From Cell Towers To Power Washing Growth with Chris Cannon, The Cannon Power Washing

0:00Welcome to Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae with Action Coach Business Growth Partners. Every week, we sit down with business owners, founders, and leaders to uncover the real stories behind building a successful business. The wins, the setbacks, the lessons learned, and the strategies that help them grow. No scripts, no fluff, just honest conversations with entrepreneurs who are in the trenches every single day. Whether you are a business owner yourself, thinking about starting a business, or simply enjoy hearing how successful people think and operate, you are in the right place. Let's jump into today's episode, shall we?

0:58All right, everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae with Action Coach Business Growth Partners, where we work with local business owners to turn big ideas into real scalable growth. Today, I'm excited to be joined by Chris Cannon with the Cannon Power Washing. Chris, how are you doing today? Doing fantastic, my friend. I'm happy to be on. Yeah, yeah, we're excited to have you. So let's go ahead and jump right into things. So for those of you who may not know it yet, you know, who are you? Who is Chris Cannon and what is the Cannon Power Washing? I'm just a regular old dude from Gainesville, Georgia, just trying to make a living and feed the kids, to be honest with you.

1:34Helps some people out along the way. Okay, great. All right, Chris, so how did you go ahead and get started in the industry and started in your business, really? So I didn't really know what I wanted to do at first. I just knew that I wanted to start a business. I actually started out climbing cell phone towers. I did that for about 10 years. and it kind of kept me, you know, out of town and on the road. And I mean, it was fun while it lasted for sure. But then, you know, I started a family and got married and stuff like that and really wanted to kind of ground myself. And getting out of the tower industry is not the easiest thing in the world because it's pretty decent money.

2:18So then people get used to it. And then it's hard to find something entry level that, you know, kind of supplements that or replaces that rather. And so a lot of people just come right back. So, you know, they'll try doing various things to try to get out. Cause I mean, it's fun, but like staying on the road is pretty tough. And, you know, if you just want to stay a single man, it's not a problem, but staying on the road with a family is pretty tough. So I knew that starting a business was going to be probably my best out. And luckily it was, but I started having a, I guess, a prerequisite of making sure that my new companies that I was working for in the towers was going to keep me in town.

3:08You know, right time I'd get hired, I'd be like, look, this is going to work out perfect as long as you keep me in town. And, you know, that whenever that stopped, then I would try to find another company that would keep me in town. And it just got, it got kind of old, honestly. And the last company that I worked for, you know, I was a CM for them. And they had told me, they had already knew that I was going to stay in town as long as they wanted me as an employee. And they tried to say, you know, move to Nebraska. And I was like, no, I'm not moving to Nebraska, man. I mean, nothing against Nebraska, but like I am not moving the family to Nebraska for, you know, a tower job.

3:52And so I had already done like one pressure washing job prior to this conversation with my superior. And I kind of just said, no, I'm out. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to try this pressure washing thing for real. And, talk with the wife or whatever. And we decided, why not? Let's just try to do it full time. So I guess the first thing that I did was I contacted every contact in my phone and let them know, hey, I am doing pressure washing full time now. And tell anybody and everybody you can that I do pressure washing and I'd love to come out and give them a quote, help them out, whatever.

4:38that produced actually a relatively good amount of business to start off when somebody doesn't know how to get business so it kind of kick-started me in the right direction and i mean i can keep going but like that really is what kick-started me just kind of like saying nope i'm gonna go full-time and a lot of these people they go and and there's nothing wrong with it but like they keep their job while they're trying to go full-time but i'm like a I'm like an all-in kind of dude. I just wanted to make sure that I did this right the first time, and I haven't looked back since, to be honest. Okay, okay.

5:19So, Chris, let's go ahead and get into kind of the operations and everything of owning your business. What's something about running your business that people think is amazing but you think is actually complete BS when you hear it, would you say?

