The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - Part 1/2: The Ultimate Guide to Starting Your First Service Business⏐Ep. #123

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

I sat down with Daniel Cronauer (LinkedIn), an entrepreneur who built his success by starting and scaling service-based businesses. In this episode, Daniel shares practical advice on getting started, finding the right niche, and setting up systems to grow and succeed. If you’re thinking about starting your first business, this episode is packed with clear, actionable steps to help you hit the ground running.This is part 1 of a two-part conversation with Daniel. Be sure to tune in next week for part 2, where we explore advanced strategies for acquiring customers and other home service niches that really no one's talking about.Timestamps below. Enjoy!---Watch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-ytAsk me a question on or off the show here: http://tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: http://tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: http://tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: http://tkopod.co/p-xFree weekly business ideas newsletter: http://tkopod.co/p-nlShare this podcast: http://tkopod.co/p-allScrape small business data: http://tkopod.co/p-os---00:00 Introduction to Power Washing Business01:29 Danny's Journey: From Gym Teacher to Entrepreneur07:14 The Power of Marketing and Customer Acquisition12:21 Diversifying Services: From Roof Cleaning to Commercial Power Washing19:01 Niche Opportunities: HVAC Coil Cleaning27:37 Scaling the Business: Predictable Revenue Streams35:54 Christmas Lights: A Seasonal Revenue Stream

I got into commercial power washing. They advocate everyone to do this. That came out's about $1,800 of stop. We probably do between 400, 500, 600, maybe of coil cleaning. It's 600 grand? Yeah. Dang. Next year, we'll do $450,000 of crystal lights.

Get a yard sign. The yard sign is the single best thing you could have. I've done millions of dollars based on that yard sign. He takes a couple of rock fliers and goes and throws them in the driveway. That is how to market residential service. I sold the service before I had it. I service all the time. Sell it before you have it.

Welcome to the Kerner Office. You're going to love today's episode. I ran into this guy on Twitter named Daniel, and he started a power washing business 12 years ago in northeast Pennsylvania, and he is a rock star. He's been running this for about 12 years. It's a seven-figure business. We talk super in-depth, in detail about power washing HVAC coils at grocery stores and residential and new business lines and the home service niches that people could start. This is maybe the most tactical, specific, granular, exactly step one, two, three. how to start a home service business, how to get your first customers episode that I've ever published. You're going to love it. I couldn't stop talking to the guy. I was getting so much energy out of our

conversation. So this is going to be split into two episodes. The second one will be a week from today. So next Monday. He started washing roofs. Then he started power washing. He does Christmas lights. He does permanent lights. And he is a savant at acquiring customers in creative ways, which you know I'm a sucker for. Enjoy. Well, why don't you start by just telling us who you are and what you do and where you from? My name is Danny Kronauer. I'm from the northeast of urban Pennsylvania. I was supposed to be a gym teacher and it never worked out. So didn't make it. And I ended up starting a roof cleaning soft wash business. Had some success with that. I was making some bucks that I was like, should I like, can I retire and like just set on autopilot and really geared it towards lifestyle of like not clocking in. You was able to have some free time and also some money to kind of play around. And then I realized like, yeah, it wasn't enough money. So I. I wanted to do something else. And I wanted to scratch. My hometown had a gym.

The gym failed. And so I started calling the guy, like, researching why it failed, to get his personal insight that my brother and I physically built the gym. Then caring for employees. I started a Christmas lights business. Now I have a little bit of a construction company I was just working on before. We turned on the call here. Okay.

So what got you to start the first roof washing business? And how big did that get? What were the numbers like? I was a substitute teacher trying to. to make it and I was actually playing Diablo 3 which by oh no that's my favorite dude diablo 2 was me in high school after like 2003 4 or 5 like I had a barbarian named gub tesley necromancer like oh man you're speaking my best friends so this is why you go back to like before we're recording I say like people want to hear about you that's amazing I don't know if you give it credit I give it credit

Diablo too created the business person I am today. Yes. My dad was like, hey, I need you help clean the roof. And I'm the oldest of four. My sister's graduation party was coming up and he wanted to clean our roof for the party. First off, like, who looks at the roof. Second of all, whose roof's dirty. And none of that makes sense.

