Inside Pink's Window Services Playbook Worth Millions | With Carter Smith Ep. 17

0:00Chris Cruz:Bro, that line right there, the amount of founders that I've talked to that have never said that line where you said, what if I told you a window cleaning business just shattered the blue collar ceiling with 100 locations nationwide? Pink's window cleaning service just did this. But here's the shocking truth. They started with just two laid off college grads and an old Tahoe five years ago. They went from$250 ,000 in revenue during their first year to millions today. That's like opening a new location every 18 days for five years straight. But the real secret to their explosive growth, they hire for loyalty over experience.

0:35Chris Cruz:What started as a simple window cleaning business has evolved into a nationwide phenomenon, redefining blue collar work. Pink's proves that with the right branding, culture and values, any job can become a fulfilling career in a thriving business. This is anatomy of a brand where we obsess over what makes brands tick so that yours never settles. This is episode 17 with Pink's Window Service co-founder, Carter Smith. I want you to set the scene for me. You're fresh out of graduating from Baylor University. So then you begin to reinvent what most people would call a boring, unglamorous job into a nationwide lifestyle brand.

1:12Chris Cruz:Tell me, how did this start? What was the originating idea? Like, where did this go for you? Like, you're just out of college and you start this and then things take off. You've been in business five years and it's pretty remarkable. I appreciate it man um yeah it's been a funny ride it's like Brandon and I very much followed what we thought was the textbook corporate route like we did the four-year degree studied business got out got the downtown quote-unquote like sexy job we thought we were supposed to and then COVID hit and we realized like oh like we're pretty dispensable like we both got laid off right at the beginning of COVID okay and I had been friends throughout college got laid off right at the beginning of COVID and we were like, Oh, this might've been like a little bit of a false bag of goods that we were sold.

1:55And Hey, go to school, go do this like really safe career, do this route. Brandon was working in the music industry. I was working for this, I guess, maybe not the safest route. I was working with a company called Tecova's Cowboy Boots. I'm like, I love those guys. I was doing experience work and honestly, they've helped me so much to today and they've been awesome. But I went that route thinking, Hey, I want to work in a brand. I want to work my way up. We'll figure it out and COVID hit, got laid off and was like, Oh, okay. I just got a downtown apartment. I just gotten married and I was like, I got to figure something out.

2:26Chris Cruz:And this is where, this is what city is this? It's in Austin. Yeah. This is 2020, like March of 2020. I was like, all right, back to the drawing board. It's freaking out. I was like, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? Brandon had just got laid off. He reached out and he's like, Hey, let's go on a bike ride from Seattle to San Diego. He's like, we'll figure it out. We'll get to hang out. he's like dude we have all this free time and i'm like yeah but like i just got married i got bills to pay like he's much more was living with like eight guys didn't have any expenses just different stage of life at the time and i was like dude that sounds awesome let's meet up and talk about it but i knew in the back of my mind i'm like that's probably not going to happen and also i don't even have a bike he's like an avid cyclist i was like this would be a stretch for me but i'll i'll play your game i'll play along and so we met up and it was kind of like right off the bat we realized this bike ride trip's not happening covid's going on all the parts yeah stuff down left and right yeah yeah we couldn't stay anywhere and so he was like yeah you're at blah blah blah blah and i had been toying with this idea of like dude i would love to get into blue collar work like something about it i think i grew up thinking like those were lesser than jobs i grew up in like an area in houston it's called memorial and i was like man i yeah i was kind of sold that like hey you go to trade school that's kind of like the alternative plan b if you don't have the money to go to college yeah and then during covid i was kind of looking back i'm like dude a lot of those guys all still have jobs i know that went the trade route and a lot of those guys are working for themselves and drive a lot nicer trucks than i do and i was like i wonder what it's all about and so i kind of pitched it and i was like man what have you ever thought about blue collar have you thought about doing this and he was like honestly like i get i get it because it's all about showing up on time doing what you say you're gonna do and brandon and i are like dude we're not the smartest guys by any means but we can figure out how to listen to the customer's needs and show up and just be able to produce on that and that's kind of where the whole heart began was like i think we need to get the blue collar work and then you picked window cleaning like how did that how did that come about it wasn't like the first pick and we kind of went through a few different options i was hard pushing for like what if we did window and door installation because i was like and i think i realized i was just like had so much pride built up and it was like okay that sounds like a more professional like sounds better than window You're killing the ego.

