The Secret Hack to Landing MASSIVE Commercial Service Jobs

You purchased a street sweeping company in Southern California and you were selling some residential, some to HOA construction companies. And you were just starting to get into it, right?

Correct. Yeah, yeah. It was about probably four months into running the operation and we had had it probably since May last year. So we're about coming up on a year mark.

Okay. All right, now what did I suggest? What was your core question and what did I suggest back then?

I think I was just looking how to grow it. This is my first run at entrepreneurship. I just finished a baseball career and came across this business, low risk. And so you, I think you took a look at our website, you took a look at our Google, my business profile you mentioned just get some reviews, start working on SEO, double down on the Google Ads that, that had been working. So keep doing what's working and then figure out some sort of cold outreach which has been good. Like we've just found some associations locally and all that. And yeah, we're just doubling down on all that.

Awesome. So what type of cold outreach have you done?

So a lot of it has been just getting lists from I think outscrapers, things like that. And whether it's homeowners associations, commercial property managers. And then I joined a contractors association that's like local and so that'll get our construction side going. So it's just a mix of cold calling, cold emails and following up on any past leads, things like that.

And do you have any stories like a specific customer or instance you remember of a time that cold outreach worked and what is that story?

The cold outreach has been slow. One of them we have, we have a big construction company in our area that it could lead to a lot of jobs and they weren't even aware that we were a company. And yeah, just a phone call led to that and then I had a phone call with a gentleman that he owned a parking lot in our area and I asked if he had some other properties as well and he pointed me to. Yeah, he wanted some pressure washing for a parking garage that's at near lax. It's like a seven story garage. Working on getting that one hopefully. And that would be probably a month of revenue just in itself. Yeah, that'd be nice.

Like it would be the equivalent of a whole month of revenue for your company.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

Now do you do.

And we would outsource all of it.

Nice. That was my ex. So you don't do pressure washing, you would just sub it out?

Yeah, yeah.

Now what on that job specifically, what do the unit economics look like, what would the top line be and what would it cost you to sub it out?

So it took a bunch of research, but I found that I could get someone who I could trust not to, like, flood this thing and put me in a lot of trouble. Who's done these size jobs before? And it probably would cost me about 30 to 35,000. And I actually had asked the customer, like, hey, have you done this before? I don't know if you understand how big of a job this is. And he said, yeah, we did it two years ago, but we only did half of it, and I think we did it for 30,000. So he gave me the number, which was really nice, very helpful. And yeah, so I quoted him, I think 55 or something like that for the whole building.

Okay.

Which I confirmed with a bunch of other guys that are, I think mostly through Twitter. And they said anywhere from the 50 to 60 range would probably be based on the square footage and everything.

Man, pressure washing parking garages. I didn't even know that was a thing. That is a lot of money.

Yeah, that's the next avenue that I want to add to so I don't have to outsource it all. Because we've gotten probably four or five leads on it in the last two months. Only one of them has landed, and it was a pretty small job, so I'm waiting until it makes sense for us to invest in that.

What would it cost you? So he didn't balk at the 55 grand?

No, he. He has to. His thing was he has to go get it approved by his VP or whoever is above him. And he said they were planning for either mid to late summer for this job.

Okay, and what's it going to cost you to outsource that?

About 30 to 35, man, for everything.

So you have to pressure wash the entire thing or they will.

It's most. Yeah, it's mostly pavement, so I have to sweep. It came from a sweeping job that I would sweep at first, get all the debris, and then, yeah, they would. It's basically get all the oil stains up and then it's mostly just the pavement, not any of the building or anything. Okay. And then making sure all the gum and just stuff that gets stuck over time.

Now, is this just for aesthetic purposes or is there like some regulation requiring this?