And so I'm like, sure. So I come outside. He has like a breaking bad setup. It's a kiddie pool filled with chemicals running through our old power washer. And our ladder at the time didn't even reach. the roofs or ladders against the house and I'm like holding the power washer above my head and he's telling me where to aim and so I sprayed the whole roof I came down off the ladder I could you not by the time I got down to the ladder the roof was clean I was like wow like that was

really impressive it was extra impactful because you couldn't see it being clean you were flying blind it was like a before and after like you you perform was before and after but you weren't able to see it in the process. That's exactly what happened. And I was blown away. So I was walking around my parents and I was walking around their neighborhood. So I was probably like 22. And I recognized a bunch of these houses like had this problem. I was like, wow, like I couldn't stop looking at it. You know, I hit a mailbox by accident because I was driving. I'm like looking at all these roofs. So well-manicured houses, great landscaping. Houses are taken care of roof looks really bad. Like, you know, a $400,000 house with a $400 looking roof.

And so I kind of got into that. So I read forums, back when forums were a thing, figure out how people took care of this, what it was, researching and all about it. And my dad had an engineering background, so he helped us put together our first, like Breaking Bad once again rigged

that just looked like it came from a meth trailer. We did another roof that we knew. And the problem was there was a thing called L-I-C-H-E-N that didn't come off. Like you see that in like Seattle where it's like high, moisture areas, right? Yeah, so I'm not sure you'll see it on like rocks or trees here. Like it kind of grows kind of everywhere.

Yeah. Some people equated to like a good air quality, but I'm not exactly sure why moisture definitely is a thing. But the likened it came off. So the first like three months, I was like panicking. Like all the black streaks are gone. The roof looks really good. But they have this bird poop on there. Right.

So exactly what it would look like. And then just sure enough it came off. So after I actually took, I'm not sure if you have this background too, it would be funny. co-sales, you've cutco knives. I know it, but no, I never did it myself. So I, you're checking all the boxes. Did you sell a little door to door two? That's what I did. No, that I couldn't be further from that one. Okay. Well, that was my equivalent of cutco. Exactly. That was your equivalent of Kukko. And what that was for you was just getting over rejection, right? The fear of rejection is gone. Checked out of the chat. And so Kukko taught me like cold calling, following up of people I

didn't know going to present at their house. These are all things I was able to sell two people. And so I really, I knew the product, loved Cutco knives. I grew up with them in my house. So easy sell. I literally took my Cutco training book. I opened it up. And the first thing they had was a picture of the Cutco building with American flag.

And like, what is this page doing? This page is establishing rapport with the customer, right? They're American company. They're a brick and their actual real. So I planned my business later that week after I cleaned the first roof with the Cucco sales book. And I just took the Cucco sales book. I'm like, what are they doing in this page? What are they doing this page?

The next page was their complete homemaker set. It was the biggest, most badass thing they had. Or actually, the second page was a drawer of knives that was like completely distraught. Like it looked like someone just dumped them from Salvation Army. And they weren't taken care of it wasn't pretty. Wooden handles. They were like growing bacteria on them. they're showing the problem that the customer was going to have.

And then the next page, of course, is how we're going to fix that problem. So I didn't reinvent the wheel. I just took Coco's wheel and apply it to Apex Offwash and how we're going to sell and perform and do leads. It was good. So you started going door to door with those principles? Postcards, mailers, flyers, door to door, all of it. Yeah, I really, I tried everything as far as advertising goes to see what kind of work. Built a website.

It's really important. At the same time, I was kind of the unemployed teacher. I worked for a guy who had a medical surgical equipment company. And my job was to build out his Google AdWords for him. So I was studying how that worked at the same time of launching the business. And so I just do like he would walk in and there would be orders on his desk that just automatically got printed from somebody who didn't the submit button and really knew how important a website was for just selling at 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365. So yeah, I got the website up and running. Of course it looked terrible because it was like the first one I built.

But yeah, the roof cleaning business, as quickly as I got into roof cleaning, I knew that it was going to be flooded with competitors. So I wanted to see what else I could do to diversify that or get into more of a niche market because, I mean, I was a 22 kid who started a roof cleaning business in like two weeks. And I knew I was the first person in my area to do it. And I just knew as a matter of time before people caught on to how good this really was that they were going to start doing as well. What were your sales like the first year or two? We did about $100,000 the first year. Wow. I was 50 roofs.