4:37Chris Cruz:Like each step of the way, like I'm killing this. Every step of the way was like, we have to die to our pride. And I think Brandon was a huge proponent. Like, dude, what if we're just like, what's wrong with being a glorified janitor? Like nothing. And so we're like, you're so right. And I think early on it was like, we thought we had to oversell this thing. But every step of the way was like, dude, at the end of the day, we're just cleaning windows. And that's all that matters. And it was always such a funny conversation to talk to friends during COVID because they were like, what are you up to?

5:03What are you up to? And we felt the need to like oversell it. and be like, oh, I started a home and commercial services company.

5:09Chris Cruz:And we're like, dude, what the hell does that even mean? So we committed to each other. We're like, no, dude, we need to squash the pride and just tell people, hey, we clean windows, and that's all that matters. And I think once we could get over that, it was like, okay, this is what we're trying to do differently. And that's when we found the voice of, okay, let's flip the script on Blue Collar. What happened to Blue Collar? I think it was like the employees stopped valuing their work and seeing themselves as like a great add-on to the community, great like enhancer to the neighborhoods and so we were like man it does all start with believing that your work is truly valuable and wow that you mean something and just the the feeling of putting your name on something and at the end of the day looking back and like i did that it's just like kind of a lost art that we were not getting out of the corporate experience and so it's been fun to try to just stoke that fire all day long and you got you said before the call that you guys started in a Tahoe like or and just cleaning like I don't know how many homes but then you're you started to scale talk to me about the moment from like all right we're in the van and it's changing what like that transition when did you start to feel that like what was that switch like oh this is more than just us two you and Brandon like what was that switch like it was probably like six months Brandon and I were cleaning all the windows we were just running it out of just you two just us two yeah okay the first things first we were like let's make a website because it looked like everybody had a terrible website let's make an instagram let's make uniforms yeah uniform was like everything to us we're like it's got to look different it's got to feel different it's got to create that trust like the second you meet us at the doorstep it's all got to speak to it and so we built the brand out like day one was like man we want this to look timeless like it's been around forever like it's not some young hip new thing and so we doubled down on like how can this just feel like it's blended into this community from the get-go and so the only thing i was missing was the vehicle it was like we were running out of my old tahoe for so long eventually we got like an old school truck and then the truck just started falling apart so we started moving into vans and getting like the wrapped van and that was the best decision ever but yeah it was just brand and i for like eight months just cleaning windows six to eight months of like we're doing all the jobs we're doing all the quoting and we loved it we just love the simplicity of like you show up it's dirty you leave when it's clean and you get to see the customer's reaction again and again and again yeah and it started we started realizing really like man if we had more time to go sell more time to go chum up business because we were splitting time between doing jobs and trying to get to quotes and yada we're like we got to hire some buddies so my wife's little sister has like a great little network of buddies that all just kind of go she's the oldest of four girls so there's been just like so many boyfriends in and out and i was like tap into this like network of young dudes better yeah let's get into this network of young fit dudes you can help oh yeah and they're all like looked apart and then i had all the time in the world and i was like man if we can get these guys on board and wearing the uniforms and so that's kind of where it all started was like let's get some of their friends get involved and honestly we got so lucky with the first two guys we hired like i think that could have been an extreme speed bump if we would have hired poorly right off the bat and that's i think things we're learning now with coaching people on their franchise locations is like man take your time here take your time and finding the right people we're so thankful we didn't make the mistake of just like going to hire some guy that had blue collar experience but we hired based on like and we didn't know it at the time like it was dumb luck that we just hired based on like oh these guys are actually loyal to us they're loyal to what we're building and we've learned like that serves precedent over everything like i don't care how hard a worker you really are sometimes i don't care if you're the best sales guy in the world but if you're bought into like okay what are we doing different with pinks are You bought into what Brandon and I have to say.

