times we'll exemplify. One thing we do like in, we have team meetings. The leadership or technician meetings are on and, my operation manager leads those. And he'll call out one person each week and say, Hey, you exemplified Unity and this is why. And we'll have an example of that. So we try to put that at the forefront of who we are,

Matt Willis:

That's wonderful.

Bow Angemi:

how our culture is, you know, and if somebody's, not shown one of the, core values, we just have a conversation and say, Hey, we gotta address this a little bit or something, we try to have

Matt Willis:

Yeah.

Bow Angemi:

with them. It's not like you did this wrong, you know, get in somebody's face, you know, you're high, you're, you're gone. That sort of thing. It's more of a conversation.

Matt Willis:

Yeah, I love that you are keeping these things top of mind. Oftentimes, there'll be old, dusty values that are placed on the website and maybe on the wall of the break room, but then if you ask any of the employees, they don't know what they are and they certainly don't influence the culture. It takes that constant reinforcement in order to actually ingrain them into people. And as I was reviewing, probably a few hundred of the reviews for Blue Gander, they very much matched the sentiment in the values. Hey, these people, they actually showed up on time. Whereas a lot of home service businesses, like, we'll give you a 14 hour window and we'll still show up late. No, you guys show up on time. You guys do phenomenal work. You guys own any kind of mistakes and anyway, it was neat to hear those core values after reading so many reviews and seeing that's where it all stems from because we think of marketing as an extension of culture. If you have great marketing but a horrible culture, that bad culture is going to catch up to you and is going to prevent growth or at least healthy growth. And so what you guys, it sounds like are doing or you're promoting a phenomenally healthy culture and so however much marketing you're doing, the culture is really bolstering you to the extent that you are.

Bow Angemi:

Yeah. that's absolutely right. It starts from the inside out. You build your culture, find good people, you build a, a good culture and then it translates into the work you do.'cause you can't go out and. Sell work and tell'em how great you are, and then not deliver on that promise. And that's one of the things that are important to us to deliver on the promises we make, so that's a big

Matt Willis:

Yeah.

Bow Angemi:

And, yeah, and like you said the reviews kind of speak for themselves. People will chime in the way the experience they had, if ever, ever is a problem, we like to get back there asap, you know, within 24 hours we'll make it right. We treat every, every

Matt Willis:

Yeah,

Bow Angemi:

important,

Matt Willis:

so the emphasis on integrity and professionalism, et cetera, when did those become instilled in who you are and what you value?

Bow Angemi:

I think from early on, even when I worked as a solo entrepreneur I always took pride in my work, you know, and that always translates, I didn't wanna come in, do a. A shoddy job and, and then walk away. want to go in there. You do clean somebody's property and you walk away and they're smiling happy about it. You build a relationship and then walk away, feeling good about yourself, you never want to go in there and just, do a shoddy job or break something, or do something. Just walk away and not tell anybody, you know, that sort of thing. But yeah, so it started early For me. Because once I did that and I just wanna steal that in everybody around me I, I held, hold everybody to a higher standard, and it, it just, it's just, I guess just the way I was rooted, the way I was raised,'cause it just nos at me if there's not somebody's not doing their, something to the best of their a their ability. That just it's just kind of part of who I am, I guess.

Matt Willis:

That's really neat and I feel like it's really hard to maintain employees in any home service organization. But it seems like you guys are doing an above average job at that because of that culture. Because you're not just giving them a job. You're providing a, people spend say 40 hours a week working and having a positive experience where you feel like you're doing good for other people. That accounts for a lot in people's mind.

Bow Angemi:

Because it, spends a good chunk of their time at a job, right? You want that experience to be good. You wanna be able to go into work. And be happy to go into work, not like dreading it every day, and we want all our employees to feel like they're, special and unique. And they have a safe place to work, place they can be happy to come to. And that's important to us,

Matt Willis:

Yeah, even though it doesn't pay immediate dividends, it's like you could save money by not providing those snacks. You could save money by not providing the extensive benefits that you do. You could save money by an increased profitability in the short term. But it sounds like whether, and I'm curious where you learned this, like was it coaching or otherwise, but by making these investments in culture, even though in the short term it comes across like a big hit on profitability, it seems like you're far beyond the tipping point of realizing, hey, we might not be able to track the revenue benefits from these investments. But they're absolutely there.

