Clean for Profit
Clean for Profit helps window cleaners and home-service pros grow a real, profitable business through practical marketing, systems, and interviews with successful operators.
Clean for Profit
The $100K Window Cleaning Blueprint (What Actually Matters)
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If you’re trying to build a $100K window cleaning business, this episode is for you.
Dave and I break down the real roadmap to getting there but more importantly, the foundational principles that actually make it sustainable. Not just hitting $100K once, but building something that keeps growing without burning you out.
We talk about what actually moves the needle early on, where most guys get stuck, and how to think about growth the right way. From getting your first consistent jobs, to dialing in your systems, to building something that doesn’t fall apart the second you step away.
If you’ve been grinding but feel stuck, or you’re trying to do this the right way from the start, this will give you a much clearer path.
If you’re serious about growing your window cleaning business, make sure you’re subscribed and share this with someone else in the game.
A lot of people ask me when they're first starting their window cleaning business how to make their first $100,000. And it's actually a lot easier than you would think, but there are some things that are really important to get right the first time. And there's things that if you don't do them early, you're paying for years in terms of lost momentum. Welcome back to Clean for Profit. And today I'm joined by Dave Scribani, as always. What's up, Dave? What's up, man? Let's talk, let's talk about this question that comes up all the time. And I think that it's becoming less of a benchmark now, uh, thanks to inflation. But like everyone's curious on how to break six figures in general, whether it's in you know, a job, a trade, or in starting their own small business. Um, and I think that there's there's I think that on the good and bad side, 100 grand is way less than it sounds like. On the good side, um, making 100 grand is like just a matter of you're you're not even pulling in 2500 a week in terms of in terms of the work that you're doing. Um, I mean 2500 a week if you work, you know, and if you take two weeks out of the year off, um is 125k. Yeah, so um we're not talking about crazy, crazy weeks that you're pulling. You can easily sell over $2,500 a week, like in two or three days, depending on what market you're in. So it's not an astronomical number. Now, you mentioned the same applies on the other side of things, like it's really easy to eat through a hundred grand in in weeks or months if you're scaling your business. But I think the first thing I just want to dispel is like if you're if you're wondering that it's it's it's less than what you're probably thinking. Yeah. Um so that should be I don't know. For me, that's a relief. Um, but there are some important things to to make sure you're doing right off the bat. And I'll let you speak to this, but I think the most important thing to do first is just to build momentum early.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, and doing that by working, right? Like go get your hands dirty. Um, I wouldn't focus too. A lot of people get stuck on. I need a logo, I need a business, I need business cards printed, I need to get my insurance, I need to make sure I have a DBA or an LLC. Right. And you know, all of those things are very important. When you start though, go make money. Yeah. Go make money. Um, I remember there was someone that uh I that called me one time, and this is someone I've known for a while, and she wanted to start a just an interior residential cleaning company. And she started doing all this this math on like all these things that she needed to do and buy, and it added up to like just under $8,000. She's like, I need $8,000 to start a cleaning business. And I'm like, No, you don't. Go go pick up some Windex, some cleaning products, some towels, some rags, and a vacuum. Like we're we're talking about some very low cost here. Like, you don't you don't need all of all of that. So you haven't moved and done anything just because you're stuck on I don't have eight thousand dollars to buy what you need. Yeah, go make money and you'll get the money to buy all of the things that you desire and will make the job easier in the long run. Yeah, but it's like just go, just go start, go make money.
SPEAKER_00Totally. Yeah, there's definitely a cost to you know, this is such a nuanced topic because like you need to start when you're ready, but a lot of people think that ready means that you have all the equipment you're ever gonna need, which you never do, by the way. Right, yeah, no, no, no. There's I mean, I just spent most of us just spent more than I made last month on equipment, and I need more stuff. Yeah, like it's yeah, it's not enough. Yeah, we just spent 30,000. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Man, there's always like more, and like you know, you're probably gonna need another rig in six months.