8:46It's like, we can teach you how to sell. We can teach you how to bust your ass. We teach you how to get up in the morning, listen to the customer, do the whole thing. And so that was like the biggest God thing. It's like, dude, we got really lucky with our first two guys. And so they started running the business. We started moving into vans. And yeah, just slowly but surely every year we started kind of adding a van. And a van could do like$250 ,000 to$350 ,000, really like$300 ,000 a year is a sweet spot for a van. And when were you bringing?

9:13Chris Cruz:like 250 somewhere in there okay and in that process did what like you you started you flip the script on blue collar work you started with that value of communicating that value from yourself even like you owning that yourself like your own transparent journey of going like i'm going to view this work differently and that's going to be the like the the dna of this brand and then you said you start to leverage things that people weren't doing which was uniforms, social media, websites. One of the things that I knew pinks first for was because of social media. I knew it because I saw some of the different content pieces.

9:48Chris Cruz:So how did you leverage social media to grow what started as this small Austin brand into a national name now? Like how, how did you think about social media and content that nobody else was thinking about in this space that led to a lot of growth? What's funny is I feel like people like ask that question a lot just because there weren't a lot of people in blue collar that were trying to do a brand or a social presence and like i think when we think about brand a lot of our friends like think about it wrong in the sense that they're like oh brand like the great logo and the uniform and you're like that's that's a component yeah it's like the logo come on to the brand but like we were like so honestly i think just inspired by a few companies like this company mcguire mormon hospitality here in austin and then like yeti coolers and watching them take like yeti for instance super simple concepts like cups and coolers yeah they over engineered the hell out of them and they're incredible products but it's like how in the world did you get all these guys to buy yeti hats and put yeti stickers on your truck and it was like dude it was through storytelling is through doing the yeti presents and telling these little videos and these little vignettes on people across the country and we're like man how is there a way to do that in blue collar because i know these stories are taking place but how can and at first we were just fascinated by like blue collar in general like okay i think there's a way to double down and i loved making videos in college i don't know if michael ever remembers any of them but like i just loved it i was never very good but i loved making like stupid little instagrams and it honestly took us a while to start making those like same instagram edits for our business because we thought it was unprofessional but then we realized like let's just like swing the bat on one of these and do one that feels a little over the line of like maybe not the most professional thing and it landed really well and our customers loved it and moms were talking about it we're like man if we can just keep getting people to just know our name be the only cleaning company that people can think of i was like i think we're doing something right there so that's so it's been the big thing is like how do we just be the only name you can think of in a window yeah i mean it's it's it's i love what you're saying when the brand isn't the logo it isn't the visuals it's something deeper that gets expressed through those things and you're and you've the the problem the the problem i see now happening is people are going to go like okay cool let's just create content but you guys also trusted your employees to make content it feels like or am i looking just from the outside no wrongly it looked like you were going hey employees we actually trust you to create content for the brand which isn't a common thing yeah it is kind of a weird thing to entrust with your team because obviously you they got to be on the job they got to get the job done right they got to set a precedent and obviously visuals are everything and if guys are jacking around their phone doing stuff it's like that that doesn't work that doesn't work in the home doesn't work in a business so yeah guys honestly felt freedom at times to do it but a lot of it was us showing up at a customer's house that we already knew and be like kind of prompting the guys to do so okay that's really good to know because there's industries that are yeah there's industries that are looking in on what you guys did on social and going how do my guys stay on the job but yet create this content and they don't get the insight that you just even said we're like hey some of this is us going to job sites we knew and setting that up like the reality is our guys don't have time during the day to like do it or think about it or put together concepts so a lot of it was running it past homeowners running it past business owners but hey is it cool if we show up and do a little thing here and they're like yeah for sure it's great or we'll throw in like a free clean or some sort of incentive to let us have a little more freedom on the job yeah and yeah people loved it and our guys loved it because when they saw themselves in the social media they saw themselves in the videos they're like it creates the family okay i'm actually a part of this if they're they're wanting to put my face out and like truly all the videos you see are our actual employees it's not like we haven't like pulled in any buddies or anybody to help like it's been all actual guys that are showing up to the house to clean windows and all so that's been fun and the the the other parts of what you guys have done too is like the, the way that you're, the ads, even you see like the comparisons of the one window cleaner, who's kind of just like, he's not paying attention to the job.

