Part 1/2: The Ultimate Guide to Starting Your First Service Business⏐Ep. #123

I got into commercial power washing. I advocate everyone do this. That commands about $1,800 a stock. We probably do between 400, 500, 600 maybe of coil cleaning.

600 grand?

Yeah.

Dang.

Next year we'll do $450,000 of crystallites. 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 rock flyers and goes and throws them in the driveway. That is how to market residential service. I sold the service before I had it.

I say this all the time. Sell it before. Welcome to the Kerner office. You are 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 H vac coils at grocery stores and residential and new business lines in 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're from.

My name is Danny Cronauer. I'm from northeastern 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. A roof cleaning soft wash business. Had some success with that. Was making some bucks that I was like, should I like, can I retire? And like just set an 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 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. Then 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 jumped 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 make it, and I was actually playing Diablo 3, which, by the way.

Oh, no, that's my favorite dude. Diablo 2 was me in high school. Like, 2000. 3. 4, 5. Like, I had a barbarian named Gubb. Tesla Necromancer. Like, oh, man, you are speaking my language.

Best friends. So this is why, you know, going back to, like, before we were recording, I said, like, people want to hear about you. That's amazing. I don't know if you give it credit. I give it credit. Diablo 2 created the business person I am today.

Yes.

My dad was like, hey, I need your help cleaning the roof. And I've. 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? None of that makes sense. And so, 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 roof. So our ladder's 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 kid you not. By the time I got down off the ladder, the roof was clean. I was like, what?

Wow.

Like, that was really impressive.

It was extra impactful because you couldn't see it being clean. You were flying blind.

I was flying.

It was like a before and after. Like, you. You performed 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. My parents, they read with my parents. 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, like, hit a mailbox by accident. Because when 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, started reading forums back when forums were a thing, figuring out how people took care of this, what it was, researching all about it.

But.

And my dad had an engineering background, so he helped us put together our first like Breaking Bad once again rig that just looked like it came from a meth trailer. We did another roof that we knew. And the problem was there's a thing called lichen. L I C H E N that didn't come off, it just turned off.

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 equate it to like a good air quality, but I'm not exactly sure why moisture definitely is. Is a thing. But the lichen did come off. So the first like three months I was like panicking like, oh, this sucks. Like all the black streaks are gone. The roof looks really good. But they have this bird poop on there. Right. That's exactly what it would look like. And then sure enough, it came off. So after actually took. I'm not sure if you have this background to be funny. Co sales. You cut co knives.

I know it, but no, I never did it myself. So you checking all the boxes, did you?

Yeah.

You sell religion door to door too? That's what I did.

No, that I couldn't be further from that one.

Okay. Well, that was my equivalent of Cutco. Door to door.

Exactly. That was your equivalent of Cutco. 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 Cutco taught me like cold calling and following up with people I didn't know, going to present at their house. Like, these are all things I was able to sell to people. And so I really, I knew the product. Love Cutco knives. I had 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 I'm like, what is this page doing? This page is establishing rapport with the customer. Right. They're American company, they're brick and they're actual real. So I planned my business later that that week after I cleaned the first roof with the Cutco sales book and I just took the Cutco 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. Was the biggest, most badass, you know, 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're 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 Cutco's wheel and applied 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, and my job was to like 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 knew like he would walk in and there would be orders on his desk that just automatically got printed from somebody who hitting 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. Cause 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 like diversify that or get into more of a niche market. Because I mean, I was a 22 year old 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 grand the first year. Wow, 50 roofs and 22 year old. Yep. Which was great. You know, that was. 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, it would vary like so 150 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 for 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 do this. I sold the service before I had it.

So I 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 too. Any money I had, I paid myself the lease. And I don't pay myself first. I know it's a book. People talk about that. I'm like dead last. I want to make sure my people can eat first and everyone else and I will just live off of whatever is left over. So, yeah, we wasn't. 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 what roof cleaning even was in my area. It was a brand new concept. So I was kind of spending a lot on educating. But you bought a snowplow 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 know, just constantly, you know, reinvesting 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 the diesel fuel that exploded all over me. So it was like 7am covered in like 2 gallons of diesel. And I remember my employee like yelling at me being 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 gonna be stuck in their way. And like, I never would be because I was doing something I've never done before. I'd never cleaned. We did hundreds of roofs at this point. You know, roofs were easy for us. They make great money, good margins. But I was okay with failing or doing a bad job or whatever to.

Figure that's how you learn.

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, we're going to figure this out, we're going to learn what's going on. Called the guy up, told my line exploded. He told me just pinch it 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 Walmart and doing other jobs and making 100x that power should cost, you know.

How did you get a job with Walmart?

Those religious guys, they're good people. So I met a, I met 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. Like, they didn't have bank accounts so they were like 20, 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, powering event. And guy asked the question, anyone do work for Walmart? And only two guys raised their hands and it was these two, 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 with them to this day. And they, they showed me like how to do it and it was definitely one of the hardest things I did in my life was to complete their like vendor packet to become a Walmart vendor. There's so many requirements and limitations. Like it's easier to do work for the federal government than it is to do work for Walmart.