Because a 20 year old, which was great. You know, but it got me the confidence to explode and like really like understood that this concept worked. It was a $2,000 service? No, it would vary. Like so one roof could have been. 50 roofs. Okay.

We did about 50 roofs. Yeah. And then we added some house washing in there as well, some gutter brightening, you know, things that once we were there. or whatever that call would be, we could add on services to that. And then I got into like commercial power washing. This is a one I love, which I advocate everyone to do this. I sold the service before I had it.

I'll say this all the time. Sell it before you have it. Sell before you have it. Yeah. So I want to get a hot water power washer. They're like seven grand. But I always took money, which I think is important to any money I had. I paid myself the lease.

And I don't pay myself first. I know that's a book. People talk about that. I'm like dead last. I want to make sure my people. could eat first and everyone else and I will just live off of whatever is left over. So yeah, we, we had a good year, but of course, I was spending a bunch of money on postcards and advertising because really no one had any idea of what roof cleaning was in my area.

It was a brand new concept. So I was kind of spending a lot money educating, but it bought a snow plow that year. So I had something to do in the wintertime. Then next year rolled around, bought a better rig for roof cleaning. And then you'll just constantly, you know, remessing money back into the company. But I wanted that hot water power washer. So I went and door to door. I went to a restaurant and sold them a power washing that you needed the hot water to do it.

So they said, yep, called the guy up, bought the power washer, put the back of the truck, and you went and did that job. Unfortunately, the line they put on to that unit was like an 80 PSI line or 40 PSI line and needed to be like a 200 PSI line. So that line happened to be a diesel fuel that exploded all over me. So it was like 7 a.m. covered in like two gallons of diesel and I remember my employee like yelling at me. Like, what are you doing? Of course, he's also my friend at the time, meaning like everyone hires their friends.

He, but he really was like my like click in my head moment that that person was going to be stuck in their way. And like I never would be because I was doing something I've never done before. I never cleaned. We did hundreds of roofs at this point. You know, roofs were easy for us. They make great money. margins, but I was okay with failing or doing a bad job or whatever to figure this out. Yeah, that's how you learn.

It's how you learn, right? So he, like, lost it because, like, the job was not going well. I'm covered in diesel fuel. And I'm like, yo, it's okay. We're good. You know, we're going to figure this out. We're going to learn what's going on. Call the guy up, told my line exploded.

He told me just pinch his shut or put a screw in there to, so it's not bypassing anymore. And we got the job done. And then the hot water unit led to me getting contracts with, Walmarts and doing other jobs and making 100x that powers a cost, you know. How did you get a job with Walmart? Those religious guys are good people. So I've met a, I've been a family who, two brothers John and Tim who were part of like a religious commune and like their dad was like the head dude.

They didn't have bank accounts. So they were like 20, but maybe 30 years old because the religion took care of all. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that. I don't know. But I met these guys at a event, powerishing event. and a guy asked a question anyone do work for Walmart and only two guys raised their hands. And it was these two dudes. And I went and talked to them afterwards and asked them how they got in and became friends with them.

They were great people and still friends to this day. And they showed me like how to do it. And it was definitely one of the hardest things I did my life was to complete their like vendor package to become a Walmart vendor. There's so many requirements of limitations. Like it's easier to do work for the federal government than is to do work for Walmart. Oh, like Walmart is tough. A lot of red tape. Oh, so much. And that I believe 90% is there just to take out the bums from applying, you know? Yeah. But which is great. Like the, like in my head, the more I see that red tape and friction, the more I want to power through because it's like no one's going to get through this. No one's going to get through that. All the more reason I need to, right? Yeah. And that was kind of how I felt too. Like I knew that Walmart was a possible golden ticket. So then I started to have to sell, which they gave me. like almost like the instruction. It's funny actually.

I didn't at the time know. They gave me the instructions that the Walmart employee was supposed to use because somebody they knew figured it out. And the Walmart employee didn't know how to do it. Like the Walmart employees like, I don't know how to put me in, you put you in the system. And I'm like, here you go. Like this is how you do your job. And so I was able to clean a couple of Walmarts on a nice monthly basis because I also

wanted to get that recurring revenue. I was always attracted to that. Doing roofs was great. How much revenue were those jobs? Walmart, we would do their storefronts for $1,000 each, and then I had seven of them at the time, and then we'd do their bathrooms. Like, that was kind of the way in. They told me, like, all these managers.