13:57Chris Cruz:He's almost like he's, he's even like on, I think I saw one of the ads where the person's like on their phone, cleaning a window. And there's like a little kid there and your guy waves at the kid and like cleans it. There's like, there's some ethos of just a different way to look at your job. What are some of the values that you think are core principles that you, you guys hold that you're like, Hey, these really matter when you're trying to grow a business, like the way we've grown our brand into such a widespread thing. Here's some core things we think about that lead to like someone smiling in the window when they're cleaning, cleaning it.

14:27Chris Cruz:Like what are some of the core pillars of your brand that change your team's behavior? Yeah. I think we talk a lot about just like what happened to the service industry and like, when did the service fall out of it? And so our whole thing is called the service industry. I think we kind of have to be servants. so we talk a lot about with everybody is like how are we just serving everyone every day and it starts with like letting them letting the customer letting the business owner lead the conversation lead how the project's gonna go so like one of the first interactions that our guys ever have on a job when they show up is like hey mr smith i'm here i'm gonna knock out where i know we're doing exterior interior how do you want this to go do you want me to start on the inside maybe you have a kit that you need to put down or you're doing a call in one of the rooms like Like just instantly putting the power back in their hands of like, hey, I want it to be so like overwhelmingly obvious that we are here to serve you.

15:21Chris Cruz:And just beating that into like every level of the process that if it's not driven by the customer, it's like, what are we doing? Just making it as easy for people to spend money and enjoy the experience as possible. And so I think that's been the big thing is like, hey, if you're going to come here and work at Pinkston, you're not obsessed with serving. This is kind of going to be harder. Yeah. So do you have any, any other values like that, that you guys, that you use? Cause you're, we're getting to scaling here in a little bit, but you guys have obviously scaled to a lots of locations around the nation, but there's gotta be some other connective tissues that you guys have that lead to how you lead the company and how the employees work when you got new franchises and founder like leading from your place.

15:59Chris Cruz:What are some of those other values that you have that help you lead? I think it's just like hiring off of the loyalty component and like creating family aspect and something we like take super serious or like meals together and so like we pick our guys lunches every day so we do 15 a day per guy wow it's created such a crazy little family experience of like when you're not packing your lunch or one guy's going here to do something like we get to go go all eat together like take down a place it's honestly just a great marketing expense because all these guys in uniform showing up eating at your place it's like wait what are these like everyone asks questions so if anybody's out there listening like it pays for itself right away wow and um yeah just like making it feel like it's really a family and then every monday we do our monday meetings we spend an hour we look back at last week's jobs we look at what's upcoming for this week and just make it feel like man like we're doing something different here a lot of that comes from the top down obviously like brandon and i were at all those meetings and we're setting the the culture and just making sure like guys this is why we're here this is what we're doing different this is what's special and it's crazy how many like 20 somethings across the country out there really just looking to be a part of something and we'll maybe even take a pay cut just to feel like valuable again or feel like a part of growing an engine i feel like my work is like meaningful is such a big thing and it truly is it's not like we have to like fake it out it's like they see it every day and the jobs they get to do the people they get to serve they get the feedback so i mean bro you're you're you're talking a lot about how dignity and respect and pride and work that you can't fake that in a team and you can't fake that in founders.