SPEAKER_02No, a hundred percent.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it max. Yeah, I mean, you know, you just started uh that'd be an interesting thing to talk about, actually. But you know, you just started housewashing, soft washing, etc. And it's like you're gonna grow, you're gonna need more equipment soon. So the point is um, you need to start when you're ready, but you're ready before you probably think you are 100. Being ready is more about just making sure that if things don't work out right off the bat, you're not devastating your life. Yeah. Um, it's not about getting the absolute highest quality equipment you possibly can. So, yeah, I mean, this early momentum phase is all about grow at the speed of cash. That's probably the best thing that someone's ever told me. Totally. Grow at the speed of cash. Yeah. Well, that's a I mean, that's a good way to make sure that you're not keeping too much of your cash and you're actually investing back into your business, but also you're not like crazy leveraging yourself with credit cards and stuff like that to to uh just increase your risk unnecessarily kind of, especially in a business that's so that's relatively inexpensive to start. Yeah, you don't need a hundred grand buy-in to go start cleaning windows, you need you know, 500, 1,000, yeah, $2,500 if you're gonna be really fancy. Um, like this phase, building earlier momentum, is about just that. It's very much so a hustle, like getting the first, you know, 50 jobs uh on the books. Um and so there's some things that you can and should do. Uh you don't have to do all of these, but you need to do one or two of them. Um that can be like going out and knocking on doors. There's so many guys on social media that are out knocking doors. You can literally just go get their scripts from them. Um they're they're viral and they make a lot of money because for a reason, and it's because they have scripts and they work. So if it works if you work it. So, and that goes for any method that you're doing. So if you're knocking doors, I actually prefer door hangers because, like, for me, like knocking doors and talk like interrupting a stranger's day, I'd rather eat glass than do that, frankly. Um, it's just not my vibe. And I've done a lot of sales, um, but it's just not it's not the vibe for me. Um, you can do way more door hangers than door knocking. And you know, you can still get to a point where if you put up, you know, a few hundred door hangers in a day, you're closing multiple jobs off of that. So that's not that's not something to uh kind of eliminate from from your possibilities right off the bat. In-person networking is less tangible, but it can also be incredibly effective if you're in the right places. You know, there's um, oh, what's the speaking uh what's the speaking groups? Toastmasters. I don't know if you're I've never heard of that. Toastmasters is a a national community of people um that get together in small groups of like five to 15, and it's a public speaking meetup. It's it's international or not in it's national. Um, there's probably one in the city closest to you, especially if you live in a populated area, but they meet up and they take turns basically giving talks and critiquing each other and like giving huge. Ultimately, this is a place where you have an opportunity to educate people through practicing public speaking about what you do. So it's really common among real estate agents. Yeah. Um and like if you go to a Toastmasters, I guarantee there's two to four real, like it's like 30% of the people that go to Toastmasters are real estate agents. And that's because they have something relevant to talk about. Like the market's always changing. There's evergreen principles in especially you know American real estate that is worth teaching people about.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Anyways, that's one example of a networking event that you can go to that is actually potentially very effective. Yeah. Um, you know, we have real estate agents that have reached out to us and you know, they've contributed five healthy five figures per year of revenue to our business just through their the people that they're uh listing homes for or so.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, for us it's builders.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_02Builders is crazy because they have they Well, they're post-construction cleans, so they're high ticket. Yeah. Uh um I mean that's really it. They're yeah, they're high ticket. Now then not every window cleaner likes to mess with those.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Either. That's hard. That's hard window cleaning.
SPEAKER_00That's a tough one. That's not that is not something that I would necessarily advise people to just like jump into if they're if they're new. Yeah. Um, there's a lot to learn about window cleaning before you have a story for how I learned. Yeah. Yeah. Fun. What's that?
SPEAKER_02Um, so uh this I got a call from a lady who was a real estate investor in Nashville. And she called me after I was doing this for three months. And I'm a I'm a very much a yes man kind of guy. Yeah. Um and I uh she calls me and she's like, hey, I have uh a prop a property is what she said. And uh it's in Nashville, it's just about to be done. And uh she's like, I need an estimate on some post-construction. I was like, okay, cool. So I get there, we go look at it, and she uh when we walk up to it, I'm seeing the properties. And they're the in Nashville, they're building up these like there are these three-story homes that are super narrow. They're very narrow homes, but they're huge. They're three stories tall with like rooftop access and they're on top of each other. Gotcha. Like you can go like this and almost in between each one and almost touch. Wow, almost touch them. Is my camera moving?
SPEAKER_00No, I'm just keeping an eye on it.
