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contents
FEATURES
6
Going
Great Guns:
Kristy White builds her
San Antonio-based pressure
wash company into a
powerhouse -- after dark
and one sales demo at a time
12
Bo Knows HOAs:
Bo Josetti specializes
in the niche market of
pressure washing vacation
home communities;
but his experience offers
insight for anyone desiring
to land an HOA contract
18
Word of
Mouth:
Serial entrepreneur
Jay Baer’s formula for
growing your business
hinges on the free
advertising your
customers can do for you
27
“Washing
Babe-raham
Lincoln…
Excellent!”:
Iconic pressure wash entrepreneur
Henry Bockman, who has cleaned
national monuments including the
Lincoln and Jefferson memorials,
is now taking his brand national
DEPARTMENTS
4 Editor’s Letter:
The biggest thing that holds back
this industry is the industry itself
6 Guest Column:
Progress not Perfection -- Be like
legendary University of Alabama
head football coach Nick Saban and
win the day seven seconds at a time
10 Contents
under
Pressure:
A look around the
World Wide Web for
wacky examples of
pressure washing in our
culture’s everyday life
Vol. 1, No. 3, Summer 2019
Publisher: Jackson Vahaly
Editor: Drew Ruble
Design: Katy Barrett-Alley
Pressure Wash News is published 4 times per year and is independently owned by Jackson Vahaly.
All inquiries should be directed to:
Pressure Wash News, 110 Childs Ln. Franklin, TN 37067
jacksonv@pressurewashnews.com
Copyright © 2019 2 Dollar Enterprises/Pressure Wash News. All Rights Reserved.
VOL. 1, NO. 3 | SUMMER 2019 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | 3

EDITOR’S
NOTE
As most PW News readers know, three
primary entities serve the pressure wash
industry. The Power Washers of North
America (PWNA) is a trade organization
that is specific to pressure washers. The
United Association of Mobile Contract
Cleaners (UAMCC) is, as its title suggests,
a “united” organization for not just pressure
washers but also window cleaners,
janitorial services, carpet cleaners, and
other general cleaners. And the Pressure
Washing Resource Association (PWRA)
provides resources for individual contractors
to grow but does not serve any type of
certificatory or regulatory function.
There are benefits to all. As an individual
contractor, it is not unrealistic (and,
arguably, sensible) to be a member of all
three. How better to stay on top of industry
trends, new ideas to grow your business,
and networking for support and education?
When I talk to people in the industry, they
consistently tell me that the biggest thing
that holds back this industry is the industry
itself. What they mean by that is that there
are a lot of operators out there nationwide
who would like to “play professional,”
who are often already members of one of
these professional associations, and who
are perhaps even trying to “step up their
game.” But they still won’t wear their safety
ropes, they still do business under the table,
they still want to cheat the government on
their taxes, and they still don’t want to obey
OSHA laws.
It has to stop.
The
Road Ahead
Most companies out there check all
those boxes successfully. Nevertheless, there
are still far too many marginal companies
that occasionally think about checking
those boxes but never do. Let’s be honest: a
large portion of the industry is comprised
of a bunch of trunk slammers and gypsies
running around cleaning driveways for
$50 and really dragging the rest of the
industry down. That’s not unlike a lot of
industries. We are not unique in that. But
that’s no excuse for not dealing with such
problems head-on.
Every time someone in our industry
goes looking for the shortcut, or fails to
deal with safety and OSHA requirements,
or workers comp requirements, and they
do so because they’re more interested in
skirting around them than acknowledging
these are the things they have to deal with,
and that they need to be compliant with
regulations like the Clean Water Act,
we all suffer. Allowing members in our
industry to persist with the attitude of
‘don’t tell me what to do, if I want to get
up on roof without my safety ropes on
that’s my decision, it’s not going to
hurt anybody else,’ is simply
no longer feasible. Because
in fact it does hurt other
people. The minute that
person falls off the roof and
gets injured or dies, it registers
on the entire industry’s loss modification
risk ratio, plummets our collective
reputation, and raises rates for all of us
(not to mention the unnecessary
loss of life).
No wonder when you walk
into your local bank to borrow
money to build a building or
something like that that they too often
look at you and say ‘oh, you’re just some
stupid little pressure washing company.’
Why? Because we’re too often acting like
stupid little pressure washing companies!
Holding such companies accountable
and even pulling their membership from
the associations are reasonable outcomes.
Associations train people to use safety
ropes to get up on roofs and when those
companies flaunt and violate the requirements
it should jeopardize their membership.
There must be accountability.
Everything boils down to leadership.
Either those companies need to start
following the guidelines or the leadership
in this industry needs to bare more teeth.
Losing membership or even creating
controversy is less important than doing
what’s right. At the least, such
Let’s be honest:
a large portion
of the industry is
comprised of a
bunch of trunk
slammers & gypsies
running around
cleaning driveways
for $50 and really
dragging the rest of
the industry down.
members should remove the association’s
sticker from the side of their truck and the
association’s name from their marketing
materials. They must be held to a standard,
be certified, and essentially ‘cut the crap’
if the pressure wash industry is going to
truly mature as an industry. No doubt all of
the associations and organizations representing
this industry can agree on that.
I, for one, believe we’ve reached
that point and that matters are set to be
improved – which is just another reason
I continue to be so high on the future of
this industry.
Best,
Drew Ruble
drewruble@gmail.com
4 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | VOL. 1, NO. 3 | SUMMER 2019

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Going
Great Guns
Kristy White builds her San Antonio-based pressure wash company
into a powerhouse -- after dark and one sales demo at a time
BY DREW RUBLE
in both Texas and the Southern United
a demo right in front of your face. And
Remember the old Febreze commercials
that aired during the 2012 London
Olympics? The ones where the aerosol
maker dangled treated jock straps from
the Azerbaijani Olympic Wrestling
Team under the noses of blindfolded
Londoners who were then asked to
describe what they smelled?
Responses ranged from “strawberry
milkshake” to “floral bouquet.” Future
product commercials utilized goats,
smelly fish, toilets, and body builder
armpits to prove a similar point.
Effective product demonstrations like
these have been around since the beginning
of sales history. They serve to make
clear to buyers that the product being
sold is worth the price. After all, what’s
more convincing than seeing it with your
own eyes? (Or, alternately, smelling it
with your own nose???)
Lucy Handley, writing in a 2014
article published in Marketing Week,
stated that “despite the digital age, the
saying that people buy from people still
stands – and they are more likely to do so
if they have an opportunity to try before
KRISTY WHITE
they buy.” According to Handley, 41
percent of shoppers who see a demonstration
of a product go on to buy it.
“That is why experiential marketing
and in-store demonstrating are growing
industries,” she concluded.
Kristy White, owner of Big Guns
SoftWash, is a big believer in the sales
demo. In fact, she’s ridden the method
(among other savvy business techniques)
to a spot among the most respected pressure
wash operators in the enormous
market of San Antonio, Texas -- the
seventh-most populous city in the United
States and the second-most populous city
States, with more than 1.5 million
residents.
“Yes, from time to time I even give
away services, and people are like ‘what
do you mean you give away services?’”
White said. “Well, frankly, I would rather
them see what I can do for them.”
White admits she relies heavily on
her instincts and emotional intelligence
before providing a free service, granting
them predominantly to prospects she
knows are highly likely to be closed.
“If I sense they are just trying to
get something for free then no, I don’t
do that; but when I know this might be
the sticking point on a sale, I’ll clean
something for free for them and show
them exactly what I can do,” she said.
“That live demo in front of them is so
impactful.”
White said she learned the art of
the sales demo from her mentor, Ron
Musgraves, who often reminded her
of the classic American door-to-door
vacuum cleaner salesmen now iconically
tethered to product demonstrations in
American lore.
“They would come in and give you
how many people would buy that vacuum
cleaner?” White said. “So it’s the same thing
with our pressure washing. And people can
understand that…That’s old school.”
Musgraves, a veteran pressure
washing contractor, owner of Pro Power
Wash of Mesa, Arizona, and controversial
past president of the UAMCC,
urged White go out and do about 12
demonstrations for clients, all the while
judging her results.
“I had to send videos of them to him
and he would say, ‘no, they’re not good
enough, you’ve got to practice more,”
White said. “’You can’t hit a homerun
if you’ve never done batting practice,’
he would say. He’s always quick with the
baseball analogies.”
Like Musgraves, White has also (in
recent years) significantly narrowed the
scope of her business. Said another way,
she stopped chasing every type of job
and instead got laser focused on a niche
– commercial sidewalk cleaning.
“I do nothing but commercial now,
and I’m emphasizing residual income,”
White said. “So I have totally changed
the model of our business in the last two
6 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | VOL. 1, NO. 3 | SUMMER 2019