5:36something that is BS when I get down to it. I would say, I mean, just owning a business in general isn't all that it's cracked up to be. I mean, I feel like that it, now in the day and age that we're in, is glorified. And it is to a certain extent, but I don't think that the actual work is accurately portrayed because a lot of people don't understand how good they have it when they're just clocking in and out. Because when you clock out, your emotional and mental bandwidth can just be cut off and now you are focused on your family and stuff. But when you're a business owner, that is extremely difficult.

6:29and sometimes it's not even possible. Like you still have to take things after hours. And I mean, I guess you don't have to, but that's probably going to make you miss out on a lot of opportunities. So in the beginning, especially, you have to be on the clock 24-7 and it gets exhausting. And that's not even from a complete operational standpoint. So I think that just to answer your question, like owning a business isn't BS, but I think it's BS that the way that business owners are portrayed, because I don't think everybody can do it. I mean, it's just, it's just tough from top to bottom. The emotional, physical, mental strain is up there.

7:17I agree. I agree. So what would you say was the exact moment or have you had this exact moment where you realized, you know, this could either really work or it could completely blow up in my face and I lose everything? I don't know. I don't really, I don't really think about the blow up in my face. Could lose everything type deal. I've always been, like I said, I was just an all-in kind of guy. So I'm all in, not really worrying about it blowing up in my face, but the hard part is the plateaus. like it will blow up in your face if you don't get over those plateaus. And by plateaus, I mean like just the like pride.

8:04Pride is one of the plateaus. Like you have to completely swallow your pride. You can't be a prideful business owner. You can't be afraid to talk to people. you can't be afraid except losses mistakes things like that like it's super hard and if you can't get over those things then then that's when everything falls on its face i would imagine gotcha gotcha now chris what would you say is the most stressful moment you've ever had as a business owner like a you know how am i going to get through this type of moment most stressful moment, I would say, is, I really haven't, I mean, it's all kind of just like a relatively stressful kind of thing, just running a business, but a pinpointed stressful moment, I, you know, I would say probably at the very beginning, you know, I was pretty naive in the very beginning, but it was pretty stressful just saying, you know what, I'm not going to have a full-time job anymore.

9:08I'm going to go out into the wild and try to figure this thing out myself. That was pretty stressful because I have a stay-at-home wife and four kids to feed, and I wanted, I didn't want that to change. I didn't want the wife to have to go back to work. I mean, I wanted to help in the business now, but like to begin with, I didn't want her to have to go get a job to help provide too. So it, that was probably the most stressful part in my opinion. Yeah. Okay. And you say you have four kids? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Pretty busy guy. Oh, for sure. Okay.

9:47So Chris, what would you say is something about you personally that had to change in order for your business to grow? Like, you know, something with like your personality or, or something in your personal life that had to change in order for your business to grow? My personality is relatively swallowable, I would say. You know, it's not a super hard pill to swallow, but like, I'm going to go back to the plateaus, man, because like you have to constantly change and evolve as your business grows in order to, you have to act like the person you want to be before you become that person. So, like, it's super hard to understand that in the beginning because your gut is going to tell you, like, look, this, or I guess I'm backwards.

10:37Your mind is going to tell you it's up, but your gut tells you that you know it's right. But actually jumping through that hurdle and getting to the other side is, it's the only way. So like that would probably be the answer there because it really is tough. The personal growth is necessary in business and it's really tough. Like growing a business is hard, but you have to grow personally along with the business in order for the business to succeed in my opinion. Gotcha. Gotcha. Now, and this next question is hypothetical, right? But let's say if someone shadowed you for a full day or let's say even a full week, what would you think would surprise them the most about how you operate your business?

11:26Right now, I'm trying to kind of transition into just sales and doing stuff like that. So I would think, I guess the surprise right now would be that I'm not really physically doing that much work right now. I think that would probably be the most, because I got somebody running the truck for me now. And I got people helping in the office side. So, like, it is eventful, but uneventful at the same time. And if they shattered me, it would probably be kind of alarming at how much I didn't speak to them, but speaking to everybody else. they'd be like man this dude just won't talk you know he can't get off the phone for five seconds to have a conversation with me oh my goodness that'd probably be the most alarming thing like just i don't know that was funny no so you kind of taking more of an operations little operational type of role basically sounds like i'm trying to it's new to me So like this is just another hurdle I'm trying to jump.