So interesting, Walmart only has two bathrooms front and back, right? They don't have a private bathroom for the manager. They purposely make their managers use the same bathroom as the customers. Keep it clean. Keep it clean. So when I was told was you'd go in and say you'll clean their bathrooms too. And so we'd save them equipment. We'd power wash the storefront with and we'd also like their concrete outside.

And we'd also go into, there's usually a door right in the middle of Walmart to get to their front bathroom and then a door around the back to get to the back bathroom. So power wash their bathroom. So that came out to about $1,800 a stop. And we'd have seven that we do on a monthly basis. Wow. So we're talking 12 grand a month recurring, predictable, just from one client. Yeah, Walmart's great. Yeah.

What are the margins on that like, that job specifically? I'm glad you said that specifically because margins power washing varies a lot based on what job you do. Walmart doesn't allow to use chemicals. Like it's against Walmart's policy. Like, they don't want to get burned. So it just water free. Gas and labor there.

So the Walmart margins are at least 50% on a job like that. Wow. That's beautiful. Yep. And then probably next biggest break was a guy who worked for me doing sales. He knew another guy who. had a large company in the area and this guy knew that we had the power to equipment and they had a contract with Wawa to do their HVAC. So it's December, which is not the time to do this power

to work. It's 21 degrees. We drive to this Wawa to clean condenser coils. So every grocery store, every refrigeration unit, every AC unit, they have these condenser coils and they really need to be clean once a year. I had no idea what was doing. The guy at the top, time. It was a technician, Rob, he met me on site. I go start up the engine. It's frozen. I like, it was 21 degrees.

But they asked me to do a job. So it's like, you say jump, we say how high. You know, that's kind of how we roll. He took a torch, thawed our pipes, got us up and running. And we were able to power wash these coils on these ice machines or the AC units on these Wawa. So Wawa had some extra money at the end of the year. Like, hey, just go spend it on whatever. So they called us to do it.

It worked out pretty well. This is great. Like, water, gas, like, that's it. Like, no chemicals. Like, go ahead and spray. And were you only spraying the coils or? We're only spraying the coils. That's crazy.

Are there companies that only spray coils? Yes. Yes. There might be two. I know. In the Northeast, I know. But they kind of travel all over. Could you see that being an opportunity?

Like hyper niche power washing? Yeah. It's actually all I focus on. It's the best. Yeah. That's amazing. You know, I made money power washing, right? I could control my own schedule.

I quickly got into the, the niche, right, like into that selective type work, which is coil cleaning. You can't go clean coils because you don't know what you're doing. And if you mess something up, it would cost you a lot of money. So that same company who we did work for, we did a good job. They call us the next spring. Hey, you want to watch some more coils and we're like, yeah, like absolutely. That was the best work we had. And then started to try to identify more refrigeration companies who we can get in with and do some more work. So real quick, what are the unit economics like on a coil job? Like, that. How long does it take? How much do you charge? And we wash coils all over at this point,

but primarily we're washing them at grocery stores. So think of an, actually, we use it, for example, of an album book, all these. People know all these familiar with an all these size and about the same. We would get 350 per store for an Aldi. That's how much, three and fifty bucks. There's a reason that number is low. Aldi's are all built the same. We know exactly. Standardized. But they're standardized. Like standardized. Just save so much time for our employees. Like they,

they can close their eyes and know right where the latter access is. How to shut the unit down, right? Like all that stuff. And the best part of our coil cleaning is it happens every year. So as soon as the pollen hits, it gets sucked up to the coils, the coils are dirty. They have to have it done. So we know.

Is the need greater where you are because of the pollen? Or is this nationwide just as much demand? I would think it's probably just as big, if not bigger in the south, because I'm assuming they still have pollen. We do some work in Ohio. They have like cottonwood. This area has this cottonwood problem.

Yeah. It just sticks right to the unit. I should preface with I was on a snowboard trip last year. I was screaming, playing volleyball. I lost my voice. I don't smoke. I don't smoke packs of day. I swear.

Yeah, you're good. So $350 for an Aldi. And how long does that take? About 25 minutes. Wow. That's amazing. That's because we know what we're doing. Right.

