So you've been at this a while…. tell us some of the lessons that you've learned. What are, you know, one or two, like things that come to mind as, you know what, these are really important for people to take away, and if they take heart with these, like it can really help them?

Well, I would say really to, you know, for one, don't think you know everything, because we don't know everything we think we do, but we learn every. But as you know, I had a company before this, and when it failed, you know, that company failed. We had the wrong business model. Our business model was built on volume. It was built on, you know, advertising cheap prices, living socials, coupon, groupons, all this stuff. And, you know, we thought that we were smarter than everybody else that, you know, doesn't matter. We're gonna get repeat customers and they're gonna be for us, and they're gonna go upsales, and that's not really the case.

Yeah.

So, that company was very, very stressful. It was extremely stressful. I walked out of there in 2017, bought my partner out, got online, met you, and rebranded my company, and came up with a whole new mindset. That mindset was like, we don't want to advertise for cheap customers anymore, we want to advertise and get customers that are willing to pay, you know, it's great money, but get good value. Like we're not ripping people off.

Yeah.

We're giving them awesome value. So I would say, you know, people are out there listening, if you have a service company, you think that to get the phone in the ring, you have to lower your price, you have to be cheap. You need to rethink that, because that's a mistake that can sink you really quickly.

Yeah.

And it's a shame cause I see guys go down that path as, as times get slow, because as business owners, we have roller coasters, you know, we have roller coasters. And, you know, I talk to people and as the rollercoaster starts to go down, they're gonna start just dropping their prices right away because they're afraid. I'm like, it's gonna come back. Relax. It's part of the ride. You know, you got to do some other things, throw some value out there, you know?

Yeah.

For me, hey, we'll, throwing free driveway cleaning with a house wash, wherever it is, but we're not gonna lower our prices.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I think that's what I would tell anybody. Just be careful.

So 2017 is when you rebranded, how long had you been doing that business model?

We've been doing that business model, for about five years.

Five years?

Yep.

So obviously, I'm gonna guess some of the stress probably is related to customers.

Absolutely.

Because you got, you know, your guys were incented to probably do as much as possible, and so that cut corners. What were some of the other like stressors that came from that? For the people that, I mean, because there's a lot of people listening that think, you know, I lower my prices, everything will be fine. I'll keep getting work and not understanding the things that go behind that are gonna come out and bite you in the ass and make it stressful. So what were some of the other stressors that you had to deal with?

So, employees was the second thing, you said customers. So employees, they're a paid commission. So when they went out the door with their tickets and if they couldn't sell for some reason that day, they just had bad attitudes, they weren't happy. So they wouldn't take care of our equipment at all. I mean, they would, we had employees that would break equipment on purpose just cause they didn't wanna work. That's the other issue. You know, when you're running at so small profit margins, you know, when a transmission and a truck blows up or a machine blows up, you know, it's a lot more tougher than now you have to go buy a transmission, right? It's hard when your profit margins are so low.

Yeah.

Dealing with the volume of customers we were dealing with that were just coming in at one time and they all just wanted this house washing deal. You know, they didn't care about their properties, so we were getting the worst properties. We were getting the properties that looked like somebody, they weren't clean for 30 years probably because they really didn't care. The only reason they got it done is because they got a groupon, they got a living social. They've seen the truck for $149 whole house wash going down the street.

Yeah.

So employees and customers are definitely my biggest, were my biggest pain points and obviously profits.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know the profits.

