0: In the Beginning

In this special “hosts-only” episode of the Huge Transformations Podcast, Sid, Gabe, and Sheila gather to share snippets of their personal business journeys and what led them to the podcast. They reveal how a single chance encounter, a divorce and lawsuit, or a basic need to cover rent all became inflection points pushing them to build thriving home-service companies. Their stories highlight a common theme: early struggles, eventual breakthroughs, and a passion for learning from peers. This dialogue sets the stage for future episodes that dive into transformation stories—from six- to seven-figure (and beyond) businesses—demonstrating that anyone can achieve major growth with persistence, mentorship, and real-world tactics.

SHOW NOTES

• Hosts:

  • Sid (Host): Founder of a successful window cleaning business in Montana, overcame “bare-minimum hustle” to build a system-driven, culture-focused company
  • Gabe (Host): Co-founder of Right Hand Rhino (route work window cleaning across multiple states), started from a random coffee-shop meeting and door-to-door sales background
  • Sheila (Guest): Owner of A+ Pro Services in Southeastern North Carolina, turned sudden adversity into a thriving 25-year-old multi-service home care business

• Key Discussion Points:

  1. Unexpected Starts: From a bucket-and-squeegee hustle to a random partnership that led to major growth
  2. Industry Connections: How associations like the IWCA or events like The Huge Convention sparked learning and legitimacy
  3. Turning Points: A divorce, a big lawsuit, or new city relocations forced reinvention, leading to serious business-building
  4. Mindset & Mentorship: Hiring coaches, networking, and simply asking questions helped each host overcome hurdles
  5. Future Focus: Each host aims to spotlight real-life transformation journeys—showcasing both the mistakes and triumphs that shape business success

• Why It Matters:

  • Encourages new and experienced home-service entrepreneurs to see challenges as springboards
  • Illustrates how forging strong relationships, mentorship, and a passion for service lead to scalable, sustainable businesses

• Takeaways:

  • Embrace Industry Support: Events, conventions, and associations can provide mentors and solutions
  • Progress Over Perfection: Get started with what you have—no business or marketing knowledge required initially
  • Celebrate Milestones: Each host recalls going from small revenue to surpassing their old yearly totals in a single week
  • Leadership Evolution: Early days of “on the truck” eventually transitioned to hiring, delegating, and systematizing

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FULL, UNABRIDGED TRANSCRIPT
(All speaker labels are in the same font size; only bold text used for headings.)

Sid (Host):
I had to figure out how to record on the first one. Okay, it's recording and we're live. So, hey my friends, it's Sid with the Huge Transformation podcast and I'm really excited today because all of our co-hosts are together. So I got Sheila Smelter, we got Gabe Torres out of Nashville, and we're all just hanging out, catching up. It's a, it's a cold day where we are. Sheila, how are you? It's good to see you. It's been a while.

Sheila (Guest):
I'm wonderful, thanks Sid. Hey, Gabe.

Gabe (Host):
Hey, what's up, Sheila? What's up, Sid? It's nice over here in Nashville, too. It warmed up a bit. It was freezing earlier this week.

Sid (Host):
That's cool. So you guys actually—Gabe, you said, you know, a week or two ago, you had almost eight inches of snow in Nashville.

Gabe (Host):
Eight inches in one day, and less than 48 hours later, it was all gone, which is why I love Nashville. We get to have fun in it, but we're not stuck in it.

Sid (Host):
And Sheila, where are you? I know you're in the Carolinas, but what—where are you?

Sheila (Guest):
Yeah, I'm in southeastern North Carolina on the coast, just north of the South Carolina state line. So I'm sandwiched between Myrtle Beach and Wilmington.

Sid (Host):
Okay. And how often do you get snow there?

Sheila (Guest):
Never, except yesterday we got snow. We got three inches of snow, everybody freaked out, schools closed down—it's like anarchy.

Sid (Host):
Yeah. A great thing to do on a day like that is just stay home, like you don't have any place to go that's not important. That's cool. I'm out—I'm in Missoula, Montana, and it's supposed to be cold and snowy here this time of year, and it's not. It's a little cold, but... But listen, what I want to do—this is the Huge Transformations Podcast, and the whole point of this show is to interview people that have gone from bootstrapped to billions. I'm just kidding. I don't know anybody that's gone to billions cleaning windows, but we've got some really successful friends and associates in business that are—they've got a seven-figure business, we've got eight-figure businesses, and they're doing really well, and we want to share those stories. Sheila, when you interview people, Gabe, when you interview people, it's the same type: it's like, how did you start, what were your biggest problems and challenges that you faced and overcome, how'd you win in that scenario, and where are you now?

There's a lot of reasons for doing that. The main reason is, anybody that is newer in business or you haven't achieved the level of success you want, or revenue, or whatever—to give you some examples of how to avoid some of the pitfalls that other people have already encountered. It's like a minefield, it's like if you've got somebody that knows where the mines are buried and they can show you, then you don't have to step on them and get blown up.