Yeah. But then we might have like a, I think, okay, Sam's Club, right? We might do a Sam's Club and we'll probably get like $1,800 for the refrigeration and maybe not $1,000 for their AC. So they'll have the refrigeration for all their coolers, right? And then they'll have their AC units that they might be on the roof or on the ground. Some of them, these are on the grounds, even better. Walmart has these, they're called rack. We call rack houses.

It almost looks like someone dropped a trailer and it's all their compressors and their units on top of it. And they would be between 1,800. typically we don't use chemical, but there might, you might have like a, it's almost like negligent. It's like 60 bucks, 50 bucks worth of chemical on a job, but just travel and labor. Beautiful. Just yesterday I sent an email out to a company to say like, hey, this is what we do. And the best part about this niche is that every HVAC refrigeration company will tell you the same thing, that they don't have enough text. They don't have enough guys.

So my conversation usually goes like this. Hey, we have guys and rigs built to coil cleaning. you don't have guys. Sub about the cleaning to us. Is that who's normally doing coil cleaning or HVAC companies and not power washing companies? It's typically like the green horns of HVAC and they hate it. But the HVAC guys are like, I went to school to work on stuff and build it out and redo this. And they're making me clean these coils.

And they're cleaning coils with like a garden hose and just a bad setup. And we've kind of fine-tuned that to really clean them fast. Or like we do a building. it's probably 3,000 feet long. Like they don't have a garden hose. They can't do it. They're nowhere near the water. Like your pressure drops on water hose after like 50 feet.

Imagine after 5,000 feet, you know. So this is a B2B business, but are you even approaching the Aldi's of the world? Are you only approaching the HVAC company to the refrigeration companies that service all these? Or do you go through both of them? It's typically the HVAC company of services. I have done both and haven't had success going right to the customer. It's better to go right to the customer. It's better to go right to the same.

an HVAC company because the HVAC company kind of controls who works on it. The incentives are more aligned there too because you're saving them money. Like you're saving them time. Whereas when you go to Aldi, like you're selling. You're just another sales guy. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, it's, it's an easy sell to an HVAC company. Yeah.

That's beautiful. I think I know the answer to this, but is there any world where this could be a residential service that you offer, coil cleaning? No. People have asked it before. As like a preventative maintenance, like, you know. Yeah, no. It absolutely should be done.

on a residential. And I've had people ask you for. Well, I meant why I said no, I meant because of logistics. Like, it's something I do. Like my skill set is they'll give me 180 stores. Like, hey, Danny, here's the year's list. Go get them done. And there's 110 of those are all these, right? And say, go, go watch these stores. And my job is a plan that out and coordinate that. Yes, somebody like, you know, Chris Hoffman, who has a thousand customers, he might say, hey Danny like here's a thousand customers go clean their clothes and he might sell for 150 and pay me 100 right and we just pull up and go do it so is a residential deed for it yeah that's a really good example I had someone ask me about residential and my answer was like it's not worth it for us just because

of I know well you're already at scale but for a guy that's never done this before that could be one route like I'm comparing this to like trash bin cleaning oh yeah years ago is there is there a business for cleaning someone's trash bin like no like why just because it smells like once a month month? Like, no, it's like, it never fails to surprise me what people are willing to pay for. Yeah. And your coils should be done, but it goes back to your HVAC guy is probably going to control that. So how often do you have your HVAC guy come to your house? Almost never. Almost never, right? And I don't know if it's a good thing or the bad thing. The HVAC company can easily add a bunch of money and say, hey, like Chris, you want your AC to work more officially?

You should have this done every year. Yeah. And that's a sell. You're going to decide yes or know to that. If someone were attacking the residential side of this, would you recommend that they go through HVAC companies just as you're doing with commercial companies? Yeah, because some of these companies will have, like, PM prevent of maintenance packages with these homeowners. And they'll like, their contract says they're doing it. And that's exactly what's happening in commercial. The contract said they're doing it and they weren't doing it because they did not have enough guys. So like, interesting. And the unit would break down and the company would go fix it, but it comes from their bottom line there. And so sometimes they don't want.

want to do, but, you know, contractually, they're obligated to do it. And for them, it was really easy for us to say, like, yeah, just go have these guys do it. You're taking some off your plate is just as valuable as hiring a new person for this company. Is the non-standardization of it a challenge? You know, I mean, how many different HVAC units are out there? Or is it more simple? So it doesn't matter as much as it does in commercial. With residential, it's very easy. Just unplug it. That's what I'm talking about residential. Yeah, residential. Yeah, very easy residential. Okay. Once again, comes to seasonality. The problem with coil cleaning is it has this window.

