Thursday Mar 26, 2026
33: The Christina and Fred Hodge Episode
On this episode of the Huge Transformations Podcast, host Sid Graef sits down with Fred and Christine Hodge of Clearview Washing, an exterior cleaning company in New Jersey that Fred started with his dad at 19 and that the couple later transformed into a fast-growing, systems-driven business. Fred shares how the company began with window cleaning and gradually expanded into gutters, power washing, and more, while Christine explains how joining the business brought a major shift toward structure, accountability, and scalable growth.
Fred and Christine break down the biggest changes that helped them grow: moving from paper-based operations to software and systems, building a stronger hiring process, creating clear roles, and treating team members like career employees instead of temporary labor. They also talk candidly about working together as spouses, the boundaries they had to create between business and home life, and how building culture, confidence, and leadership within their team has become a core part of the company’s success. Finally, they share what it takes to move from one growth stage to the next, including why their path to $5 million now depends less on hustle in the field and more on elite sales talent, operational leadership, and continued investment in people.
Resources:
Transcript:
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Huge Transformations podcast. I'm Sid Graef out of Montana. I'm Gabe Torres here in Nashville, Tennessee. And I'm Sheila Smeltzer From North Carolina, we are your hosts and guides through the landscape of growing a successful home service business. We do this by interviewing the best home service business builders in the industry, folks that have already built seven and eight figure businesses, and they want to help you succeed.
Yep. No fake gurus on this show, just real life owners that have been in the trenches and can help show you the way to grow profitably. We get insights and truths from successful business builders, and every episode is 100% experience, 0% theory. We are going to dig deep and reveal the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Our guests will share with you the pitfalls to avoid and the keys to winning. In short, our guests will show you how to transform your home service business into a masterpiece. Thanks for joining us on the wild. Journey of entrepreneurship. Let's dive in.
Hey, it's Sid at the Huge Transformations podcast, and I'm really delighted you are here. It feels like it's been a whirlwind since the last time we recorded an episode, and it's like this. I just got back from six days in Mexico for a nice reset with my wife before we get started with a busy, busy cleaning season in our business here in Montana.
And before that I was in Nashville for three and a half days for our mastermind. The huge Mastermind. And that's where we get, we get 40, 50, sometimes. We have 60 people get together in one room. These are all sharp, growth-minded business owners that really want to accelerate their business. They want to 10 x their business in the next three to five years, and we spend.
Intense time together, working on process, working on a tool, working on a way to maximize their business. And this one was no different. It was probably the most in-depth process orchestration we've done on new product development, on, on role creation to help people advance and accelerate their business.
And I'm, I usually don't bring this up, but I wanted to bring it up because maybe you as a listener, maybe you've got a business with, you know, five or more employees and you're over half a million, maybe over 700,000 in revenue, and you want to get to a million, you want to get to 5 million, but you feel like you're plateaued.
If that's you, you gotta check out the Mastermind and just see if it's a right fit for you. 'cause it's designed. For people in that range. They're, they've got five or more employees, they're over 700,000 in revenue, and they want to get to 2 million, 5 million. We really want to grow a business that will grow and operate without you.
That's what the huge Mastermind is for. So check it out@thehugemastermind.com. That link will be in the show notes. Didn't mean for that to sound like a, a promotion or advertisement, but it's, it's so valuable for people that are in that situation that feel like they've plateaued, that have kind of outgrown their capabilities, but they know they've got a lot more potential left.
They just need to help. They need to find someone to help unleash that potential. So that's what the mastermind's for. But here's one thing that we decided to do last week as the, uh, the mastermind sort of leadership group. We publish. We published a book strictly for our mastermind members, um, little less than a year ago called the $10,000 Ideals book and the 10 K idea Book m.
What that is, is that, you know, at a lot of our quarterly masterminds, we will have our members stand up and contribute and tell us what is your 10 K idea. The framework for the 10 K ideas has gotta be something that you have that's strategic or practically, um, tactical that they have, have actually done in their business in the past six months that has generated over $10,000 in fresh revenue in a 30 to 90 day period.
So we just compiled 14 of these ideas and put 'em in a book that we could give to new mastermind members to help them jumpstart their membership in the Mastermind. What's really cool about that is each one of these ideas is worth over $10,000. Last year at the huge convention when, um, uh, before I introduced one of the speakers, I showed that book and I just turned to a page and opened it, and there was one particular.
Tactic that was in there that I read and I'm like, guys, I'm gonna go home and do this in my business. It's a tactic we had never applied before. This was the end of August, right in the slow, the doldrums of summer. And I went home, gave it to my leadership team, my office manager. We sent out four emails to half of our database and one text message, four emails, one text message with this one specific tactic.
And I wanted to prove that we would generate over $10,000 in fresh revenue. We ended up generating $26,400 in new revenue just from that one tactic executed one time. I was like, damnit, this is good. It works. So we decided to make this $10,000 ideal book available to anybody that wants a copy. So if you go to the 10 K book info, let me say that cleaner, 10 K, that's one zero.
In the letter K 10 K book.info, you can get your free copy of the $10,000 idea book. I hope you do, and I hope you utilize it and implement some of the stuff that's in there. A couple day ideas in there that we've executed. You're gonna go, this is too simple. I can't believe it. Like it'll never work. Do it.
It will work. It's already been proven. It's already worked for many, many others. And it'll work for you too. So this is our, my free gift to you. Go to the 10 k book info, get your copy of the 10,000 idea book and add it to your business repertoire and jumpstart your season with extra 10,000, 50,000, a hundred thousand in revenue.
And just, you know, next time you see me at the convention or you know you hear me on the podcast, just gimme a thumbs up and say, thanks man. That was. Awesome. Make sure and get yours. Okay. That's a long lead up to today's show. Today's show, I had no idea how much I was going to enjoy the conversation and interview with our guests, Fred and Christine Hodge, Fred and Christine Hodge.
They own a power wash or an exterior window cleaning company. Clear, clear wash. Oh my God, I'm so sorry. Frank. Christine, I messed up the name of your company. They've got a great company in New Jersey, this exterior cleaning. They've been in business for about 20 years and they have gone into a, a strong growth mode in the past five years.
They've more than doubled the size of the company and they become leaders in the industry, teaching other people how to implement systems, implement good hiring, and hire leaders, and retain leaders in their company though. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did and learn as much as I did from Fred and Christine Hodge.
There are guests. Fasten your seatbelt. This was fun and fast paced, and you're gonna want to take notes. Just know that all the notes are in the show notes. Every link, everything we mention in the show notes, check it out. Fred and Christine Hodge. Hey everybody, this is Sid with the Huge Transformations podcast, part of the huge, um, the huge convention.
I'm excited today 'cause I've got Fred and Christine Hodge together on the podcast and we get to, I I've, we, we've met at the huge convention. I've had a couple conversations with you guys. I've never had a deep conversation where I go, let me hear the backstory. Let me hear how you get started. And, you know, some of the growing pains along the way.
'cause you guys have grown a, a pretty significant, uh, exterior cleaning company there in New Jersey. And it's Clearview Clearview Washing, right? There's a clear view. Clearview Washing, Clearview Washing. So first of all, Fred, Christine, thank you very much. How are you guys doing? You're in the, the land of ice and cold or how things in Jersey right now?
