It wasn’t until February of 2015 I decided to spend money on marketing and actually make this a business. Originally it was just a hobby and an idea to pressure wash to make money and I had only cleaned 3 properties up to this point.
One day I was eating breakfast and reading “The Citizen”, which was a local paper I read every Thursday because it had all of the local news. Well when I saw the ad section I thought to myself “let’s give this a try and see what happens”.
I contacted the newspaper and when they told me it would be 295$ a month on a 12 month term I absolutely freaked out. I did it anyway to see what would happen.
Next Thursday the paper goes out (this is the first week of March 2015) and I get 3 phone calls that Thursday!
The very first job I landed was a house wash in Deer Park. I charged 60 $ (LOL).
I show up to the house, grab the garden hose they had at their home and connect it to my power washer. The hose had 3 different holes in it and my wand was pulsating the entire time I washed the house. This job took nearly 2 hours because I had no idea what I was doing. I was using straight pressure on the house.
Once I was done the lady wouldn’t have the 60$ until next week (LOL)!
So this was a pretty hard lesson. What did I do? Go to Walmart and bought a damn garden hose.
The next job was a driveway and a 2 story house wash. I went to Home Depot and purchased an extension lance (terrible idea) for my next job (it was 160$ btw).
I charged 300$ and the job took me 6 hours. Once again I had no idea what I was doing, but the work was completed.
Whenever I needed parts I would frequently go to a local industrial store known as Alklean Industries in Pasadena Texas https://www.alklean.com/. The owners John and Brenda Purswell hired my father and uncle in 1983 originally and that is where their journey began in this industry.
March of 2015 I grossed a total of 1200$
April of 2015 I grossed 2400$
May of 2015 I grossed 3000$
In May I was contacted by a general contractor to power wash a bank parking lot. I asked how he heard about me, he told me Alklean Industries gave him my phone number. I eyeballed it and said 800$. He required that I have an insurance policy. I had no idea I needed insurance to power wash until this customer told me I needed it. So I contacted Hegar Insurance out of California and I got insured (their customer service was a 2 out of 10).
What I didn’t realize when I began cleaning this parking lot (with a wand) is that it was 24,000 square feet. This job was torture and it was insanely hot outside while I did the work.
I contacted my uncle Pete Bulmore who works for Alklean Industries and asked how to go about making this a smoother experience. He told me about a “surface cleaner” and he referred to it as a lawnmower for concrete. When I learned about this I immediately went to Alklean and talked with Tom at the rental department and was looking for a good used surface cleaner. I purchased a 28” Hydrotek ANT model that they used as a rental. It was octagon shaped and EXTREMELY HEAVY. I would place this enormous surface cleaner on the passenger seat of my Honda because I had nowhere else to put it.
So after 30 hours of power washing I finally made my 800 dollars. This was the end of my days being the cheapest to land the job.
June 2015 I grossed 3200$
July 2015 I grossed 3000$
Then in August I got a call from a man named Charlie Foggarty who owns a restaurant in Northwest Houston. I asked how he found me, he told me Alklean Industries gave him my phone number.
I charged 9 cents a square foot and cleaned 3600 square feet of concrete. The man was unhappy because he expected me to get rid of this brown discolored area that was about 500 square feet. And pressure wouldn’t get rid of it. I later found out this was efflorescence and had no idea at this time how to remove it.
August 2015 I grossed 6400$ and I was so excited that I made this much money in one month. I took a big leap of faith and financed a 2015 Nissan Frontier and made it my official work truck!
September 2015 I grossed 2500$
October 2015 I grossed 1400$
November I grossed 720$
When I just financed my truck and realized residential pressure washing was seasonal, reality hit me and I freaked out. So the first thing I did was spend MORE money on an SEO expert called “Yodle” which essentially did nothing for my company other than charge me 500$.
During this process I worked security jobs at a bank while I was a police officer for the Brookshire Police Department. What I did was bring my laptop, my MIFI air card from Verizon and I would log into my old Linkedin profile and just search for random people and add them as a connection.
While I did this I realized anyone I could ever want to do business with was on here. I learned my destiny was commercial cleaning, and not residential cleaning when I saw the potential this platform had.
December 2015 I grossed 1400$
By the end of the year I grossed roughly 26,000$ and the amount of money I spent for my business was right at 40,000$ so my first year was in technical terms… Awful.
January of 2016 I got a phone call from my Uncle Pete and he told me there is a guy in Sealy Texas who just fired his cleaners and needed someone to clean his garbage trucks.
I absolutely wasn’t interested until they told me it was 24 garbage trucks every Sunday at 40$ per truck.
This is where my success began.
Photo is from the job where I learned about efflorescense. F9 Efflo is my go to choice.
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