years. I decided I was going to chase
nothing but sidewalk cleaning in San
Antonio. Now, yes, I do an occasional
roof cleaning…but my focus is on shopping
centers and restaurants -- anything
with a sidewalk.
“I’ve seen a lot of mistakes out there
in the industry where operators start out
and they want to chase everything. But
when you’re trying to do everything, and
saying ‘yes, I can do your roof,’ and ‘yes,
I can do your house,’ and ‘yes, I can do
this and I can do that,’ you just seem to
stretch yourself too thin, particularly if
you don’t have the right employees for all
those aspects.
“Then, doing residuals, I have them
on either a bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly
schedule,” she continued. “I’m not
doing ‘one and dones,’ to apply a basketball
phrase. I just send those to another
competitor in town…I pick and choose my
customers now whereas before I was always
like ‘yes, I’ll do your job.’ Now I’m focused
on who I want to work for and work with, so
that’s how I changed the model.
“The growth has been a little bit
slower but it’s steady now. Income is
coming in. With residual income, I know
every month what’s coming in I just need
to keep on adding to it and growing.”
White’s crews work exclusively at
night, and not just because her clients
exist in high-traffic areas.
“It’s hot in Texas, so at night it’s a
little cooler,” she said. “My guys work at
night and each of them have their own
route. That’s how I’m building it -- I only
do one guy per truck at night where a lot
of companies go out with two.
“Personally, I work a lot of days and
nights now. My guys go out at 9 p.m.
My down time is like 2 a.m. I do a lot of
training and sales during the day.”
Her formula has produced success.
And she’s built the company in rapid
order from when she and her husband
started in the industry just a few years ago.
Back in 2006, White was a supervisor
at the Department of Motor Vehicles in
Delaware.
“So I took people’s licenses away
from them,” she said. “I did that for 12
years and worked my way up through
the state and became a supervisor.”
Meanwhile, her husband, Darren,
was working for the postal service.
continued ...
BIG GUNS
soft wash
MAKING A DEMO
Thinking about launching a product demo-based ad campaign? Here
are a few important aspects to consider.
In a 2018 Forbes magazine article on how to have a “killer” demo,
writer Tom Taulli offered these steps to improve your odds of success.
DISCOVERY
CALL OR EMAIL
“Before the call, you need to get a good understanding of the pain
points, challenges, and requirements of the customer. One way to do
this is to add some fields in the sign-up form for the product trial. But you
should also reach out to the customer and ask some initial questions.”
START OF THE DEMO
“Before jumping into the product details, it is a good idea to spend a
few minutes talking about what topics you will cover and how long the
presentation will be. It’s also a good idea to give a quick description of
your company and how your products solve tough problems. Something
else: provide information that shows that your company is standout, such
as mentioning large customers. This will help to build trust and credibility.”
THE DEMO
“A demo is not a training session. Rather, it’s about addressing the
needs of the customer. So do not go straight into a tedious description
of your product. The customer will probably just zone out…Next, the
demo needs to relate the product to the daily problems or scenarios the
customer faces.”
THE TAKEAWAY
“At the end of the demo, recap the main points and how your product
can help solve the customer’s problems. Then, you need to talk about the
next steps. Is the customer ready for a purchase? And if not, who should
be the next person to talk to?”
Next, writer Larry Alton in a 2016 Inc. magazine article provided this
additional advice on successful demos.
MAKE THE
TEST CONVINCING
“If your users suspect you of manipulating the results in any way, the
demo won’t be convincing. Show everything ... even if some data or
results might work against you.”
TAKE A RISK
“Don’t take the safe route. Truly test the limits of your product. Can it
take 200 pounds? Try 400 pounds. Can it survive being underwater? Put
it underwater for a week. The bigger you go, the more impressed your
users will be.”
MAKE IT CRAZY
“Throw in something random, weird, or downright perplexing to make
the image of your test stick in your users’ heads. This is apt to become
your ‘hook.’”
VOL. 1, NO. 3 | SUMMER 2019 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | 7

BIG GUNS
soft wash
“We ventured into the pressure
industry, and I know their wives as well.
“That’s kind of how I got involved,”
country and we talk on a regular basis
washing business because Darren was
We all help each other.”
she said. “You get to know a lot of
talk about what we’re doing. If I’m going
kind of looking for a way out,” she said.
White’s rapid ascension in the
people. You build a cross-country
to teach them how to do business then I
“He didn’t really like the post office life
industry hasn’t been confined simply to
support system.”
need to do it myself properly. That’s my
because it was the same thing every
her growing business. She has also been
So how does she manage running a
philosophy,” she said.
single day. Also, I think we looked at his
on a rapid rise within industry circles.
successful, around-the-clock business and
The DMV supervisor from Delaware
pay and over 12 years it went up $4,000.
White is current president of the United
also serve the national organization ?
has certainly ingratiated herself into
And he was like ‘there has to be more
Association of Mobile Contract Cleaners
“I have a good support system,” she
Texas culture. How did she do it? Well,
to life then what I’m doing right now.’
(UAMCC). She credits that role primarily
said, adding, “I have ambitions.”
perhaps it starts with her savvy choice of
So one day he was listening to a radio
to her thirst for ongoing education.
White added that education more
company name, and logo.
program out of Houston and the guy
“I learned early on that I needed to sit
than competition drives her and that she
“We sat around the table in 2013
was talking about pressure washing
with people who were better than me, if
has a passion for seeing things improve in
trying to think of a fun name and Big
opportunities and the next thing I know
that makes sense,” White explained. “It’s
the overall industry.
Guns came up,” White said. “Texas is
we were talking about doing this.
kind of like in school where you have the
“I talk about ‘competitors’ here
big on guns. Everyone carries a gun
“One day we came to Texas to visit
cool table at lunch, you know? You want
in town; but to me, really they’re not
down here. And then Big Guns also
his sister and we ended up on that trip
to sit with the cool kids because you know
competitors because when you need help
kind of goes along with the muscle idea.
buying a house while we were there. I
you’re going to learn from them and grow.
or your equipment is down, you have
So it was just kind of fun. I wanted
called my mom and dad and said ‘oh,
“I wanted to sit with the guys that I
someone you can rely on, and that’s the
something totally different that I hadn’t
by the way, we’re going to move to Texas
knew were out making millions of dollars
beauty of this. I have one local compet-
heard of before because there are so
and start a pressure washing company.
in this industry, that had so many trucks
itor and we have dinners together every
many names out there that are the same
We changed our lives.”
on the road, and that were always pushing
once in a while. We sit down and talk and
across the country.”
White has been primarily steering
themselves to do more and be better. So I
hang out. It’s not cut-throat like some
The logo was actually designed
that company since 2013. Darren only
learned with Doug Rucker [of Kingwood,
places are. I’ve learned to get along with
through an online contest.
began working full time at their company
Texas, founder of The Pressure Cleaning
people and we all work well together.
“I think the guy that actually did our
last June.
School] and Ron Musgraves.
If we make our economy stronger then
logo was out of Indonesia,” White said.
What has it been like as a woman
“I believe in education in this business,
we’re both going to grow that way.
“All I said was I wanted a Texas theme,
owner in a predominantly male-owned
because education is key to being successful
“At conventions, I teach people how
a kind of a cowboy character, because
industry?
in life and learning to work together.”
to do the residual income. I teach a class
I wanted something to be memorable.”
“Being a female in this business was
She also volunteered at annual conven-
on how to do a proper demo and how
Memorable, indeed. Not unlike her
strange at first, but not now,” White said.
tions, learning at the ground level how the
to present that to a client. I have guys
company’s and her personal story of
“Plus, I have so many friends now in the
association and its events worked.
that call me all the time from across the
success in the pressure wash industry.
8 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | VOL. 1, NO. 3 | SUMMER 2019