It's cold, it's snowy. We're dreaming of warmer days, but we're almost there. True, true. Do you always feel like, I mean, it's like the, I I don't know what the, uh, the bias is, the mental bias, but when you, when the sun's shining, you think it's always gonna shine. And when it's cold as hell, you think it'll never be warm again.
And we know that's not true. Yeah. But it sure feels that way. It sure does. It sure does. I mean, today it's like 40 degrees and it feels like summertime because Yeah. I don't feel like I need a jacket. I've been so conditioned to the cold that this feels warm to me right now. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's great.
Well, that's great. Well, I want, I want to dig into your guys like the origin story of Clearview Washing. And if I understand correctly, Fred. Believe you started as a wild-eyed 19-year-old. You're like, I'm gonna go start a window cleaning company, 19 years old, 2004. And you just started, what, uh, what was your motivation to start a window cleaning company?
Do you have any family members that are business owners or like, why would you do such a crazy thing? So it's, uh, there's a combination of everything going on here. So yes, I do have a family of entrepreneurs, as does Christine. Um, and I started the company with my dad. Um, he didn't start, I didn't start it.
We started it together. Um, I was studying entrepreneurship at Rowan University in Southern New Jersey, and I knew I wanted to become an entrepreneur, but I did not realize I was gonna be getting into the exterior cleaning game. Um, Monday day, on a Saturday, my dad woke me up and he is like, we're going to clean some windows.
I'm like, what are you talking about? And I'm like, uh, he said, we're going to clean some windows. I'm like, what? And he still, he, he says, credit, I give you credit to this day. He is like, most 19 year olds wouldn't have popped out of bed and said, all right, let's go clean some windows. But he had found an experienced window cleaner in Pennsylvania and he had found a job through putting ads in the newspaper.
'cause that's what people did back in, still in 2004. And he found a client locally and he hired this guy from Pennsylvania to come out and he said, listen, I'm gonna give you all the money for the day. I wind up a couple jobs and I just want you to show us the ropes. You get all the money. We don't want anything.
But, uh, so the guy. Drove like about an hour, um, came out this way. Um, we went and did the jobs. I got to learn firsthand what a professional window cleaning was like, how to actually operate a squeegee. The tools, the tips, tricks, the whole nine yards just one day. And, uh, from there we kind of, that was the first job, um, that went smooth with the professional.
It did not go so smooth with the current, the jobs. Uh, that came shortly after that. Um, once the professional was gone, I still remember we had a wooden ladder. I'm like, I don't even know if they, like, do they? I don't think they even make wood. Is that legal? I remember swatting bees away from my head. I'm squeezing it from the outside.
He's telling me he could see streaks. I'm trying to clean it like I was ready to, we were ready to rip each other's throats out. And, uh, at the end of the day, somehow, some way we kept at it and we started to add additional, um, services. We eventually, people started asking, well, can you clean my gutters?
Can you clean? Uh, can you power wash my house? Can you do my walkway? Um, and we kind of evolved since then, but that initial being 19, starting at, my dad had a full-time job in Manhattan. He commuted every morning. He hated it. Um, that's why he was always steering me towards entrepreneurship. Um, he realized that, uh, it, it wasn't, the corporate world wasn't what it used to be, and it was, uh, very cutthroat.
And he instilled in me a lot of values from, um, basically, uh, entrepreneurship. Um, and that's what propelled me to study entrepreneurship at, at Rowan University. And every job, or the few jobs I had in my life before Clearview, um, I always took such pride and also looked at things to improve. He's like, you're the only 17-year-old that would come home from the Italian restaurant saying that like.
You sold the most specials and this is what they're doing wrong. And they, they need to prove on this, this, and this. He's like, he is like, most of 'em are like, I made a hundred bucks. I'm happy. I'm going out with my friends. He's like, you were giving me a, a detailed report on the things that they could do better at the restaurant and to improve customer service to quality of the food, everything.
And he is like, you laid it out there on a regular basis and you're always so competitive. Um, that's very cool. Were you, were you always just kind of hardwired like that you see problems in solutions and opportunities or did, was there some childhood training? Yeah, I think, uh, uh, being surrounded by a lot of my uncles, um, that were entrepreneurs, I kind of saw firsthand.
Um, one of them ran a theater with a restaurant and I saw like how he conducted business, how he went about things. Another one had a production, um, video production, which wasn't really the norm back then. Um, and, uh, he was growing that company and, and there was a bunch more in between. And I saw firsthand like what they were doing in their element and how they led and were looking for things.
And I kind of, I, I loved that. Um, I really, um, was fond of that and I kind of, I wanted to take my own approach and bring my own thing. And me and my dad also found that, like all the other businesses we felt at the time, the ones that were successful, and I don't feel this way anymore, but back then I felt like there was, there were like.
The owners were slimy. And it was like this guy, and I'm not talking exterior cleaning just in general and our, our ways of doing things and I'm like, we kind of both felt like there was a way of doing things the right way and there's a way of doing things, um, uh, and, and showing appreciation and being generous and treating people right where you could still be successful and do it that way.
And we kind of set out to do that. Um, and the reason we fell into exterior cleaning in particular was someone was supposed to go to my parents' house for $400. The guy didn't show up, he didn't call, he didn't anything. And it was like right before I think Thanksgiving and my mom was upset that the, she really wanted to have the windows cleaned before the, all the guests came over in a couple days.
And, uh, we, we saw an opportunity with, uh, being able to just answer the phone, make phone calls, and be, show customer service to, to get it where it's, yeah. Interesting. When, when I first started, um, in Florida, they, I had a, I had a buddy that was in the same church and um, he was really successful, had an advertising agency.
Was killing it. And I said, bill, you know, gimme some tips here. Like what's some advice to be successful in this market? And he said, just show up. Yeah. I'm like, what do you gimme something I can actually use? Like that's dumb. And he is like, I am not kidding. If you show up on time, you're ahead of 95% of the so-called competition.
Like if you don't believe me, call three plumbers and try to get 'em to come over for an estimate. And I was like, oh my gosh, how is the bar so low? Yeah, and it's you, we've been in the industry for a long time. Feel like the bar has gone up quite a bit, but there's still a lot of people that. Don't answer the phone or don't return a call and just don't show up.
What was, um, at some point, I guess Fred, you, you took the business on, on your own. Your dad became not the helper or not the partner or however that worked, but in, in those early days, like what was your, what was your biggest goal for the winter cleaning company once you guys got started? So early on I was just trying to figure it all out.
How do I hire people? How do I land jobs? I still have like our little calendar book with all the jobs from back in those early years. And like there was gaping holes in the calendar. I'd have work on Monday and then I'd go Thursday and then I'd have Saturday and I was like, all right, well how do I fill out the rest of these days?
So I was just trying to establish something and my dad, he also says now, he's like, I didn't think we can get it where we got it. He's like, I didn't see that potential. Like I was trying to get us off the ground entrepreneurial journey, but I didn't see Clearview becoming what it has become back in those early days.
And I was trying to figure out every aspect, and he'd be in Manhattan and I'd call him and I'd be like, Hey, I got a question about this, or this is going on, or whatever the case may be. And he'd, and he'd try to help guide me from his office where, uh, he was working. And, um, the early days, I, I, I, from early on, I wanted to hit a million dollars.