Bow Angemi:

I think a large part of it is sim For my wife, she was always a big advocate of you know, wanting to treat our employees well. That's why we provide like full healthcare, health, healthcare Forum. We provide, life and disability. We provide 3%, you know, retirement match if they wanna do that. We provide all these things because. and then, you know, medical, I mean, we got dental, we got, yeah, we do all these things just because, she believes in treating everybody well as we can. You know, it does affect the, you know, the bottom line. It costs more to operate for sure. I won't lie about that, but I think it just builds a good culture and we get good people in here and it pays dividend,

Matt Willis:

Yeah.

Bow Angemi:

for everybody.

Matt Willis:

Yeah, that's huge. So we've talked a bit about how you hire people as well as how you build the culture, but I'm curious what your process looks like to develop your people for the future.

Bow Angemi:

So we have like a path for him. So you start out as a one star technician, then you can go up to five star field lead. So there's a clearly defined. A path for'em. So they have something to look forward to. You know, you do some things, you do some training you watch some videos, you do, uh, recent books, and you can move up the chain. It has a clear defined path. So I think that was important early on. We implemented that a few years ago, and that's been really a big game changer because then you have somewhere you

Matt Willis:

Yeah.

Bow Angemi:

they're not just coming in to work, say, oh. I've made it. That's it. They know they can move up the ladder, you can make more pay, you can have more responsibilities and all that sort of thing. And that gives somebody a vision as well.

Matt Willis:

Yeah, it's incredible.'cause right there you laid out, this is not a dead end job. Which even that inspires a lot of enthusiasm. Hope and confidence is the one potential thought on your mind, these employees, as part of the potential growth for them. Eventually, they could be become franchise owners.

Bow Angemi:

if it's the right person, absolutely. Yeah. That's never off the table. And I always look at, as we expand too, we'll need like more service managers and things like that. And I'm always looking at people that can jump into those bigger roles. The bigger office type leadership role. Definitely. You'll notice the people that are the ones that are good fits for things, and the, it kind of rises to the top. And, but yeah, no, I'm always looking at that.'cause that's all part of the vision, trying to put the right people in the right seat, for what their strong suit is. And, excelling from there,

Matt Willis:

yeah. So shifting to technology, how big of a role has technology played in. The growth and experience that customers have with your brand.

Bow Angemi:

I think technology is one of the key features, you know, and fortunately my wife is really

Matt Willis:

Hmm.

Bow Angemi:

At technology, she's super good, but she's really excelled at. But having a robust, system in the backend for followups, for emails, for all sorts of things, that no customer's left behind of mantra, all that stuff. It's just been key to maintaining constant growth. And not losing customers, and not somebody forgot about. It's been huge.

Matt Willis:

Sure. What are some examples of areas in the customer journey that you have, embedded technology to improve customer experience, for example? Communication with the customer. That's another reoccurring theme I saw in the reviews. Do you have technology that automates that?

Bow Angemi:

from the time customers upload into the system, you know, they'll, get a, a follow. Let's say you schedule a job, they'll get a follow up. As soon as they schedule, they'll get a follow up. Let'em know the day and time we're coming, they'll get follow ups. As it gets closer, they'll get a text going out the day before to reminder to let him know. And then the day of, we will hit, the guys will hit on the way. And what'll come up is a, automated, picture of the technician coming to the house and a little bio about him, his hobbies who he is. So the customer feels comfortable way before the technician ever shows up to their property. And so that's just one of the aspects of how that life journey would be from schedule to you. The time the technician shows up. So when they come to the front door, they're like, oh, it was nice for you to, you know, it's nice to meet you and stuff. And it's just a more it's just a, yeah, it's a calming effect for everybody.

Matt Willis:

There's more of a personal connection,

Bow Angemi:

Yep.

Matt Willis:

so you as a organization have a number of services that you include. You mind running us through that, including both residential and commercial.