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GUEST
COLUMN
Think Progress,
Not Perfection
Be like legendary University of Alabama
head football coach Nick Saban and win the
day seven seconds at a time
Colby B. Jubenville, PhD,
is a recognized author,
international speaker, business
consultant and professor.
He is the founder and the
director of the Center for
Student Coaching and Success
(www.mtsu.edu/cbhssuccess)
on the campus of Middle
Tennessee State University, the
largest undergraduate college in
Tennessee. A Senior Consultant
with Brentwood, TN based
Brent Consulting Group, he is
the recipient of the Nashville
Emerging Leaders Impact Award
presented by the Nashville Area
Chamber of Commerce and YP
Nashville. The award honors one
of Nashville’s top leaders who
has made a significant impact
on Nashville’s young professional
demographic. Most recently, he
was a blogger for the Washington
Times focused on self-reliance
and developing an entrepreneurial
mindset. His website can be found
at www.drjubenville.com, and his
latest book can be found at
www.mepersonalbranding.com.
BY DR. COLBY JUBENVILLE
I can’t stress enough that neither your
personal change and growth nor the
change and growth of your employees
and business are going to occur overnight.
It’s a process. You’re going to have to be
patient, both with yourself and others.
Too many people I consult get frustrated
if they don’t see immediate results.
They often abandon ship. That’s a huge
mistake, especially when incremental
improvement is already evident!
I’m a list maker. I have a big list with
everything essentially in life that I want
to achieve.
Each week I make a weekly list with
an ambitious but what I believe to be
doable amount of work from the big list.
Then each day I make a daily list
from the weekly list that is also ambitious
but doable. (Yes, I need a therapist…)
Do I complete each task each day?
No! Not by a long shot! But am I discouraged?
Well, sometimes, at least a little bit.
We all know that some days simply go
off the rails and don’t end up the way we
planned them.
What I’ve discovered from my
list-making obsession, though, is that
often an item on a list can’t be completed
and stricken off in a single space in time.
As much as I want to strike it from the
list, and feel a sense of accomplishment
when I do, about the best I can expect to
do on any given day is push the proverbial
rock up the hill a few more feet, or
even inches.
The other thing I have realized is that
eventually, sometimes after having the
same item on the list for days or weeks
at a time, I do finally finish and I’m able
to strike it off the list. How did I do it?
Was it achieved in one fell swoop? No,
it took adequate daily progress over a
period of time before ‘voila’ it was finally
(almost suddenly) accomplished -- and
strike-able.
We are a perfectionist society. We
look around and it seems that people and
businesses are accomplishing amazing
things overnight. Believe me, it’s not
happening that way folks. It’s a process.
And that process requires a mindset of
progress over perfection.
It is almost football season again, and
once again down in Tuscaloosa, Alabama,
legendary University of Alabama head
football coach Nick Saban has a team
primed for yet another run at a national
championship game. How does he
achieve such sustained success?
The answer might best be explained
(ironically since the Tide’s mascot is a
pachyderm) by first asking the question
‘how do you eat an elephant?’
A lot of people don’t know it, but
Saban has a personal advisor who has
been central to his success. His name
is Lionel “Lonny” Rosen, a professor
and psychiatrist who has been working
with Saban and his football teams since
Saban’s Michigan State days. Rosen
is credited with inspiring Saban’s now
well-known method for running a
successful football program, called “The
Process.” It’s based on what’s called
process thinking, or the breaking down
of things—like meetings, practices,
games, and seasons—into smaller pieces
that can be handled without anxiety.
According to Burke, it provides a way of
functioning without being overwhelmed
by the bigger picture.
Said another way, you eat an elephant
one bite at a time.
continued ...
10 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | VOL. 1, NO. 3 | SUMMER 2019

It’s based on
what’s called
process
thinking,
or the breaking
down of things—
like meetings,
practices, games,
and seasons—
into smaller pieces
that can be handled
without anxiety.
As but one example of Saban/
Rosen’s process thinking as it relates to
football, Saban has smartly communicated
to his players that the average football
play lasts about seven seconds. Then
he tasks his players with one simple goal.
It’s not winning the game. Or winning
a championship. It’s certainly not about
looking at the scoreboard or focusing
on the end result. It’s about winning
those seven seconds. Then regrouping
(regardless of outcome) and focusing on
winning the next seven seconds.
Imagine how this concept might
translate into your own life and bring you
(like Saban) to the cusp of championship
(professional or otherwise) in your own
life. Can you win the first hour of the day
when you get out of bed by controlling
your thoughts and sending yourself
positive messages and inspiration for the
day? Can you win the next 30 minutes
of your day on the sales floor by being
focused and efficient on the task at hand?
Can you win your 2 o’clock meeting?
After work, can you say something nice
to your wife within the first five minutes
of being at home that will set the tone for
a nice evening at home with your loved
ones? And when the weekend comes,
can you focus for seven seconds every
time you stand over a shot on the golf
course thereby maximizing your chances
of making good shots that add up to a
solid round?
I’m not asking you to bust the monthly
sales record overnight! Or save your
marriage! Or lower your handicap! All
I’m asking you to do is think in bite-sized
increments in your quest for success!
Stop thinking about perfection and start
thinking about progress. Pair the process
to your dominate focus (sales!) and watch
GUEST
COLUMN
the personal championships rack up.
When I watch Alabama’s football
team play in championship games, I find
myself wondering: Do their players and
coaches make more sensible choices than
the other team? Do they produce repeatable
outcomes? Football, especially under
pressure, is complex. Does the Crimson
Tide’s step-by-step approach keep them
in games? Do they appear overwhelmed?
Yes, Alabama is blessed with the pick
of the crop of the best athletes in America.
But mark my words – Alabama’s players
and coaches are winning football games
as much with their thoughts and their
mindset of progress over perfection as
they are with their actions.
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VOL. 1, NO. 3 | SUMMER 2019 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | 11

HOA
Niche
operator
Bo Knows HOAs
Bo Josetti specializes in the niche market
of pressure washing vacation home
communities; but his
experience offers insight for
anyone desiring to land an HOA contract
BY DREW RUBLE
There are over 351,000 homeowner
associations in the United States, according
to HOA-USA.com. Collectively, this
represents over 40 million households, or
53% of the owner occupied households
in America.
Clearly, planned communities are big
business. And according to HOA-USA.
com, single family, townhome, and condominium
associations spend more than
$15 billion annually on their communities
on products, services, and maintenance,
including pressure washing.
Arguably no one knows the upsides of
building a business through agreements
with HOAs and property managers better
than Bo Josetti, owner of All Clean
Power Washing, which serves portions
of southeastern Pennsylvania, Delaware,
and the Eastern Shore of Maryland. In
fact, Josetti is not only an expert in the
niche market of HOAs. He’s actually an
expert in a niche of that niche – specifically,
vacation homes.
The lower Delaware region is one
of the fastest-growing areas on the East
Coast. Baby Boomers are retiring and
moving to the water in large numbers. In
addition, Delaware taxes are nearly unbeatable
– there’s no state tax and taxes
across the board are relatively painless,
making it a premier retirement destination.
“We’ve got probably 20 communities
under construction right now within
10 square miles of our shop,” Josetti
explained. “So why go someplace else to
expand when the area you’re in is blowing
out?
“It’s just growing inventory, and we’re
not talking about high-dollar beach
houses,” he continued. “I mean, there
are a couple of communities like that,
and one of our biggest contracts is one
of the finest communities on the Eastern
Shore where you’ve got multimillion-dollar
homes being built. But the majority
is the blue-collar, pension retirees that
are coming here and getting 1,500- to
2,500-square foot homes in one-and-a-
12 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | VOL. 1, NO. 3 | SUMMER 2019