17:35Chris Cruz:So for you, I know that you mentioned a little bit about your origin there, but for you personally, how do you keep that in your mind as you've grown? We're going to go into scale again, like I said before, we'll go into scale a little bit. You've grown, but yet you still have to stay rooted somehow. How are you doing that? How are you staying rooted when you're not out there in that truck or unless you are? I don't know. I think that's a lot of it is like Brandon and I still spend so much time with our local Austin location and our business and those guys and like probably almost two times a week I'm like grabbing a beer with one of the window cleaning guys just after the job and it's like just that hour I get with them does so many like months of leg work of just like hey man what do you want to do in life like how are you heard how do you feel taken care of how can we either make this a better place or how can I like find the next thing for you I think it's really just like it sounds dumb but it's just like treating them like humans of like okay yeah it's like an employee like I want to be a part of your life you've invested so much of your time and effort into this and you've made us money it's like how can I do the same for you and leads to really cool conversations and just giving guys a platform to talk about it it's been so cool bro that line right there you the amount of founders I have that I've talked to that have never said that line where you said you've made us a lot of money how can i help you yeah like that frame of mind bro is so powerful and no wonder you're drawing in these people because for you you're not making up this stuff you're not putting on a show for how you're leading your team you're doing the work you're showing up for your team and you're you're teaching them stuff beyond what it is to do just a practical job you're giving them something internally which is incredible uh and so i want to talk about scale you when did you start scaling and is it was it like year two three and then was it fast quick i know in five years you've got 100 locations which is fast but what was that scaling process like and not losing the soul of pinks like that's the thing that i'm so concerned about is like with people and hearing it is like how do they not lose their soul because what this guy's doing is so incredible in the industry how do they not lose that and You're doing it.

19:49Chris Cruz:You're doing it. We're trying to figure it out. We're having a lot of fun. I think the biggest thing was just like, I think to your point, like we were terrified of the idea of expanding and Brandon, I never really saw this growing past. Like, okay, we could do Austin. Maybe we'll do like San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, because they're close and we know people. But as far as like franchising goes, wasn't on the radar until we started like having some college buddies and friends reach out and like Houston, Dallas, San Antonio. And they're like, Hey, how could I take this to my town? And we're like, yeah, it's a good question.

20:20And so we like kind of started peeling it back. We're like, maybe we could just license it to people. Maybe you could like pay us some sort of licensing fee. You get the name, go run your business, do whatever you want. But then like every smart person we talked to, like lawyers, they were like, you know what, like what you're talking about is called franchising. It's already a thing. Like the government's going to recognize that. So like there's really no way around it. And we're like, there's no way. There's got to be a better way to do it. So we started talking to this company in Austin, just happened to be in Austin.

20:47they'd franchise their painting company and into like a year or it's like a hundred locations we're like dude they're doing something right company was called that one painter started by steven and out these two guys in like north austin and so we're like you know let's figure out like what they know what they do and it turns out they were right in this transition period of hey instead of just having the painting company what if we had a mother company almost like a neighborly or like horsepower brands or something of like man if we had this mothership and we had all these home services underneath it we'd probably be a lot more powerful than just the one trick pony and so we met them at this funny time of like hey would you guys want to partner and figure out how you could be the window cleaning arm of this like home services brand and so they had a lot of the back end the franchising legal jargon stuff dialed so that's kind of where the the whole thing took off and honestly it was not a slow trickle it was like in two years we've been franchising for two years now and just like hit it really hard our whole thing was like dude if we can do 20 locations in the first year, that would be insane.

21:44Like sell 20 units. Like that would be, we wouldn't even know what to do. And that first year we did like 170 something units. And so we're like, oh, okay. We got to figure it out. We've been on hire. We got to, yeah. And so -

21:58Chris Cruz:How did it not break? How did it not break? Like, what did you do to not lose this thing on the tracks? Like you're like, that is insane. So what were some of the things, the rituals, the practices, the leadership advice that you got that was like, this has kept us from losing this thing on the rails right now. Losing this thing off the rails. I mean, I think hiring well, obviously, like we got pretty lucky with hiring well and hiring for loyalty, not just because they took a personality test and they were the exact fit for what we needed or they were the best at X, Y, Z. It was just like, you know, they're bought into what Pink's is doing and they're bought into what Brandon and I have to say and they're ride or die with Resi Brands and we can figure out how to scale from there.

22:32Chris Cruz:How did you find that out? How did you find that information out? Like how did you go like - Because we had it within like our network of like everyone we kind of knew. Yeah, that's a great question. Like everyone we had a little bit of an association with. And so we're like, hey, there's some social equity here. Like, yeah, maybe there's a more fit senior veteran person for this role. But like, I know you're bought into what we're building. Let's go. And so like, how can we do that and grow with that, with the core just all being the same? Like, hey, we're in it for the same reasons. We really want good owners.

