EmpirePW

At the end of this month I will be relocating to Michigan to buy a friends landscaping business. I have a chain of resturaunts that have me clean their dumpster areas, walk ways, and windows on a regular schedule in the Wilmington and Jacksonville, NC area. The district manager asked me if I knew anyone who would take over the cleaning starting in January, so I am putting the offer out there. Contact me for the details. Matthew @910-443-0513 This is a great contract to have.

Hey Lance I just picked up Jacksonvilles defense and special teams for my fantasy football league... a little bird told me they're gonna return a kickoff for a touchdown and that's big points for me... Bigger prize for you but we'll both be winners...

Bill, We can probably work something out on a commision basis for the selling of my services. I work right in your area but I have had trouble selling in the past for a few reasons. If you'd like to further discuss this call me at 910-443-0513 during the day. I only do this part time but I still have a lot of free part time to fill. Matthew

Spiders dont really bother me but a few months ago I was walking under a tree at my neighbors house and had a some web strings wrap around my face. I wiped it off and didn't think anything about it really. A half hour later I was sitting on my couch and my roommate walked up behind me and told me not to move. he grabbed a newspaper and swatted this 2 inch huge hairy brown spider off the back of my head onto the floor and stepped on it. The friggin thing was on me for over a half hour and I didn't realize it. The thing that really gets to me though is when I described the spider to people in my area (I'm still figuring out the creepy crawlies in North Carolina) they called it a brown wolf spider and I got varying reports about if it was poisonous or not. Still don't know for sure but am glad I didn't figure it out the hard way.

I have another job working in a resturaunt waiting tables. I wouldn't give that job up anytime soon because I have it good there. A good friend is the GM and he understands my power-washing job. He knows I work in the resturaunt to fill time and meet new people but he knows I work hard while I am there too. Also I am DBA Empire Pressure Washing so at the end of the year the gov't wants their money. The taxes I pay at the resturaunt help reduce that amount significantly. I work part time too because my resturaunt job is flexible. If I should come across a lot of work that will keep me busy for a while I can get some time off from the resturaunt and nobody complains. I plan to eventually go full time in the next year or two. My mother is getting laid off from her job next June and is getting a nice severence package, my father is a real estate broker and is trying to sell all his property in Michigan right now, my brother and his best friend (who is also like a brother to me) want to move down here to North Carolina and get out of michigan. So when mom gets fired and dad sells some houses all 4 of them are moving down here. Dad is going to find work for us since he can sell glasses to a blind man, mom is going to keep the books, my brothers are going to come down and do the labor with me and we are going to turn Empire into a family business. That is when I fully intend to go full time. Until then it is all about what work I can scrounge up while working part time and learning how to do it right.

I tend to stay away from wood decks but I do houses and flatwork. When I get a first time customer I give them a stack of business cards and tell them to write their names on them and hand them out. If they refer 5 jobs to me I send them a certificate for a free house wash. I also send them a letter 6 and 10 months after the cleaning thanking them for their business and reminding them that houses do get dirty again and I am still in the area if they need anything.

My two favorite quotes (and I tell them to my girl all the time) are: It could be worse. You could be dead. and Smile. If for no other reason than because I told you to. -- Both by me

If a customer insists on something that I don't recomend I just make it clear that I will use their product if they want but I put into the contract that I am not responsible for any damage or dissatisfaction caused by the product. I also make the point that since I will be purchasing only the amount of product I need for the job and not in bulk the price of the job will probably rise, sometimes significantly. I then leave it to the customers to decide what they want to do. If they hire me that's cool and if they don't it's ok with me too.

removing paint from brick is a pain and you'll never get all of it off. I had a friend that needed his office building repainted and he asked me for some help in prepping so I went out with a 3700psi/4gpm machine with a rotating turbo nozzle and took as much paint off the cylinder block as possible. I got a lot of it off, mostly in the areas where it was already starting to chip and peel (which was what we were going for) and we just painted over what was left. All in all the moral of my story is avoid jobs that have you removing paint from wood or brick. Stain is one thing paint is another, especially latex paint. The PW alone will not be enough and I recomend passing on the job. I would at least.

First let me state that residential work is not usually what I do so when someone calls me with a residential job I make them describe their homes to me (# of stories, dimensions of the sides, garages, etc) and I give them a quote over the phone. I don't make it too cheap and I also stress the fact that I am liscensed/insured/bonded with experience and references and a whole bunch of other good stuff. I would say I sell 90% of the jobs that call me for a quote without seeing the houses since most these jobs were referred to me by someone I had done work for (I run a referral reward program with clients.) Any commercial or industrial jobs I go out meet the people in charge and visit the site before giving an estimate. These jobs turn into regular customers that need constant cleaning though and are much more lucrative to me than residential work. So for houses over the phone everything else I will always give a free estimate.

I use one rig (well it's my pickup loaded up) and one guy (me) and I average between 1k and 5k each month. I did however have a good month last month where I scored an apartment complex with 30 buildings that took me 3 weeks (weather issues and other scheduled work slowed me a bit) and that was a $12,000 job. I don't spend any money on advertising though, I just get work by word of mouth or pursuing the job and it's just me so 1k-2k is all I need to get by but those 12k jobs make a month look real good.

I haven't been to the doctor in six years and the last time I went I didn't want to but the my baseball coach made me go to get X-rays (which turned out to be nothing but a sprain). I had a third degree burn on my hand 2 years ago and I didn't go to the doctor for it. It is going to take some serious hurting before I go to a doctor. Maybe that's just me though.

I started out with a little 2.5gal/2400 psi residential pw that I got from my grandpa when he bought a new one. Then I realized the money making possibilities of pressure washing so I bought the same powerwasher you mentioned from the Home Depot because of the 0% intrest for a year. I have gotten plenty of work with it and since it isn't a skid unit I didn't need a trailer, just my pickup. It has been a good investment and paid for itself but once I get enough work to do this full time I intend to buy a better PW. If you are starting up with very little money to invest then buy it but do remember to do some research into what you need in this industry before you just buy a power washing and start working.

I think my old roommate dated at least 5 or 6 of those girls.

Very truebut when I was first starting up the pennies were very tight so I got the minimum I needed. As soon as I need more I only have to pay the difference in premiums.