My Window Cleaning Business Grew 958% — Here’s What Changed

Last year, my window cleaning business was barely getting traction.

I had moved into a new market, my Google Business Profile got suspended, leads were almost nonexistent, and the pressure of providing for my family felt very real.

Fast forward to this year, and the business is up 958% year over year. We’re already over $100k on the year, leads are coming in consistently, and the problems I’m facing now are completely different.

In this episode, I’m breaking down what changed: the lead flow, the labor bottleneck, the need for better training, how I’m thinking about quality control, why I’m tightening up the finances, and what I’m outsourcing as the business grows.

Growth is a good problem to have, but it still exposes the weak spots in your business.

If you’re starting or growing a window cleaning business, this episode will give you a real look at what happens when things finally start working — and what you need to build next.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to Clean for Profit. I appreciate you tuning in again. Um, I wanted to talk about, you know, today is the last day of May, and I when thinking about topics to kind of cover on the podcast this week, I sort of just started digging through what's been going on over, you know, the year so far. And I was looking at my dashboard and I'm I'm looking at it right now. And so far in 2026, our invoice value is $111,300. And this time last year, so the period of January 1st to May 31st of 2025, we had invoiced $10,500. Um, so between a year, you know, compared to last year, the business has grown from a revenue standpoint by 958%, almost a thousand percent growth year over year. Um now there was a lot that was going on, um, or that has gone on uh between that time. So I just wanted to talk about first off, what's different, um, like why the immense amount of growth, but also I wanted to talk about how things have changed in terms of what's different operationally and the different problems that I'm moving through right now, um, to kind of just take you along with me and give you a one perspective of what it's been like and what you might uh expect to run into as you start to grow your business. So last year, this time I had very little business and it had just barely started to pick up at all. You know, like I mentioned last year, it was 10.5k by the time we got to the end of May. And a good chunk of that um happened in April and May. So January, February, March, and some into April was um extremely slow, almost non existent, basically. Um, my Google business profile had gotten suspended shortly after we had moved, which was five months prior to the new year. So in September, like early September, we moved um to the market that we're currently in in California. And when I changed my address, my Google business profile got suspended. And at the time, I had no idea what to do about that. And so that ended up being basically a six plus month fiasco where I really had no idea what to do. Um, so no business was coming in at all. Honestly, the Google business profile thing is crazy. I think that there's probably hundreds of millions, if not billions, of potential dollars that are being like essentially not extracted from the market because small businesses just don't ever get their Google business profile unsuspended when it gets suspended. Um by the way, hit me up if you want to pick my brain on that. Um, I learned a lot going through how to get unsuspended. Don't just appeal it. There's more to it than that. But it was a feeling of survival, and honestly, in the worst sense. You know, I'm married, I'm the breadwinner of a house of with three children. Um, and so survival at that time was about providing for my family, like bare bones, just brass tacks providing for the family. Um, anyways, after that, the suspension was lift and lifted, and we had a pretty decent year after that. Um we kind of we kind of cruised for the rest of the year. We grew, we grew steadily, we started to get a decent amount of lead flow, and we ended up doing about $70,000 by the time 2025 had ended, which was just primarily me. Um my brother helped out a little bit here and there as well. Um, but now we're above a hundred thousand or above a hundred and ten thousand on the year, and in some ways, it it feels like survival in a in a totally different way. It's more about survival of the business and how we grow it. We've, you know, obviously financially, we've reached a place where it's like, you know, we're not we're not desperate. We weren't in the first place, but I'm trying to think of how to even say this. It's not like I'm thinking about the next job as my next paycheck anymore, I guess is the way that I would put it. Um it's more about making sure that the next job is like one step closer to building a sustainable business that I don't have to be in forever. Um, and that as we grow and do more business, we're not just making mistakes faster, essentially. Um, so we have no shortage of leads, but we have a shortage of labor. Um not because there's no one out there that wants to work, like I've gotten plenty of applicants, but mainly because um, you know, I don't have a really I don't have an operations manager, and I don't even have like a formalized written-down on paper training process for my employees. And so because I have direct oversight over training, I can get some level of quality and consistency into the training process. Um, but it depends heavily on me, and I have to be there like making corrections and doing doing everything, directing all of it. Um, so that means the amount of people that we can train at one time is basically one um or two, because my brother is now, you know, a lead technician, uh, potentially headed towards like an operations manager position. So he can train as well, but like we need a baseline standard that's written down that we can all refer to. So everybody's getting trained the exact same way. And so, anyways, because of that, you know, I'm in we're in essentially an approaching peak season. Um, and my brother is getting