SPEAKER_02Um uh, anyways, there was 10 of them. Uh they're 5,500 square foot each. Whoa. And they're three stories. Uh each one had around 80 fixed windows. Whoo. And it was inside and out. Can't open them. Wow. Um, and uh, anyways, it she's like, you know, can you do post-construction? She's like, I can't find anyone that'll do it. And I was like, Yeah, of course, yeah, of course we can. Mind you, I'm three months into window cleaning. Yep. Uh I severely underbid. Thank, thankfully, I had um some great, great guys. Alex, my is still one of my current employees. He was there with me during this time. I brought in a friend and contracted him. He's a window cleaner in Nashville, so he was already experienced. But we did all of the pressure washing on these three beds, these or these 10 homes uh and all the window cleaning inside and out, and we did get it done, and it took 12 days. Wow. Um, but I mean, I was stressed beyond belief for those 12 days. Sure. Because I did not realize that you couldn't just squeegee off glue. Yeah. Like I didn't know, I didn't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got that. I'm like, oh wow, we need razors. Oh, wait, they're tempered glass. So this is a game, this is a total game changer.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for sure. Um, it's good that you realize that before you touched razors to that glass. Yeah. Um, yeah, you're doing some due diligence for sure. Uh that's off topic. No, it's okay. I think the point is that like real estate agents, especially when it comes to networking in person, that can be very, very effective. And so can just cold calling people and like getting on vendor lists, for example. Um, that's a good long play. We're gonna talk about foundations next. So I'll I'll get into that a little bit more as uh as something that's really good for like bolstering your business long term. I'm just gonna update my by the way.
SPEAKER_02When you say yes to stuff like that, that's how you really learn. Yeah, dude, you're not gonna learn by posting to Yeah, it was terribly stressful. Yeah, but guess what? We're one of I think three window cleaning companies in our area that do post-construction. Right. And the reason we say yes to it now all the time is because we're really good at it and we have a process for it. Um, but that was from taking the risk of jumping into some unknown deep waters and you and just figure it, figure it out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Now, I I want to be clear, we're talking about early momentum, the reality about these things that we've been talking about, things like door hangers, door knocking, um, networking in person, um, and you know participating with uh Facebook or LSA, like getting into ads, these are all things that you can I mean, you can take these to the bank. Yeah, you don't have to do anything else that we're gonna talk about in this episode to actually make a hundred grand, which goes back to our point of like it's actually not that much. Um, it's it's not a massive deal to break six figures, and you can do it really badly, which is like if you only do this building momentum thing, that's great, you can make a lot of money. You're not thinking long term. So that's what we're gonna talk about. Because, like, if you what you want to do in your business is not make a hundred grand, yeah. Um, you want to build something that appreciates in its value from a revenue and profit standpoint annually year over year. Yeah. So, like moving into talking about building a foundation for your business is like while you're doing, you have to hustle. You need to build early momentum and you need to lean into that. So, like if you're doing door hangers or knocking doors, get a partner or hire somebody. We're doing, I'm eight years in, we're doing door hangers this year. I haven't put up a single door hanger this year. Um, but we've put 7,500 door hangers up through uh a team that I've hired to go out and put up door hangers for me. And that's started to we started to see a return from that. So um, like you can you can accelerate this early momentum stuff long term to to build a business for yourself. It's incredibly important to make sure, however, that um you're not building a house on sand. Um, you know, you need a house that has a firm foundation, preach. And uh there's there's a few ways to do that. Um and uh they're all really important. So the first thing, and you know, I heard you talking to one of your coaching clients yesterday um about this specifically, which is like you need a Google business profile. Period. I hesitate to say that you have to do all this stuff up front. The reality is the sooner you do this stuff, the better. Yeah, for sure. Um I never say, like I won't say never, but I try to underemphasize this a little bit from like an operator and early growth standpoint, because people can sit on this and not do the things that build momentum early on. Um but so but that is a caveat. Day one, you should have a Google business profile up, like as early as possible.
SPEAKER_02Because to be honest, uh, to to relieve a lot of these questions on when and when I shouldn't do things, you just find someone that you can like bounce ideas off of that's ahead of you. Right. Knows the industry that you're in and ask for guidance. Yeah, like that's really what you need. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but that's a that's a big thing.