I'm not totally sure on the parking lots. Like, what is regulated as far as the pressure washing. I know the first couple of levels are like their VIP section. So he was like, hey, I need a. Like a deep clean for this. So I think it's more for looks of it. But I think there also is like an element of not having to invest in more pavement resurfacing and all that over time if you maintain it. So I think long term it saves you money. I know that's the case for sweeping, at least for asphalt and all that stuff. But so I would say there's some sort of benefit other than just looks.

Man, my mind is buzzing with this. I feel like you're in, you're in la. How many parking garages are in la? Like this is such a high ticket item. You could pay a full time guy to just chase down these parking lot owners and chase down these five figure jobs all day, every day.

Yeah, that's what I'm realizing. So we're in Ventura about probably an hour and a half. Yeah, hour and a half outside of la. But yeah, the, if I, even if I could get these jobs and sub them all out like it would be less of a headache and pretty decent cash flow.

So I love the model of subbing everything out and until you, you feel comfortable enough to do it yourself and you've de risked. So we do this in the tree business, we sub everything out. We literally don't own a chainsaw. But at this point we're looking to buy a tree company in DFW that doesn't sub anything out because we feel confident enough that we know how to run the business that we could just boost our margins. So our perfect scenario is buy a cash flowing tree business that's doing a million dollars a year in net profit. Come in there, put our marketing on it, put my operating partner on it who's an amazing operator and just boost the margins, boost the top line with better marketing. And so back to you. I think street sweeping and commercial pressure washing go hand in hand because you're going to have to do a run through this first anyway. And I feel like anytime you do a job like this, you're going to have to run through it. And so if I were you, I would get a, I would go to rionomy, which is a website that I like to use for scraping data. And honestly you can scrape with a virtual assistant everything you need during their one week trial. They're not going to like me saying this, but whatever you get, because it's super expensive, you get a one week trial.

Okay.

And I have a VA that I can refer to you that I've used for this. And he can go in and you can make a very specific Search for LA County, Orange county, whatever you're doing for parking garages or for parking lots or whatever it is, maybe just everything over an acre or under an acre and scrape it all out. Get as much data as you can and then just start hitting that list with someone local, not a va, either you or a partner or an employee and just start learning, learning how much of a need there is for this. I think four leads over two months for something that's this high ticket is pretty dang promising. I, I usually try to dissuade them from expanding into other verticals because they're you, they usually have a 1% market share of the vertical that they're already in. But yeah, for what I understand this A goes hand in hand with what you're already doing and B is much more high ticket because what would if you were to just sweep this seven story garage, nothing else, what would you charge him?

It might take maybe 5 or 600 bucks.

100X difference. Yeah, yeah, that's crazy.

And the capex for the pressure washing is much lower and replacing something on my sweeper, if something goes down it might be a $15,000 expense. So that's the real part that's difficult with this. But yeah, this. So the person I was subbing it out to, he actually reached out to me and I found out he'd been doing this for about 10 years and he's about, he said his top line this year will be around 7 to 8 million just with 80% commercial and then some residential.

Holy cow.

So is he opened my eyes to what's there?

Is he specializing in parking garages or just any pressure washing?

Any pressure washing, sandblasting. So like getting any of the stenciling up. They do like some fleet washing for commercial tractors and vehicles. So they do a little bit of everything.

Yeah, I have to imagine that it's really easy to sit here on this call and be like, oh yeah dude, pressure washing. I have to imagine it's very competitive, especially in la. But the fact like if you were to get on these cold calls and say we only do pressure washing for parking garages in LA County, I feel like that sells so much better than just another pressure washing guy calling them. And first of all, I doubt that any pressure washing guys are calling these guys because they're probably pretty busy and they're like people don't want to get on the phone so they're not competing with cold calls. Right.

I had to call probably 10 people to find someone and each one when I Sent them the address. They said, no, that's. That's way too big for me. I can't do that.

Perfect.

And yeah, so it took me like this guy told me there's probably three or four within southern to Northern California like that could handle a job this size. So. So, yeah, I think the competition definitely goes down once you start getting into those bigger jobs.