Like, I was like, I'm getting this company to a million dollars and I wanna bring on, I wanted him to be able to leave the job in the city. Mm-hmm. I wanted to bring on my mom. I wanted to bring my brother on his operations. And then obviously eventually when I met Christine, I wanted to obviously bring her on board.
Um, so the, the, the, the million dollar, um, revenue was the, the ultimate goal that I set out early on. But it was, it was hard. Whenever me and Christine present, especially at the huge, we show our chart of like, growth from thousand four until 2026. Those first 10 years, it's like a plateau. Like it's such minimal growth, like there's growth there.
Mm-hmm. But then it was so small and, uh, Christina asked the credit, the growth to when she came on board. So then we started to get into the, the mountain range. Um, but, uh, it was, it was definitely, um, that was the ultimate goal and that was what I had set out for. Okay. And so Christine and you joined the company in 2017 and started running operations and, and doing things.
I, I just, I read the bio and the timeline and it felt like, it's like Christine's coming in to crack the whip and get these wild-eyed dudes in order. It's like, you got a great idea, but you're all over the place. You gotta have a system. Is that fairly accurate? It's exactly what happened. Okay. It's so literally the chart that we present is like, it's flat, and then it's like, once I joined in 2018, it was like, woo, alright, here we go, let's go.
Um, but we always like to say that my strengths are Freddy's weaknesses. Mm-hmm. And, um, his strengths are my weaknesses. So when I joined we kind of like divided and conquered. Like, we were like, alright, you focus on this, this, and this. I'm gonna focus on this, this, and this, and then we're gonna get this to a million dollars.
And it felt like it took forever to hit a million dollars. There was one year we came in at like. 970,000 and like we had $30,000 worth of work, but the, um, signed, but the, uh, the weather wasn't cooperating leading up to Christmas. Yeah. And we were like trying to send the guys out in the snow. Like we were like, we gotta get to a million dollars.
And we, and we didn't hit it, we hit it, we blew it outta the water the following year, but getting to a million dollars felt nearly impossible until we did it. Yeah. Yeah. So how long had you guys been married or were you married before you joined the company? You guys been together for some time? Um, so basically we met in 2014.
We got engaged in 2015, and then we got married in 2016. I had a, I was a corporate paralegal. I focused on, um, corporate, like intellectual property litigation. It was, it was very interesting and challenging. And that was my, for my entire adult life up until that point. And then we had our daughter shortly after we got married, um, like 10 months later.
And she, um, and, and then after my leave and everything, I was set to go back when our daughter, Gabriela, was four months old. So I went back, I remember it being in October and I went back for three days. And then on that Wednesday I came home and I said, I don't wanna work there anymore. I just wanna. He's her mom.
Like, I can't, I can't like go to work and like not see her. My commute was over an hour. Wow. And he was like, then quit. And then like, I was like, okay, that sounds great, but like, we just got married. I don't even understand your financial situation. Like, I, I don't even know if you know what you bank every year.
So like, I was like, we have to figure something out. So, um, a really good friend of ours, uh, who's actually our financial advisor, suggested that I negotiate a layoff. And I, I did, I went back and I just said, I have to leave, but I am not going to quit. I need you to fire me. And I need to collect unemployment and I need to figure out what life is like being married to an entrepreneur.
And I'd been with them with so long that for so long, that they actually gave me like a full year severance package. And it allowed us the year to transition into like managing the Clearview Finances and seeing what life would be like. But long story short. Um, I intended to be a stay at home mom, but Freddy would come home because he was still in the field.
So like he'd come home with different scenarios and I wanted to help him troubleshoot and I wanted to help him problem solve, and I was able to do that. So very organically, I started just like being a part of the business. And then a few years later he was like, you should be the CEO, and I was like.
Okay. You can tell Sid what, uh, your boss said when you told her you wanted to be, uh, laid off and in the, uh, Australian accent. Actually, she was from Australia. She was our vp, um, legal vp. And I went to her and I was like, I, you know, our baby's four months old and I just can't do this. And I was like, I wanna quit.
I wanna quit. But I, but I just, I don't even think we're gonna have any money this winter 'cause my husband doesn't work in the winter. So I was like, so I need you to fire me. And she was like, oh, okay. Like, she was like, I've never gotten that request before. And I was like, okay. And she was like, well, I'll talk to human resources and we'll figure it out.
And I was like, okay, I will not be at work tomorrow. Like, I, I never went back. Um, the, I went back the following Monday and they had like a going away party for me. But, um, anyway, the whole point is. I wanted to, my family is also, my family comes from Lebanon and they all came over in the seventies and they all started businesses in the us.
Every restaurants dry. My parents had a dry cleaners, all of my aunts and uncles and my parents. Everyone worked together. The spouses worked together. So like I lived this life. My uncle had a wholesale dry cleaner, so we had a warehouse just like the Clearview Warehouse. So like then we had restaurants, and then there was jewelry stores.
So like I've just always, me and my cousins have always been at these businesses. We saw parents fight and aunts and uncles fight, and we knew what money was like. And like, I guess it's just in my blood that it was like, I saw Freddy working and I was like, I'm gonna jump on board with this and we're gonna make it really successful.
Okay. I've gotta ask with the, with the, uh, the Lebanese immigrant background of your family, your extended family from the seventies, and then, then the jersey, um, grow up from Fred, like, who argues better because that there's a pretty high temperature on both ends of this. Take a lucky guess. Well, I know who wins.
I know who wins. The Lebanese have some fire in them. Yeah. I thought the Italian jersey thing. But until you see a Lebanese woman get, uh, met and then it's a whole nother level. Yeah. When you come, coming from that era and that background of turmoil in that part of the, of the world. I joke her, I've been at war for a million years.
I'm like, yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. So who's, who's more visionary between the two of you? Because I, I didn't realize you're both from entrepreneurial backgrounds like that. Um, I would consider myself the more visionary person. Yeah, I, I, I'm a dreamer, but I, um, it, there's almost like a back and forth with this, which is why I think we compliment each other.
But like he would have a really good idea and then he'd come to me for like strategy and like, how would we do this? And then I would strategize it, but I need it to be perfect. And he'd be like, no, you have a cutoff. We have to now roll it out. So like, we've always been able to just bounce back and forth between like vision, execution, rollout, and implementation.
Okay. Okay. Even when I met her, she came to my bachelor pet at the time, and there was just stacks of those papers that, it was those carbon papers where you give the customer the white copy. Mm-hmm. And there was result yellow and pink ones, both invoices and estimates and, and like piled high in my apartment.
Yeah. And she was like, all right, step one, we need to go electronic. So then we worked together. I was like, here's five of the best CRMs for our vinyl of. I'm like, I need help picking which one. So she went through, she, she did a demo with all five during her lunch break when she was still at the her job.
Wow. And she came back, she's like, we're going with Jobber. And that's when we, uh, went with Jobber and we've been with them ever since. So like, we've done a lot of that type of stuff where I was like, she, she knows the problem, I knows the problem. Then we worked together and then we kind of came to a conclusion and we made it work.
Okay, cool. Very cool. Yeah. I was gonna ask which CRM, but in, when you first started telling that, I, I put that story all back, way back when you started in 20 2004. And I was like, there were no CRMs. Yeah. You had a spreadsheet maybe, but mm-hmm. This was a, a little more modern. So Christine, what were the first systems that you put in place?