SPEAKER_00The reality about like what you want to do long term that's really going to continue your momentum and build it past beyond what you could ever do if you were just out knocking doors or putting up door hangers is make sure that you're visible long term to people that are looking for your service. The way right now, like we'll see how you know, I think that large language models are going to sort of change this um over a long time span, and probably the ways that you rank are still going to be pretty similar.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, but right now, everybody, when they're looking for a service, goes to Google. Yeah. Period. Yeah. Google is the authority uh on on how to find local home service businesses. So getting your Google business profile up as soon as possible is very important because when you're building early momentum, part of the way that you turn that early momentum into long-term momentum is by getting reviews on your Google business profile. Yeah. Which is the biggest thing that's going to help you rank long term. So that's extremely important. Um, when did you get your did you get your Google business profile up right away, or when was yours up when you started your business?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but again, I'm kind of like a an anomaly in that because I was in the marketing space for so long. So I knew one, I knew how to do that very quickly. Yeah. So I had the idea of glass therapy. My wife is the one that came up with the name and the logo. And the second she came in with the name and the logo, I was like, that's perfect. Google Business Profile. So, but I again I knew how to do it. A lot of people don't. Uh, a lot of people will try to get one and they get rejected or it gets shut down immediately. So again, there's still prioritized go and make money.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Here's the thing next time you're out making money, knocking doors, cleaning windows, hustling, when you get home, open your phone, set a timer for 20 minutes, go to business.google.com and run through all the steps. Yeah. You can do it in 20 minutes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You can also sit on it for six months and then do it in 20 minutes. So do it sooner than later. Uh, like Dave said, there's a good chance you're gonna run into some problems setting it up. Google is a pain in the ass. Don't tell them I said that. Um, they're already listening to this podcast, I'm sure, and just you know, demoting me terribly for saying that. But um, there's a good chance your profile is gonna get suspended when you set it up. There's no good reason for it. Hit me up if you need some guidance on that. I need to make a page on on my agency uh website as just like a guide to how to get because it's like 30% of people that sign up for profiles now get suspended. Um, and you really, as an individual, it's almost impossible to get it reinstated. You need help to do it. Yeah, I can't help.
SPEAKER_01But you can't.
SPEAKER_00I and I can't help you. I can pull you in the direction of somebody that can. It's not a service that I'm interested in providing, frankly. But um, don't get stuck for tons of years. I saw somebody who posted recently on Facebook that was like, I finally set up a new Google Google business profile after getting suspended. It's like, I didn't want to give up my 50 reviews, and it's like, oh bro, you gotta, you gotta just get help. Get help. 50 reviews is too late to give up, in my opinion. Yeah, it totally is. Um, the next thing you need foundation-wise, is a good website. You know what you need a website that is conversion optimized, that is built using SEO best practices. So your page titles are in sync, your descriptions are written uh according to search engine optimization best practices, which if you don't know, is just like if you've ever if you've ever been to a library, it's organized in a specific way. So if you're looking for something, you know where to go. And uh when you look up a given topic in a library directory, it tells you exactly where to go. It's the same thing with Google. Google's job is to make sure that they're presenting the most relevant data that they possibly can to people that are searching for a given service or product or whatever. And the way that you make sure that you are showing up as a relevant search result is by adding the correct, by adding relevant content and by setting up your page in a bunch of nerdy ways that I won't get into that are optimized for Google recognizing what you do, yeah, where you do it, etc. And that you're a high-quality business that's active in the space, um, and and all of the above. So um I'm more than happy to rant, like we'll probably eventually do an SEO-based podcast for the nerds that are interested in that, like me. But making sure that you have that set up pairs with your Google Business profile. Yeah. So it it it's just another signal to Google that indicates that you're a relevant business that is in the area that your clients are searching in, uh, and therefore you should be showing up long term in the area. So yeah. How many reviews do you have on your Google Business profile? I think like 140. 140? Yeah. I think I'm at 126 now. Um how like to your knowledge, how important is that for a home?
SPEAKER_02Oh my goodness, he's massive.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, massive. Like honestly, if you only did one thing long term to build your business. Yeah, never stop getting reviews.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And and it's equally important, I would say, to respond to them.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Positive and negative. And how you respond to negative reviews, that actually, we could probably do an episode just on that. Yeah. Uh a lot of people freak out when they get negative reviews. And I it's funny, I said this on one of our episodes yesterday, how that stresses it stresses me out. And I have to remind myself, like, yeah, the idea of getting it stresses me out. Uh and uh it's because I'm the owner and I want my business to be great and I want it to be perceived as great because I believe that it is. Um, but you know, if you get a bad review, typically the rule of thumb is just you how you respond will stand out more than the bad review.
SPEAKER_00Totally. Yeah. Yeah, agree.