It's a March through July window, really March through June, that you kind of get this stuff done because you want this unit to work efficiently as possible in July heat or August heat or, you know, for Pennsylvania when it gets really hot. You don't want to do it in February because the pond doesn't happen yet. Right. So there's a little bit of window there. You have to deal with, which makes scaling a little harder and trying to work hiring people to do it in a certain window is the tough part. But then you have ways to fill that in. We can talk about power washing for forever. But yeah, as far as coil cleaning, I can look it up.

But we probably do between 400 and 500, 600, maybe of coil cleaning. 600,000, yeah. Dang, that's amazing. And the best part is it comes around every year. So, like, you know, I used to sweat, like just having roof cleaning to do. Because it wasn't recurring really, right? No recurring. Now, it's 12 years old.

So, like, the business has some clout, you know, people, no us and recognize it now but um for a while like you know i'd sit here on january first and look at myself like i have no money yeah i i don't know i don't know if we're gonna do i have no idea i don't know economy goes bad whatever i i have no idea how much work we're gonna do and now with with the coil cleaning i can pretty much predict like we're gonna have 500 600 grand with a coil cleaning you know again uh or more or more you know because i'm gonna start hammering more more companies or we're going to expand further south or west to whatever we start doing. We actually did a bunch of work in Ohio last year.

Six-hour drive, no problem. The company who we, which is also a great way to look at things, I think you could kind relate to Bucky's success. Like just ride the coattails to somebody else. This other company kept growing, expanding their footprint and they're like, hey, Danny, you guys are coming with us. We're going North Carolina. We just open a branch up.

We don't want to hire a new guy for 80 grand. So you guys just do it. We'll pay you $25,000. Yeah. And like, perfect. Where we go next? You know? And so many people would be like, no, that we don't.

Nah. No, but like you uncover beautiful things when you just say yes to things. And you can always back out later, right? But just say yes to everything. Yes. Yes. The yes to opportunity is like advice I definitely give people. Say yes to opportunity.

So your current business started as a 22 year old just washing roofs. And then you just started exploring. You started doing, you know, storefronts and all kinds of stuff. Then you landed on coil cleaning. And coral cleaning is not everything. But now you essentially still have the same business today, but you're doing all kinds of different services. Yeah. So I still have a residential branch.

I called the residential division. And it's just like three guys who run that. They're talking about adding another truck this year because they were kind of overwhelmed. But so they might have five guys where there. I just do residential cleaning. They'll do 300 to 350 of residential cleaning a year. So similar long lines of rolling suns. So that's accurate information they're given.

And then commercial-wise, about four trucks to tax each truck. And we'll do gas stations, coil cleaning water towers. So actually just great networking. I met a guy who was in charge of these water towers. And I'm like, yo, they're so dirty. He's like, yeah, I know. But I need someone who can clean them. And red tape to work for a utility company, you have to, like, really have your stuff together.

They can't just pick up Joe's power washing from. So most of my success is. come from making Power Washington a legitimate business, right? And people look at Power Washington as like a Home Depot guy, right? And they don't want Home Depot guys. They want a legitimate business. And we like 100 feet tall, 80 feet tall, 60 feet tall, all different tanks. We did.

Last year we didn't do too many of the year before. We had about different sites that we did these things for. And this is for a water company, but like every state has water companies, right? So now I'm like, oh, well, you didn't for Aqua America. why not doing for New Jersey America or whatever, you know, might be. And they just pay such better rates. Like, I really love the saying like, don't compete, dominate. I don't compete because competing is down here, right?

I just dominate. I go to this level where like it's very few players are at, right? And there's so much more money at the top than there is at the bottom. No one competes to be the highest price. They're all competing to be the lowest. Yeah. And I'm just competing to be a professional power washing company. And there's very little professional capability out there.

What does a water tower job pay? And how long does it take? They quote between $6,000 to $12,000 per water tower and you know, a lift. Lift might be $800 to $2,000 depending the size of the lift. And we could do it in a day. Wow. And the beautiful. There's some, you know, bleach involved.