Um, the first one was jobber. Getting everyone on a CRM. Now it's like, it was like a whole family business. My mother-in-law, my father-in-law, my husband and my brother-in-law. So like, trying to implement jobber was like easier with the employees than it was with the phone. Like, no, no, no, no. We're gonna use paper.
And I'm like, Freddy, can you tell your parents we have to use jobber? Is it literally paper, all paper up into that point? All paper, every, everything was paper invoices. His, I have it. Um, darn. I wish it was accessible. I have it in, I have a marble, one of those marble notebooks and I still have his written schedule of which houses he was going to.
Yeah. Who he invoiced. And I kept it as memory because he, like, he hustled really hard and, and it took a lot of work and like constant consistency and, um, anyway, so then we got on jobber. That was our first thing. Uh, we developed a. Great hiring system. 'cause the people he was hiring was like, they, we would see them for two days and they'd be gone.
And then another two, you know, we'd hire someone else and they'd be gone. Or like, he would call me and he'd be like, can you pick up this guy from the train station and drop him off at this house to power wash? And I'd be like, sure. What's his name? Like? So like, I was like, we can't, like, we need someone who can drive.
Um, so we, we created like a really great hiring system, which is actually. Honestly, I think our hire, I, I don't know if, I think, I feel like I know that our hiring system is the reason why we exceeded a million, $2 million in revenue. Because remember, remember when I called you that time, I was like, Christine, the one guy, uh, punched, uh, the other employee in the face at the gas station.
Um, which we do. I remember that. I remember them all. So, hiring system, this could be a great day. Yeah, we had, um, we developed a quoting system and like each year we like to like take on a new system. 'cause things are always evolving. And like what you said back, you know, back in the day there were no CRMs.
Well, even since I joined Clearview eight-ish years ago. There's so much new technology that has rolled out that really, that's what raised the bar in our industry. You didn't see this, you know, 6, 7, 8, 9 years ago. Yeah. So the ability to, um, have hiring softwares, the ability to have quoting softwares, the ability to track crew productivity, that's something we rolled out three years ago.
Now, I, I know which jobs are profitable. It's not just for the whole year, like this is our net, but I know which jobs were profitable and which ones we took a loss on. So like, it's been great to, um, utilize technology. My cousin's husband is our QuickBooks coach, and he says to us all the time, and we've had him speak in front of our employees, and he says, you guys are not a power washing company.
You're actually a technology company that power washes and window washes. Mm-hmm. Because of how we utilize technology to scale. That's cool. Can you give me, at a high level, kinda run me through your tech stack? Um, okay. CRM jobber quoting is on respons in bonus up is how we track crew productivity. Ninja VA is where we get our virtual assistants.
That's, that's a huge part of tech too. Yeah. Um, um, hire, bus hire, what was that? Yeah. Company cam hire bus company cam for photos before and afters and videos. Hire bus. I have everybody run through hire bus for proper placement within the company. Um, luckily I, I got a nine as CEO. Um, what else am I missing, Freddy?
Obviously QuickBooks, but that's more of a Yeah. QuickBooks. Oh. Um, this is a new one, but it's actually really exciting. We use school.com Yeah. As our hub for our employees. So it's like our personal page so our employees can message each other. I have our training classroom if our, there's a, an app on the phone, so if our employees wanna call out, um, they just go to school.com and they go into the Clearview classroom and they can click the form to submit a call out form a PTO form.
Yeah. It's, it's, there's like a log so they can post, like everyone was posting pictures at Christmas time with their families. So that's something new. And um, it's awesome because we're all remote and the employees are all over the place, but it like brings us all together. That's really interesting.
Usage of school. Yeah, I, I've not heard of anybody doing that except we use Slack for, you know, with the company, the communication channels and stuff like that. But you can do all that in school. Yeah, we were using Slack and then I switched over to school and it's like, it was awesome. Like, our guys got laid off in mid-December because of the weather.
So, um, like at Christmas time, everyone's like, love you guys. Like, it keeps things out of text and people were posting pictures and then on New Year's there was like, everyone was like, happy New Year. Our VAs in the Philippines posted pictures with their families celebrating New Year's Eve and like, it, it really brings you together.
Like it's, it's a really cool platform for that. And it's, it's affordable. So, yeah. Did you start using school to, uh, to use it as your LLM for training and things like that? Or did you. Start using it just to replace Slack. Uh, I started using it. I discovered it because of my process. CEO, like coaching community.
I like settled on that for process CEO for business coaching. Yeah. And I was like, I think that I can use this for Clearview. So I showed it to Freddy, it was $99 a month and I was like, I think that we should try this. Let's try it for a year and if you don't like it, I'll dump it. And, um. So that's how I did it.
And then I learned how to utilize the classroom. So like we can film training, YouTube videos, for example, and put them on like private on YouTube, but they're all linked in a classroom. Yeah, on school.com. So like I have our whole training. And easy employee access. So like for bonus up there's a leaderboard, right?
And we have this leaderboard of the crew productivity and who wins for the day and the week and whatever. Yeah. We have that on a TV screen at the shop. But there's like, now in the classroom we have bonus up reports and the guys can just go in a bonus up and click the link and see the leaderboard on their phone.
So like, oh, no kidding. It's like a one stop shop because I can put like Google docs, like if I need them to fill out, um, an emergency contact form or like now I have them doing, um, photo and video release forms. 'cause we're doing bigger things on social media. Yeah. I like have the link there. So like, everything's accessible in one place.
'cause you have to remember field employees, they're not sitting at a desk all day. Yeah. They're not going home to a computer. So like, I wanted there to be an easier way than Slack to have like one hub of data and information and a place to share. And school did that for us. So that's our newest technology.
Our first year was 2025 and wasn't Slack. We weren't able to get rid of previous employees off of there. Like, or what? There was a thing, I forget what it was. I just, I just, it, I couldn't visually see it, how I wanted to see it in Slack. And School makes it like easier for me to like, see our team, see everyone's faces, see the classroom.
Like we needed a central, we needed like a company CRM, like for our employees. Yeah. And I got that from school. No, that's really cool. We've, we've struggled with that exact issue with, you know, the, the field guys, they're, they've got a phone and they're working and they're not sitting at a desk. Slack is great for a company of desk employees.
Yeah. In remote workers you have to, you have to get on, get on school. Yeah. Oh, that's cool, man. I got my money's worth out of today's conversation right here. Thank you. Um, oh, that's cool. Okay, so I, I want to ask you to both, and, and I don't care who goes first, start how you want, but talk about working together as spouses is, it's not super common in any industry and there's a lot of dynamics that go between home and work.
How do you maintain professional as well as your loving relationship and, you know, not be mad at the end of the day or whatever. Just start somewhere and tell me about what's it like to work together as spouses? You guys teach a lot about this, uh, industry. Yes. Do you want me to start, or do you wanna start?
Yeah, Whitney's first. Um, okay. So it wasn't always this great and so like other couples in the industry, like when I first started it was because it wasn't only my husband, it was my in-laws and my brother-in-law. So like. It wasn't. So there were, I can't even say a blurred line. There were no lines between when work communication stopped and like family kicked in.