22:59They're going to love their employees and like love their communities. And I think that's kind of what it all came back to is like loyalty, loyalty, loyalty, What's it like create loyalty with your employees and that's going to create loyalty with your customers. And that's how you're going to build an awesome impact, an awesome brand and just kind of take over. And so, yeah.

23:17Chris Cruz:And what now as you're, as you've gone to the scaling model, franchise model, like right now, how are you thinking about primarily thinking about the brand? Like what's, what's your, like the future of it and how you look at it where you're like, this is what I'm doing to be almost this architect and guardian of the brand. and going into the future like how are you thinking about that so we we grew super fast but we were still extremely selective on like who we awarded a franchise to so i think just like getting to take care of that community and that network of business owners has been such a cool thing and like our whole barometer for it was basically like hey would i want to work for this person like do i want to grab a beer with this person and it's like okay if they're a good hang and they're a good checkout and they're truly feel like invest in the community that they want to impact and they know how to honestly like get 20 somethings out of the bed like to get out and do stuff then it's like okay i can get behind this and i think the big thing for us right now is like how are we a household name and like how can we do strategic things whether it's partnerships or popping up in places you didn't expect a window cleaning company to be just kind of thinking outside the box just to help these owners with as much just fuel as possible to be like okay maybe someone's already heard about this or already seen about this so that when you go there to quote it's like you already have that much more of a leg up of like because with the home services man I really think it all comes back to just like the trust trust highway of like believing that the people are showing up can actually do the job and you want them to be in around your home your business and so by having this national presence or having the brand awareness we're like man that's just one step farther and yeah I love that how to just kind of pop up in funny places has been yeah thing for us so okay i i've got i've got a personal question that is around you guys facing something where you're like okay this didn't this didn't go well because i i remember my son talking to me about art and design and things like that and he's having he's he's nine right and so he's this he's art doing all this art we're talking about yeah it's fun it's awesome it's it's so fun talking to him about this stuff but he was about how we basically got to the spot where he never saw in his art classes or in the videos he's seeing in art class these artists fail so he's mad at himself because he's his art doesn't look as good as he wants it so i remember thinking so many podcasts you hear the success but you don't ever get a moment where you get to hear them say like dude this was one of the hardest things this part here was a tough hurdle and this is where it didn't work well in the journey what's a mistake that you learned from that you're like, dude, I learned from this and this was real tough.

25:52Chris Cruz:Like, is there something that comes to your mind when you're like, dang, dude, that was a tough one? I'm trying to think with like, I feel like it just comes back to possibly hiring of like, yes, we got lucky with our first few guys. But then I think we didn't learn, we learned less in the hard way truly of like, let's go grab some blue collar guys, guys that have worked in the business that have been outside a lot and might be hard workers because we started growing so fast to just actually do the day to day window cleaning. And we started, realizing like, oh, those guys are way more loyal to themselves than they are to the brand.

26:22And so it's like, they're going to leave us for the next job that pays a few bucks more.

26:27Chris Cruz:Wow. And for you guys, how is the process now to train your staff and your culture? Is there anything you're doing company-wide that you go like, hey, we do this company-wide? Or is it each franchise kind of manages their staff accordingly? How do you keep culture across all these different franchises. It's super systematized. Like everything from the hiring to like every step of the funnel of the customer reaching out to them receiving the quote to what it looks like when the guys show up on the job to the final closeout. It's all just like you can follow the playbook. They've got print offs.

27:01They got laminated things in their vans. Like they know how the step goes. And really it's like just finding every opportunity to make sure the customer feels so overwhelmingly taken care of. It's kind of what it comes back to. And luckily enough, like window cleaning is pretty easy in the sense that like it's dirty or it's clean it's pretty black and white you can get guys up to speed quickly so it allows for our guys to show up if they feel equipped with they know how to clean the windows they know how to do the things they can focus all their energy on like how do i take care of the customer how do i okay how do i not track in mud leave a mess leaving handwritten notes after all the jobs with our little goodie bags with like merch bundles of cups.

27:40That's awesome. So you do that for every job?