Wow. Like Walmart, it's a lot of red tape.

Oh, so much. And that I, I believe 90% of it's 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, 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, to sell, which they gave me, like almost like the instruction. It's, 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 employee's like I don't know how to put me in. You put you in the system. I'm like here you go. Like this is, this is how you do your job. And so I was able to, to clean a couple Walmarts on a nice monthly basis because I also wanted to get that, that, that recurring revenue I was always attracted to that doing roofs was great.

How much revenue were those jobs?

Walmarts, we would do their storefronts for a thousand dollars each and then I had several of them at the time. And then we do their bathrooms. Like that was kind of the way in. They told me like all these man. 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, as the smart customer.

Keep it clean.

Keep it clean. So the, the what I was told was go in, say you'll clean their bathrooms too. And so we, same equipment we'd power wash the storefront with and we'd also like their, their concrete outside. They would 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, their bathroom. So that commands about $1,800 a stop and we'd have seven of them that we do on a monthly basis.

Wow. So 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, 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's free gas and 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 our next biggest break was a guy who worked for me doing sales. He knew another, a guy who had a large company in the area and this guy knew that we had power equipment and they had a contract with Wawa to do their H Vac. So it's December, which is not the time to do this power washing 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 cleaned once a year. I had no idea what I was doing. The guy at the time was Technician Rob. He met me on site. Go start up the engine. It's frozen. I like it was 21 degrees, like, 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 out our pipes, got us up and running, and we were able to power wash these coils on these, the 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. Water, gas, like, that's it. Like, no chemicals. Go ahead and spray.

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 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's going to 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. They're like, hey, you want to wash 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 could get in with and do some more work.

So real quick, what are the unit economics like on. 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, Oven book, Aldi's. People know Aldi's, familiar with Aldi's. The size of them are about the same. We would get 350 per store for an Aldi. That's how much? 350 bucks. There's a reason that number is low. All these are all built the same. We know exactly.

Standardized.

Standardized. Like, standardized just saves so much time for our employees. Like, they. They could close their eyes and know right where the ladder access is, how to shut the unit down. Right. Like, all that stuff. And the best part of coil cleaning is it happens every year. So as soon as the pollen hits, it gets sucked up to the coils. 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 or like, we do some work in Ohio. They have, like, cottonwood. This area has this cottonwood problem, and just. It just sticks right to the unit. I should preface with, I was on a snowboard trip last year. I was screaming playing volleyball, so I lost my voice. I don't smoke packs a day, I swear.

Yeah, you're good. So 350 bucks for an Aldi.

And.

And how long does that take?

About 25 minutes.

Wow, that's amazing.

That's. Cause we know what we're doing, right?

Yeah.

But then we might have, like, a think, okay, Sam's Club, right? We might do a Sam's Club. And we'll probably get like 1800 for the refrigeration and then maybe another thousand dollars for their ac. So they'll have the refrigeration for all their coolers. Right. And then they'll have their AC units that, you know, might be on the roof or on the ground. Some of these are on the ground. It's even better. Walmart has these called rack. We call them rack houses. There's a. It almost looks like someone dropped a trailer, and it's all their compressors and their. Their units on top of it. And they would be between a thousand. Eighteen hundred. 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 H vac refrigeration company will tell you the same thing, that they don't have enough techs, 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 out the cleaning to us. Is that who's normally doing coil cleaning or H Vac companies and not power washing companies.

It's typically like the greenhorns of H Vac and they hate it. But the H Vac 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. Coils. And they're, they're cleaning coils with like a garden hose and just a bad setup. And you know, we've kind of fine tuned that to, to really clean them fast or like we do a building, it's probably 3,000ft long. Like they don't have a garden hose. Like they can't do it. They're nowhere near the water. Like your pressure drops on a water hose after like 50ft. Imagine after 5,000ft, you know, so, so.

This is a, a B2B business. But are you even approaching the Aldi's of the world? Are you only approaching the H Vac company or the refrigeration companies that service all these or do you go through both of them?

It's typically the H Vac company who services. I have done both and haven't had success going right to the customer. It's better to go right to the H Vac company because the H Vac 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, it's, it's an easy sell to an H Vac 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, they should, it absolutely should be done on residential and I've had people asking for it. Well, I meant why I said no. I meant because of logistics. Like it's something I do. I like. My skill set is they'll give me 180 stores like, hey Danny, here's the year's list, go get em done. And there's 110 of those are Aldi's, right. And say go, go wash these stores. And my job is to 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 it for 150 and then pay me 100. Right. And we just pull up and go do it. So is there 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. 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 H Vac guys. Probably going to control that. So how often do you have your H Vac guy come to your house?

Almost never.

Because I'm almost never. Right. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. The H Vac company can easily add a bunch of money, say, hey, like, Chris, you want your AC to work more efficiently? You should have this done every year.

Yeah.

And that's a sell. You're going to decide yes or no to that.

