Dirt. We love it. You should, too.
Here’s why dirt’s your new business best friend: it keeps coming back after you clean it.
From car washes to laundromats to home cleaning, getting rid of dirt is a top priority for most Americans, which makes for awesome service-based businesses.
Let’s make it even juicier: You can start some dirty businesses, like power washing, with $0 and scale them to multiple millions.
And you’ll make even more money by buying a pressure washing route that already has a revenue stream instead of starting from zero. Sounds crazy, but we’ll break it down along the way.
Here’s what you need to know before you start your own power washing company (and the advantage of buying one instead).
Why Start a Power Washing Business (And Why Buying One is the Better Choice)
Plenty of businesses require you to get the equipment or sellable goods upfront.
As just one example: Amazon dropshipping? You need a garage full of crap and have to keep your fingers crossed that it will sell.
Not the case with a power washing company.
Let’s say you want to start with $0. You make up some flyers, hit the pavement, and pre-sell a few customers on your power washing service.
With a few prepaid gigs, you can cover the cost of a decent pressure washer from Amazon.
With a low barrier to entry and low risk, it’s a sweet deal to offer a service with big scaling potential.
But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
It’s true that you can start with nothing at all. It’s also true that you’ll be grinding away for a while as you try to grow your business. Starting with $0 means you’ll end up in solid side hustle territory while you get things off the ground.
You can jumpstart your path to profitability by buying someone else’s power washing route.
You might think it’s out of reach to buy one of these businesses. But business marketplaces like BizQuest and BizBuySell tell a different story.
And that’s not counting business owners who want to sell but haven’t pulled the trigger yet. You can find those by just reaching out to business owners or by using sites like BizScout (a tool we built and own to help entrepreneurs find off-market businesses).
Best of all is the funding. You can use seller financing to buy one of these businesses for a low price.
You’ll need to negotiate a deal where you pay the previous owner back through business profits over time. From there, you get to take the helm of a business that’s already making money, has a team, and (most importantly) has customers.
But if you’re still set on starting rather than buying, read on to get your foot in the door with pressure washing.
1. Pre-Sell Your First Jobs
You don’t need the actual equipment to get your first few clients.
Most solid gas-powered pressure washers on Amazon go for $300-500.
Ladder? $80.
Hoses and nozzles? $80
Cleaning solution? $220
If you pick a higher-end pressure washer, your all-in biz startup costs a total of $880.
The average driveway costs $258 to pressure wash.
Score either three driveways at a flat $300 or four at $250 to cover your full startup costs out of your initial earnings.
Think you can convince a few neighbors to give you your start? You won’t know until you ask.
You won’t need to worry about this step if you’re buying a business. The previous business owner has already done the hard work of getting their first customers. In an ideal world, they already have more than a few customers on recurring contracts, too.
2. Use the Pre-Sell Cash to Get Your Equipment
Once you collect payments, acquire your equipment. Don’t pick junk that will break and delay your job schedule or cause other headaches.
Read the reviews and pick good hoses and nozzles for a solid pressure washer.
The best way to make money with pressure washing? Clean it all in one stop.
Start with selling driveway cleanings. But try to add on the front or back porch, too.
Selling bigger jobs will push up your per-customer revenue, but it’s also why you can’t buy weak equipment. You need those suckers to work day in and day out!
As you grow, you can double your revenue by buying a second set of the same equipment managed by a contractor in your business.
You could invest in a company vehicle to cover more ground, too, but you don’t need bells and whistles for your first couple of months in operation. Keep costs low and invest in equipment and contractors as you need to (AKA when the money’s rollin’ in).
When you buy a business, pre-selling to fund your equipment isn’t even a consideration. The business already has the equipment you need. Instead, you’ll be thinking about how to finance a business purchase.
Our recommendation is to use seller financing to close the deal. You can negotiate a small, upfront down payment with the owner. Then, you can start paying them back over time with the proceeds from your new business.
You’ll get access to all the equipment, employees, and profit without needing to worry about debt and interest from a loan or long-term profit sharing with an investor.
3. Create a Legal Business Entity
After you sell your first few jobs, get serious and start treating this like a real business.
Every business should register with their Secretary of State. Choose a company name and make sure no one else has it first.
Most places don’t require a specific type of business license or certification to pressure wash but double-check that for your region and state. You may need to look into environmental permits, depending on your area and the cleaning solutions you use.
Most businesses, by default, register as sole proprietors. These have no special liability or tax protection. Talk to a CPA about whether it makes more sense to form a partnership or limited liability company business structure instead.
Once approved with your name and state registration, open a business bank account. Purchase accounting software to keep track of income and expenses from the very beginning.
Don’t skip these steps. If you fail to form a business entity or account for finances, this prevents you from paying the right taxes, hiring contractors, or confirming cash flow.
Checking all of these boxes is important. But it’s also a lot of hoops to jump through. When you buy a business, you’ll know from the due diligence process that the previous owner crossed their t’s dotted their i’s.
4. Start Outsourcing Your Jobs
If the money from pressure washing sounds cool, but the prospect of standing in the hot sun blowing dirt out of concrete cracks doesn’t get your motor going, outsource the work.