HOA
Niche
operator
half story type homes in a cookie-cutter
type setting of a neighborhood and living
a very simple lifestyle. That is really
what is going up all over the place and
that’s really our bread and butter.”
Serving a vacation or second home
market can be quite different from a
traditional HOA or property management
client. How so? Based near resort
communities like Ocean City, Maryland,
the Delaware beaches, and Rehoboth
Beach, Josetti services homes that are vacant
a large portion of the year.
“Since for these people it’s their second
home, and they are not here most
of the time, the water’s turned off,” Josetti
said. “When we first began washing
some of these communities through
the property manager or the HOA, we
would quickly run into water issues. For
instance, we couldn’t hook up to one resident’s
water because it’s turned off. The
neighbor is turned on, but the neighbor
doesn’t want you using his water to wash
the rest of the neighborhood.
“So I created basically an environment
where we’re able to bring the water
to wash upwards of 500 or more units.
We’re able to supply the water on water
trucks and trailers, and being able to get
that water to the location…to pull it off.
Not everybody could show up on site
and do that.”
The property management companies
soon found out that was exactly the
case. Given that insurance rates for the
industry are going up due to exorbitant
insurance claims, to the point where
many insurance companies won’t even
cover power washing companies anymore,
Josetti recently instituted a price
increase on one client. Not surprisingly,
the client asked for some time to shop
other options. Josetti happily agreed.
Why? Because as he expected, Josetti’s
value to the vacation home client quickly
became clear.
“What we do, in my opinion, requires
a premium, so as I’ve raised these prices
over the last few years, they naturally
have told me they have to get other estimates
to compare the pricing,” Josetti
said. “What they have found out and
come to realize is that based on the description
of the job at hand that we have
kind of created and provided to them,
the process that we’ve created and how
we provide this water remotely, and the
production rate in which we get it done
-- no other company can do it.
“Most of the competing companies
come in and say ‘we can’t do that, we
don’t have the capability.’ Other companies
would come in with such a high price
tag because they really had never done
this before and they were just guessing at
true costs. The HOA soon understood
that those companies were not going to
be able to perform the service, certainly
not in the time that we would, because
they just don’t have the same capability.
“We kind of created the specs for
these contracts and now have spoiled
(so to speak) the customer, the HOA, the
property manager, with being able to do
the job based on these specs, whereas the
rest of these companies can’t do it.”
Adding to Josetti’s value is the fact
that Eastern Shore water companies now
disallow operators from tapping in to
community fire hydrants. The area has
a lot of iron in the water; so even though
it goes through a treatment plant and
gets treated, there is still enough in the
pipeline sitting at the bottom that when a
company like a pressure washer taps
into a fire hydrant, they stir the iron up.
Residential customers were getting very
angry because when they would turn on
their spigot they would have iron in their
water because somebody had just tapped
in to a fire hydrant down the street for
whatever reason (a lot of them were the
builders and construction companies using
the water during the construction of
all the communities Josetti describes going
up). Water companies said ‘no more’
and stopped granting any more permits
or allowing anybody to tap into fire hydrants
except the fire departments.
It could be said, then, that Josetti sits
in the Catbird’s Seat in Ocean City. But
it hasn’t always been that way.
Josetti came around to both pressure
washing and specifically HOA work after
a lengthy career in painting and restoration
services. In 1995, after working
for another contractor, Josetti started
Superior Painting Services in Philadelphia.
Then one day he had his “ah-ha”
moment.
“What got me into the power washing
business fully was that I had a painting
company and I was burning myself
continued ...
VOL. 1, NO. 3 | SUMMER 2019 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | 13

HOA
Niche
operator
out and I started to realize I was making
more money power washing the jobs
that I was getting ready to paint than I
was from painting,” Josetti said.
“Right around the late 1990s, early
2000s when they started changing the
building materials from wood to the
composite materials and vinyls and all
these different maintenance-free materials,
what I basically could see was that
in the future these materials wouldn’t
need to be painted or stained but oh,
guess what, they will need to be cleaned.
Every single house that was starting to
get built 20-plus years ago was needing
our pressure washing services within
two to three years. The light bulb went
off in my head. I said ‘all right, here’s
what we need to do.’”
In April 2004, he launched All Clean
Power Washing and slowly moved out
of all painting and restoration services.
Josetti’s gravitation specifically in
to the HOA space came in large part
due to the positive influence of his wife,
Meg, on the business.
“We finally realized that if we were
going to get to the next level with the
company, she had to get involved,” Josetti
said. “She has a business degree
and was also a property manager when
we got married. So she’s got experience
across the board and that helped us immensely
in our venture with the property
management work that we do in our
market.”
Sounds like a perfect marriage, no
pun intended…
Today, All Clean employs between
eight and 15 people depending on the
time of year.
A lot of small pressure wash operations
nationwide would love to land
an HOA contract and cease doing jobs
one residence at a time. Josetti said he
actually gets contacted all the time by
people asking questions about getting
access to property management portfolios.
And although he explains that
his “niche of a niche” is different from
standard HOA work, he does offer advice
and support for becoming successful
in the space.
“Just go do it,” he said. “For instance,
anywhere in the country these 55 and
over or retirement type communities
are taking shape and there are ways to
reach them and market to them,” Josetti
said. [See sidebar titled “Step-by-step
Guide to Marketing to HOAs”].
“They are basically created under
the same guidelines and needs that we
provide to our market here, where everything
is going to be taken care of…
from gutter cleaning to the exterior
washing to the lawn maintenance…and
that has to be done by an outside service
like ours. You can find those in the middle
of Oklahoma or Florida, obviously.
It’s all over the place. Be prepared,
think it through, and offer value.”
In addition to running his company,
Josetti has since 2015 served on the
board of directors of the Power Washers
of North America (PWNA), where
he teaches various certifications. He assumes
the presidency of the association
later this year.
“I came to my first convention in
2013 because I wanted to know what I
didn’t know,” he said. “I’ve been doing
this for a long time and within the first
literally 20 minutes of the first class that
I took I realized did I have a lot to offer
that I knew more than most of the people
in that room. Frankly, I knew more
than the instructor. And from there I
just had a passion for it and I have no
problem giving back and helping even
my own competitors.”
According to Josetti, it is not uncommon
for him to teach classes at conventions
to competitors in his own market.
“It’s about raising the tide of the
industry,” Josetti said. “And helping to
set some standards that everybody can
live by.”
STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE
TO MARKETING TO HOAS
As HOA-USA.com stated in a recent
white paper, “the opportunities
to market to this target audience are
tremendous, but also challenging.”
Why? Well, for one, homeowner
associations are nearly invisible!
“Most HOA’s do not have an office
or a phone,” the website states. “Only
a few maintain current websites and
are rarely found on a Google search.
Without an identifiable customer, you
cannot sell your product or service. So
how do you get in front of the board
members and decision makers for
these communities? And what do you
say in order to help them make informed
decisions to better their community
through you?”
HOA-USA.com was created specifically
to reach the targeted market
of HOA board members and decision
makers. HOA-USA works closely with
management companies and maintains
a Management Company Directory
nationwide of over 5,000 listings.
The following is a lightly-condensed
list of tips the website offered
up when planning a marketing campaign
to HOAs. [Visit www.HOA-
USA.com for more.]
RESPECT THE BOARD
MEMBER’S TIME
“People who serve as board members
for their HOA all do so voluntarily.
As an incorporated homeowners
association, board members cannot
be paid or otherwise compensated for
serving on the board. Board and committee
members put in a great deal of
time into board meetings, enforcing
covenants, collecting dues, and making
their community a better place. About
35-40% of HOAs contract with a professional
management company to
help ease the load of running the community.
The rest do so by themselves.
In either case, board members are the
decision makers for their communities
and their time is quite valuable. When
you get the opportunity to speak with
a board member about your products
and services, keep these thoughts in
mind. In most cases, boards are required
to get numerous bids on a variety
of different services. They want
to (and need to) hear about what you
have to offer, but often don’t have a lot
of time to hear it. If you are fortunate
enough to get agenda time at a board
meeting, keep your presentation short
and offer to send more information. By
being respectful of the board’s time,
you may find yourself in a better position
for an RFP (Request for Proposal)
and increased business.”
OFFER VALUE
AT THE HOA LEVEL
“Remember that when you are
reaching out to an HOA, you are speaking
to the community as a whole and
not just to one homeowner. Make sure
that your message speaks to the ultimate
goal of every board member: to retain
and increase property values of the entire
community…If your company typically
works with individual homeowners
then keep several things in mind:
• Often the HOA will have common
area and amenities that need servicing.
For example, the clubhouse may
need carpet cleaning, or the private
roads may need repair work.
• The board member is in a unique position
to tell the rest of the community
about your products and customer
service. A good impression to the
board member can go a long way.
• Offering discounts for multi-home
purchases is a great way to ensure
that the board or committee member
will tell their neighbors.
continued ...
14 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | VOL. 1, NO. 3 | SUMMER 2019