12:33Like I'm really trying to focus on working in the business and getting more business instead of just trying to get done with the business that I have on the books as quick as possible. So that's kind of the shift that I'm taking right now. Just more of a networking style. I'm trying not to run ads to get more business. So I'm trying to find as many other opportunities as possible to get that business instead of just running ads or posting on Facebook or whatever. You know, like I'm trying to find a different way to get it. Gotcha. Gotcha. Now, let's go ahead and talk about numbers without getting too specific since you've been in business for a little bit.

13:17But what I guess, how many months did it take or maybe what year did it take for you for your company to turning for your company to have the turning point where things started to score scale and you became profitable? I'll be honest, man. Pressure watching. The reason that there's so many people that do it is because the barrier to entry is pretty darn low. So, I mean, I started with the, I think it was 3 ,200 PSI, 2.3 gallon a minute pressure washer that I just had laying around in the garage. And I would lift it up, put it in the back of the truck, wrap my hoses up into a little thing with like a little twist tie, put them in the bed of the truck.

14:03and, you know, and I've kind of grown my business on the operational side as the work has came in. So I was pretty much profitable from the get-go, but I had to be because I had to continue paying bills, had to continue feeding the kids, had to continue keeping the wife, you know, a smile on the wife's face, that kind of thing. So I was profitable from the get-go. And if I wasn't, And, you know, we're millennials here. We don't have, you know, 50 grand sitting in our savings account. So we got to get this ball rolling quick. So I was profitable from day one, just about it. You know, I would, my profit margins were probably like 75 or 80 % because I didn't have any bills on the business side.

14:49Now, obviously that number has went down since I've grown, but the gross has went, but, you know. the profitability right off the gate go. Okay. And that's pretty cool. So, you know, low overhead, obviously, and, you know, because you don't really have to keep an office or anything like that. You just take, you kind of take appointments by word of mouth. Is that kind of where most of your business comes from? In the beginning, yeah, I was running. So I borrowed my father-in-law's truck and I borrowed my father's, I guess my grandmother's trailer and I had the pressure washer that was already in the garage.

15:33You know, all of this was just no money to start off. And I was running my business off of Apple Calendar and just my actual text messages. So, you know, as things got overwhelming, I would find a solution for it. But, you know, if that entailed a monthly bill, then I did it. And then if it made sense on down the road in a couple of months, I kept doing it. And so it's just kind of the snowball effect, right? Like I just kept, as problems came up, I just solved them. I mean, I've always been kind of a put-and-fire-out kind of guy, not a reactive, not a proactive kind of guy. And now I'm trying to shift that.

16:17but I didn't know what to be proactive for. So I just made a decision and reacted. It's kind of funny because in the beginning I had like a rule, right? So I wouldn't research these decisions like crazy or I'd drive myself crazy doing the research. And one of my old tower owners, he ingrained this in my head, he says, never get analysis paralysis. So I made sure I didn't have analysis paralysis. I wanted to have action over everything. So any decision that I made, I had to make it less than 24 hours. If I'm doing it, I'm doing it. If I'm not, I'm not. And, you know, it's not like I couldn't revisit, but I just wouldn't put an extensive amount of thought into it because I feel like that's a lot of things that keeps business owners from starting is just this extensive plan that doesn't even really work in the first place, just start doing it and then figure it out along the way, you know, especially with something like this.

17:20You know, if I was buying into a half a billion dollar warehouse, I'd probably do a little bit more planning, but a pressure washing company, just go wash some darn stuff and figure it out. Yeah Okay Now, you know, what would you say Is something like, you know, or one thing Or maybe a couple of things that are giving you kind of An unfair advantage against your competition out there I'm a freaking genius That's probably No, I just plan Nah, I don't really think I have An unfair advantage I mean, well, I guess Doing what's right You know, like I'm really not out here to try to screw people. And we had this conversation slightly before we started here, but like you just do the right thing.