Bow Angemi:

well, right now our services consist of we've, concentrated'em a bit more. So our services is on the residential and commercial side. We do window cleaning is what our main focus is. Then we also do pressure washing. So we got a hot wash system for all flat work, like concrete, it works great for cleaning oil, any deep embedded stains. And then we got also soft wash setups for buildings and siding and on on the commercial. That's on residential and commercial. And then the higher rise commercial, we got the, uh, drone, which can, uh, utilize, usually we'll use that anywhere from three or four stories on up. And, uh, we utilize that for windows and siding so we can do a soft wash siding as well as clean the windows. And that's kind of in a nutshell, Mainstay services. We also do gutter cleaning in the fall and holiday lighting in the fall, so temporary Christmas lighting. We put up that every year. So we've been

Matt Willis:

Yeah.

Bow Angemi:

that about six years, the holiday lighting, that's been fun.

Matt Willis:

Yeah. Nice. So you guys, just by the work that you guys are doing, you guys are contributing to the community by, serving people by cleaning their windows. What other impact are you guys having on the community?

Bow Angemi:

of the things we're really proud about is that every month we pick a different charity of the month. And so, give a percentage of every job scheduled that charity every month. So we've been able to give thousands of dollars away Like a Red Cross. month, it's Idaho Youth Ranch. VA rep was last month. We did Meridian Canine Rescue. We've done a number of just, great organizations. You get to know them personally. It just makes you feel good to give back to the community whenever you can. We're still a small business, we can give back to our community that's helped, given us so much and it's a big deal to us. Yeah.

Matt Willis:

Do you guys have a specific, like defined mission, like we want to have x, Y, Z impact on the community?

Bow Angemi:

Yes. I think our vision is service, service growth and community impact. So

Matt Willis:

I.

Bow Angemi:

are kind of our three. So we wanna excel in our service. Of course, the. To, to our customers, our growth post internally, our internally with the technicians and external, externally, you know, making everybody a better person, when they leave as when they arrive, and then community impact that goes back to all our, charitable work and just, brightening up our community, and being a good steward of our community. That's a big deal to us. So that's kind of our vision for that, you

Matt Willis:

Yeah, that's really neat. One of the things that you shared with me previously was we want to be a steward of the community and not simply take from the community. And I love that perspective and just like you just said we want to contribute to the community that has given us so much. Living in the same sort of community that you do, I can vouch for just how remarkable and wonderful this community is. So, absolutely love that. What gets you energized about what you get to do with Blue Gander? Is it more the community stuff? Is it more the employee stuff, getting to serve the customers? Like what gets you fired up the most?

Bow Angemi:

a, it's a mix to the community as far as that just really makes you good and warm inside, either through volunteer work or, you know, providing, a check to somebody to put, to good use. But, uh, also on, uh, the employee end of it, providing a good, stable job for these guys and gals. And, um, it not, it's not only for them, it's for their, their whole family, it makes me feel good to provide something for these guys, you know, somewhere they're happy to come in and put in as good day's work and get rewarded at the end, it's nice. So I feel good.

Matt Willis:

Yeah, that's great. I'm curious, you have a number of reviews that talk about, how great the, they're. The customer's experience was, I'm curious if you could offer an example of a time where you guys went above and beyond to deliver, and yes, I'm asking you to brag about yourself here, but here's the thing. Every company out there says we offer the best customer service. And so what I'm asking is. What's an example of a big hurdle that you guys have overcome in order to do right by the customer?

Bow Angemi:

that's a good question. That sticks out would be, we do like, there's a Broadway, Albertsons we do

Matt Willis:

I.