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HOA
Niche
operator
Remember that HOA Board Members
CANNOT be paid or compensated
for their work as a board member,
so offering them personal incentives to
promote your product is NOT allowed.
However you can offer incentives to the
HOA or community as a whole. For
example, a power washing company
may offer a free exterior cleaning to the
HOA clubhouse in exchange for advertising
on the community website.”
TIMING IS
EVERYTHING
“Approximately 75% of Homeowner
Associations hold their required annual
meetings between the months of November
and February. This is important because
the annual budget also gets ratified
at the same time. If a board is going to
make a change in service provider for a
big-budget operating expense item, they
are likely to make that change around the
time of the annual meeting…Marketing
your services in the months prior to the
annual meeting is often a good strategy.
That’s not to say that all expenses are decided
during the annual budget. In fact,
much of the ‘operating budget’ will be
adjusted throughout the year. Seasonal
influences are likely going to dictate the
appropriate time to advertise…A sound
marketing strategy for HOAs will include
some amount of marketing year-round,
while leaving the majority of the advertising
budget for the months of the year
when board members are most likely to
pay attention.”
THE ROLE OF THE
MANAGEMENT COMPANY
“Approximately 35% of HOAs contract
with a professional management
company to aid with the governance of
the community. The other 65% choose
to self-manage or are, for all intents and
purposes, defunct…When an HOA
contracts with a management company,
they are assigned a community manager.
This person aids with collections, ensures
covenant enforcement, and generally
handles the financials for the board. The
management company will often have a
list of vendors that they go to when one
of their boards is in need of a particular
product or service. The property manager
will take bids from their vendors and
make recommendations to the board
on who to select. However, the decision
making power still lies with the board.
The property manager will always yield
to the board because the management
company works for the HOA (not vice
versa).
Reaching out to management companies
is almost always a solid marketing
strategy if you want to work with
HOAs. By getting your foot in the door
with a management company, you
stand the chance to be a “preferred
vendor” and may be asked to provide
an RFP for one of their communities.
It is important not to forget about
the 65% of the market that chooses to
self-manage. These communities need
your products and services too, but they
don’t have the luxury of asking a community
manager to help find your company…Working
both sides of the market
is important, and understanding
that in both cases the ultimate decision
maker is the board member may be the
key to your success.”
CONSIDER TURNOVER ON
HOA BOARDS
“Serving on an HOA Board can
be quite rewarding, knowing that you
have helped your community maintain
its property values and become a
community worth living in. However,
if you have served on an HOA Board,
you know that it is also a time consuming
and often thankless job. Thus, the turnover
rate among board members can be
high. Most new board members will take
office at the beginning of the calendar
year. This can often breathe new life in
the community, as new board members
often have a number of things that they
would like to see improved in the community.
However, many first-time board
members have limited (or no) experience
serving on a Board of Directors. With
this in mind, it makes sense to advertise
to HOAs at the beginning of the year, so
now you can be heard by fresh faces on
the board. New board members can feel
overwhelmed at first and will sometimes
take several months to get accustomed
to life as an HOA board member. A
marketing campaign than spans several
months (January – April) will give you a
chance to leave a lasting impression with
these folks.”
GEAR YOUR
WEBSITE TO HOAS
“If you plan to advertise your products
and services to HOA board members,
it is important to remember that
you must speak to their needs as a community.
Dedicating a section of your
website to this agenda is a sound strategy,
as most people will take the time
to look up a company on the internet
before doing business with that company.
If a board member is able to visit
your website and quickly find a page
that speaks directly to them, you have
put yourself in an excellent position to
earn that community’s business.”
USE SOCIAL MEDIA
“People are using social media as
a primary means of communication,
which can translate into referrals and
excellent word-of-mouth advertising.
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are
great places to advertise specials, post
testimonials, ask for referrals, and join
HOA-specific groups. Having these social
media tools link directly with your
website is also a great way to improve
your search engine optimization. Talk
to your webmaster or website designer
about integrating social media into your
overall marketing strategy if you have
the time to devote to it and you’ll hopefully
see positive results for your efforts.
Look up some other businesses (or your
competitors) to see how they are using
social media. A few posts or tweets per
week will take no more than a few minutes
of your time, and can lead to increased
exposure and business.”
BANNER ADVERTISING
“Banner advertising gets your company
name and logo in front of your
customers, and more importantly drives
them back to your site, increasing your
site traffic and Google rankings as well.
This important first step in the marketing
process reinforces your brand recognition
to the decision makers who matter
most to increasing your businesses sales.
By carefully choosing only relevant sites
your banner ads appear on, you can
make sure that you reach the right audience
and drive targeted traffic to your
site.”
DIRECT MAIL
“Lately everyone has gone digital, so
there’s been less of an emphasis placed
on using direct mail to reach your targets.
This has caused a resurgence in
the effectiveness of this type of marketing.
To create an effective marketing
strategy, it’s important to reach your
target market in various ways. Send out
direct mail to various targeted lists of
homeowner associations.”
16 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | VOL. 1, NO. 3 | SUMMER 2019

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CONTENTS
UNDER
PRESSURE
A POP CULTURE-
INSPIRED LOOK
AT THE PRESSURE
WASH INDUSTRY
A look around the World Wide Web
for wacky examples of pressure washing
in our culture’s everyday life
BY DREW RUBLE
App-ropos
Secret Entourage, a consortium of
millionaires who now work to help tens
of thousands of entrepreneurs start and
grow their own businesses, interviewed app
developer Allen Wong of Rego Apps a few
years ago.
Wong told Secret Entourage that his first
app was a browser that removed the toolbars,
did not save your browsing history, and
allowed you to view websites while offline.
One of Wong’s earliest successful apps was
called News Feed Elite, which was the #1 news
app back in 2009. Using the technologies he
developed from his browser app, he made an
app that made it easy to view various news
sites. It was successful because it allowed you to
scroll through websites by tilting your phone,
save news articles to be read at a later time
(even offline), block ads, share sites to Twitter/
Facebook, and other things. It basically paved
the way for the other popular news apps you
see today.
But his most successful app was his 5-0
Radio Police Scanner…5-0 Radio was for a
time the #1 police scanner app for the iPhone.
At its peak, it was in the top 10 paid apps in
various countries. People had many uses for
this app, ranging from monitoring crime in
continued ...
18 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | VOL. 1, NO. 3 | SUMMER 2019

CONTENTS
UNDER
PRESSURE
their neighborhood to getting live alerts about
hazards in the region to keeping in touch
with family members who were members of
a police force. People also used this app to get
early tornado warnings, hurricane warnings,
flood warnings, and other news before the
radio and TV broadcast them. It made it
to the top of the charts after Wong added
internet radio stations to the app and created
a free ad-supported version of the app. Other
copycat apps later popped up and saturated
the market.
In all, according to his personal website,
Wong’s apps have been downloaded by at
least 15 million people.
Not long after Wong began having his
wild success in app development, the then
20-something posted some pressure wash art
he had completed on the sidewalks outside of
his swanky new home to social media.
First came Batman. More followed. But,
alas, eventually his artistic liberties met their
match.
As described by Wong in his last social
media post on the matter, the neighborhood’s
home owner’s association had the last laugh.
“HOA’s response to my sidewalk street art,”
Wong wrote at the time, his words placed next
to this picture of broken out sidewalk concrete.
“Well played, HOA. Well played. You win this
round.”
A WALK WITH
DR. SEUSS
The Dickinson Press reported on Jeff Borys,
who used a pressure washer to inscribe a
passage from a Dr. Seuss story on the sidewalk
outside his house in Grand Forks, North
Dakota (pictured here).
20 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | VOL. 1, NO. 3 | SUMMER 2019

