204 - Building an Eight-Figure Empire from a Window Washing Business with Brandon Vaughn

0:00It was horrifying. My wife was like, this is the stupidest idea you've ever had. It's going to be so good. We got the Guinness World Record for the world's largest virtual business conference. We went from zero to$100 ,000 a month. We hit seven figures our first year. At the time, we literally went down to$50 in our bank account. I was positive that I was going to go bankrupt.

0:24Brandon, Vaughn, we have a freaking treat today. You own 12 companies. you're an eight figure entrepreneur, employ hundreds of people, but we were just talking before this. And I think the coolest thing that you said to me was you started window washing with your dad at age 13. Tell me about that. My dad was an owner operator window cleaner for 33 years. You know, my definition of an entrepreneur, or at least my version of what I knew was my dad who was owner operator between zero and one employees for 33 years. So a long time on the tools. And I was one of them. So age 13 homeschooled through high school and he paid me five cents a screen to wash screens with him when I was younger.

1:10And then eventually he put me on performance pay where I got to make commission on what we earned. And we just, I mean, that just taught me how to just hustle and work really fast. I can hardly get my son to take out the trash. How did your dad get you to like, let's go work together? Did he need a worker or was he trying to instill in you some work ethic? You know, it's funny. He, now that I have kids and I struggle with, man, it's just so hard to get the kids up and get them going and get them into a good routine. My dad had all of that with me probably to an extreme degree. He'd have to come in and wake me up almost every single morning for work because I would sleep in.

1:41I hated waking up. I was not a morning person. I complained. I whined. I did all the normal things that a teenager would and bless him for being consistent because looking back on it, like I learned so much work ethic and customer service skills from working alongside him. So I'm trying to do that same thing with my kids now who are teens as well. And it's tough. Is your dad still around? He is. What does he think of what you're doing now? I mean, cause you just said zero to one employee for 33 years. So it's not like he had this big operation. What does he think of the fact? He's like, man, Brandon, you got a company with 39 locations.

2:17You're doing, you know,$2 million a month in that space. I never did anything like that. What does he say to you? You know, it's funny because the day I turned 18, I went out and got my own business license, kind of carved my own path, came full circle. 2012, my dad was walking on the treadmill and collapsed, walked on the treadmill every day. Very, very healthy fit. You'd look at him. I mean, He looks way younger than he is, but he had a heart disease and it went undiagnosed for a period of time. Put some stents in. Doctor told him he couldn't work physically anymore. So this was 2012 and he had no savings, no retirement.

2:58And what that kind of transpired into was us circling up as a family and me stepping in and buying the business from him for three grand a month for life. and at the time was doing about$8 ,000 a month. So there was not enough meat on a bone to feed all of us. You know, my, cause my mom wasn't working. So I kind of was forced to grow. And before that I had kind of ran every business that I had very similar to my dad, owner operator, doing the tools, you're like, sell the job, go do the job, sell the job, go do the job. That's all that I knew. So 2012, 2013, like I had to, I had to really, really get uncomfortable with growth and try to figure out, okay, how can, how can this business make enough to work and feed two families?

3:44And, you know, me not have to work 80 hours a week and good coaching, good mentorship and lots of pain and suffering. You know, we kind of started figuring it out. What did, so you had other businesses at the time and you just stepped in to start doing window washing. I had a company called Vaughn creative works where I did web design like on colleagues list. I found some towing companies and would cold outreach to a few different companies, taught myself how to do like lightweight HTML, CSS coding type of a thing, some graphic design stuff. And right before that, I failed a construction business.

4:19So like I wasn't, I'm not like crushing it in business at this time. How old were you? Let's see. This was 13, 13 years ago. It was 2012. I'm 41 now. So, you know, 28, 28 years old. So 28 years old, your dad collapses his sole source of income is a window washing company and you step in to buy it from him three grand for life which obviously you need to be able to support yourself but you're now supporting your dad and did you even think about it at the time were you were you know what i mean like looking back probably look at that and like holy crap that was crazy but at the time did it just feel like no this is what i'm supposed to do yeah 100 yeah it's just like what what other choices there.

5:02Like, of course, of course, we're going to take care of my mom and dad and, and figure it out. And honestly, I was excited. You know, I'm an, I'm an undying optimist. And I think that you kind of have to be, to be an entrepreneur. You, you have to just be like, well, of course, of course it's going to work out. Why, why wouldn't it work out? And then you find out later that, oh God, everything is horrible. And this is a hundred times harder than I thought it was going to be. And then hopefully your desire to just, your refusal to quit and your work ethic to just, I'm going to make this work no matter what, that willpower allows you to not collapse on yourself like a dying star.