What do you think a truck would cost to do jobs this big if you were to buy it yourself?

The guy told me how he would do it and it was two trucks. I think the equipment, if you're getting it like new and going to keep it for a while, would be anywhere from 40, probably 35 to 40 grand per truck. Like with a truck trailer, everything, I think you could probably get it around 35, 40, so maybe 75 grand. To be able to do two crews on a job like this that'll pay.

For itself in two, two, three jobs.

Yeah.

If you were to only sweep this, how often realistically, like I know how often you'd like to sweep it. How often realistically would someone invite you back to keep sweeping that? Only sweep it?

Would this like a parking garage? Not. It would only be when they pressure wash because they're charging people for airport parking and so they don't want to. If I go and sweep it, it's going to be completely full and we're not anything done with it. So they're going to have to empty the lot for us to pressure wash it one or two levels at a time.

Interesting. Okay, how often do normal parking lots need to be swept?

A normal one? It depends. Like a commercial grocery store can be. I had one that's every night. But that's a very low margin. You're. It's just a race to the bottom. And then the HOAs, the nicer communities, are probably once a week or once every other week.

Okay. I'm just thinking, I know this isn't even why you called, but I'm latching onto this because it's a. This is still recurring. Like, you don't give up the recurring aspect. It's less recurring. It might be 10x less recurring, but 100x bigger ticket size. So to me, this is the exact type of asymmetric risk that you should be taking. You don't have to take any risk but your time and your pride to talk to these guys and at least learn. And then once you've subbed it out five or ten times, you really don't have a risk at that point because those five to 10 jobs, hopefully you've been the one interfacing with them. You are the one with the relationship with them. And they're going to recur in one, two, three years. Right. So even if you buy a truck today and you never get another job, you're still going to be able to do those jobs again in one, two or three years?

Yeah.

Am I missing something or is this a big opportunity?

I think it's a big opportunity, which is I've been on the whole YouTube rabbit trail for the pressure washing since this came up. The other pressure washing leads have been like much smaller, but they're still, you know, anywhere from 2,500 to five grand for these commercial jobs. And yeah, I mean, with a sweeper truck, like if I'm sending them to a construction site, I'm pretty happy. If each truck is doing about 2,500 a day, that's like best case scenario. So, yeah, to have a pressure washing job that I can do after hours, pretty low paying employee and to be able to do that and get three or five grand per job, I think there's definitely a big interest there. There.

Yeah. Okay, Think of it this way, because I've talked trash on pressure washing in the past because it's one of the very few home services that have gone viral on Tik Tok. So there's all kinds of high schoolers and college kids, which I love out there, buying pressure washers from Home Depot and hustling and I love that. Right. I don't love it as a competitor, which is why I'm not going into that business. But I love that they're doing it. So let's just take this business and compare it to something with less competition like fencing. Let's say every year in the fencing industry you've got just to keep the numbers clean, 100 guys coming into the market and 50 guys going out of the market. Maybe they're closing their business entirely. And let's just say that's like the average attrition into and out of the fencing business. Statistically speaking, unless Americans are getting 50% more fences every month, then at some point in the future, those companies are in for a world of hurt and a lot of competition. Let's say in the pressure washing industry it's three times that because it's gone viral on TikTok and fencing hasn't. Let's say you've got 300 coming into the market every month and 150. What that says to me, there's actually a barrier to entry with what you're doing because of the ticket, how much it's going to cost to buy one of these dang trucks. Right. And so all else equal, if the top of the funnel is three times bigger, the top of the funnel for the $50,000 truck parking lot pressure washing industry is the same size. Which means that if you're in an overall industry that's much more crowded and you find a subsegment of that industry that's ignored, then you will statistically be much less crowded than an average industry like fencing. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

I would wager that exactly 0% of these guys being inspired from TikTok are spending 75 grand on a truck. But there still is a growing need for that market because the economy's growing. And so if you're the guy that takes that on, then I think you'll be even better primed for success than someone starting a fencing business, which has not gone viral on TikTok. Right.