WORD OF
MOUTH
Word of Mouth
Serial entrepreneur Jay Baer’s formula for growing your business hinges
on the free advertising your customers can do for you
BY DREW RUBLE
Jay Baer is a seventh-generation entrepreneur.
An internet pioneer, he has
written six best-selling books, founded
five multimillion-dollar companies, and
is currently the president and founder of
Convince and Convert, a social media
consulting company that advises some of
the world’s most iconic brands, including
Hilton Hotels and the United Nations.
Baer doesn’t think a business like a
pressure wash company should have to
spend a single dime on advertising in order
to grow their business. He cites Robert
Stevens, the founder of Geek Squad,
who said advertising is “a tax paid by the
unremarkable.” How then does he expect
a business to grow?
“If you do it right, your customers
will do the growing for you,” Baer explained.
“The best way to grow any business
or to grow margin is for your customers
to do that growing for you. But
for that to happen, you have to give them
an opportunity to do just that.
“There is no question that word of
mouth is the single most important way
that customers make a decision about
where to give their business. But here’s
the tragedy. You have to do word of
mouth on purpose and almost nobody in
this industry or any industry is doing so.
“Fewer than 1% of all businesses
have an actual word-of-mouth strategy,
even though we all know how important
word of mouth is. It’s how we make decisions
in our own lives, right?
“You probably have a marketing
continued ...
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WORD OF
MOUTH
strategy, a social media strategy, a hiring
strategy, a compliance strategy, a real
estate strategy, a banking strategy -- you
have a strategy for everything except the
one thing that can actually grow your
business the most affordably, which is
word of mouth. We have to do word of
mouth on purpose.”
Baer said embracing the concept of
word of mouth requires first turning
loose of the notion that competency
alone creates conversations amongst
customers.
“We believe that if we just run a really
good business, if we just take care
of the customer, if we just don’t make
mistakes, if we continue to invest in new
equipment, if we roll out at new idea…
then people will talk about us. But that’s
not how the world works.
“Nobody has ever said ‘hey, let me
tell you about this perfectly adequate
experience I just had.’ You never say
that because it’s not an interesting story
to tell and it’s not an interesting story to
listen to.”
Same is lame, Baer preaches.
“As human beings, we are wired to
discuss things that are different and ignore
things that are average…So you
have to give your customers a story to
tell. You have to give them something
that they perceive as different. And that
difference -- that thing that you do that
they are not familiar with -- that becomes
the story that they tell their friends.”
Baer says doing something unconventional
that creates a customer experience
has been proven to accelerate word
of mouth activity among customers.
According to a recent research paper by
global consulting firm McKinsey, 50 to
80% of word-of-mouth activity actually
derives from an experience that “deviates
from what’s expected,” or as Baer
says, something “outside their frame of
reference.”
Baer provides this example. There
is a band in Nashville, Tennessee comprised
of eight Grammy award-winning
musicians. Every member of the band
has won a Grammy as a session musician.
Each member of the band, though,
is under contract to record labels in the
city to play on albums with some of the
most popular artists in the world and
therefore are contractually bound to
NOT play out in public under their own
names. So what do they do? They make
an unconventional choice. They dress up
like mummies, concealing their identities,
and they travel around the country
wowing crowds with their world-class
music. (The band is called Here Come
the Mummies.)
“Now, would you tell a story if you
went to a music show and everyone was
dressed as mummies compared to if
you just went to a music show even if it
was the same good music?” Baer asked.
“How could you not tell that story?”
Baer said every business needs to
seek to identify their own similar “differentiator”
so that people will talk
about their business as well. He calls
this a “talk trigger.”
Baer describes a talk trigger as “an
operational choice” that you make on
purpose that causes customer conversations.
The key word is operational choice.
This isn’t really marketing, not in the
classic sense. It’s not a promotion. It’s not
a price. It’s not a contest or a coupon or a
billboard. It’s something that you do differently
-- something operational -- that
customers notice and talk about. It really
is part of your operation. It’s part of
your customer experience.
According to Baer, good talk triggers
share four things in common. The first
one is that your talk trigger, your differ-
continued ...
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WORD OF
MOUTH
entiator, has to be remarkable in the
true definition of that word, which is
worthy of remark.
Take CVS Pharmacy. Baer said many
people have experienced the CVS talk
trigger without even noticing it. Think
about it. What is remarkable about the
CVS experience?
Well, CVS has massively long receipts
on purpose. And customers notice it and
talk about it. One customer, after visiting
a CVS, went on social media to express
that he had run out of wrapping paper
for presents so he used a CVS receipt
to wrap presents. A sort of inside joke,
it got a lot of attention on social media.
Another customer had a window blind
break in his bedroom, so he used the
CVS receipt to replace the missing link.
The social media post received 57,000
retweets and 256,000 likes. CVS couldn’t
buy that kind of publicity. It’s an operational
choice that the company made on
purpose to create conversations, or a story
worth telling.
The second thing Baer said that your
talk trigger must be is repeatable. Baer
explains that the best way to create a talk
trigger is not for special occasions or people
on their birthdays or a certain day of
the week but for everyone all the time.
“All customers must have access to
your bonus because you are trying to maximize
the number of people who will tell
your talk trigger,” Baer said. “Business, a
lot of times, they think…we’ll just do it on
their anniversary or their birthday or for
our best customers. I understand why we
think that way, but you are then reducing
the number of talkers.”
Baer tells the story of a restaurant
in Sacramento, California called Skip’s
Kitchen. The restaurant is by no means
remarkable from a curb appeal standpoint,
it’s just a simple family-owned
business that makes good hamburgers.
According to Baer, Skip, the owner, has
spent a grand total of zero dollars and
zero cents on advertising in nearly a decade
in business. And yet there is a line to
get in to the restaurant almost every day.
Every person
gets a crack
at it. It’s not just
on Wednesdays
when business
is slower. It’s not
just on a person’s
birthday. It’s not
ladies night.
It’s everybody.
How did they accomplish that in a
saturated restaurant market? How do
they create that kind of traffic without
telling anybody about the business?
“It’s because their customers do that
for them,” Baer explained. “Their customers
are volunteers marketers. And it’s
because they have a story to tell. They
have a talk trigger.”
Here’s how it works. Skip’s is a counter-service
restaurant, meaning that you
order from a menu board placed behind
the cash register then wait for your food
to be brought to your table. Except at
Skip’s, after you order but before you pay,
the counter person whips out a deck of
playing cards, fans them out face down,
and says ‘pick a card.’ If when you select
a card you turn over a joker, your entire
meal is free.
“Approximately four people a day win
this game,” Baer related. “Everybody
gets a chance, but about four people win.
And when they win, they go crazy. It’s
like winning the lottery. The Patty Melt
lottery. They are taking patty melt selfies.
They’re calling their mother. They’re
putting reviews on Yelp and TripAdvisor
-- it’s a whole thing. And it’s so successful
that in Sacramento, despite the fact that
there’s a big sign outside that says ‘Skip’s
Kitchen,’ most of the people in Sacramento
call it ‘that joker restaurant.’”
Now that’s an effective talk trigger.
But, as Baer stresses, one of the reasons
it’s so powerful is that every person gets
a crack at it. It’s not just on Wednesdays
when business is slower. It’s not just on
a person’s birthday. It’s not ladies night.
It’s everybody.
“Consistency is the key, especially
when you’re trying to create word of
mouth because you want them to tell the
same story to more and more people,”
Baer concluded.
The third thing your talk trigger must
be is reasonable.
Baer said a lot of times business owners
think that in order to get attention,
or get new customers, they have to do
something over the top, like hold a contest
where the winner gets a new car or
something crazy like that.
“We think that we have to blow people
away or we have to shock them,” he
said. “You don’t need something big. In
fact, it shouldn’t be big and here’s why.
Because when you do something for customers
that’s too grand, it doesn’t create
the kind of conversation we think it does;
rather, it creates suspicion. What they say
is ‘wait a second, what’s the catch? When
is the other shoe going to drop? This
can’t be true, they are not really going
to give somebody a car.’ Also, it’s like the
Publisher’s Clearinghouse effect. People
think ‘I’m not going to win that, so I’m
going to throw it away because it’s too
big, it’s not reasonable.’”
According to Baer, you don’t have to
make it big; it just has to be different and
consistent. Consider, he says, Double-
Tree Hotels by Hilton. The hotel chain
has given every guest a warm chocolate
chip cookie at check-in every day for
30 years. (Now that’s a talk trigger with
some staying power!)
“They hand out an incredible 75,000
chocolate chip cookies a day,” Baer said.
“How effective is that? I conducted a survey
of thousands of DoubleTree guests
while consulting Hilton and found out
that 34% of them -- more than a third --
have told a story to somebody else about
that cookie. What that means is that
22,500 stories today will be told about
that chocolate chip cookie.”
Baer follows up with a simple question.
When is the last time you saw a
Double Tree advertisement or TV commercial?
It’s not very often because the
cookie is the ad and the guests are the
sales and marketing department, he said.
“It’s not a car, it’s not a trip to Hawaii,
it’s just a chocolate chip cookie, but
people talk about it all the time online
and offline,” Baer said. “People are making
hotel decisions based on a chocolate
chip cookie!”
Baer cited another example pulled
from the story of a tire shop owner he
met in Kansas. In this businessman’s
hometown is located an artisanal root
beer company. The man loves this root
beer. So, when you take your car into his
shop for maintenance, or to purchase
tires, or for tire rotation, and you pick
up your car after he services it, every
customer finds in their passenger seat a
two-liter bottle of this locally-made root
beer with a little note that says thanks so
much for your business.
“In that town, he is known as the
Root Beer Tire Man,” Baer said. “You
don’t get free tires. It’s not something big.
It’s just root beer. But it’s consistent and
it becomes the story people tell.”
The fourth and final thing your talk
trigger must be is relevant.
“It has to add up,” Baer said. “It has
to make sense. The Root Beer Tire Man
makes sense because he likes root beer
and the root beer is made in that town. It
must speak to who you are and what you
are because then the story is easier to tell.
There’s not a lot of follow-up questions
that have to occur.”
As another example, Baer points out
a locksmith in New York City who is the
highest rated locksmith in New York
City, and also one of the highest-rated
businesses of any kind and all of New
continued ...
VOL. 1, NO. 3 | SUMMER 2019 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | 25

