Pressure Wash News Winter issue

IT’S A
FAMILY
AFFAIR
Here were our participants:
✔ Vickie Eubanks, co-owner with
husband Ty and sons Connor
and Tanner of South Shore
Building Services in Commerce,
CA;
✔ Erik Wasel of Averus Fire
Services (which specializes in
kitchen exhaust hood cleaning
business) in Gurnee, IL. Wasel
operates the business with his
with wife, June, daughter Meagan
Bunch, son-in-law Daniel
Bunch, and son Ryan Wasel;
✔ Marie Reinsel, co-owner with
husband, Andy, of A2Z Pressure
Washing in Bellevue, OH;
✔ and AC Lockyer, who owns Soft-
Wash Systems in Sanford, FL with
his wife Karen and son, AJ.
VICKIE EUBANKS
“We are celebrating our 40-year anniversary
in business. We are in the range
of $5 to $10 million. We always thought
we would sell our business one day; but
our sons, Conner and Tanner, went to
school, graduated with their business
degrees, and, to our surprise, both really
wanted to come in to the company. We
changed our whole strategy from selling
to succession planning.
“For the last four years, we’ve been
very deliberate about succession planning.
We hired a coach to help us figure
it out, and read a lot of books while our
sons were learning the trade. For three
summers in college, both of them did the
actual field work. Since they graduated,
they have since been learning everything
Ty and Vickie Eubanks, with son, Connor, owners (with their other son, Tanner, not pictured) of South
Shore Building Services in Commerce, CA
from HR to the accounting side of the
business to managing our crews, safety
training, and customer service and sales.
“My husband Ty and I have very diverse
skills and interests. What has been
great is that I kind of have my part to
do in the business and my husband does
his part. He focuses on operations while
I do marketing. That’s my baby. Never
the two shall meet. That’s when we work
our best.
“We actually have two offices. Two
separate buildings. We in marketing and
client service are actually in one building
and they in operations are in another
building. But on the finances of the company,
we work together through strategic
planning. We’ve always worked together
on that piece.
“Now that there’s four of us, we are
truly a family business right now. One of
the benefits I see is it’s great to share our
values and actually they have become
even more clear and well-communicated
to our customers and employees since
our sons joined the business.
“We’re in the Los Angeles market. It’s
very competitive, and very corporate. We
do only commercial work. Previously, we
didn’t want to project our company as a
‘mom and pop’ shop; so, we have marketed
differently throughout the years. A
lot of people didn’t even know we were
married! Once we became a certain size,
then we felt more comfortable with us
being a husband-and-wife team because
we already had established a corporate
image. But now that we’ve got both the
boys along with us, we are marketing
ourselves as a family-owned business to
these big companies like CB Richard Ellis
and they are eating it up! They love
working with a family business! So, we’re
really proud of working together as a
family and it turns out our customers
love it too. They love that they are working
with the owner’s son on something.
Conner just closed the Getty Museum,
which is three guys full time every day of
the year. That’s a big project!
“Here are a couple things that keep
our family moving forward and focused.
One is that we all pick a business book
to read each month or maybe every two
months and we’re all reading the same
business book together. That’s really
helped us get cohesive on ideas for the
company. I suggest Profit First and Traction
for starters. Then we get together
once a month and we discuss the book
and some of the ideas in it. That’s where
we kind of do our strategic planning.
So once a month it’s a family meeting,
a business meeting, but it’s more about
the values of the company and not so
much about what’s going on day-to-day
in the business. It’s built around reading
a book. I think it just sets you in a positive
mindset, a creative mindset.
continued ...
VOL. 2, NO. 1 | WINTER 2020 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | 25