married, which is amazing in in a week, but he's gonna be gone the majority of June, um, which means that the amount of like managerial oversight is literally just me at this point. Um, and I've got two employees and another guy that's gonna be starting in the next um few weeks to a month. And so that's just been a big bottleneck for us, the people bottleneck. Um, really thinking about the training process for the first time, which I haven't done before. It's just been like everybody I'm training is like a one-off, like you maybe, maybe this guy will be here for the summer, and then that'll be it. So I haven't given it a ton of like formalized thought or um, you know, written these standards down so that we have something to refer to. I don't have an employee handbook, like there's all these things that I know I need to develop um that I just haven't had the time to get to yet. So um that's gonna be something that in my in my free time, especially after June, when my brother is back and we have some more oversight. Um, and as we get more fully trained technicians into the field, um, that's something that I need to formalize, like really, really formalize. Like before we get more technicians into the field, because that's what's gonna make sure that we're maintaining quality, which is the biggest thing that I want to make sure of. You know, at the end of the day, I think there's something to the idea that no one's ever gonna care about the business as much as you, the business owner, which I think is absolutely true. Obviously, it it has to be. Um, but you can still maintain, I think, a high level of quality. Like, I and that's not a place where I want to compromise. Like, I'll compromise on close rate um for a short time. Um, I'll compromise on I don't know, the the the trucks that we're buying. Like, we can scrap that stuff together. What we can't do is compromise on quality. And at the end of the day, like not every single technician is always gonna do the job way better than you would ever do it. But that's one of the last, like, that's one of the hills that I'm willing to like not die on, but stay on for a long, long, long, long time. So I think you do that by establishing those standards on paper and having a consistent trading process. So that's something that we're looking forward to building into. The next thing is management of finances. Um, this has been something that's changed in a way that I I was expecting but just hadn't felt before. So if I had one piece of advice on how to manage at least the personal side of things, is like if you have a business account, which you should, business bank account, set up your pay so it's like auto-deducted, like auto-transferred, so that you're not being loosey-goosey with like the business money is the business money, and the personal money is the personal money. Personal money gets fed from the business, uh, from the cash in the business, uh, consistently. So every two weeks I have a couple thousand dollars transfer from my business account to my personal account, and that's what we use to live off of pay rent, buy groceries, etc. Um, do everything that's personal. That's a really easy way to organize yourself early on, so you're not constantly pulling from the business money just like whenever you need a few hundred bucks. Um, it's way more systematic. Um, setting aside for taxes, I've always done this, but I'm doing it uh more now. There's just more money in there than there ever has been, which is great. Um, and I think I'm honestly, I think I'm over allocating for taxes because um, like I'm also making sure that I'm accounting for a profit and not waiting to get to the end of the year to find out what my profit is. Um, but I'm pulling a lot for taxes as well, and I think I'm gonna end up pulling quite a bit more than I need. Um, because speaking of profits, um, there's been a lot of change in that. I mean, the expenses for getting another um we've had a ton of expenses. I've bought two multi-stage um water filtration systems, I've bought two brand new Zero poles, the uh the Zero Pro 30 foot with a brush and the Zero Micro 30 foot with a brush. Um, amazing products. I've loved them. Um, but man, I mean, just on water fed pole accessories, I've spent almost $10,000. Uh, I've bought the van that's been another uh almost $20,000 after a wrap. Um and there's just stuff that like starts piling up. I'm honestly gonna probably be buying new new vehicles from now on because that van, now that it's wrapped and nice and pretty and stuff, needs a transmission. So that's gonna be another, I've been quoted six to ten thousand dollars from multiple shops, depending on if I go with a new transmission or a uh whatever rebuilt transmission. So that's fun. But profits have been weird too, man. I mean, it's funny because you know, this month we did about $44,000 in revenue, which is just mind-blowing. Um, way more than I've ever done in any previous month. I want to say last month was my previous record, and last month we did $33,000. So that was our previous record. We beat that by over $11,000, uh, which is amazing. And it looks like we're gonna do about $35 in June. And the only reason that's not $45 to $50 plus is because I'm down my main guy, my bro. Um so, but the profits have been like in terms of what I'm paying myself plus what's left over in profit, because I'm just taking my pay from my profit up front, which I don't think is the most well, whatever. It's gotta happen somewhere. I need to learn more about how to like set profit aside, but um, like my profit is like essentially the same as it was um when I was solo on the month, um, which is interesting because like I think from that 44, I probably have like 12 in profit, something like that. And uh maybe if that, it's probably closer to 10, honestly. Um, and like I could totally solo a 10 to 15,000 month, um up to up to like an $18,000 month I've done before, and it's like 85% profit. Um, so it's crazy having three other guys working for me. We're doing a ton of volume comparatively speaking, but the profit left over is lower, and I'm like still in the field, so