27:44Chris Cruz:Every job, yeah. We love leaving a little merch bag, little pinks-like branded bag with a bunch of little items of like, hey, thanks so much. Truly, it's an honor to take care of your property. We'd love to come back. Let us know if we can ever get set up on a maintenance plan and kind of that whole thing. Oh, wow. Just to get stuff to people they actually like. And it came out of like, we started doing so many houses and homeowners were like, dude, those hats are sick. Those are fun. And like, do you give them away? And we're like, we should give them away. That's like, we should do that. And so we just started making it kind of a company policy of like, hey, you do a job.

28:16You should give these away. Just wow people. And it turns out it's like the best form of marketing is other people telling your story. Obviously, it's the deepest. It's the most effective. It's the most powerful. So like, how can we figure out different ways to just create a, holy crap, I can't believe I got that experience out of my window cleaner, like that type of thing.

28:33Chris Cruz:Wow. Okay. Let me ask you this question as we head towards the end of this. this is going to be more around your personal leadership, how you're thinking, what's, what's something right now where you're like, man, this is what I'm learning as I'm growing. And then we're scaling at the rate we're scaling. Here's what I'm learning right now that I'm like, I'm just getting advice and wisdom from those around me. And here's what I'm, I'm actively figuring out. I think, I think that the value of having a partner in this and doing it with somebody, whether it's from the accountability level or just like, maybe it's how I'm wired in the nature of like wanting to do something with someone else and this comes back to I think like earlier or like when I graduated college I went and lived in a bunch of cities that I thought I'm like I'm gonna love them like LA Portland New York and it turns out like none of them were great for me because they didn't have my people and it was like with building this Brandon and I like got so busy and we started kind of bifurcating our roles of like okay we can't overwork you got to do this I'll take this but some of the fun started to fall away and be like wait this was a lot more fun when it was just you and me in the van, like doing stuff together.

29:35So how can we bring it back to that? So I think a big thing we've learned is like, you know what, let's kind of double work a little bit, like stop splitting up all the roles. Like, yes, we'll do more things together just to get back into the like, oh yeah, this is why we do it. Cause I'm committed to you. We're committed to the same mission and it's way more fun to build it together than it is separate. So it's like, that's been a big eye opener of maybe it's not the most efficient way to do it, but we're having a lot more fun that we get.

30:00Chris Cruz:I was going to say that seems like to be kind of a common thread throughout pinks is could there be a more efficient way could there be a way that technically could be faster yeah yeah but it doesn't get to the result that we want for pinks and it felt like you got clear on the results you wanted or the way you wanted it to feel and be and so you guys chose your route though your route at times may not always be the fastest route to something yeah it's it's the route you guys want to take and it's intentional which is impressive with how we do the jobs it's like not every window cleaning company staffs two guys in one van to go do a job but it's like that's mandatory for us so you're gonna have two guys show up and we really like we do it i think for the fun aspect of like you're in it with somebody you're in the trenches you get to go home and tell war stories about i can't believe that happened blah blah blah it builds something different than we kind of call it the pool route effect of like if it's just one guy in a truck doing his pool route which like a lot of pool companies do they turn through people so fast because it's a really lonely job and it's just like airpods and do their thing with our teams we have the guys honestly and it might not comes back to the thing it might not be the most efficient but they work together around the house.

31:04Like they go all the way around together instead of splitting up and going opposite ways, they stay together so they can like, Hey, take your AirPods out. Let's talk. Let's have a conversation. And when the customer can look outside and be like, Oh, those guys are actually friends. Oh, like they're actually enjoying their job. Like I feel so good about this company instead of them, like simple stuff like that. And it's been night and day different. And it's like, and it's not complicated. It's just like,

31:27Chris Cruz:I feel like every person needs to go work at pinks for a little bit. I feel like we all got we all got to go get around at pinks. I miss it. I like truly do getting to clean windows with Brandon are like the best days of my life, bro. Well, I'm excited for it to see it continue growing. I know we got some in Nashville now. I've seen some of the trucks start making their way over here. So I'm excited, man. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Dude, y 'all are awesome. Appreciate y 'all. Thank you.