What made you want to do the work you do? Please share the full story.
In 2009, after helping a family friend clean their driveway and seeing how much better it made their home look and feel, I decided to start Inland Power Wash. This experience helped me understand that cleaning the exterior of a property is about restoring pride in a home and protecting the exterior surface from future damage rather than just removing dirt. I wanted to create a company that used environmentally friendly products and treated each customer like they were my neighbor, so I decided to turn that first job into a full-time business.
The original purpose of my business has not changed in the 17-plus years since I started it. I still receive the same satisfaction from watching a customer’s roof or siding turn back into a brand new state as I did the first time I cleaned one. Therefore, I continue to provide an honest, respectful, and caring service that makes a real difference to Southern Californian homeowners.
How is AI changing your business? What changes are you making to adapt?
AI is fundamentally changing the way we pursue a lot of our back-office functions including scheduling, answering customer inquiries, and planning routes. With the use of AI-based applications, we no longer spend hours on the phone or doing paperwork to answer requests for estimates or group jobs by location; instead we are able to respond to request more quickly and group jobs together to save on fuel and allow us to serve more customers each day.
In order to adapt to this change in technology, I am training our small team how to use these tools while maintaining the personal touch our customers expect and deserve. We will continue to perform personal inspections of each property and provide free estimates, but through automating some of the daily work with AI, we can now spend our time focusing on providing quality cleaning and exceptional post-cleaning services.
What are the 3 things you like best about your work and why?
The most rewarding aspect of my career is having created an instantaneous change in appearance. Not only has this provided a great deal of satisfaction for a customer who was able to solve a difficult cleaning problem but also has provided an opportunity to extend the useful life of their roof, driveway or siding. This unique experience of transforming a customer’s property into something beautiful is what makes all of the hard work and early morning rises worthwhile.
The ability to see a home appear as though it were new again builds trust with clients and helps to establish a loyal customer base. Many satisfied customers refer their neighbours, thus helping to sustain a thriving small business. Therefore, the most fulfilling part of my job is the visible evidence that I can have a positive impact on the world around me.
What are your greatest 3 skills and how have they helped you succeed?
Attention To Detail…that is my strongest asset, and it is apparent in the way that I look over every property prior to and after cleaning it. This has helped me achieve success thus far in my career because when a contractor misses even a small area such as a corner or has a streak on a wall or is not thorough enough, the customers will see those small things that most contractors overlook, and this is why we have received a 5.0 rating on Thumbtack. Companies that provide services with a focus on professional results have found it helpful to have a high level of customer service and quality; therefore, my attention to detail has allowed me to achieve this.
The same attention to detail also keeps us efficient and safely performing the work that we do on a daily basis. Knowing the pitch of a roof, the type of siding material, how much drainage is needed, and which types of cleaning solutions to use have all allowed us to provide customers with a service that is free from damage and callbacks; as such, they trust us with the care of their homes.
Tell us about a time where you saw a surprising outcome that you did not expect.
A couple of roofing companies referred a homeowner to us for advice on replacing their roof due to the damaged area. After inspecting the roof, we found that there was a significant amount of algae staining and a very small amount of structural failure. We were able to clean the stained areas by using only a biodegradable soap and soft washing method. After about an hour or two of cleaning, the homeowner’s roof was restored to almost brand new condition. The homeowner was extremely impressed with how quickly we completed the job and decided to cancel the replacement contract, thus saving more than $10000 by choosing to clean their roof instead of replacing it.
This experience changed how I explain the value of my products and services to my customers. I now explain to my customers that cleaning is not only about appearance but helps determine the actual condition of the surface and can sometimes save an unneeded expense. Additionally, it confirmed to me why I recommend using soft washing methods for roofing surfaces. Using the proper cleaning techniques can achieve remarkable results and help protect the roof shingles at the same time.
What is the biggest challenge you face each day and how do you handle it?
One of the main difficulties I experience every day is that there are no two jobs alike, and therefore, I am constantly required to pay attention to specifics when maintaining consistent quality across many aspects of jobs, from surface type to climate and customer’s expectations. For example, a roof may require soft washing whereas a driveway may require high pressure cleaning, and a cool-misty morning in Costa Mesa will impact the amount of time it takes to dry off a specified surface. My solution is to perform a quick pre-job inspection before I begin any work on a property, then create and maintain a checklist that includes all necessary settings for pressure, cleaning solutions, and safety procedures.