18:09And I'm going to be honest, one of the realtor, one of the greatest pieces of advice that I got from owning a business was from a realtor of mine. And he's a really good friend of mine. He said, because he actually started doing handyman work instead of doing realtor. And I was like, what the heck are you doing that for? He's like, well, dude, every time I call somebody, they don't answer. And if they do answer, whenever they say they're going to be there, they're not there. And they're not doing what they say they're going to do. So he was like, dude, if you do two things, you'll succeed in business.

18:49He said, answer your phone, number one. And number two, be where you're at when you say you're going to be there. And if you do those two things, you know, obviously there's a lot more to it. But if you do those two things, you're going to be just fine. Because he was a really good realtor. He was making pretty good money. And then he flipped the script immediately and was able to make that much, if not more, just being a handyman. So, like, I was like, dude, that's, you know, it seems overwhelming at first. But if you just break it down like that, it's pretty darn simple. Just answer the dadgum phone.

19:25If it's a spam call, answer it. The spam algorithms are going to work regardless. Just answer the dadgum phone. If it's business, be nice, polite. If it's not, hang up. It's pretty simple. Yeah, yeah. And it's so important to do that, man. I mean, man, I talk about this all the time that, you know, here in 2026, we got more ways to communicate than ever. But people do a poorer job than ever of communicating. It's the worst. I mean, it's, yeah, it's awful. People just don't answer your call. They'll ghost you. They won't answer your text, even though, you know, everybody's on their phone all the time.

20:01I mean, you know, you see my text. 100%. Yep. I guarantee you, if you looked up, if you just Googled pressure washroom near me, and you called the first 10 companies, I guarantee you way less than half of them answered. I would almost guarantee you, you might get one or two phone calls answered on the first try. It's wild. Absolutely wild. And that's during business hours. We're talking 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, during business hours when everybody should be answered. Now, if you try to be a smarty and call at 10 o 'clock at night on a Friday, obviously there's a low chance that they're going to answer.

20:38But we're talking like real prime time phone calls being answered, you know, and then they won't. It's wild. Or some random AI assistant that's just, you know, not very intuitive. Like, I'm trying to get my house washed. well could you please spell out your email you know and i'm like i'm not doing that either you know i'm trying to provide a luxury service i want you to feel like it's luxury so i'm not gonna let you talk to some ai agent built by some rando in their freaking basement you know i'm just like i'm just not doing it i'm not for it i thought about it pretty hard but i was like that is not the direction i want to go so i got real people yeah yeah no it's true man i i just recently did that with a big box retailer.

21:24I'm not going to say the name for whatever reason, but I did call because I had an issue with an order and it was completely AI. I couldn't even speak to an agent. I'm like, what happened to this thing? It's like, I can't even speak to a person. I'm speaking to a robot. Yep. And I think it's going to become more and more frequent and people are going to become more and more frustrated with it. So the more that people get, we're kind of going back in time, right? AI is cool. AI is great, but you've got to keep it in its place. Like it doesn't need to be in every single facet of your business or I think it'll implode, honestly.

21:59Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. Now, Chris, have you ever had to make a tough call? Like, you know, example, letting someone go or cutting something off or not doing a job, declining a job or stopping halfway through that ended up being the right move long term? Yes. And the thing that comes to mind to start with is the part of the plateau that I said I had to swallow my pride. So I acquired a relatively, it's not relatively, it was a large job the last month or the month before. and I quoted it like I should, got the job, started doing it, and just didn't realize how big the job was. And it ended up being extremely overwhelming because where I'm trying to fit now, there was no deadline for this job.

22:58So I wasn't being rushed by the people, but, you know, I'm rushing myself because I'm trying to get this done, get paid, keep doing more jobs and more jobs and more jobs. And I want to do it right. So like, it was very overwhelming doing this, this massive job. Because I anticipated like eight days and I think it ended up taking me like 20. It was freaking ridiculous. It was a, it was a massive learning experience for me. And I, and I, I'm very grateful for it, But I had to call a big name, super commercial focused pressure washer in to help me. And, you know, the connection became with a mutual friend and he came out there and helped me.