So like the family thread, like I would send a newborn photo of Gabriela and then like his dad would text and be like, we got a one star review on Google. And that was at like, and I'm like, I can't, I don't have the ability and I don't like the corporate world either, but like. I think the stuff I was able to pull from it and implement into Clearview were valuable.
And it was, we don't need to text about, we can't text about work. Like no one's allowed to text about work. And that took a long time. But now there are no texts about work. It's, we all have email addresses, so if we do get a one star review and you choose to read it at 10:00 PM you can forward it to us and I'll read it when I'm working at 8:00 AM the next day.
So like there were boundaries that we had to create that took like two to three years. And then boundaries between me and Freddy, like I would, you know, run payroll and then he'd be about to fall asleep and I'd be like, there's no money in the account. And he would, he'd be like, why are you telling me now?
And I'd be like, I forgot to tell you earlier. And we'd have to figure out where to transfer money from. So like those things, we, we said it, at the end of the day, work is done because if he doesn't wanna be working at 10:00 PM if I want to, I can jump on, but I have to check my email. Everything is through email now.
There is no texting about work and that fixed everything. And he works from the shop. I work from home. I go to the shop, um, sometimes, but I think like having separate workspaces really has benefited us. And I'd have to say like if I've been at the company for eight years now, I think the first two were challenging in our marriage with work and life balance.
Mm-hmm. And then the last six have been great. I love working. I genuinely love working with him. Like we, we are so aligned in terms of our vision for Clearview Washing and for our family and for our financial freedom that like when it comes to work, regardless of what's going on in our personal life, we can jump on a call and like execute like that.
Yeah. Cool. Let me, I'm gonna get to interrupt both of you. I'm gonna pull the mic really closely here. Fred. You're a very lucky man. You got me. I'm okay. I'm alright. I knew you knew. Alright, let's hear it from, from your, um, yeah, Soly. I don't wanna repeat it. She's spot on with everything. Um, those earlier years were tough 'cause I was the middleman.
So like, I was like, if she had a problem with something that my mom, dad, or brother was doing, she'd let me know that and then I'd have to go convey it. And then it was like, it wasn't, that wasn't fun. Um, and at the end of the day though, like just working with her, that's why I wanted her to become the CEO.
I think there's a lot of people in this industry. I think there's more husbands and wives working together, but like, they don't necessarily see it that way. 'cause maybe the wife has a full-time job and then she helps with the husband behind the scenes doing administrative stuff. Like every scenario is different, but I feel like a lot of the women don't get the credit they deserve.
And that's why I told Christine, like, I want her to be front facing and be the CEO 'cause she deserves that. And with everything she's doing, I think establishing also like the boundaries and the lines of like, who's responsible for what. So that we're not, we weren't all working on the same thing and, and kind of wasting time.
Um, I think that was really huge. Um, and I think just setting the boundaries, like she said, like we try to do no business talk in bed, and like every once in a while one of us will slip up and like, she'll be like, I don't want hear this right now. And then vice versa, she'll be dumping me on, uh, about something.
I'm like, I don't want to hear that right now. Mm-hmm. Like, it's, it's 10:00 PM I'm enjoying whatever show we're watching to like, relax and unwind before we go to bed. Like, let's, let's, and we respect it. Like, it's like you need the reminder. Like, I could be frazzled about something, but he's like, Christine, I'm done for the day.
And I'm like, I'm sorry. You're right. Like, I'll shoot you an email and I'll send him an email. We're laying next to each other in bed and I would like send the email from my phone so that he gets it in the morning. Just to, we have to, the only way we'll succeed is if we respect the boundaries. Yeah. Yeah, that's, it sounds funny to say we're side by side in bed.
I'm gonna email you. Mm-hmm. But the having that boundary and a clear line Yeah. Is so valuable. I really appreciate that. And we go out to dinner sometimes and people are like, oh, like that's not a boundary for us. Like if we, like, we're not gonna bring up like bad stuff, but like, if we wanna talk some strategies, some futures, some like things we can do.
Like I we're going on a date night tomorrow night. I wouldn't be surprised if we started talking to some business. Like, uh, we, we enjoy talking about that stuff, especially when there's a passion, um, involved with that. And obviously we're both see the end goal of where we're trying to reach. Yeah. Another like key thing, I think it's because of how great our employees are, is Freddy's home for dinner every night at five.
'cause my kids eat early. They eat at five. Yeah. And like that never slips. Like we eat dinner together at five o'clock and we're very present with the kids. Like we. We're able to shut it off at this point. And I feel like years ago when it was more chaotic and we had less systems, it was really hard to shut it off.
So like we've, we've really nailed like our work life balance, I feel like. Yeah. That's How old are your kids now? You got two kids, right? Yeah. Six and eight. Six and eight. Okay, good. And, and what a remarkable gift for them. It's like your family culture to go dinner at five. Yeah. Whatever. It's have dinner together.
Yep. Yeah, I love that. And we bring them in too. Whenever there's a Clearview van, we pull, we'll pull them out of school. Like, to me, like I want them learning entrepreneurship firsthand. They engage with all the employees. Um, they, they enjoy coming to the shop. We just moved to a new location. They're, they're like, I wanna go see the new shop.
Like, they get excited if we're doing an event. Um, there's a lifetime gym where we were handed out stuff. They're like, all right, we're gonna have a strategy. They're like, we're gonna go up to certain people and we're gonna hand out their little Clearview rubber docs to every kid that walks by. And they're, but we're gonna go, we're gonna give a pamphlet to the parents.
I'm like, deal. And like they executed on all day. Yeah. They were going back and forth. And my daughter would call my son out on 'em. My son would call my daughter like, you missed one. You missed one. Oh. And they're all about it. And they're like, they're hustling. And I love seeing that. So I know. Whenever like, uh, uh, me and Christine talk, I'm like, we're doing it right.
'cause like I see them seeing it firsthand. They're they're involved in it and they're confident. Yeah. Like they don't have to be entrepreneurs, whatever they want to do, but I want 'em to at least have a taste of that so they know if they're interested. Yeah. Yeah. Having a taste of and immersion into that, that work ethic and hustle culture as an entrepreneur.
Like, and I don't mean, hu hu I don't really like hustle culture and grind and all that because, well, for a lot of reasons maybe we'll get into, but to have a sense of, and seeing that, you know, the, the risk reward factors, like the harder you work, the luckier you get mm-hmm. To actually see it and not just read it or hear it.
I, I really love that. What a, what a blessing for your family and your future generations. Well done. Thank you. Let's, let's go back to, I just want to go for like. The, the past five and a half years, it's 2026 or February, 2026. From, from 2020 till now. This is, I assume has been most of the growth that you guys have had together as a company is, you know, COVID to now, what was it like in 2020?
And then like, kind of take me through the, the peaks and valleys, or maybe it's just a straight line, like a rocket launch. Um, 2020 obviously as everyone experienced was a little scary. But then, um, you know, spring wasn't as busy as it should have been. But then come August, like we just blew up. Um, so 2020 was a unique year.
Um, we experienced steady growth. So what I was saying earlier is like, it, it felt like it took forever to hit a million dollars and then from 1 million to 2 million, you like fly there. Mm-hmm. Like, it is very strange. Like we didn't. It's not like we didn't have to work hard enough, but like we didn't strive for it the way we did with 1 million.