Because I face the same challenge with my scheduling as well, I build in protective buffer times into each of our daily routes. An unexpected situation such as a stubborn rust stain or a hidden spot where algae grows will take longer to remove. To help alleviate this issue and to keep ourselves from feeling rushed, I communicate openly and honestly with my customers whenever this occurs so that we can maintain our consistently high 5.0-star rating on Thumbtack.
What do you value most and why?
What matters most to me is earning my customers’ trust. Exterior cleaning requires customers of our company (and every other cleaning company) to let us into their homes and trust us with their roofs, siding, and landscaping. Gaining customers’ trust does not happen by default; it is earned through giving free, no-pressure estimates and transparent, easy-to-understand pricing, as well as providing a satisfaction guarantee to fix any areas that a customer is not completely happy with.
Customers can also gain trust in our family-owned business by forming long-term relationships and referring us to other homeowners when they know we will show up on time, we will clean their homes using eco-friendly methods, and we will treat their homes as if they were our own. One customer may only ever have one home cleaned, but if they told a friend to hire us and then they hired us, they would be part of hundreds of homeowners who would refer us.
What achievement are you the proudest of and why?
The accomplishment I’m most proud of has been growing Inland Power Wash from one small favour for a family friend in 2009 into a successful family owned/company that has been serving the Southern California area for more than 17 years. This is an important achievement when you consider that most small businesses in the service sector do not last as long as we have been around; therefore, this proves our continued commitment of providing high quality, safe, and honest service through changing conditions/development in our industry and market.
This longevity has led to our 5.0 rating on Thumbtack with over 60 reviews. This rating demonstrates that we take the extra time to make sure every day we pay attention to the details of the job we do. We also have the continued trust of our repeat customers and referrals, which reflects the level of care we take with their property.
What is your favorite book and why?
Michael Gerber’s “The E-Myth Revisited” is my favorite book; its teachings regarding the distinction between ‘working in’ a business versus ‘working on’ a business ultimately imparted life-changing insights for me as an owner who prefers to do everything personally (clean every roof/driveway). It taught me that you can create a business that has the potential to continue to be successful well into the future by creating process documents, training your staff properly, and building systems that are not dependent on any one person.
Everything I learned from this book has had a direct effect on how I run Inland Power Wash. As a result, we now employ checklists to evaluate each surface type before commencing work, have established standardised working procedures for all soft-wash and rust-removal projects, and follow clearly defined protocols for estimating potential jobs and following up with customers after completion. This book taught me that, while many small, family-run businesses may never achieve a truly professional level, by implementing repeatable systems, these businesses can compete with larger corporations.
What advice would you give to your younger self and why?
Advising myself 10 years ago to “Document everything and build a training system sooner, rather than later,” makes me think that for too long, I relied on my memory to store all the knowledge from my jobs. Even though I had knowledge of the correct pressure settings for stucco jobs, soft washing roofs properly without damaging shingles, cleaning rust stains without etching the concrete under the graffiti, I held on to that knowledge and did not have a formalized process created or documented to communicate those procedures to my team.
If I had created documentation sooner, I could have trained new employees much quicker, ensured that the quality of our work would be the same regardless of how busy we were, and spent time building the business instead of explaining things over and over again. This is critical information for small companies like mine; if the company’s owner’s success standards do not trickle down to all employees and are not followed by all employees, then they will not succeed.
Who has been your biggest mentor in life (personal or professional) and how have they helped you?
My father has been my largest mentor; he instilled in me the belief that all jobs warrant the same level of integrity and care. My father taught me how to conduct yourself when dealing with customers. For example, treat customers’ goods the same way you would treat your own; be on time; and do not compromise quality in order to get things done more quickly. These very same principles became the backbone of Inland Power Wash when I created the company in 2009.
In addition, my father has shown me that one’s reputation is built one customer at a time. By following his example, I demand that all estimates be provided free of charge without pressure to accept them; all cleaning methods employed by us be environmentally friendly; and that we guarantee customers’ satisfaction. For these reasons, my small family-owned business has been successful for more than 17 years, and Southern California customers continue to trust us.
Just for fun, what is your favorite food?
French fries