23:44And he let me know my pricing was pretty in line. And it really just showed me where I could be and honestly where I wanted to be and made a friend in the process. And it ended up helping me tremendously with the amount of production that he provided from a knowledge standpoint and being able to use his equipment. So that was kind of like, it was a relief after the fact, but I was just so like, no, I don't need help to start with. No, I'm good. No. And I ended up doing it. And it was awesome, to be honest. It was great. Yeah. So it sounded like it was a big commercial job. It was. Like a business or something?

24:30Yeah, it was cleaning a whole neighborhood, like all the curbs and sidewalks in a whole neighborhood. And it was like, I think it was 30 ,000 feet of curb and like 20 ,000 feet of sidewalks. And it was just, you know, at the beginning you're like, oh, just curbs and sidewalks, no big deal. But like, oh my gosh, it was just so tedious. Yes. But like I said, I'm super thankful that I got the opportunity and it was a massive learning experience.

25:06All right. So we're going to head into what's called the quickfire round. So how this works is I'm going to give you one word and then I just want you to tell me the first thing that comes to mind when you hear each word in regards to running your business. And then kind of give me like a blurb of two or three sentences after that to kind of explain why you chose that word. Does that make sense? All right. OK. The first word is success. work success doesn't come without work and a lot of work and a lot of hard work at that the opposite end of that failure laziness I think it's pretty easy to fail if you don't work you know it's the opposite of not working not working yeah burnout I would say systems systems is a pretty good word for that one because if you have systems in place, I think it could reduce the burnout a lot because you're not doing everything on your own.

26:02Scaling.

26:07Intelligence. Just knowing when to push and when not to push. Hiring. Reading people. Just being able to read somebody and trust your gut whether they're going to be helpful or not. Yeah, and that's a tougher said than done, right? It is. A piece of paper can only tell you so much. I can't tell you how truthful the person is or how loyal they are or whatever the case is. Oh, 100%. But you can kind of get a good feel. I'm not going to hire anybody without meeting them in person. Okay. Yeah, you can't get a good feel, especially if you meet like in a public place, like a restaurant or something like that.

26:43You see how they interact with folks, how they interact with the server, you know, how they interact with other people. Are they rude? Are they, you know what I mean? Absolutely. You can kind of get a feel. Yeah, customer service in a customer service environment. Mm-hmm. Next word is freedom. Misunderstood. I feel like freedom is misunderstood. I feel like everybody just thinks it's so easy to attain, but it's really not. And then the last word is competition. There is none. I don't think there is any competition. One of the biggest successes that I've had is just being friendly to other business owners.

27:28Like, we thought we all think that there's, you know, they're taking our work. That is not true, man. If we lived in BFE Utah or Wyoming or something, maybe. But we're in Northeast Georgia freaking booming out of our gourd. There is plenty of work for everyone. like there's a huge pressure washing company in northeast georgia and one of my main contacts like he he runs most of the like equipment side of it so he gets to interact with a lot of he gets to interact with a lot of business owners specifically for pressure washing and painting and he was like, the market can hold like at least 15 more of these dudes.

28:20And it's just like, when you hear somebody like that say that, you're just like, there is so much work out here. You just got to get in front of the right people and do it. You know, I know that's more than a couple sentences, but I think that's one of the biggest things that are misunderstood. It's like, just because I'm another pressure washing company doesn't mean I'm your competition. If I'm being a douchebag, yeah, sure. But, like, if we're all friendly towards one another, it's actually pretty productive because we can bounce ideas off one another and help each other out. Yeah. No, I agree.

28:55Totally agree. And, you know, there's a new neighborhood, it seems like, built every other week. Oh, like, literally, if you don't go down a road for a month, that road is almost irrecognizable. Like, there is going to be something built. I mean, it's kind of scary to be honest with you. Like high schools, schools, buildings, publics, Kroger. I mean, it's just ridiculous. And it's not just some 10-house neighborhood. It's like 500 houses in the neighborhood. And all this stuff has to be taken care of. So the service industry is golden. Yeah. No, I agree, agree. All right. So I appreciate you getting through that quick fire round here.