5:41And I feel like that's kind of the recipe for good entrepreneur is you have to have enough optimism to be able to be like, we're just going to send it. You know, we're just going to, we're just going to go for it. You know, this is going to be great. You know, and I'm selling my wife on it. I just going to be awesome. Like I want to grow this thing and I'm going to get this and be like this whole thing. We're going to keep the second generation thing going on. And it was way the heck harder than I thought it was going to be. But at the time, it was like, no, the course is we're going to do this and we're going to get it figured out.

6:07So what happened with that business? You take over that business. You're like, oh, I got some window washing experience. I used to do this as a kid. I'm a freaking bro. You step in, your wife, you convince your wife to do it, which, you know, bless our wives. I don't know how they stick with us. Way harder than it was. Where did you get to with that business over time? I had some, some really hard peaks and valleys with it. We had, I had over half of my team quit on me while we're booked out for two months solid. Like once we're, you know, like a couple of years into it, we started growing like five, six, seven, eight people.

6:39So video is cool, but I have what scientists call a face for radio. And so it's even cooler is long form audio via my podcast and my newsletter, nickonomicspod.com. Go there for free, subscribe to my newsletter. It's one email per week, super tactical, and then go to my audio podcast. I do three to five episodes a week, depending on how curious I am. And it's stuff like this. It's all free, no sleazy sales pitches, nickonomicspod.com. And honestly, I would say that the biggest, one of the most pivotal things for me was a book called the E-Myth by Michael Gerber. I read that at the time and it kind of taught me about a working on the business.

7:14And one thing I realized is when I was sitting in front of a computer and I was creating systems and processes and checklists and like, you know, manuals. And I was extracting information out of my brain, my dad's brain and putting, you know, like automation stuff in place. That's where I realized I was making the most amount of money. We were scaling the fastest. Our teams were doing the best. It was easier to bring people in and train them up to speed. And we kind of hit this critical like inflection point where we doubled and started tripling every year. About five, five and a half years later, I was at 70 employees and we had 24 service vehicles.

7:52I would say it was my first big boy pants business that I had because every business before that was a dumpster fire owner operator, kind of hot mess. And this was still, don't get me wrong, like lots of dumpster fire moments. It was, you know, it got to a place where like, okay, I'm only working five hours a week in the business. It runs itself pretty much. I was speaking a lot. I was doing lots of teaching at industry events for home services. And then just had someone just randomly approach me, asked me to go out for lunch after one of my speaking sessions and offered to buy my business. Sweet.

8:25We sold within a couple of months after that. It was crazy. Okay. So at the end of the five years, when you sold the business, what was it like you're trailing 12 months top line? I know you said 70 employees, but what kind of revenue was it doing? The month that we actually exited, we're doing about 500K a month. Wow. There's seasonality that, you know, that of course kind of goes with that, you know, in the wintertime. And we were adding like a truck a month. So it was like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. We were really kind of scaling up a lot. You know, 12 trailing months was obviously less.

8:54It wasn't 500K a month the last 12 months because we were growing really rapidly. But that's really where it kind of settled into. What would your dad say as you were scaling? What would your dad say every time? Hey, we got to get a new truck. Hey, we got to hire new people. Like, what would you say? truck number two he goes are you sure you want to grow this much like are you are you sure you want to do this and then truck number three whoa brandon like this is i mean i'm not kidding you he was he really was horrified nervous really freaked out like any moment that i had that was just super stressful he's like see i told you like this is why i told you all it's simpler this is why i always kept it this small you know there's lots of complications and And he wasn't wrong.

9:35It was way simpler. It was way easier, but you know, he had a bus score of one and bus score is how many people need to get hit by a bus in your company before it ceases to exist. And for, for my dad, that number was one. Like we want that number to be as high as possible. Dude, I, did you make that up? No, I didn't make it up. I, I, I love that. Yeah. I heard, can't remember who it was that I heard it from, but it was a, it was an author. Yeah. How many people need to get hit by a bus. And your goal is to have that number be as high as possible. He got hit by a metaphorical bus. And so as you kind of scale and kind of grow, he was very, very uncomfortable with that thought.

10:15But I had more redundancy. I had more people whose jobs it was, their livelihood was dependent upon selling stuff and getting work done and completing things. And everyone was on performance pay and it was tied to KPIs and metrics. So it became a lot more redundant and stable to where something happened to me that wasn't at risk of the whole business. Yeah. I mean, you get to a point where you built a real business, you have systems and processes and it's things that can exist without you necessarily being the one to be there to drive it. Two things. The first thing is I don't call it the bus score.