If someone were attacking the residential side of this, would you recommend that they go through H Vac companies just as you're doing with commercial companies?

Yeah, because some of these H Vac companies will have like PM Pro maintenance packages with these homeowners and they'll ask like, they're 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, it, it comes from their, their bottom line there. And so like sometimes they don't 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 H Vac 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.

Residential. Yeah, Very easy. Residential. Okay. Once again, comes to seasonality. The problem with coil cleaning is it has this window, right? 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 where for Pennsylvania, when it gets really hot, you don't want to do it in February because the pond isn't happened yet. Right. So there's a little bit of a 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 grand?

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. No. It's 12 years old. So, like, the business has some clout. You know, people know us and recognize it now. But for a while, like, you know, I'd sit here on January 1st and look at myself like, I have no money. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if we're gonna do. I have no idea. I don't. The 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 the coil cleaning, you know, again, or. Or more, you know, because I'm gonna start hammering more, more companies, or we're gonna expand further south or west, you know, whatever we start doing. We actually did a bunch of work in Ohio last year. Six hour drive, no problem. We, the company who we. Which is also a great way to look at things. I think you could kind of relate to Bucky's success, like, just ride the coattails to somebody else.

Piggyback.

Other company kept growing, expanding their footprint, and they're like, hey, Danny, you guys are coming with us. Like, we're going North Carolina. We just opened 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 grand.

Yeah.

And like, Perfect where we go next.

You know, and so many people would be like, no, 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 to opportunity is like advice I definitely give people. Say yes to opportunity.

So, so your current business started as a 22 year old just washing roofs and then you just started exploring. Then you started doing, you know, storefronts and all kinds of stuff. Then you landed on coil cleaning. And coil 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 which I call 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. Um, but so they might have five guys over there just do residential cleaning. They'll do 300 to 350 of residential cleaning a year. So similar long lines of rolling suds. So that's, that's accurate information they're given. And then commercial wise, about four trucks, two text 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 to 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 I, I, most of my success has come from making power washing a legitimate business. Right? And people look at power washing as like a Home Depot guy, right? And they don't want Home Depot guys, they want a legitimate business. And we like 100ft tall, 80ft tall, 60ft tall, all different tanks. We, we did last year, we didn't do too many of the year before. We had about like 11 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 do them for you? New Jersey America or whatever, you know, it might be. And they just pay such better rates. Like I, I, I really love the saying like, don't compete, dominate. I don't, 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 care company out there.

What does a water tower job pay and how long does it take?

They quote between 6 to $12,000 per water tower. And you run a lift. Lift might be 800 to 2 grand, depending on the size of the lift. And we could do them in a day.

Wow.

And the beautiful. There's some, you know, bleach involved, so maybe $200 worth of chemical, a hundred dollars worth of gas, and then just labor and profit.

That is great.

Water towers are really. So I really started focused more on, on those higher, higher margin, higher dollar stuff. We did. I, 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, to bid all the Turkey Hills. And I got the bid. And the guy calls me up and say, hey, can you take any, any more? I'm like, well, what do you have? He's like, well, I've got 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, to Massachusetts and New York and all 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, 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 a hundred dollars a store.

Why? Because it takes so long?

No, because the. It is such a squeeze. 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 Pennsylvania. And the only thing they would lose their job for is going over budget. This is exactly 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'd do it for 450 bucks. And I'm like, per store, 450. 450 per 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 was possible. But he's like, look, you can do for 450. Or I'm giving to this guy. Yeah, we'll do 450. 450. And I told my guys, start o', clock, when it hits one hour, leave. And wow.

Okay.

I mean, that's. Yeah, that's the battle you're fighting with. With a certain company's gas stations. And I've done other gas station companies which are. Have much more pride. There's no, you know, 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 and out. Okay.

And there are some turkey hills. We did in 15 minutes. Yeah.

And it's. What do you pay your guys? Like, what is your labor cost on a 450?

So I was paying my guys a. An hourly rate 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 has successful powering, you know, company. And I always kind of said to myself, like, yeah, no one wants to work just for an hourly. Right. Like, that sucks. Like, you don't have some kind of vested, you know, interest in the job. So they would get, like, lead tech would get 5%, assistant tech would get 3%. Then, you know, once again, the lead tech or the assistant tech kind of knew what they're doing. They would get that. 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, Then there's some jobs they make. Make 22. They. They always have, like, that. That base pay of $20 or 21, 22. Between 17 and 22 hourly, you know, rate, and then that percentage on top based on their experience and. And the.

Okay.

What they bring to the table.

Yeah. 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, didn't know how to handle money, and I got the business back.

So he screwed it up.

He screwed it up? Yeah, yeah, he was making good money and some people can't handle money. And that's, that's what happened. And so I got the business back and we got the business back. I really like hammered down Christmas lights. I took the Christmas lights from like 12 customers, like 250 customers. And wow, again, Christmas lights reoccurs and there's nothing better than recurring revenue. I can tell you. Next year we'll do 450 thousand dollars of crystal lights. And it is 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.