You brought up living social man. We did a living social in 2014, I think begin spring of 2014, some somebody talked us into, "hey, it'd be a great . All these people are gonna call you away from, you know, trying to get the living social and you'll be able to upsell them." That was the furthest thing from the truth. It was the worst pricing model that in Groupon. Like they're basically the same, the worst pricing model ever. And then you didn't get paid until like 60, 90 days later. And, you said that, and I got like a pit in my stomach remembering those three months we were dealing with that crap. But you know, it goes to the value that you provide as a company to your customer. And if you are, if you're short-changing the value that your company provides by lowering your price, the customer's not going to see you as valuable either. I mean, it's a two-edged sword. Like, okay, so let's say your average ticket, or, you know, you're gonna drop the house wash price that maybe, normally you charge 400 bucks and you're gonna charge 200 bucks, okay? And you get five people to sign up for that in one day. Well, first of all, this's gonna be a long ass day, number one. Number two, you are not going to be able to provide the value that you can provide because you got a customer that's waiting on you to do that $200 house wash and to the customer, the $200 house wash is the same value as the $400 house wash, and therein lies the problem. What do you think is the biggest thing that you were able to do to help you increase pricing or average tickets that eliminated having to worry about you selling your price cause that's what everybody talk. "I gotta sell my price, I gotta sell, sell it back." What did you do that helped you be able to increase average tickets without really just raising prices arbitrarily?

You mean now with this company?

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. So, value providing our customers with a, you know, from the whole customer journey, from when they call us. When they get the proposal, the whole step through, it's laid out very professionally. The value we give them, the steps we take during the house wash. Now, we don't just have an estimate saying, we're gonna wash your house. You know, it's really descriptive what we're gonna do. We're gonna cover your electrical outlets. We're gonna take care of your plants, we're gonna protect your property, you know, all the steps that we do, our final wash, all all these different steps that we do that are extra, now becomes where, you know, you can't compare apples to apples. Right? You can't compare this quote, my quote with another regular quote cause it's not the same.

Yeah.

And so I think value is, is really where, where it's at been for us. In educating our clients, also. I spend some time educating them, cause they don't know, you know, they think pressure washing a home is this pressure washing a home. They have no idea that it's not just pressure washing a home. There's things that can go really wrong when you get your house.

Absolutely. So we talked a little bit about the PWMCA prior, anything else you got going on? Any projects coming up or any speaking events that you're doing that you're focused on making happen or maybe another type of project that's going on that you wanna tell us about?

Oh, right now I'm working on next year's "annual", but besides that, you know, I'm working on something, trying to get it panned out to do something down there in like the Kentucky, Ohio area. Trying to do an event down there. So one of our awesome vendors in the industry, I'm not gonna mention right now cause we haven't ironed it out. So I don't want to get anybody angry, but we're working on getting that done. And then that'd be great. Give guys the opportunity to learn a network, and you know, I had a really good conversation with a buddy of mine last week, and you got to get him on the podcast, man, Paul Gianni out of New York. You know, he came to my Myrtle Beach event in 2000, I think in 19,(2019).

Yeah.

May have been 2020, but I think it was 2019. He's out in, up in New York. He said, look, I've never been off of my island, I've always been here. He has a nice little company at the time. He goes, I came to your event, he goes, "the people that I met changed my life completely." Now he has a, a really successful growing company and he told me that he runs his company. He's like, "I run my company now, like I have no arms or legs. That's the way, that's the mindset I have. That's how my companies ran." Cause I was out taking down Christmas lights few, you know, last month and he called me, he like, what are you doing taking down lights? I'm like, "cause I like to." He's like, "no man, no. I've now run my company, like it has no arms or legs where I don't, I'm not touching anything like that." And this is somebody that's been in business for a while. He's been in business for a while. He came to an event, he never thought he had to go to an event. He came to that event and he was like, just blown away. So now he's a really big supporter of the events. Because it really opened his eyes, man. Cause these events aren't about, you know, all these events out there aren't about, "oh, I'm gonna go there and this guy's gonna tell me how to spray bleach or whatever, or whatever you do. How to cut grass or you know, how to clean air ducts." These events are all to meet new people, learn new techniques, and build relationships that can really help your business.