SPEAKER_02People will read how you respond. Yeah. And if you're snarky and you complain back to the customer and be like, well, you said this and we agreed on this. Like, if you do that, that's real bad practice.
unknownTotal.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, as is just saying uh something like, I'm sorry, but we don't have your name in our records as a customer. Yeah. Just like totally eschewing any responsibility, even if that's true. You know, I think the only time where you could maybe do that is if you just get a blank one-star review. Yeah. Yeah, like what is this? There's no explanation. We talked about this before, but there are fraudulent reviews um that people will use in order to try to scam you. Keep that in mind, especially if you ever get three in a row in very short sequence, and especially if someone reaches out to you saying that they were paid by another company to get those bad reviews on your profile. That's something I won't go into how to navigate that again. Hit me up or dig through our previous episodes and you'll find it. Uh, but I'd be happy to walk you through how to how to navigate that. But um yeah, it's super important to get reviews early on. And dude, here's something I'll admit. Uh, I've been doing this for for eight years now. And for the first five and a half years, I collected a total of 23 reviews. Yeah, yeah. So about uh four point four point one reviews a year, something like that. And then Over the last year and a half, um, you know, we've gotten the remaining a hundred and three. Put some emphasis on uh getting those. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. You have to. Yeah. Um I mean, the only thing that I was doing at the time, and this is why it was so slow, was show everybody. I would get them. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Please do.
SPEAKER_02I have it somewhere.
SPEAKER_00The only thing that I was doing at that time was like if I really, really liked the client, sometimes I would text them out. Tap cards.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Literally, you just walk up to the customer, they hold their phone up to it and uh scan it, and then instantly got it. Yep.
SPEAKER_00What it opened up. So about five seconds ago, I scanned that. I just put my phone on top of that card. And I'm currently looking at the interface to leave a review for Dave's business. That's how easy it is. You better leave one. Yeah, absolutely. A one star, no details. Oh no. And yeah. Um, I'm sorry, Chris uh Chris Bagatini hit me up and told me to do that. So pay me to take them down. Okay. I got you. You know, I won't put up 30 more. I'm gonna put out a hit. Um, yeah, so I mean, the reason that I had so few reviews over four and a half years was that I was only asking, I was asking when I thought of it. I was only asking people that I really liked and that really liked me, and that I knew for sure would leave that five-star review. So you didn't have any automation? Yeah, zero automation. And then I would sometimes like ask and then follow up after I was gone with that one text. That was it. Now it's totally different. I need to get on board with those tap cards. I don't have those yet, but that's great to have technicians have, you know, they pull that out, scan it, especially if you're incentivizing text to go get reviews for you. Um, let's talk about that in a second. But we now have that fully automated. So we've built automations that we now offer other window cleaning businesses that are built into our business. They tie right into the CRM, whatever CRM you use. We use Jobber. So in Jobber, whenever an invoice is set to paid, it automatically puts them on a we use a timer. We have a 12 hour timer that counts down. Some would say that that's a detriment, but we also, in the rare cases, this happens one out of maybe every 50 clients. Yeah, we just don't want them to leave a review. Not because they're not happy, maybe because they're not happy. I mean, that that's something that rarely comes up, but um for whatever reason, man, uh you don't want everybody to get that. So we put a 12-hour timer on it. You can add a tag to a contact in order to have it not send. But if you don't do anything after 12 hours during business hours, so it doesn't send at 2 a.m., it sends them a first text that's like, thanks so much. Let us know if there's anything we can do for you. So it's like a light quality assurance. Yeah. Uh, and then it goes to mywebsite.com front slash review, which has access to all of our review platforms. Yeah. So for us, that's just we have Google, Facebook, Yelp, and Nextdoor. Yeah, those are the four that we have on there. You can just click one and it leads to the same place that your Google Tap card took took me to. Um and that alone, then 48 hours later, it sends them another request. Um, so that if they haven't left one, they can go leave one at that point. Just two touches. Yep. That's it. Um, that is where all of those reviews have come from. Yeah. It's just a matter of automating that. Now, Dave, I know you get a little bit more personal and actually get get closer to the client in terms of follow-up and asking for a review. What do you do after a job's complete?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So my guys are trained to when they go up and ask the customer if they would like to do a lap around their property to just see the work that was completed. That's when my techs are trained to take out that Google tap card and say, hey, before I leave and while I'm packing up, would you mind just tapping this with your phone and leaving us a Google review before I go? And uh, in fact, I have a tech that started a couple weeks ago, and last week he was out on his own for the first time, and he had a hundred percent of his jobs left reviews. 100%. Yeah, and that's huge. Um, and you that's the thing too, when you ask people in person, they almost I've never, I don't know if anyone's ever just been like, no. Unless they are old and they don't have a Google account or something. But in general, everyone will say yes. Um, and it also gives you the opportunity to when you ask, um you're asking customers where it it'll bring up if something if they're not happy about something, it also gives you the opportunity face to face to help make some make sure something do something right or you fix a window that maybe you didn't clean clean all the way, whatever it might be. Yeah. Um you're already there, right? So uh and when you send out text, text automation is great, they're great reminders, but I would don't use that as like your only option.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, I mean, the the thing with like what you do and what your texts do is you're you're ensuring quality. Well, what else do you do next day?