We were talking a week or so ago, Gabe, and I realized that the three of us, like we all have a transformation story. So I want everybody to have the opportunity to hear that and get to know you better rather than just the person that's interviewing, to understand and recognize your story. So I hope you don't mind, Sheila, I'm going to pick on you first.

Sheila (Guest):
Yeah, sure.

Sid (Host):
Ask you to tell the story—your story of how did you get into window cleaning business, what was it like when you started, and like where are you now?

Sheila (Guest):
Yeah, great. Well, I'm on the right podcast because I love telling my story and I love hearing other people's stories. And you know, really the stories that we tell, it's our life, right? It's our life story. And so I'm just really passionate about being true to that. And we're all so uniquely different, and so—and just like you said, we have so much to learn from each other. So yeah, thanks for the opportunity. So I'm Sheila Smeltzer, A+ Pro Services in southeastern North Carolina. Go back to 1999. My ex-husband and I moved to North Carolina from Breckenridge, Colorado. I was a total ski bum for six years after I dropped out of college at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. And I was a backcountry tour guide—loved the outdoors and, you know, worked service jobs and labor jobs, that's what I did.

So my ex-husband was a professional window cleaner by trade, literally growing up in the Myrtle Beach area—that's what he did from the time he was a kid, he was a window cleaner, and he was super good. So I only use him in past tense now because we are divorced. That was back in, I don't know, 2006 we became divorced. So in the early days, starting the business in '99, we were sole proprietors, owner-operators, I did the books and stayed home with the kids, had a wonderful life, it was great, and he was out in the field. We had one employee, and fast forward to 2006, we had good growth over the years and things like that. This is a huge retirement area that we're in, so we had, you know, our client database were people that built homes too big to take care of, right? Their retirement homes. And so that's where we came in.

So in 2006, a big ball was dropped, and that's all I need to say. Basically, the company fell in my lap, we had one employee at the time, and there was kind of a big blow-up between my former husband and I, and that employee—kind of, we had this like day of reckoning, and there was this huge fight basically, and we were... We had one truck, and we were tearing the equipment off the truck and saying, you take this, you take that, I'll take this, I'll take that. And that one employee was standing there, his name was Joel. And I said, oh, well, oh my God, I'm so sorry, what do you want to do? And he said, oh, Sheila, I stay with you.

So here I am—I have this business, and I have one employee, I didn't know how to do any of the work, but at this point, it was literally a situation where I had to provide for my children as a single mom. And I could have thought about going to real estate, blah blah blah. I said no, you know what? We've got customers calling us every day, this is an easy pathway for revenue to make money, I'm going to just do this. And so Joel taught me how to do the work. I worked like a man physically in the field, climbing ladders, washing houses, cleaning gutters, the whole thing. I did that for about seven years. I would pick my girls up—I mean, sorry, I would load my girls in the car in the morning, swing by pick up Joel, drop the girls off in the carpool line at school, go off and work with Joel, come back, reverse that order. And that was every day for about seven years. Then I started to say, well, hang on a second…

And there's a big point in there which I think is important. At that time of that day of reckoning, we were also sued for $64,000 worth of scratched glass. That led me into the industry, right? That led me into like, hey, this isn't just a business in Brunswick County, North Carolina—this is like, I am part of an industry, because I was, you know, exposed to the International Window Cleaning Association and Power Washers of North America and blah blah blah. And so, you know, when I started to be exposed to this, I saw that other people were actually very successful running companies like this, and it's like a light bulb went off. I said, wait a second, if they can do it, I can do it. And then fast forward, hired a business coach, started to hire employees, started to get my finances in place, all the QuickBooks stuff—like having the legit chart of accounts and a budget and a business plan. That's just how we've evolved.

And today, we teeter anywhere between 20 and 30 employees, we do commercial building services, residential home services, basically, I'm trying to differentiate from being a window cleaning/pressure washing company. We do commercial janitorial as well, but I'm trying to transform into selling service agreements and selling repetitive services to our clients that help mitigate the major problems that they have with their home living in the southeastern climate, which is corrosion, oxidation, mildew, mold, and algae. And so these are major problems that cost our customers thousands of dollars in repair and replacement, so what can we do to provide a service to them that will—I call it my 10x dream outcome—how can we prevent that 10x spending of repair and replacement by spending $100 with us, you save $1,000 in repairs down the line. And so I'm kind of repivoting. We just celebrated 25 years in business, believe it or not. And so, there was literally a huge ribbon cutting celebration. I woke up the next day, I'm like, wait a minute, time for something new. So I'm just a whole new forecast for the company.

Sid (Host):
That's pretty—it's kind of a wild journey. And I just, you mentioned the IWCA, International Window Cleaners Association, it's kind of your first recognition that there's a whole business here, this is an industry, and you said light bulb moment, you know, things went off. I just want to toss in here for our listeners that you end up on the board of the IWCA, you were actually the president of the IWCA a year ago, and have been deeply involved in the industry, helping people at all different levels. So I think that's a big deal.