We were like, oh, let's hit like we thought, like let's hit 1.3 and then let's hit 1.5 and then let's hit 1.7. But like 2 million just came like that. And then now the grind from like 2 million to 5 million, five millions the next, um, milestone for us. Yeah, like that feels like the challenge that we went through going from, you know, zero to a million essentially.
So over the last few years we've been trying to strategize after we hit two, uh, 2 million is like, what can we do now to get to 5 million? Well, we have to reinvest into the company in a more strategic way. And I think it's going to be less strategy because we've nailed hiring laborers. But like, what do we do now?
We have to invest in sales talent. So like now we're like doing things we've never done before. Higher salaries, higher commissions. Bringing on people from other industries that are better at sales than we are. Initially, it was like me, Freddy, and his dad, and we, we, us three are so passionate. We wanna win.
So like we can sell anything to anyone, right? But like, we're gonna, we know we're gonna call every customer back. We know that we're going to like lock in every deal that we can. But, and then you, we like dabbled with like certain salespeople and we were like, okay, this is good. This got us to 2 million.
But now we're like, no, for us to get to 5 million, we need like rock stars in sales. So like, we bought in someone from the fitness industry who's just a king as sales. He spoke at the huge last year actually. Okay. Um, and then we bought in somebody else who now we're trying this for the first time. We give him zero leads all week.
He's out getting his own leads. Okay. And he is killing it. So like, we're trying new things. Like we always say like, the reason I think we're succeeding is because we never think that we're the best at everything. Like we are going to continue to absorb from everyone we talk to. What do we do next? What do we do next?
So the last like two to three years have really been like, okay, now how do we get to 5 million? And it's a lot different than what we needed to do to get to a million. Yeah. So you're your systems, and I mean real systems, it seemed like it's what brought you over a million. Mm-hmm. But now you're investing back in the company through roles and leadership.
Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah. Yeah. We, we rebranded. That was part of it too. We felt like our branding got a little stale. Uh, went more into social media and content. Um, obviously the hiring, uh, our ops manager we brought in 'cause we tried to always hire from within and that didn't work out with the operations role.
Just because they were, uh, awesome. Lead tech did not mean they were gonna be an awesome, um. Uh, ops manager for US manager, and we failed at that twice. Uh, my brother was our ops manager and he was killing it. Uh, the problem was he had entrepreneurial aspirations as well, so he ended up buying a pool, cleaning and restoration company.
So he went out and he's an entrepreneur himself now. After he left, we promoted from within twice and just fell flat on our faces. Um, and they're, and we ended up bringing 'em both back and they, they wanted to stay with the company, but in a lead tech role. Um, yeah. And then we decided to hire someone that had operational experience from Chick-fil-A and the healthcare industry and everything, but exterior cleaning.
And I'm like, if they can run operations, I can teach 'em the ins and outs of our industry. Yeah. And that's been a huge success for us too. Oh, that's cool. Do you, are you familiar with Jonathan Patosh? He's. He, uh, he started, I think it was service, CEO. He's got a, a significant landscape company in Dallas-Fort Worth.
Mm-hmm. Um, he has been, so, he is in a, in a, an adjacent industry to us, and he was at one of our, he was on a panel at a dinner we hosted a couple years ago in Nashville. And so he built their, he's got a partner. He worked about, you know, five, 10 hours a week. They got their lawn care company up to 10, 11 million a year.
Wow. And he had service CEO and, and it was very significant. He, he had an exit on that, which is like the, the kind of life changing money. He's super down to earth. It didn't change him. Mm-hmm. But when we were talking to dinner, uh, this panel we're talking about, you know, the keys to real growth and really being established in that growth.
He, he's so mild and modest when he stood up and said, listen to me. It got everyone's attention. 'cause he's a, you know, he is just a soft spoken guy. And he said, look, all of these strategies and all these things are great. He said, but the key when you want real growth is your people, and you've gotta pay 'em as much as you can.
Said, we had a guy, and I don't know what role he was in, we were paying 250,000 a year. And he was not moving the deal on a company. We fired him. We hired somebody. We're paying him $400,000 a year. And my, and I'm like getting tight in my throat about those kind of numbers. And he said he added like 6 million in revenue to the company in one year.
And he is like, you gotta get the right people. Yeah, you gotta pay your people. And I've like listening to your story, mine is very similar with the growth of our companies. And I go, we try to promote from within within, which is, is good. It's, it's got a noble side to it and a co you know, a, a culture thing to it.
But when you really get to the point where you're like, we're gonna grow, we've gotta go. You hire an expert. Yeah. You guys hire coaches to coach you. You even mentioned having an Excel, or not Excel, but a. QuickBooks coach and I was like, who does that? Okay. It was like, when you want to go pro, you hire a pro to teach you.
Yeah. So the people that got us to 2 million weren't gonna be the same people that got us to five. And we realize that, and we had to make some changes to, to accommodate that. And I'm loving it. Like the, the, the sales team is like, they're freaking rock stars and like they always say, hire people that are even better than you at what you're doing.
And like they are. And like, I love working with them. Um, both, uh, obviously both guys and obviously the operations is great and our field techs with the hiring process are great. So like I, every year at our company events, I always say, this is the best team we ever had. But like, I really mean that. 'cause every year it's getting better and better.
So like, and I think everyone sees that themselves too and really appreciates it. Yeah. So you guys teach a lot in the industry. I mean, you've, you, you interview others, you teach, you have a coaching thing. You've spoken at the huge convention. I see you guys speaking at other industry events and stuff, and you do that a lot.
You bring a lot of value. What I want to ask is, who do you learn from? Who are your mentors that you, uh, who's your coach? Well, I, I always looked up to Brandon Vaughn tremendously. Like, uh, when I saw he, that, when I saw he reached $5 million before exiting himself, like that was like, and he was doing all those awesome videos.
He was showing people to be behind the scenes. And a lot of people will say, yeah, yeah, yeah, but then they won't execute. And we see that when we're coaching too. Like, and that's why you're. Driven or not, uh, you're drawn to the people that actually execute. Like me and Christina always talk about different people that we're coaching, like that's an executor.
I love that guy. I love that girl. Like they execute, like you tell him what to do and then a week later, a month later, they're like, that's done. That's done. No matter like what it is. And I absolutely love that. I felt like I was that way with Brandon. Like if he said jump, it was like, all right, how high do you want me to jump?
Like yeah, I'm gonna execute on whatever it is. And that's where I would come to Christine with all types of ideas from stuff I was learning myself. I'm like, I think we should look into this software. I think we should do this. I think we should do that. And then like, we were taking each step. But like that's someone that I would give a lot of credit to.
'cause that's who I really luck up to for a long time. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. If he, even if he like posted a Facebook video, like a short Facebook video, we would like save it, watch it at night and be like, okay, we have to figure out how to do this. Like we just wanted to execute and then we like every book.
Every single book. Like I have this and then I have another bookshelf over there. But like any book that comes out, industry related or, um, the speakers at the huge and we, we get the book and we just get to work. I read it. 'cause there's always one thing you can take away. Like I, I always like use the word fluff.
Like I hate fluff. Like I want like actionable. Like this is how you do this. And um, so a lot of books are fluff, but there's still like one thing you learn in that book that you're like, oh, I read one book that I felt like was all fluff. Like, it was like, okay, so you're a multimillionaire, but how did you do it?