Yeah, I think the piece that people miss the most is the connection that you make with others in your industry and the things you can learn from that, and the things you can gain from that, you know? I've been fortunate that, you know, I've met some people outside of events, but at the same time there have been a lot of people because of events that I've met, Dave Carroll, Kirk Kempton, like those are two people that the relationship started at an association event. And, you know, Dave is probably, you know, if I'm saying, Hey, who are some of your closest friends? Dave would be one of those people, and it was because of an event. And I've learned from him, he's learned from me. You can't take away the value, or you can't understand the value that holds until you experience it and people think, like you said, it's something else, right? They think they're gonna go there and they're gonna learn how to do something better, and you will learn how to do something better. But it's probably not gonna do any, have anything to do with the actual work of your business. It's gonna be either about yourself, or how to process better that helps you do something. You know, Paul saying that he doesn't use his arms and legs. I mean, he is creating a business, not a leverage job. A lot of us have a leverage job to where we have to show up, we have to be available. Maybe we're not out in the field, but if we're not doing the work, things don't get done. You know, and to me, that's the biggest focus of any business owner that they should be really pursuing. Regardless of how big you want your company to be or not, is get a business that can operate without you all the time. It's possible. Number one, it's a mindset thing. And number two, it's giving trust to people that you've put in place to be able to be successful, and that's the hardest. To me, that's one of the hardest things we do. I made 2023 the year that all the processes that are done in my business, I don't have to do. Now, I've removed myself from probably 80% of the processes already. It's my strategy, we have meetings on a weekly basis. We talk about what we're testing, what we're doing, like I do all that. But I used to do the majority of the work now, like the only thing I really do is sell, and this year the goal is I don't want to be the person selling. And you know, we added someone in January who, she's the first person that's ever sold a client for our company that wasn't me. And it's crazy, like it's a good feeling. But what Paul is saying is creating something, you are not needed. That's a business, and you don't, and that's the kind of stuff you can learn by hanging out with different people at these events. I mean, and then like some of the speakers you had this year, you know, like you had what Santi, like he's, I mean, who doesn't he speak for? He's one of John Maxwell speakers. Correct? I think. And then, he works in Howard's organization, like the guy's intelligent. And you could sit there and take just a little bit from what he said, implement your business, and see some changes. So my advice is get to an event, like at least do one a year, you know? And take your team, like, take people that are on your team, that are valued, members of the team, that have invested into being there, and give them something to look forward to, and to like work towards so that they can see, okay, there's more to this. There's more to this than what we're doing. And yeah, I mean, if you haven't been to an event, get to one. If you have been to one, but you haven't been to the PWMCA, get to the PWMCA, I mean, come on. What other event has someone singing Party in the USA at a high level for karaoke? I mean, do you know of any, Jamie? Because...

I don't, I don't know anybody. I don't know. Yeah, it's good stuff, man.

So cool, man. So tell us how people can get in touch with you, where they can go find out more information about you and the stuff that's going on.

Yeah, so if they wanna find out about the association, they go to pwmca.org. If they just want to follow me and just check me out. I'm Jamie Schmidt. I'm on Facebook. I have a couple groups of I'm in Pressure Washing Motivation is my group. I'm in a couple of Gary's groups. So I'm in all the Facebook groups, a lot of industry, so, I'm around, but if you wanna learn about the association, pwmca.org is the place to go. Tells you all about it there, and we're growing and we got some pretty cool resources coming this year, which I'm pretty happy and stoked about.

Absolutely. Yeah. Get there, check Jamie out. Man, get to the event. Like if you're a home service business owner, regardless if you're in exterior cleaning, carpet cleaning, dryer vent, cleaning, not cleaning, junk removal, like whatever. Get to the event. There's a lot of good resources. That can help you and inside of the organization as well, inside the association. Ton of good stuff. So go check them out. We'll have those in the show notes. Jamie, it's been a great time hanging out, DMN8 Nation. Go remember DMN8 the day and I'll be talking to you guys soon. 

DMN8 THE DAY!

You can find Jamie Schmidt on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jamie.schmidt.39

Check out his organization at https://pwmca.org/

Check out his company Greenway Pressure Washing at https://www.greenwaysj.com/

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