Bow Angemi:

month. We've been doing his for probably 35, 38 years every month. Didn't do, they weren't, uh, particularly satisfied with some of the, uh, flat work at one time before he had the hot wash. So we went back and we washed down. We had the drone, so we went back and washed down his, uh, his whole side of his building, all the signs for him. For nothing. You know, we just, Hey, I called him up. Hey, do you mind if I come Down and just clean, you know, your signs up?'cause they were full of cobwebs and stuff and was super appreciative of that. You know, he didn't ask us to do that. And he was like, he would've been fine. You Yeah. he would, we would still have the job and stuff. But I was like, it's the same director I've known for, for all this time. He's the same one. He is been at the Broadway before his, the old Broadway was just a little building before they made the Market street. And so we went out there and we took care of that for him and he was super appreciative and I appreciate him. I mean, he's a long-term customer and he is just been super good to us. And I was like our standard, that wasn't up to our standards. So I was like, we'll, go back and we'll just do this for you. It cost me of course, but it was, you

Matt Willis:

Yeah.

Bow Angemi:

his money well spent,

Matt Willis:

yeah, a hundred percent. Thank you for that. I'm curious it from a business standpoint, do you see more opportunity for growth in the residential or in the commercial space?

Bow Angemi:

well, a little bit of both'cause there is a lot of, uh, we do about 50 50, so there is a lot of residential that, uh, there's so many people moving here as you know, it this place, it is not slowing down anytime soon. So the residential is still grow, but, um, I'm focused. Me and, uh, yeah, my sales reps we're focused a lot more on, uh, the big commercial accounts and some storefront, but more reoccurring work. We'd love to get, just have that reoccurring schedule, weekly and monthly going through the winter, because that helps a bunch for us through the winter, January, February, around here, just like January and February, we have our commercial accounts, but To, to. Remain providing all these things to everybody here, so we're kind of focused on the commercial end of it a lot for that, but we

Matt Willis:

Okay.

Bow Angemi:

grow with the residential as well.

Matt Willis:

Yeah. No, not surprising at all. So everything that we've talked about today from customer experience, employee engagement slash culture, has all led to Blue Gander winning a few awards. Can you share which awards you've won and how you're building off of that success going forward?

Bow Angemi:

So, yeah, so I hate to brag about that, but yeah, so some of the stuff we won is Idaho's best. So we won the best of the Treasure Valley, and once you get into that pool, there's the, there's, you're in the Final Four, there's Northern Idaho Central, Eastern Idaho, and then the Treasure Valley. So you go to the award for the best of the state, Idaho's best for the statewide winner, and we won the last two years in a row for the statewide winner. And it's not a easy one to win because you gotta have the, goes by Google reviews your BBB rating. People can only vote once for you. So it's not a daily vote. It's actually it's a pretty legit system and, uh, and we're pretty proud to

Matt Willis:

Mm-hmm.

Bow Angemi:

Two years we put in for it. For statewide. And then on the, we've also won the Boise Metro Chamber Small Business of the year, for the 11 to 50 employees. And, uh, we're really proud about that.'cause that one's a hard one to get. We put in for it for the last three years and you get nominated, and then you end up the final three. And we, we got it. We won it this year. So that's super exciting. That's a pretty big deal and we're really proud of that one. Those are a couple of the examples of the things we've done. Yeah.

Matt Willis:

Yeah, that's wonderful. And so having won all of those awards and grown the business as much as you have, what's next?

Bow Angemi:

So what's next for us? We're continue the trajectory, uh, see in the valley here, since this is, uh, you know, we're still growing. Kind of see where we end up, see how far we can get. Uh, Groan around the locally and then we'll de then we'll look into, that point, we'll look into whether to branch out to other big cities see where that takes us. The main focus is getting our systems super dialed in so it can be a plug and play. We wanna move, we wanna franchise. just plug it in the next place and you're able to scale and go, hit the ground running get our marketing dialed in all of that stuff and that'll be the future goal, right now we'll saturate the area and see what happens, and we're always open to, if somebody's tired of being in the field too, we're always open. I'll throw that out there. We're always open to acquire other businesses. I mean, we, we acquired Tree City Window Cleaning last year, and and we're always open to that, so just something to kind of throw out there as well.

Matt Willis:

Yeah. That's wonderful. Bow Angemi, it has truly been a pleasure connecting with you today. Thank you for taking the time to connect. If anyone wants to learn more about Blue Gander, you can learn more at CallBlueGander.com. Again, that's CallBlueGander.com. Bow, thank you so much my friend.

Bow Angemi:

I appreciate it. This has been fun.