Thesis: The exterior cleaning industry is dominated by pushy, shady, up-selling companies which pawn off questionable products using fear-based sales tactics. Exhibit A: Yesterday in Yarmouth, I looked at an asphalt (composite) roof for a homeowner who thought it might need a cleaning. Yes, it does: dark streaks of algae discolor the north side of the roof, while spots of moss and lichen are plainly visible. Easy enough. After looking at the roof, I noticed that the white cedar shingled siding didn't look quite right. "Oh, that ," said the homeowner. "Don't get me started!" Of course, I did. As the homeowner explained it, several years ago she had hired a well-advertised local company to clean algae from the siding. The salesman/owner insisted that the siding not only be cleaned, but also treated with their revolutionary stain/sealant product which would be a one-time treatment. Must. Be. Done. Basically, to do anything else would be sheer madness! So, the homeowner hired said Company to clean and "seal" the siding; the Company massively over-promised and under-delivered; the company later got so many complaints that the Company dissolved and re-formed under a new name. Clean slate! And today, while that Company's glossy print ads and prominent Google ads are seen by thousands, they're still peddling the same crap to unsuspecting cedar customers, and the Yarmouth homeowner's siding looks like this all over:
To a large extent, my livelihood is tied to the cost of cedar. For example, if cedar roofing and siding were free, I'm guessing I'd be un employed because nobody would care about maintaining something which is free to replace. At the other end of the spectrum, if cedar roofing and siding cost the same as, say, gold ... well then I'd be busier than I could ever keep up with. There would be a flood of new cedar cleaning services in the industry. Cleaning equipment and chemicals would be wildly overpriced. As it stands, cedar costs less than gold but it's far closer to gold than "free." For this reason, yes, there continues to be more new cleaning services each season, and equipment and supplies are indeed priced to the moon. HOW costly is cedar at this moment? Let's look at Home Depot , which should be considered the bottom end of things but which I'll reference because most higher-end yards don't publish their prices online. Home Depot's white cedar shingles are available for $69/bundle plus tax. A bundle covers 25 square feet, so that's just about $3/square foot. But, obviously, that's just the outermost materials. If a homeowner is having siding replaced, then the material cost is just the beginning. Don't forget about: disposal of the old siding stainless siding nails new cedar breather and water resistant house wrap and the big one: LABOR to remove and install Siding is commonly measured in "squares," whereas each square is 100 square feet. So the above-mentioned bundles of cedar are 4 bundles per square. Add all this up, consider that the above example represents the rock bottom end of the price spectrum, and it's no wonder that us cleaners are able to clean cedar for a tiny fraction of its replacement cost. That's my idiots such as myself are as busy as we are. Here's a number I'll never forget: A contractor recently told me that they price out new red cedar roofing installations at $2000/square. That's $20 per square foot .
Just some thoughts about what it is that I REALLY do, and what the legacy of these years will be.
We all know " That Guy :" the sole proprietor or tiny-business owner who had a good year or three and is now driving around in a 50-, 60-, or 90-thousand dollar pickup. This isn't a "work truck" in the traditional sense: this truck has a luxury interior, fancy rims, never a scratch on it... and commercial plates. Maybe there's a dash-mounted bracket for a laptop computer, or a tool or small piece of equipment somewhere in the bed, but let's face it: these could easily fit in a Kia Soul . "It's a work expense!" That Guy says with a laugh. "A write-off! If I didn't spend it, the government would just take it in taxes!" You get the idea. That Guy spends a fortune on an unnecessary, over-priced, inefficient four-wheel drive ego boost. As I said, we all know a That Guy . Here's the deal: Whether a company is structured as an LLC, S-Corp, DBA, etc, it's true that earned income left over after business expenses will be taxed. It's income! And yes, spending available money on a work vehicle (or tools, equipment, advertising, etc) will reduce the company's earned income, thereby reducing the taxes as well. But isn't there something... I don't know.... smarter that can be done with available money to help reduce taxes? You know, something that won't represent the financial liability of an unnecessary luxury vehicle ? Enter the Simplified Employee Pension plan ( SEP IRA , for short). Like a traditional IRA, it's a way to set aside pre-tax dollars for retirement, while reducing the calculated taxable income this year. And unlike a traditional IRA (whose annual contribution limits for 2023 is a mere $6500), a SEP IRA can absorb up to a whopping $66,000 - or up to 25% of compensation - each year. (Note that or reasons involving funny tax math, owners/sole proprietors can "only" contribute up to 20% of their income.. still a lot more than a traditional or Roth IRA!) There are some catches: if employees exist, then the plan needs to contribute to their SEP IRAs in the same percentage that is contributed to the owner's. For this reason, I see the SEP IRA as a potent tool of particular interest to sole proprietors and small mom-and-pop companies (such as Outside Cleaners LLC), where employees are family members . There's more: for small business owners living in the Great State of Massachusetts who would like to qualify for very affordable subsidized health care, this SEP tool can be used to knock down your calculated income enough to qualify for subsidized income . That's right: if you plan it right, you can shovel money into your retirement each year while also continuing to qualify for heavily subsidized health insurance. Sooooo... that's why I live like a pauper. My sales truck, which I bough for $10k before the pandemic, has 265,000 miles on it. And while That Guy is dumping eye-watering amounts of money into auto insurance and excise taxes and monthly payments ("It's a business expense!") for his ridiculous ego truck, I'm putting the same money into our retirements. Maybe I'm the only one who care about this stuff. Maybe I'm wrong to hang my hat on the long-term growth of the stock and bond markets. Maybe the western financial system will implode, my retirement will go to $0, and That Guy will have the last laugh while he rolls onto the beach in his ego-mobile. Time will tell.