SPEAKER_02Oh, I call. So after a job is completed, I take the initiative to call each customer and ask how their experience was and make sure that they were actually really happy with the service that they got. And I also use that as an opportunity to, at the very least, rebook them again or share us some information about our service plans.
SPEAKER_00Totally cool. Yeah, man, all of those things are just huge foundations for ensuring quality in your service. What as you start to let go over the reins in terms of not being the guy that's out cleaning glass, um, that's a massive benefit because you're making sure that the work that's being done, instead of just not following up with your clients and hoping they had a good experience and hoping that you don't hear back in six months when you call them to rebook that they weren't happy with the last time. Um, you're making you're getting ahead of that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, that's incredibly important. And you can, I'm gonna not leave a one-star review for you. Thank you, sir. I opened my phone, it's still set to one star. So uh yeah, I don't. Yeah, so everyone, please go report Colby's review. Yeah, please, please. So on that, you know, the other things in terms of building foundation are getting on social media to some degree. So get a Facebook page set up. You're gonna need one if you're gonna run Facebook ads. Yeah. Um, same goes for Instagram. I'm a hypocrite on this one. Like, I don't barely, I'm not active on social media. We were talking about this yesterday. It's like we've heard I've heard so many people talk about reference the podcast, including, I don't want to get into your your private life, but hang out with your family. And one of your daughters was on the phone with uh a woman that I I don't know who that was, but she was older, not part of my core audience. And she was like, Oh yeah, I've heard about the podcast. Um, and it's like that's all because you're active on social media, uh, which I appreciate, but it's like, bro, I I need to get more active on that. And the same goes for you. Like, if you're running a window cleaning business in your area, it's worth it to be relatively active on social media. Don't overthink it. You don't need to be posting every single day. Like being present, okay. Dave does. So I'm not surprised that he would say that.
SPEAKER_02I mean, it's easy stuff though. I like people, especially the um the stuff that's entertaining to and uh satisfying to watch, like squeegeeing windows, people love watching that stuff. Set up your phone, get a little tripod right behind you while you're cleaning a window and easy stuff. Yeah, for sure. Yep. Especially with meta glasses and GoPros, like you can strap so much stuff to you to make gathering content super easy.
SPEAKER_00For sure. Yeah, I'm looking into the meta glasses for sure. Yeah, I'm a little skeptical on how much of a disruption they can be. Yeah, because they have so much integrated into them. Yeah, that like, yeah, I'm not trying to like scroll reels in my glasses.
SPEAKER_02No, no, yeah. I want to be present in life.
SPEAKER_00So in order to make your first hundred K, but also build a business that grows off of that 100k as a foundation, we also need to be thinking about bolstering business long term, which is part of like the foundations that we just talked about, but this is like even more forward-looking than that. So we talked about reviews, review automation, etc. Retention is another huge one.
SPEAKER_02So the value of a customer.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. Yeah, which comes to like cost per cost per lead, like how much are you paying per person that you're actually ending up to go clean windows for? It can be a lot higher if your retention is good.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_00If the first time you clean a customer's window is the first of a dozen times that you clean their windows, all of a sudden your cost per lead has gone down dramatically, or cost per job rather. Having retention systems built into your business is incredibly important. I know you've done that through building out recurring, like a recurring pricing structure in your business. How's that going, by the way? What's your what's your client account look like in terms of how many people you have on recurring contracts right now?
SPEAKER_02Oh gosh, I don't even know the number. Um it's it's growing nonstop because that's what we really push for. Um and especially when you're paying for when you're paying for leads, you want to get the most out of out of that. And in an ideal world, the value of a customer should be higher than just one visit, um, which is why we push service plans. And yeah, I generally I don't even know what the number is. I don't know how many people we have on those, but I mean it is substantial. It's why in you know, in December of 2025, we had over 100,000 scheduled for 2026 before the year even started. So that's that's a result of recurring.