um, anyway, that's been weird. And I've got a lot to learn about the profit side of things. Um, I know it's there, and I've just been like really investing a lot back into the business, so that's the main place that the profit is uh is disintegrating from, and my technicians are all newer, so they're not as productive as they could be, um, with the exception of my brother. So, and then so labor bottleneck management of finances has changing has changed, and then outsourcing and setting boundaries. So um setting boundaries is a big one. This is the first year, even though we're doing as good as we've ever done, that I've taken weekends off consistently, which has been amazing. Um I need to get to a point where I can start looking into outsourcing phones um because it's taking up a lot of my time. And when I'm in the field, it's a hard one, man. It's it's really it adds a ton of time to a jobs timeline, and it takes away a lot of your ability to train when you have to take phone calls, even just here and there. It's um it can be quite the distraction. Um, and finding and training independent technicians, and then most importantly, long-term, once we have training dialed in, once we have, or as we get training dialed in, as we have these things more documented, getting an operations manager, whether that's my brother moving into that role or hiring a technician that turns into a lead that turns into an OM. Um, frankly, I don't I don't care all that much where an operations manager comes from, but I'm in need of somebody who has experience with window cleaning in a very extensive to a very extensive degree. People that know how to talk to clients, uh, people that can read a room in that regard, people that know how to upsell, uh, people that know um like when you can use a waterfed pole in our market versus when something has to be hand uh hand washed, like all these really specific requirements that you need to know to be able to succeed, not only on a job site, but on directing other people on a job site. Um so like those two things, outsourcing phones and getting competent technicians and competent leads, uh, and then eventually finding an operations manager would get me well, it would get a squeegee out of my hand, first off. Um, and it would dramatically increase the amount of contribution that I could make to the company through spending more time in marketing and sales. Um, because really, like I I love cleaning windows and I'm pretty fast at it, but in reality, the amount of value that I can produce for the company in a sales position is at least 10 times what I can produce in the field. Um, so that's the real that's the real bottleneck, man, is making sure that we are constantly learning about how to properly onboard and train, but even more importantly, how to vet people. Um, I thought I knew how to interview and how to um how to vet people when I started doing this, and it's way more complicated than I had previously anticipated. Um and I have to like really lean into figuring that out. That's a problem that is incredibly valuable to solve for your for any business. Um so I think you know, if you're in a place where you're considering or actively working on growing your business, just plan for these things in advance. And I think that we hear it all the time in theory. Like it's hard to train people, it's hard to find people, uh, profit margins like get squeezed more as you go from solo to somebody who has employees, um, and you can't wear every single hat of the business long term. These are all things that we hear all the time uh as business owners when we're talking to other business owners, but prepare for it. Like figure out how you're gonna solve these problems now if you're planning on growth. I had plenty of time uh in hindsight uh in January and February, where I could have been formalizing a lot of this. Um and I I I did to some degree, but not as much as I could have. Um, and that's okay. I mean, I think a lot of it was, you know, I'm learning as I go. I'm learning these problems as I go. You know, I didn't know that I wouldn't like that I would need to learn more how to properly vet people. I didn't know that. I thought that I had it covered. Um, and the same goes for training people, where it's like there's these little edge cases in training where my inconsistency as a trainer is kind of starting to show up. And a lot of the assumptions of like small things that kind of go along with being a technician aren't just those are assumptions and habits that were earned over you know a decade of cleaning windows, and that stuff's not just gonna transfer to a technician right away, and it's not gonna transfer automatically if it's assumed that it'll transfer, it needs to be a part of the training process. So, anyways, I hope this was helpful. Um, it's been crazy growing by almost a thousand percent in a year. Um, I would love to, if you're listening to this and you have a business that you've scaled to multiple trucks, I'd love to have you on the podcast and kind of pick your brain. And I'm sure our listeners would get a bunch of value from that. Um, and uh yeah, if you're a solo guy that's looking to like make that next step, feel free to reach out to me. I have nothing to sell you, but um, you know, I'd love to chat with you about what you're thinking and hear about your plan because I think that's the biggest thing that solo guys that want to grow, or even just people that are just starting are missing, is they're on their phone too much when they think they're and they call it growing their business. Um, and they're not out there just like executing, like you need an execution bias. Uh, and sometimes just talking to somebody about what's in your head and having somebody say, like, hey, do these five things um makes all the difference. I know it does. That's basically what my coach does for me. And uh it's the reason that it's that's like the primary reason why we've had the growth that we've had in the last year. I can trace it back to hiring my coach. So this has been Clean for Profit, and we will talk to you next week. Thanks for tuning in as always.