WORD OF
MOUTH
York City. How?
“Once he is done with the job you
called him out to do, he goes around
your house and checks every door and
every window and does a thorough security
audit,” Baer said. “He’ll say ‘this
one’s a little bit loose, this one could be
jimmied open’ – he does that whole process
totally for free.”
That inventory -- his talk trigger --
makes sense, right? He wouldn’t think
of offering you a warm chocolate chip
cookie like Doubletree, would he? That
wouldn’t be relevant.
“So it has to make sense for you and
your business,” Baer said. “The cookie
works for DoubleTree because they are
focused on the warm welcome. They are
focused on the first seven minutes from
the time you walk in their door to when
you make it to your room. That is also
why they spend more money on lobby
design than other places. Plus, it is not
just a cookie handed to you or under
glass. It is a cookie ceremony. The person
behind the register goes to a warm
oven behind them, puts it in a plastic
bag, and hands it to you. The hand-tohand
pass is a big part of it. It’s not just
a cold cookie under glass at the register,
it’s a warm cookie. A warm welcome. It’s
an experience.”
Resist the temptation when you were
working on creating your talk trigger
to just do something “random,” Baer
warns. “Think of something that is true
to the spirit of your organization and
then turn that into your talk trigger.”
Here are two final examples of talk
triggers that Baer shared.
There isn’t much in the town of Santa
Claus, Indiana. Certainly not Santa
Claus. Mostly corn, Baer said, and he
should know living in nearby Bloomington.
The one thing they do have in
Santa Clause, Indiana, though, is Holiday
World Theme Park and Splashin’
Safari Water Park, a family-owned water
park and amusement park. It’s not
the kind of place you would expect to
find an amusement park, Baer said. In
fact, Baer describes the location as “objectively
terrible.” As such, location is
a distinct disadvantage. So too is the
fact that the park is family-owned so
they don’t have a tremendous amount
of budget. They can’t just spend their
way to success competing against the
deep-pocketed folks that run amusement
parks elsewhere in the nation
and that boast characters like Mickey
Mouse. But what they do have, Baer
said, is an extraordinary talk trigger.
“When you go in to Holiday World
and go through the turnstiles, the first
thing you see is a little hut, a little building,
and you soon realize it is a free sunscreen
station,” Baer said. “These are
spread all throughout the park. They
offer an unlimited Supply of sunscreen.
“It is a total freak show…It’s like a
slip and slide but everyone standing up.
It’s a greasy audience.
“The owners obviously run a very
good business. A tight ship. They know
what they’re doing. But people don’t talk
about good. They talk about different…
what they talk about is free sunscreen.”
“And, in fact, Holiday World ranks
as one of the very highest rated theme
parks in America on tripadvisor.com --
higher than Disneyland, Disney World,
Universal Studios, and Cedar Point! And
almost every one of the reviews that leads
to that rating mentions free sunscreen.
“It’s repeatable, relevant, reasonable,
remarkable,” Baer concluded.
Finally, there’s a business in New
York City called Paragon that services
cars. Their talk trigger was based on
an epiphany. Paragon’s owners asked
themselves a simple question related to
the time and effort it takes for a customer
to service their car. And that question
was, ‘when do our customers NOT
need their cars?’
The answer? When they are sleeping.
Paragon now has a mobile app
Think of
something
that is true to
the spirit of your
organization
and then turn
that into your
talk trigger.
where customers schedule an appointment
for their vehicle. Paragon then
picks up their customers’ vehicle at their
home once they return from work for
the night, usually around 6 or 6:30 in
the evening. They take it to their repair
center, fix it overnight “like a magical
elf ” Baer said, texting you periodically
for your approval if they identify other
services that are needed or they recommend
for your automobile. Then they
bring your car back to you before you
leave for work the next morning.
Not surprisingly, Paragon has massively
increased revenue since making
the operational change, and customer
satisfaction is through the roof.
“Now if somebody fixed your car
overnight like a magic elf, would you tell
that story?” Baer asked. “Hell yes, you
would tell everybody you know that story
because it’s universally awesome and
remarkable.”
So how do you come up with your
own talk trigger? Baer explains the process
in full in his book on the topic, but
does offer this advice up for starters.
“Talk to your customers about what
they expect and then use that research
to come up with some candidate triggers,”
he said. “Then test them.”
Bear adds that the secret ingredient
of word-of-mouth advertising, he believes,
is “empathy.”
“It is taking the time to really understand
where your customers are
coming from, to be aware of what they
really need, and delivering that,” he
said. “It’s really more psychology then
it is execution.”
Baer finished with one last example
of a talk trigger premised on this notion
of customer empathy. KLM, a Dutch
Airlines based in Amsterdam, had an
admittedly poor system for reuniting
customers with items lost on their planes.
People would lose their headphones or
sunglasses on the plane, the flight attendants
would place them in a lost and
found, customers would contact the airlines
looking for their possessions, forms
would need to be filled out, and perhaps
a couple of weeks later the items would
be returned. As a solution, KLM trained
beagle dogs to board planes after arrival,
identify scents on lost items, and run
through terminal areas returning items
before customers left the airport.
“So a beagle shows up with your
item,” Baer said. “Is that a story you tell?
“Empathy does not have to be complicated,
it’s just people understanding
people. Simple is amazing. It’s relevant.
It’s an operational add on that becomes
a talk trigger.
“That’s the best place for you to
start your own talk triggers. Exceeding
empathy expectations causes conversations.
Make your business care more. Be
the guys that care more about your customers.
And if you do that…your path
is success.”
Advertising is a tax paid by the unremarkable.
Your customers are your best
marketers. If you give your customers
a story to tell about you, they will tell it
over and over and you will grow.
[Editor’s Note: Baer, who is also a tequila
collector and certified BBQ judge, was
keynote speaker at The Car Wash Show
in Nashville, Tennessee, May, 2019.
This article was created from Baer’s
keynote address to attendees that day.]
26 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | VOL. 1, NO. 3 | SUMMER 2019