SPEAKER_00There you go. That's not just like going out and being like how.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so actually think about that for a second. We do we're talking about just making a hundred K. I could stop advertising completely, fire every employee, and I have a hundred K scheduled for 2026.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, totally. And that's the difference between like there's two mindsets here, and that's I think why uh we kind of clickbaited you into how to make your first 100K. It's like you don't want to make a hundred K, dude. Yeah, you want to build a hundred thousand dollar business. Yeah, like uh and and beyond, obviously, but like how much better would it be to have a hundred grand scheduled? Yeah, um, a year in advance, yeah, rather than just making a hundred grand this year.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, and that goes for any number. I mean, you know, if you're we're just working a normal job right now, um, you know, I mean, think about what it would look like for you if you knew in the next six to twelve months you had fifty thousand dollars of work scheduled for your business. Yeah, like you make that in a year. I don't know you, but you know, let's say that that's you, let's say you're making $35,000 to $50,000 a year. What if you also had that scheduled in advance? Um, the amount of freedom and just like uh yeah, that's an incredible feeling compared to um you know, your next 50 grand is gonna come paycheck by paycheck over three, six, nine, eighteen months. Yeah, you know, so that's where real freedom comes from in this business is knowing that you have customers that trust you, have rebooked with you, and um yeah, man, that's that's really where the benefit comes from long term. So having retention systems similar to reviews, like you want to make sure that you're doing something like Dave is doing, like calling your customers, trying to get them on some kind of a retention plan, even if you're not baking in full-on recurring regular maintenance plans into your clients, you know, into your business's agenda, getting them on the schedule for six months down the road, like whenever they're gonna need their next, their next cleaning, and just having them tentatively scheduled so that at least you know when to follow up to rebook them. And the same goes, you know, we have a pretty lightweight but way more effective than nothing system that we build our clients as well, which is like similar to the review automation, yeah, at six and twelve months. And you can change this according to whatever your preferences are. Um it simply texts the client and sends you to your website.com front slash rebook. Uh, or they can it says, you know, type yes, respond with yes to rebook, or go to this link. They can fill out a two-second form because you already have their information in your CRM. Yeah, first last name, boom, they send it and you reach out to rebook. Yeah. So it's one of those things that, like, you know, if you have a hundred clients, which isn't that much, uh, it it saves you, you know, a ton of time, you know, if you're not the kind of person that's inclined to just like pick up the phone and call 100 people. Yeah. So yeah, the last thing I wanted to get into uh two uh two more things is like generally building brand awareness. This is like big brain long-term kind of stuff, but you had a billboard. Yeah, you do you still have one up? Not during the slow season, but okay, okay. So you've kind of gone back and forth on that. You know, in our first talk, we talked about uh how that was one thing that you wouldn't do if you started again about a month ago. I heard you kind of bringing it up as like a potential benefit. And then yesterday you kind of went into the actual thesis that you have now on it. What is it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, what my opinion on it has wavered uh back and forth many times. And um my uh so far, this could change again, who knows? But so far, my opinion on billboards uh after having them for I had it up for uh eight months. Uh and I had different ones throughout the throughout town. My opinion is they are uh they're really gr they're great for brand awareness. Um it's like a digital awareness campaign, uh I guess you could say, uh, if you were running that on like Meta. It feels it's fun to drive past your own billboard and see your brand or yourself or your company up on a giant uh yeah yeah, just a giant billboard. Um and uh it I think it it gives the business a perceived um it's perceived as being a is bigger than it might actually be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um so it's it was good for those things. I didn't necessarily see um like a I can't apply like a much of an ROI to it. Yeah. Um but we would ask people when they called us, how did you hear about us? It was very rare someone said billboard. Very, very rare. It probably was one of those things that maybe added to the reason why they called. They probably originally saw us on Facebook or Instagram, and then maybe they Googled us and then they're driving around town and they're like, Oh now I'm seeing the billboard. So this company's like standing out, right? Right. Um, so uh ultimately I think they're great if you have the money to spend and lose. Totally. That's what I think they're good for. Sure. So if you can spend and they're the very they vary in price depending on where you're located. Yeah. So out here in Clarksville, 550 bucks a month is what I was paying. That's very inexpensive. If I was in Nashville, I'd be looking at $2,500 a month. So drastically different in in price. Yeah. Uh, and in that case, I would never, I would never spend that kind of money. To be honest, $550.