10:48I would call it the lottery score. So a few years back, I, I stopped saying like, well, you know, if somebody got hit by a bus with it, who would be able to, or if you got hit by a bus, who would do your job. And I started saying, well, if they won the lottery, who would be able to do their job the next day? Cause it's, it's still the same idea, right? Like you win the lottery. Yeah. You're out. Yeah. Yeah. It's less grim affair. I worked in hot. I worked in hospice. So I think my team was like, can we not like have our own team die? We're already taking care of dying. Are we all getting hit by a bus, man?

11:17What's happening here? Why are there so many bus accidents? But the second thing is, is my, my dad was an entrepreneur, not very successful entrepreneur. And when I bought my first business, it was a$3.2 million business that I purchased for the first time. And I was talking to him on the phone and I'm talking to him and he had never purchased anything that big. Like when we bought cars, they were salvaged title cars that he fixed up. When we bought anything, it was like used to be fixed. He built our own house pretty jankily. But anyways, I'm talking to him on the phone and he's like, he's an immigrant.

11:50He says, well how much is the business and i was like oh it's about it's 3.2 million dollars oh that's too much that's too much money come on millions of dollars and i was like dad i i did the due diligence like it's a good business we're gonna buy it it's like oh you could go out start the business for half of that money and grow it 10 times anyways and then i you know i end up selling it years, years later. And it's a, it's an amazing outcome, but it was a very similar experience, right? It's like, my dad is like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. What are you doing here? Yeah. It's too big. Yeah.

12:27Yeah. I'd say, you know, it's, it's one of those things that you'll always be surrounded by those types of individuals and they, you know, it's, it's with love. Like my dad, your dad deeply cared for you. And all these things are said with the best of intention, the best of meetings but man there's something about getting around other people in a community of those that are doing big things because i i could tell you what every every friend that i've grown up with every colleague every family member looks at me looks at me like a three-eyed alien when they ask like you know what you i don't like telling people what i do for a living because they're like what do you do for a living i'm like i i have a i do garage floor coatings Like I don't, I don't even get into it because it's just, it's too weird.

13:14And a lot of people can't wrap their brain around it. And I'm just a normal person. I'm a homeschooled kid that didn't go to college that has made every mistake you could possibly imagine. And I still have no idea what the heck I'm doing. Like, that's kind of like the whole point. I mean, like you probably don't know what you're doing because if you're doing something new all the time in order to grow, like that's just kind of part of it. And it's like getting comfortable with being extremely uncomfortable is, is it's a right to pass it as an entrepreneur. I still hate talking to people about what I do.

13:44It's why it's one of the, I never even asked that question to somebody weird because I feel weird about it, but we were renting our house out and we met and met with people who were going to rent it. And the guy was there with my wife and he's like, well, what do you do, Nick? And my wife's like, yeah, what do you do? And like, and like I've sold a couple of companies, I have investments, I own multiple businesses, but it's not like there's only one thing I do. Right. And so my go-to line now is just like, ah, dick around on YouTube. And they're like, what does that mean? And it always spurs a conversation.

14:16But yeah, it's weird trying to explain what you do to people who don't understand entrepreneurship anyways. So for them, it's always just a foreign concept. That's why I like one of my favorite stories of yours that we were talking about is you swing for the fences. Right. And like people who swing for the fences are weird. Home run hitters are weird. It's like, well, why would you risk all of that? That's weird. Why would you risk people looking at you when you fail? That would hurt my feelings. You did this thing where you started a YouTube channel. There's basically chronicling your path to a million dollars.

14:50And I think for most people that would be freaky, right? Because what if you fail? What are people going to say to you? What's my wife going to think? What are my friends going to think? I'm putting this out on YouTube. I don't even have an audience yet. And I'm like chronicling this, like, Oh man, I'm a dummy. I know this because I've gone through the social media space. Talk about that experience of you launching this YouTube channel. Oh, it's horrifying. My wife was like, this is the stupidest idea you've ever had. I'm like, it's going to be so good. Cause you need to understand something. Like, let me tell you about the stakes.

15:19I owned a business coaching company called conquer. So I, you know, I, while I was growing my service business, I did lots of public speaking. I had tons of people asked me for coaching. And so I went out and found like, you know, eventually got up to close to 50 coaches that all owned seven and eight figure businesses. We kind of made this group together. It was unbelievable. We did so many cool things with that business. We got the Guinness world record for the world's largest virtual business conference. Like it just, no way. Yeah. It was just the, it was, we had 20, 20, almost 21 ,000 home service business owners attend like our events, the home service super holy crap.

15:55But like, I had a lot of eyeballs on me. And I was, and it kind of gnaws at you and people like, Oh, well, you just sold your business. So you're kind of a sellout. And you know, those who can't do they teach and it just always ate on me a little bit and definitely some ego and some pride. So I told my wife, okay, I want to start this business. It's going to be a YouTube thing. You know, the rules are no work in the field from day one, no sales. I can't go to even do a sales call. In fact, I won't even answer a phone call from day one. I have this small, like little startup budget of 15K and I'll pick an industry I have no experience in, won't use any of my previous contacts whatsoever.