WASHING
Babe-raham
Lincoln ...
Excellent!
Iconic pressure wash entrepreneur Henry Bockman, who has cleaned national
monuments including the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials and is an expert at
performing “big jobs” like the University of Maryland football stadium and the
D.C. Armory, is now taking his brand national
BY DREW RUBLE
Henry Bockman, you might say, has
always been red, white, and blue.
A veteran of the Navy, Bockman
served aboard the USS America as
an aviation ordinance specialist with
the F-14 Squadron “The Starfighters”
weapons systems.
“I went into the military because I
wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do after
high school,” Bockman said. “I wanted
to get out and see the world a little.”
Bockman served three years in the
service. Afterwards, he started out working
at the Department of Energy as a
security guard but decided it was “too
much like being in the military.” He had
a friend who had a window cleaning
HENRY BOCKMAN
company and asked him to do a job for
him when he was going on vacation.
“So I did that and made like three
hundred and fifty bucks,” Bockman said.
“And I was getting paid about that same
amount for a week in the military! So I
was like ‘this is pretty good.’
He bought a couple squeegees and
started cleaning windows. From there,
beginning in 1989, he started adding
other lines of business, including gutter
cleaning and, in 1990, pressure washing.
He would eventually start Commercial
Restorations, a company specializing
in delicate commercial pressure wash/
cleaning jobs. This included work on
Washington DC-area historical memorials
like the Lincoln Memorial and
Jefferson Memorial. Bockman cleaned
the plazas, exterior areas, and some
of the lower parts of the Lincoln Memorial
in 2002 and again in 2006. He
did the same for the Jefferson in 2006.
Other historic projects on his resume
include the Abner Doubleday Stadium
in Cooperstown, New York, the home
of the Baseball Hall of Fame. In short,
he’s done a lot of high-pressure jobs, no
pun intended.
The first time Bockman cleaned
sections of those national monuments
was as part of the ‘Clean Across America’
program that he created. Clean
Across America was nothing short of
a brilliant marketing idea for the entire
pressure wash industry. Bockman’s idea
was for pressure washers everywhere to
clean historical areas nationwide free of
charge both as an act of altruism but also
as a means to promote the industry to the
general public. The Pressure Washers
of North America (PWNA), for which
Bockman is a former director, adopted
the idea and made it the organization’s
continued ...
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number one outreach initiative.
“As far as I know, that was like the
biggest promotional thing still to this
day that the organization ever did,”
Bockman said. “So basically the organization
-- free of charge -- offered to
clean the nation’s historical areas. It
was a community thing that I did for
my own companies and communities
and then I went to the board of directors
of PWNA and introduced the idea
of making it a campaign for the organization
to use it for promotion and as a
membership building thing.”
Once again, in classic service to
America style, Bockman had made an
imprint in a patriotic way. This time
he was recognized for his work in a
high-profile manner. As creator of Clean
Across America campaign, he received
the Daily Points of Light Award from
then President George Bush.
Working on national historical
monuments inside the Beltway was no
panacea, however. Doing government
work by its very nature means lots of
bureaucratic red tape. Cleaning historical
monuments adds another layer of
regulations and, frankly, obstacles to
performing a successful clean.
“Most of the stuff you have to run
by National Park Service,” Bockman
explained. “They have approved products
you use for the Lincoln Memorial,
for instance… it really was nothing.
Palmolive probably would have done a
better job. Or you could have just used
hot water at low pressure.”
In the spirit of Clean Across America,
and/or with profit in mind, pressure
washers nationwide should consider sizing
up their own local historic inventory
(smaller in scale though it may be) and approaching
the proper government entity
(planning commissions, historical societies)
about getting a chance to clean them.
Bockman offers up this advice for
those thinking of doing so.
“It’s not just different methods and
chemicals and processes but also navigating
governmental entities. It can be
very complex and not for everyone,”
Bockman said. “Even for small-town
operators, they need to prepare their
minds to sort of go through some hoops
and do some things that you wouldn’t
normally do just getting a residential
or commercial job.
“Sometimes it’s a huge hurdle,” he
added. “For instance, you often have to
do core samples…So you may have to
wait a year before you can actually go
out and do the job. You’ll have to show
consistent cleaning performance on different
areas of the buildings and in removing
different stains. They may want
it to dry just to make sure it’s right. So
there’s a lot of prep work involved to secure
it. You’ll have to put a lot of work in
place before you can even begin bidding.
“Also, wages. Sometimes you have to
pay a certain amount on different projects
on government jobs. Some of them
they require you to pay wages that could
be $30 an hour and you have to pay your
guys that if it falls under certain guidelines.
You have to know that fact going in
and plan for it or you’ll under bid.”
According to Bockman, on some of
his highly-sensitive DC jobs, his crews
will be guarded by armed security the
entire time they are on a job.
“They guard us with M-16s,” he
said. “So you have two security guys
per employee on a job site following you
around watching you the entire time
and inspecting your vehicles and going
through your chemicals every time you
pull in…A lot of contractors way under
bid these kind of projects because when
you have to go through a security checkpoint
every single time you do a property,
it can take an hour just to get on the
property and through security. Time is
money. Then you’re guarded and you
can’t move around quickly. So, for instance,
if a window is open, they’ve got
to call to get clearance to go in there
and close it. Some of the jobs that we’ve
done that would normally take us three
or four hours can take two days just because
of the bureaucracy. So pricing is
huge for these jobs.”
Not understanding all these ins and
outs of government can cost you in the
long run, both financially and reputationally.
“On some jobs, they don’t allow us
to use any acid-based materials at all,”
Bockman explained. “So if you have to
remove rust or lime or calcium without
an acid-based product, that has to be
covered in the contract that you submitted.
Because if they expect that to be
removed, there’s no way you can really
remove it. If that fact is not made clear in
the contract, you have lost all credibility
when you have to bring that fact up in
the middle of a job.”
Education, then, is key. And no one is
more known in the pressure wash industry
for an emphasis on education than
Bockman. Arguably no one in the field
has as many certifications and credentials
for various types of cleaning techniques
as Bockman. He is also a prolific
teacher in the field. In fact, Bockman
created many of the power washing and
soft washing classes in existence today
across the globe.
His restoration work in particular requires
continuous education on the latest
and greatest products and methodologies
being developed to deal with historic
or sensitive projects.
“Staying on top of the industry in
this specialized field is key to success,” he
said. “I recently took a class that taught
me how to rebuild statues. Let’s say you
have a statue and a grape bundle breaks
off. This allows you to remake the grapes
and attach them and bond them so they
won’t break off the next time it freezes.
Really cool stuff, and very lucrative.”
Bockman isn’t just known for historic
jobs. He’s also known for his ability
to do big jobs that other pressure
washers simply couldn’t bid on because
they don’t have the bandwidth, equipment,
knowledge or experience that
Bockman possesses.
continued ...
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WASHING
BABE-RAHAM
LINCOLN
For instance, Bockman recently
pressure washed the DC Armory, which
opened in 1941 as the headquarters,
armory and training facility for the DC
National Guard. Commonly identified
by its domed roof, is a 10,000-seat
multipurpose arena with 70,000 square
feet of drill floor, the Armory today is
Washington, DC’s most versatile venues,
serving as an auditorium, arena,
big top and ballroom.
“That’s the biggest project I’ve done,
really,” Bockman said. “Limestone
and…bigger than a football stadium.”
“The project was over half a million,”
he said. “I spent three and a half weeks
on it.”
Not unlike historic jobs, successfully
completing big jobs, Bockman said, is
also highly dependent on planning.
“A lot of it is figuring out the fastest
and most efficient way to do something
with the least amount of manpower and
the least amount of resources,” he said.
“But the biggest thing on big jobs like
stadiums is to make sure that you have
access to water or enough water to feed
your equipment. You have to make sure
you have enough water access to run
full out and non-stop…I’ve got pump
systems to do 45 gallons per minute. In
addition, I have all kinds of different
and weird equipment that I either made
or designed or created to do stadium
jobs. I created a special surface cleaner
and patented it – a modified a piece
of equipment to do multiple things and
which made a huge difference on a stadium
jobs. We tripled our speed when
I designed that on the second day of a
big job that was eating our lunch. The
first day, we got like two sections done…
once you go through that, you say to
yourself, ‘okay, what can I do to make it
easier. You learn on the fly. Sometimes
every couple hours you try something
different just to get two more rows done
in the same amount of time.”
It’s not just getting the water on site
but also getting the water where it needs
to be. At the University of Maryland football
stadium, for instance, Bockman needs
equipment that allows him to get water
hundreds of feet up to the top rows.
“We had to run lines 250 feet up to
the very top of it and then 150 to 200
feet down,” Bockman said. “So minimizing
how many times you have to go up
and down the stairs to clean – well, you
are going to think deeply on that.”
Once again, pressure washers nationwide
wishing to ramp up from residential
jobs to big commercial jobs like football
stadiums can learn a lot from Bockman’s
experience and advice. Which includes
perhaps to consider NOT going in to
that particular line of business after all.
“Everybody would like to get a job
like that, but are you really in a position to
do it?”Bockman questioned. “In addition
to questions about adequate equipment,
there’s also the financial side of it too.
“If you want to take on a $50,000-
to-$75,000 project, can you cover the
overhead to get through the project?
Can you cover payroll? Equipment,
chemicals, and gas? And you’re probably
not making any other income if
you have everybody on your crew out
there, so there’s no other jobs coming
in every day to make money…Can
you go three to four weeks without
any money coming in at all? And, after
that, another 30 days to get paid? Not
getting paid for a few months would
put most guys out of business.”
So how did you do it?
“I learned by trial by error or trial by
fire,” Bockman said. “It’s a calculated
risk and you take it in some cases.
“I’ve made big mistakes on jobs…I
screwed up one bid on an apartment
complex of three-story townhouses, 275
total,” he said. “I was tired while I was
running the numbers and wrote up a
price not realizing until we got on the
job that I calculated square footage for
one story, not three. So I did the job for
a third of the real price. I think I made
$300 on that whole job after labor and
materials. I was like ‘don’t make that
mistake again.’”
Bockman’s service to America was
most recently on display during his recent
tenure as an appointed member
on the Commission on Veterans Affairs.
Though he describes his two-year
term on the commission as “boring as
hell,” with more time spent in meetings
listening to presentation than actually
taking action, he said he did his best to
promote the commission and get it out
there on social media so more people
recognize that we even have a commission
and its programs.
“They move so slow,” Bockman bemoaned.
“I could have renewed it and
stayed on but I figured there’s a lot of
things I can do community service-wise
and helping people on my own rather
than sitting in meetings.”
He has done so by recently testifying
to Congress for a new training program
for veterans that teach them how to deal
with government contracting for free, and
which also helps veterans network with
the powers-that-be who facilitate these
contracts. Bockman was also recently
recruited to participate in a new veterans-in-business
online training program.
What’s the latest from Bockman?
Well, after decades of running six companies:
Henry’s Housework Inc., Commercial
Restorations, Extreme Marketing
Solutions, a training company called
the Contractors Foundation, and two
companies that operate online stores
and internet directories, he was (at press
time) in the process of merging all of his
pressure wash businesses into one powerhouse
of an entity.
“The new company is powerwashcompany.com
and it has the ability to do
power wash servicing on a nationwide
scale,” he said, highlighting setting up
different branches, working with other
contractors, and lead generation. “I can
launch a company in any place easily.”
One can’t help but expect that another
venture related to his service to the
USA is also in the offing for Bockman.
30 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | VOL. 1, NO. 3 | SUMMER 2019

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