Yeah. And I think that's been my hesitation is I don't think we would do or I wouldn't pursue residential pressure washing unless I just got leads out of nowhere.

But it.

I would focus on these higher ticket items or the sweeping.

Yeah, yeah. So if I were you, I would make. I would buy a different domain name entirely. Just something cheap. 10 bucks. Regarding parking Garage Pressure washing. And maybe that's what it's called, Parking garage pressure washing.com or LA parking garage pressure Washing. And it's a long domain, it's not pretty. But then take your credentials. How long has your company been in business like before you bought it?

About 30 years. Perfect.

Leverage those credentials on your new landing page. And talk about on this new landing page how all you do is LA County Parking Garage pressure washing. And it can be a simple website, you can put pictures in there, it could be a one pager even. But then when you get on these calls, or I would even throw Google Ads at this landing page and just see what happens because there's probably very low traffic but very low competition on these Google Ads and just separate that and you could put on there like a subsidiary of your current business name or something. I would really explore that while you're doing everything that you're currently doing just to see what comes from it.

Yeah. It would take one job basically to pay off any sort of thing like that and two jobs probably to pay off all the equipment.

Yeah. And there's thousands of those things in the county, I'm sure.

Yeah.

What did we not get to that you had a question about with the.

Street sweeping high capex, we've gotten it to about 60 grand a month and it's about I would say 8 to 12% net margins because we're definitely investing a lot into making sure the equipment's back updated. We got a lot of old equipment when we bought it, ads, all that sort of stuff. So personally I have a decent Runway financially a couple years or so and this is my first go at entrepreneurship. So I don't necessarily want to take my chance of two years or whatever to focus on something that might not be my highest leverage or best opportunity. But it was just the opportunity that kind of fell in my lap. I have a background obviously in baseball, played 10 years professionally. I haven't done anything really with that or growing like a brand or anything like that. So I don't know, I'm not really sure if I should just continue just roll on this, learn all the skills of running a business at like marketing, sales, all that that I didn't know beforehand or if I should continue to pursue other things. I know you've had a couple of segments on the shiny object syndrome lately, but yeah, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts.

I think that you are in the exact right place. What was your. If you're at 60 grand a month today, what were you three months ago when we first spoke?

I would say probably 28 to 30 at that point and then when we bought it we were at about 15 to 20.

Okay. So I'm a big advocate of shiny object syndrome as I talk about. But I would like there's a difference between shiny objects inside your, your industry and outside. So like in my industry quote is entrepreneurship and so I'm always chasing shiny objects and I have a vehicle called co founders where I can place these shiny objects with operators. Right. I think you're doing something really special and amazing and the fact that you have a 30 year old business means that it's likely to stay in business for another 30 plus years. Statistically speaking, you're in one of the biggest economies in the world that's a growing economy that's by the ocean, which means it's not going anywhere. It's not as prone to market bubbles like Phoenix or Vegas. I would imagine there's dozens of other competitors you could buy in that market. I would lean hard into street sweeping and, or street sweeping plus like commercial pressure washing because it's not going anywhere. It's not going to be disrupted by AI One day there's going to be a self driving street sweeping truck and you can buy it and you can cut your cogs down right. Like you are almost immune from technological advances. In fact they're only going to benefit you. So I would keep doing exactly what you're doing and when you get to the point where you feel like your growth has stalled then start looking at acquiring other businesses in the same space. Maybe you acquire a commercial pressure washing company instead of starting one from scratch. I would also take your customer list like as soon as possible and reach out to them and ask if they have any pressure washing needs because you could have a whole other 60 grand a month of revenue already in your email list.

Yeah, okay, that's really helpful.

Yeah that's what I would do. But I think you're doing something really, really special and I want you to come back on in a couple months and let's talk again.

Yeah, yeah that'd be great. I appreciate it.

Okay, thank you Brandon.