So maybe $200 worth of chemical, $100 worth of the gas and then just labor and profit. That's great. Water towers are really. So I'm really starting to focus more on the, was higher, higher margin, higher dollar stuff. We did, I had Turkey Hill is a gas station near where we are in Pennsylvania. There's 240 Turkey Hills in Pennsylvania. And I put a bid together to bid all the Turkey Hills.

And I got the bid and the guy calls me up and say, hey, can you take any more? I'm like, what do you have? He's like, well, I have 500 more across like, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts. So you know where this is going? I said yes. And so I'm like, sure. And then he like gives me the work and he left out Pennsylvania. I'm like, like I said yes to Massachusetts and New York and Connecticut because we're going to do Pennsylvania too.

Yeah, it's a package deal. Yeah. He's like, oh, yeah, all right. So then he gave me, so now I had both. Yeah. So we did, it was two years ago, we had 700 gas stations and which sounds like a lot. And it definitely was. But the reality is gas station work sucks.

Like the margin, I might make $100 a store. Why? Because it takes so long? No, because it is such a squeeze more like. It's, you're just, yeah, they have low margins, so they push that on you. That's it. And my sales guy said to me, he goes, look, the reality is the person doing this bid and making this decision is in wherever Connecticut. And they are not going to lose their job because of a dirty turkey hill in wherever in Pennsylvania.

And the only thing they would lose their job for is going over budget. This is exactly what happened to me. The guy said my quote for a store was $800. And the other quote came in at like $450. The guy calls me. He's like, hey, just so you know, like someone else said they do it for $450 and $450. And I'm like, per store, $450 for a gas station. And I'm like, there's just no way it's possible.

And he burst out laughing because he knew it. He knew there was no way it's possible. But he's like, look, you're going to do it. for 450 or I'm giving to this guy. Yeah. We'll do for $450. And I told my guys, start a clock. When it hits one hour, leave.

Wow. Okay. I mean, that's, yeah. That's the battle you're fighting with a certain company's gas stations. I've done other gas station companies, which are, I have much more pride. There's no homeless people sleeping in the backyard or in the dumpster or whatever. And like, they paid a lot more money. It was good.

So it's a different game depending on who you're playing with. So that 450 is it one or two guys doing that job in an hour? guys. Okay. And there's some Turkey Hills we did in 15 minutes. And what do you pay your guys? Like, what is your labor cost on a 450? So I was paid my guys an hourly rate and a percentage. That's because I was taught that way. I had a coach I hired for a day. And that's what he kind of said that he did. And he had successful power washing, you know, company. And I always kind of said to myself, like, you know, no one wants to work just for an hourly rate. Like that sucks. Like you don't have some kind of vested, you know, interested in the job. So they would get like lead tech, we get five percent.

The assistant tech will get 3%. Then, you know, once you get the lead tech or the assistant tech can do what they're doing, and they would get that 5%. And so right off the top, I was paying out 5% to each tech based on the job. So they love it too because we get a water tower job and they're like, let's go. We're making good. Yeah, we're making, I mean, these guys can made $100 an hour, you know. And there's some jobs they might make 22.

They always have like that base pay of $20 or $21, 22. between 17 and 22 hourly rate and then that percentage on top based on their experience. Okay. Well, they bring to the table. All right. So when did you start doing Christmas lights? I started doing Christmas lights probably about eight years ago. And I kind of sold the power washing business to one of my employees.

And I sold the business and the Christmas lights because that was a residential package kind of together. I was only doing Christmas lights for probably two years at that point. So I only had a few customers. And then it just worked out the guy who I sold it to, he started making money, did not handle money. And I got the business back. So he screwed it up. He screwed it up. Yeah.

He was making good money and some people can't handle money. And that's what happened. And so I got the business back and we got the business back. I really hammered down Christmas lights. I took the Christmas lights from my 12 customers, like 250 customers. And once again, Christmas lights reoccur. and there's nothing better than reoccurring revenue. I can tell you next year, we'll do $450,000 of Christmas lights.

And it is, it's amazing. Okay, remember, come back in one week from today and we'll play part two. And that's the part where we really dial up the energy and get super specific about acquiring customers and other home service niches that really no one's thinking about or talking about. Thanks for stopping by.