Sheila (Guest):
Yeah, thanks for having me. Can I just say I've served on the Glass Education Committee for 15 years, I've been on the Residential Committee, served on the Board of Directors two times. My first time was in 2010 for three years, and then I just completed another board term, and I'm immediate past president. So I went up through executive committee. And that's been a big part of my career. It's all volunteer, right? But what I love about that is, we talk a lot on this podcast and with our interviewees about building a business, but I'm always very passionate about preserving and professionalizing standards in relationship to our craft, right? And that's where my industry involvement has been so important to me.

Sid (Host):
Yeah, you and I share that. I've served on the Glass Education Committee for 8-9 years, a lot of volunteer hours. But it also helps the industry at large. It's got a far reaching impact, not just for the business owner and stuff. And case in point: two of my employees, who you've met, Darby and Cole, they're a great part of my team. They went to IWCA a couple years ago, they met you, but they started getting glass education. We do a lot of safety training, we teach people about scratched glass, tempered glass, how to be safe, how not to damage stuff. They came back and taught me some terminology because we used to just help. If somebody was like, "What's wrong with that window?" I'd go, "It's got a blown seal. Can you replace it?" And they're like, "Don't say that, that's a failed IGU, Sid Graf." This is how you explain it. I'm like, oh. It's a small example, but a great example of increasing the professionalism of an industry through education.

Gabe (Host):
Well, I feel like we should give applause to Sheila for 25 years. That's so cool. And still evolving 25 years later, you know, that's really cool.

Sheila (Guest):
Thanks. I'm the slow and steady, I'm the slow and steady.

Gabe (Host):
Yeah, I'd say I'm probably the slower and steady.

Sid (Host):
We're in good company then, Sid.

Gabe (Host):
Within 25 years, and you said you're about to— you want to make a shift and change. I think you're talking about within the industry or with your business, but the first thing that popped into my mind is, is there a way you could combine your time as an outdoors guide with the—could you start doing tours and guided tours for people climbing ladders and walking on roofs, that kind of thing?

Sheila (Guest):
No, but you know, what's so important about that question is that everything that we've learned in our past has contributed in some way to what we do in our future. Right? So I'm an example: those old jobs that I had gave me my unique skills that made me good at what I do today.

Sid (Host):
It's true how it layers. Steve Jobs said you only connect the dots when you look backwards. I think it's definitely that way. So Gabe, you have a story. You started your route window cleaning, but you come from a door-to-door background. I'd love to hear your overview.

Gabe (Host):
Yeah, yeah, real quick. I grew up in—I got out of high school, ended up in door-to-door sales, traveling around the country each summer, different products: pest control, security. And it opened my eyes that you can make money in these random ways. Then I started a gym with a buddy after college, but parted ways when we realized I wanted bigger scale, he didn't. My wife and I moved to Nashville with no plan. Then from a random coffee-shop meeting, I met a guy who introduced me to the Mike Dahlke. We hit it off. Dahlke was not investing in that guy's business—didn't pass muster. But Dahlke and I ended up connecting. Six months later he sees my Facebook message, calls me up. We talk about a route work window cleaning business. We both think it's possibly a bad idea, but let's do it anyway. We had a third partner, Brandon, who loved the name Right Hand Rhino. We launched it about seven years ago. Now we're around $1.8 million, have four markets, including Vegas, which was chaotic at first. It's a fun ride.

Sid (Host):
I love hearing that story. Just a random coffee shop, message on Facebook, a handshake, and you have a multi-million dollar enterprise. So let's do a quick version of my story. I'd just come back from living in Greece for a year with my wife, dead broke, in Florida, looking for a job. My neighbor was a window cleaner. I asked to go with him for half a day. Loved how simple it was. Borrowed an old squeegee, found a bucket in a dumpster, started knocking doors. My very first job was a convenience store with 25 windows, I quoted $4 for exterior. The manager said yes, took me three hours. A little over a buck an hour. But that got me going. Moved to Montana, did it for years on a small scale, just me, a helper. Went to The Huge Convention around 2016, realized I'd never truly built a business. So I started learning from real business owners who are bigger. Now we have a system-driven, culture-focused, seven-figure business that runs without me. It's a small team but an excellent one. The big takeaway is how a major shift—from hustle to real business structure—can happen if you find mentors and a bigger vision.

Sheila (Guest):
I love that, 30 years total, but business for only eight. I can say similarly, 25 years, I've only truly been “in business” for about nine. The industry events, relationships, the mentors, all of that keeps us growing.

Sid (Host):
Yes, so that’s why we do the show. The transformations for both the owners and the listeners—hearing real stories of struggles, breakthroughs, and building a stable business. I'm excited we get to share it. So thanks for being part of it, guys.

Gabe (Host):
Yeah, it's gonna be just as educational and fun for me as it is for everyone listening.

Sid (Host):
All right, Sheila, I'll see you next week, Gabe likewise. We'll talk about what we learned last week and what's new in the industry. 'Til then, thanks for tuning in to the Huge Transformations Podcast.

Sheila (Guest):
Thanks, Sid. See ya.

Gabe (Host):
See ya.