But there one takeaway that I took, which was, um, this like way, a certain way of doing employee report cards. And I was like, oh, that's genius. So now we have like employee scorecards. So like there's always something to take away and. There are so many more people than not that think like, oh, but that would never work for me, but that would never work in my demographic.
That would never work in this region of the us. That just would never work. But it's like, no, if somebody else does more in revenue than you, you do have to take away what they're teaching you. It does work. You just have to, it's a mindset shift. Yeah. So what, what are one or two of the biggest mind shifts you guys have had together as a couple to grow your business?
Because you, you don't go from a half a million to a million without changing the way you think. We're not, we're not offering jobs. We're offering careers. That was a big one. Um, that was a mind shift. And that one like, seems like, all right, not that big, but like that was totally different. We we're, we're hiring people that are providing for their families.
It's not just some job where they're collecting a few bucks and then kind of doing whatever they want. Um, that was a huge one. Do you have any other ones, Christine? Yeah. My mine was like paying higher salaries. Like I was terrified to pay higher salaries even knowing that this person would execute because they know more than we do.
But I was terrified to pay these high salaries. Mm-hmm. But, um, it's, it's, it's paying off. And I have to say that I know that a lot of people run the company on their own, but there is like, it's a blessing for there to be like me, Freddie, and his dad. 'cause if me and Freddie are hesitant about things, his dad comes in and says, you too.
I understand how you're feeling, but you have to think he's, he always says you have to zoom out and think big picture. Don't think about right now. Zoom out and think big picture. And sometimes we need to hear that. Yeah. And then there are other times where like Freddy and his dad are like, oh, this is a stupid process.
And I'm like, no, just do it. You know? And then, but like we all have to like, we all like the, there is power in us being like, so totally different in encouraging each other to like, go along with a certain plan. I think we've made really strategic, I think we've been very strategic risk takers, um, in how we've grown the company.
Yeah. Yeah. But the high salaries was a huge mindset shift for me. Okay, cool. Um, when you shifted from job to career, did it change the retention, the employee retention? Or did it change the way you've taught about Okay, good. Our retention rate is like 95%. Like that's not, say we're cleaning in New Jersey, like, yeah, we lose one guy a year and this year we didn't even lose anyone.
So like, uh, at the end of the day it's like. Everyone's on board. We're very transparent when we're hiring people too. Like, Hey, you're gonna be off in the months of January and February. We'll see how December goes. We, we will try to go as far into December and we start back first week of March, but I can't, like, we're not gonna work January and February.
It's not just throwing upon them when all of a sudden, uh, Christmases rolling around like, oh yeah, by the way, you're gonna be laid off right now. Good luck. Yeah. Like they know, so they prepare for it. Some of them go on vacations, some of them do DoorDash, some shovel, uh, snow removal, like everyone does something different, but they're all back here.
On March 9th is our kickoff, so a week from this Monday, we're gonna have our kickoff meeting and everyone's coming. Oh, that's cool. They all know, they all know how to window wash and power wash and clean a gutter like that is the easy part. But like we have shifted in the sense that like, we are almost like motivational speakers to these people.
Like we look at it as like, I, like we could change the entire trajectory of this person's life by giving them a career. Mm-hmm. They think they're applying for a job, but they could be here forever because we are giving them growth. We're giving them, um, you know, security. We've, we now offer 4 0 1 ks and health insurance.
Like, we want it to be a place where they can actually grow and thrive. And one of our guys bought a house last year and like one bought an engagement ring and he got engaged. So we're like seeing them grow from like kids in their twenties into adults. Yeah. And we're trying to like stand behind them and motivate them.
One of them texted. One of 'em just texted me and Freddie and he was just like, I just wanna thank you guys so much. You guys have really helped me, you've changed my life, whatever, whatever. And he's a, he's our lead trainer. And my response to him was, you don't have to thank me. You're the one doing the work.
Just know that me and Freddie will always be here to support you. Yeah. That is, that is so rewarding with, um, with some of the thing, you know, you said you, you're kinda like motivational speakers for 'em. You're, you teach 'em a skill, you teach 'em how to, you know, run their role, but you're also teaching 'em life skills, right?
Yeah. Do you, um, have like a leadership develop development plan or program where, like, what are the types of things that you teach? Your employees that is gonna be good for them no matter where they work in the future. We are always trying to build their confidence because they don't have that, they may not have been given that as a child.
Um, going job to, job, to job that. You lose confidence right there. So I always do, um, like team building things when we're all together and we get together three times a year in to like the entire company is together three times a year. The kickoff meeting in March, Clearview Day in August, and then our holiday party in December.
And at every single one of those events, we always start it with something motivational. And Freddie used to think it was so corny, but now he loves it. So like one of them would be, um, one time I had like a whiteboard and I gave everybody post-its, and I said, on everyone got three post-its. And I said, on each post-it write a goal or a dream or a vision somewhere.
You wanna be in the next year, two years, five years, whatever it is. I wanna know like one goal and vision. And they had to write three of 'em. And then you have to have them stand up and go to the front of the room and present that in front of everyone and stick it onto the company vision board. Wow. And like that is getting them to open up, because I know the guy.
I know which of our guys are insecure. Like one of 'em who seems like a complete boss when he is power washing, he always says, I don't know. And I'm like, okay, I'll come back to you. You can think about it. Like I wanna build that confidence in them. I want them to speak in front of people with their chin up.
I want them to share their goals and their dreams with people. And now they all have a support system. Our guys hang out with each other outside of work. So like another one that I did was, um, stand up in front of the room and tell everybody, um, one great trait about yourself and one great trait about someone you work with here at Clearview.
This went on for like an hour and a half. We had our guys walking to the center of the room, hugging each other. Like it turns, it just opens everybody up to really connect. Yeah. And now it's like a brotherhood amongst our team, but it's because we've learned so much about each other. That is really cool.
We, I did, um. A similar exercise about a year ago, and I thought it was gonna be corny. I was like, I, I wish one of my guys would do this exercise. So I didn't have to say it, but I, I gave 'em sticky notes and have 'em like, just write down what they like about their coworker. Like individually? Yeah. And stick, and we'd just put 'em in a pile We didn't read or anything, but I took, we separated 'em all.
So everybody for, you know, Jake, all of his went to envelope. We stuck it in his station and then Darby's went his, at the end of the day, they had, they all had like 10 or 11 things. Oh. That somebody else wrote about 'em and you didn't sign their name. And they, at that, after they came back and I was at the office that day and like some of the guys were crying.
They're like, dude, I had no, I like, and they, they ended up with this. Big bonding moment. Yeah. Because they realized what the other people were thinking about 'em and 'cause they didn't have sign their name. Everybody was pretty transparent about Yeah. What they really thought. And uh, I love that. Yeah. Yeah.
So I, I love what you shared. Actually, I just made a note to review this recording. 'cause we have our kickoff next Monday and Tuesday. Mm-hmm. I was literally looking for a game or an exercise to do with our crew when we come back and, uh, you just gave it to me, Christine. Yeah, yeah, of course. I couldn't be more proud at the end of that exercise.
Like I told her leading up to 'em, like, you're really gonna make them do this. We really gotta do, they were supposed have fun. I'm like, uh, and then by the end of it I'm like, this is awesome. And they had family members there. Like, it was like, it was just awesome to see all that. And I felt like a fly on the wall.