SPEAKER_00I'm still like, yeah, totally. Okay. Last thing I wanted to talk about is like long-term bolstering your business. This is something that is like kind of a mix between the hustle side of things and building up something that's long term. Yeah. But um, you know, I heard you, I heard you on you know, your coaching call last night talking about a vendor list that you got onto. Yeah. Tell tell us about that particular situation real quick.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So um a lot of times one of the questions we get uh asked a lot, and and you will see this on window cleaning Facebook pages, uh, owners will ask, how do I do all the, you know, how do I get commercial customers and these big buildings and all this stuff. Uh and uh it can be perceived as is difficult, um, but ultimately um you can call a lot of these places and uh ask how to get added to their vendor list. There's a college out near me called Austin P University. Um it's a fairly large campus, um, relatively speaking, and has a lot of different buildings and a lot of windows. And uh, I don't know if they have a window cleaner or not. So I called and instead of saying, Who can I talk to about cleaning your windows? Which you're never gonna, that's a dead end. Like you're not gonna find you're not gonna get to the right person. Uh, you call and say, Hey, I'm looking to get added to your vendor list. And um, anyways, that's what I did. I called them. Uh, I got transferred a couple of times before they got me to the right person, but I eventually got to the guy who oversees their vendors. Um, he's like, Yeah, that's super easy. Um, what's your email? Told him my email and he emailed me three documents that I had to fill out the just basic business information, uh, including a voided check for payment. Should they ever hire me, they can they can pay me. And that's literally all you have to do. Cool. That is all you have to do. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So and did you end up getting hired?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so not for the whole campus, but we did. There's a an old house, historic house on their property that the president of the campus resides in sometimes. Okay. And we did that house.
SPEAKER_00So here's the thing. I would personally, this is a place where I would like pump the brakes a little bit, make sure that, you know, I know we have the the idea of like, okay, go out and make money. This is also where you actually do need insurance. I was about to say they're not gonna hire you without that. This is after you have insurance, LSD, or whatever LC or have your business set up, and you know, you need to make sure that you're those ducks are in a row. But what you should do after that, what I would encourage you to do if you're sitting around in your spare time gaming like I do, go to Chat GPT or any LLM that works, go into a deep research mode, tell it about your market area, tell it that you're looking for commercial buildings. What I I did this with new construction. I'm looking for construction companies in this greater area. I went a little outside my market area typically that I would because these new construction opportunities can be huge. Yeah, there's suburban opportunities where they're putting up 300 homes in a community. Um, and tell it to do deep research on all of these places that are specific to your preferences. So one to two-story new construction homes in XYZ area, and to go into the directories of these businesses' websites or as close as they can get to it, looking on sources like LinkedIn, etc. Yeah, to gather information on project managers and superintendents of those construction sites. And in 20 minutes, it'll do that research for you and it will spit you out. Yeah. Spreadsheet, depending on your area. For me, I got 60 names, numbers, and emails. There you go. Um that's a great idea. Yeah, a lot of those were just general like company emails or or uh phone numbers, rather. Uh, but nevertheless, you call all of those places, you're going to get on a dozen vendor lists at least. And are you gonna see results from it right off the bat? Probably not. But on a the point is that once you're there and if they need your service, probably their vendor list, yeah. They're gonna need you eventually. Pretty static. Yeah, they add to it, as far as I know. You know, unless they unless somebody really gets pissed off and tells them to remove you, you're staying there. Yeah, so eventually, if they have a need, they're gonna call you uh and they're gonna look to that authority. Their vendor list is their authority on a lot of things. So uh it's worth that's something that's like grindy up front, but also really valuable long term for your business. Yeah, so 100% grounded, yeah. Yeah, thanks for tuning in, guys. Um, I think these things are really important. Um, it's it's easy to, especially when you're in a situation where you're working a job that you hate or doesn't pay you enough, to just think like, how can I go make a hundred grand? And like, I feel you. Um there's bills that need to get paid, and you should be thinking about that. But I would encourage you, especially in a business with such incredibly high turnover in terms of owners, to think about how you're not just building your next paycheck, but a business that's gonna support you and your family long term. So this has been Clean for Profit. Thanks for tuning in. We'll catch you in the next one.