It is possible to run a profitable pressure washing service business all by yourself, but you only get so many hours in a day.
Since it takes so little in terms of equipment, why not double or triple the fun and bring on some help? Sure, you’ll pay these contractors an hourly or per-job rate, but you’ll cover way more ground (literally).
Outsourcing sounds easy on its face. But a lot of new business owners have trouble shifting from being the person who does the work to being the person who hires workers. You’ve already got the jobs, operations, marketing, and accounting on your plate. Figuring out how to find people to work for you seems like just one more thing.
An established power washing route already has employees. Better yet, a good one has defined hiring practices. You can tap into the labor pool that someone else built by buying their route.
5. Create Service Packages and Bundles
Keep it simple with your first few pressure washing jobs to get some experience under your belt and cover those upfront costs.
Add on per-service costs with a slight discount. If you’re already on site, why not earn more by cleaning more stuff?
Siding. Patio pavers. Patio furniture. You name it.
But the real money with power washing? It starts flowing when you bundle it with other things people need. Things like:
- Gutter cleaning
- Pool cleaning
- Car detailing
- Window cleaning
- Exterior painting
- Deck and gate cleaning
- Junk hauling
Customers will love crossing multiple things off their to-do lists without getting their hands dirty at all.
Plus, you could offer commercial property services to expand your reach.
But getting to the point where you can take on those big jobs will take time if you’re starting a new business.
An established power washing business will already have service packages in place. They may already have expanded their offerings, too. You can slot right in and figure out what next steps you need to grow the business instead of getting it off the ground.
6. Scale Your Customer Acquisition
Like any other business, those first few customers can set the tone for business growth.
You can use your early profits to do things like build a website. You’ll want one soon so that you can reach new customers who search for your services online.
At first, go door to door, offering discounts for neighbors. Use before and after shots (truly your best marketing tactic) to show what you can do. Business cards will also make you look professional and make sharing your contact info easy.
Reach out to people selling their homes or realtors who want to up the curb appeal for the best offer.
A concrete marketing plan will also help you scale your business.
Buying an existing pressure washing business lets you skip these early growing pains. An ideal business is one that’s long past its first few customers. They might still use door-to-door tactics while they’re in a neighborhood, but they’ll also have a solid customer base bringing money in the door.
7. Invest in Show-Don’t-Tell Marketing and Ace Your Branding
Once you’ve delivered great results to your first couple of clients, it’s time to consider investing in more strategic marketing methods.
Here’s a few ideas to start with:
- Create a YouTube channel answering common questions about pressure washing and showcasing before and afters (tag local areas and keywords to become the area go-to expert).
- Find local influencers you can partner up with to make videos about pressure washing.
- Set up a website that targets local power washing-related keywords where you can capture leads.
- Share your work on social media (side note: we are a little obsessed with the r/powerwashingporn subreddit because it’s so damn satisfying).
- Wear branded gear while you power wash and get a sign or decal for your car. It’s too easy to get more business while someone walks or drives by and sees your work in action.
- Make magical moments like pressure washing the family name on their driveway as a marketing hack.
@investing_with_gmo That how it’s done! 🔥#timelapse #powerwash #clean #beforeandafter #epws #pressurewashing #flatwork #timepass #restoration #wash #pressurewash ♬ Roses (Imanbek Remix) – SAINt JHN
Most people have no idea how dirty things are, so offering a small sample of your work shows how much they need you.
This is the place where many people get to start when they buy a power washing business. Many profitable power washers have steady work but don’t know the first thing about marketing.
That’s a huge advantage for you. You can use the existing cashflow as a cushion while you get your marketing engine running. With tactics like the ones above, you can blow right past competitors that only use business cards and knock on doors.
8. Get Reviews from Every Customer You Can
Leverage the power of social proof. Successful power washing business owners know that no amount of what you claim about yourself or your services is as likely to convert as the words of someone else.
When you start your business, look to see who else operates in your area. Most of them don’t invest in digital marketing, so you can’t find any reviews. That’s a huge turn-off for customers.
Use software like NiceJob to automate the review process.
Who do you think will get more business: the new person on the block (that’s you) who’s adding more reviews every single week, or the no-name company without a digital presence?
A few places where reviews build your reputation:
- Google Business Profile
- Nextdoor app (keep an eye on posts where people ask about pressure washing, too, since these are easy sales)
- Yelp
If you want to get fancy, software like Birdeye posts all your reviews across platforms and your website.
Reviews are the lifeblood of service-based businesses. Whether you’re starting or buying, you will need them.
The difference here is that an existing business will have reviews that should snowball into positive word of mouth. You’ll need to hustle hard for reviews to catch up if you start a business.
Blow Away the Competition with Your Pressure Washing Service
You don’t need much to start a pressure washing company, but it will take time to ramp up if you start a new one.
Tons of potential customers don’t want to take on power washing by themselves or even buy the pressure washing equipment they’d need.
You can capitalize on this demand far better by buying an existing business. With a solid foundation and incoming cashflow, you can build even a small operation into a highly profitable enterprise.