Here's some thoughts on the rising costs of exterior cleaning
Years ago, I started posting videos online to promote our little local business. It was just part of the free online marketing and advertising strategy I decided upon as a mean to make a living. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube... that was the social media trifecta. I didn't want to pay to advertise, and to this day I still don't. Last year, I realized that some of my videos had a "lot" of views, and somebody suggested that I allow YouTube to put ads on those videos so that I could make a buck. I recently got a notice from YouTube indicating that they needed my bank account info so that they could pay me. Long story short, a video I made last year on deck cleaning just paid this month's mortgage. That was certainly among the easiest money I've ever made and tells me I should do more of that type of thing. And that's very timely, as my body has reminded me more and more this season that I should be looking for other ways to make income. I'll be posting more videos to try to keep interest and keep the easy money dribbling in. If you have suggestions for specific content, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Tired of articles containing lots of keywords but no useful info? Tired of service companies presenting themselves as authorities, even when they're actually just startups? Me too!
Decisions and things to consider in the off-season of a power washing business in New England
This is the part of the season when this job reminds me that I can't please everyone. Since 2011, I've worked for over 2500 homeowners here on Cape Cod. A small-ish fraction of those have me clean their gutters each autumn, but that "small fraction" still adds up to a lot of gutters to clean. Homeowners who want their gutters cleaned in the autumn understandably want this service performed as late as possible so that the gutters don't fill up with falling leaves again right after they have been cleaned. What most homeowners typically don't understand is that once nighttime temps dip below freezing, the clogged gutters don't just thaw out on the next warm day. They don't. And cleaning frozen gutters is far, farrrrrrr more costly than cleaning them when they're not frozen. So the task is to clean a whole lot of gutters at the last possible minute. Do them too early, and folks complain that they'll get full of leaves again. Do them too late, and it's REALLY too late. ... and that's why I've learned the hard way to strictly limit the number of gutter cleaning jobs I take on each year. And that's why I turn away far more gutter cleaning jobs than I actually perform. Addressing a few more common questions: Why don't we just automatically schedule all the gutter jobs from last year? I used to do that, and I cleaned far too many gutters for free. Each year, 10-20% of our gutter customers move away or pass away. Nobody tells us when this happens, and the new homeowners are NEVER happy to pay for a service they didn't ask for. Can we schedule your gutter cleanings now for a specific time/date in late autumn? No. The exact work date depends upon many things, including the weather in November (have early storms shaken the leaves off?), nighttime temps ... and the many, many other gutters jobs already on the schedule. By necessity I group them by town and neighborhood. Does anyone need to be home when the gutters are cleaned? No. Do I need to use a spigot? No. My truck carries plenty of water. Can I clean out the clogged drain which disappears into the yard ? Probably not. Can we schedule your gutter cleaning for December? No. Recall it was only a few years ago when we woke up to a frozen world in early December... and it didn't unfreeze until springtime. Remember: once temperatures briefly dip below freezing at night, the contents of the gutters freeze solid. Most homeowners don't understand that those frozen gutters typically don't thaw out during the daytime. Frozen gutters cannot be cleaned out for anything remotely like the normal rates you pay. Rates: We charge $1 per foot per floor and our minimum service charge is $165 (up $15 from last year). We routinely hear that this is competitive with other fully-insured gutter cleaning services. Can I repair your gutter? Most likely. If I'm already cleaning your gutters, I can perform small gutter maintenance and repair jobs if needed, such as re-attaching disconnected downspouts, sealing pinhole leaks, etc. Those repairs are performed and billed based upon time and materials only.
Before the pandemic, I read somewhere that Cape Cod has an average annual turnover rate of about 25%. In other words, a QUARTER of the local population moves away each year, and a new 25% comes in to take their space. That's probably changed a bit with the recent flood of "wash-ashores" during the pandemic, but you get the idea: this sandbar is practically a revolving door. Which brings me to a topic I often think about: the companies that claim to have washed "thousands" of homes on Cape Cod... who ACTUALLY washed those homes? Some magically-consistent and stable staff of workers? Or a long, revolving Rolodex of short-term employees, most of whom worked for just a season or two before moving on to other streams of income? Companies of any size on Cape Cod rely upon a workforce which is in constant flux. Big exterior cleaning companies scramble to find bodies to do this filthy work, and those bodies often have far, far less experience than the companies wish you to know. Through inside channels, I hear the horror stories, and it is indeed a nightmare. One example: A local roof cleaning company quietly replaced multiple asphalt roofs in the last 12 months because the under-trained geniuses they sent to do the work just butchered everything. By the way, that company proudly proclaims its "expertise" in the field of roof cleaning. My point is this: Hiring a small owner/operator or mom-and-pop business such as Outside Cleaners LLC is one way to ensure that the guy doing the actual work has as much experience as the COMPANY claims to have. When the guy on the powerwasher is also the owner of the company and has been doing the job since Day #1, it does make a difference in the finished product.