Like it was all about them and the coworkers. It was nothing about me and Christine. Like we weren't mentioning it all. It was all about them. And that was so cool to say, man. Yeah. If you think about like a field tech. Right. Like, this is not like a judgment thing. This is an experience thing. Like based on my experience, you, you are likely going to have somebody who may not have the best childhood or adult role models or guidance or someone to go to with advice or something.
So like as I was seeing those types of people, I was like, what can we do to make an impact on their lives? And once we started to see that we were making a positive impact on their lives, the company became successful. Like it truly goes hand in hand. Yeah. We, we always said, we want everyone, no matter how long they're here, whether they're here one year, five years, 10 years, we want them to leave here better off than when they arrived.
And we truly mean that too. So we've gotten, uh, the team OSHA 30 trained aerial lift trained. We've done all types of stuff too. So they have that in their arsenal. They have that card forever, right? They're officially trained. They can put that on feature resume. Yeah. And at the end of the day, we helped them try to reach their goals too.
Um, there's been people in the company, like one wanted to become a police officer last year. He had an opportunity. We pushed him and he became a police officer. Yeah. Oh, I love that. Another guy desperately wanted to work out of college. Christina had a conversation with him and he wanted to work, um, with, uh, special needs children.
And her cousin happens to run one of the, the biggest au autism schools in New Jersey, and she put them in contact. I'm not gonna lie, the first year I was pissed off that she like basically got rid of one of our best employees to go work for her cousin. But at the end of the day, big picture, it was like, that's awesome.
Like we helped him go do his goal and I still talk to him from time to time and I'm proud that like all these years later he is still doing that. And that was, he was passionate about that. Oh, that's cool. So, um, last big question before we wrap up is, you guys have a pretty clear vision or goal right now is go from where you are to, you know, to hit that 5 million mark and that's, it's very evident.
Um. The, with the principle of having everyone on the team rowing in the same direction, what are the, the incentives or the, like, how are you helping to motivate the technicians in a way that helps you meet that, reach that goal of 5 million? Because I, I know what the goal means from an owner level, right?
Well, we were talking about the tech stack before and we use bonus up. And Bonus Up is basically a system where it's, it's, it's, it's, it's the opportunity with the old carrot and the stick. And it's like, we wanna reward people that are kicking butt for us and we wanna make sure we hold people accountable.
And ironically, Christina always talks about this, like, the guys wanna be held accountable 'cause they want their peers held accountable too. Like I used to think no one wants to be like this or that. Well they actually do like, uh, they wanna make sure that everyone's being held at the same standard. But with bonus up, we're able to basically say that if your production rate is above 1 25 an hour individually, that it's between 1 25 means you're doing your job.
But between 1 25, 1 35, you're gonna get an extra dollar per hour between 1 35, 1 40, but you're gonna get $2 an hour between 1 45, 1 55, you're gonna get $3 all the way up to like, they can make an extra $10 per hour, um, in pay based off of their production rate. Yeah. We also pay them $10 per review. Um, we basically, the culture is strong.
Um, so we basically, we wanna make sure that each department is communicating with each other too, between the field operations. Sales and ownership. We wanna make sure all four are kind of aligned on exactly what's going in the office. So make it five. Uh, we wanna make sure everyone's aligned with that.
So I think by bringing everyone together, offering the additional pay incentives and doing that, that, that helps to drive everyone, keeping 'em aligned to get to that ultimate goal. Okay. Good. Good. Christine, you would you add to that? Yeah, mine, my response is a little different, but I, I agree with that in incentivizing the field crew, but I think that was part of the mindset shift and like, what got us to 2 million versus what'll get us to 5 million.
And I think strong field techs we've mastered, and I know that I can get another 18 if I needed to through my hiring system. But now I feel like the shift is going to be in sales, strong closing numbers and opera and like field operations, like leadership. Like I feel like back then it was like we needed like the work to get done properly and efficiently and whatever.
And now it's like on the backend, like, okay, we have the leads flowing in, but we need our closing ratio to like, we need to close all of these jobs. We need to focus on getting government bids. We need to focus on multi-day, um, projects. Keep the guys at one place for a week, like higher margin projects. So like mine is more on like that backend.
And that was the huge mind shift mindset shift for me is like now these big dogs that we have in sales are going to get us to the five mill. Yeah. Oh, that's great. And I'll provide the text. Okay. Yeah. What, um. What it would be your advice to anybody that's going from a million to 2 million and like, or any, anybody that just wants to get to a million.
'cause there a lot of people listening will be in that category. They're like, they've got that goal. I gotta get to a million. Gotta get to a million. What are the big shifts that they need to make or what's your advice to them? If you could just tell 'em, do this one thing, it's gonna make more difference than anything else.
I believe that, um, at that point, if you're trying to approach a million, you have to start implementing systems. You can get to 500,000 without them and you're likely not at the shop all day. You're likely out in the field kind of running operations. You have to train your guys in a way that they can focus on getting the work done properly.
And you have to focus on building systems that can scale. That way you can just continue to add to your company. Yeah, and I would say in addition to that, like yes, be out in the field, but like off the truck they gotta get off the truck. Yeah. And that's one of the hardest parts to do. But I think also making sure that their day-to-day tests are high level stuff.
Mm-hmm. They're not just everyone's busy, but like, if they were to write down everything they've done for the whole week, like every single thing they do during Workday, how many things should be delegated to other people in the company mm-hmm. Or automated or whatever the case may be. Like they're, they're, they, they're getting, they're getting, um, distracted by Home Depot runs and bank deposits and stuff that is eating up time, but not actually generating money.
And I think it's important at that level to make sure that they're running operations, but also getting as many leads and, and, and as many sales as possible. Yeah. That's great. If you think about like, um, how many times an owner has to run out to deliver a, uh, like a hose or, uh, an X Jett or something like that, imagine if they spent that time in the shop building bundles and learning how to cross-sell and upsell every single client to like double their average ticket.
Like, that's where the value is. Like it's in the brain, it's not on the road. You can have an Uber deliver a hose. Yeah, yeah. No, that's great. Well, both of you, thanks for spending time because like we finally got our deep conversation. 'cause the last two years is huge. When it's all over, I see you guys at breakfast the next day when everybody's kinda like, decompress, and we chat for about 10 minutes and I go, I need to, I need to sit down and talk with you guys.
Um, so I now finally had the chance. Thank you so much. How, if somebody wants to follow you or learn more, like what's the best place for them to go? You can follow me everywhere at the process. CEO. Um, and I, I could talk business all day long, so feel free to shoot me questions and good stuff. Okay. Okay, cool.
And for me, Fred Hodge Jr. Uh, literally on every platform. Um, and, uh, I, Clearview washing, uh, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, um, Google, you name it. We're on pretty much all of 'em. Awesome. Well, thanks again. I'm gonna ask you if you would stay on for a minute after we, we end, but for today, that is all for the huge transformation show.
Thanks for being a part of it and sharing your story. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having us.
Hello my friend. This is Sid. Thank you again so much for taking your time to listen to today's episode. I hope you got some value from it. And listen, anything that was covered, uh, any of the resources, any of the books, any of the tools, anything like that is in the show notes. So it's easy for you to find and check it out.
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