16:32In fact, I won't even make a single phone call to any of my previous contacts. Like as far as people are concerned, they wouldn't even know that I'm like even involved because the phone rings to my salesperson on like a VoIP phone. And started this company called Wise Codings. And we went from zero to$100 ,000 a month in four months. So month four, we hit 100K. We hit seven figures our first year inside of our first calendar year. And then about six months into it, I decided to franchise it and found a CEO slash partner who was going to earn equity into the business or get equity in the business as part of launching this.

17:11We franchised it six months in and cashflow this thing. And now it's 39 locations. And it's, it's just this crazy, crazy, bizarre journey of, you know, kind of what's possible. But at the time, I mean, we, we literally at one point went down to$50 in our bank account. And I was positive that I was going to go bankrupt and fail or have to have like an episode. Wait, wait, like$50 in your personal bank account? In the business bank account. In the business bank account, okay. So we were really transparent with exactly how much we spent. We went to seven employees within the first two and a half months.

17:48I was spending 10 grand a month on Facebook within four months. I laid out the exact step-by-step of how we did this. But we had this gnarly job about month two where it's like, okay, this is bad. That's what I was going to ask. All right. So when you, when you announce it, right. And you're like, Hey, I'm doing this. It sounds dude in hindsight, it's like, Oh, that's a cool story. But when you do it at the time and you're like, Hey, I'm doing this, it's, it's similar to when you start a business in entrepreneurship, because your friends and family are around you and you're like, Hey, I'm doing this thing.

18:22And you're still worried when you do it on, when you do it on YouTube and it's like this public thing, it almost can, you're worried about compounding the humiliation, if you will. So, you know, a hundred thousand dollars by month four, that's cool. But dude, how did you feel in month one and two and three? Like, were those the longest months of your life? You know, you understand something. I had a full-time job at this time. As a coach. Yeah. So like I was CEO of Conquer. We had a bunch of coaches. We had thousands of clients that were like working with us. And so most of my time was just spent in just filming, you know?

18:56So I had a videographer that would come out in the studio. We'd film, We document everything like, okay, here's how we're building the website. Here's our unique, you know, selling propositions. We're going to go talk to customers. Hey, I don't know if you remember this, but when we started this podcast, we entered into a social contract. I would spend time, energy, and money producing this podcast, interviewing these individuals and giving you insights into how to build, buy, start, grow your business. And you would like subscribe and leave me five-star review. Now, out of that, we both get to talk to really cool people and hear really cool insights.

19:27We both get a ton of value, but I just want to help you keep your word. So would you do me a favor? Will you go leave a five-star review for me on Apple or Spotify? It would really help. And if you want, even share this with a friend. So like a lot of the work was more just spent on documenting the first four months of kind of growing this business. And my actual time spent in the business was very, very low because I still had this full time job. But that was kind of the point, you know, is, is, hey, you can even some of your listeners listen to this, you can you can start a business. You just have to be really good at finding great people and recruiting people.

20:07You have to be good at systems. You have to be good at marketing. You have to understand how to go buy customers. And really, that's kind of like the recipe to success in a lot of ways, especially for home services is it's like a teeter totter. You know, one side you have your, your, your sales and marketing motions and your other side, you have your people, your trucks, your, you know, services, your production side of the business. And it's just, it's just kind of like balancing it. You know, you get booked out too far. Okay. We're going to spend more money on, you know, on, on people so that we get more people hired.

20:37And it's just kind of like balancing that. It was pretty wild experience to kind of get that set up and have people watch. What year was this? 2021. 2021. Okay. So we're still like kind of in the thick of it and you live in Washington, Oregon. Those aren't the most open states during COVID. You know, you're launching this online, but where was the first market you launched in? Portland. Portland. Okay. I'm going to fast forward and then jump back. Fast forward. You now have a company called Hirebus that is helping people make better hiring decisions utilizing AI, right? So obviously between 2021 and today, AI has come out and just kind of changed everything about everything that we do.

21:19As you launched the business and you started scaling, which 39 locations is freaking incredible, especially when you bootstrapped that in the first couple of years. At what point did you realize, hey, there's this AI thing that can actually accelerate these real world businesses that I am doing? Because you're doing real cool business. You're washing windows. You're obviously coaching people. You're doing... garage coatings. These are home services type businesses that people don't usually see as, oh, AI can help actually accelerate these businesses. When was the aha moment for you? I'd say 2023 was really the big eye-opening moment where we could really start building a lot of the stuff that I was already building and already kind of using.

22:06We were using Google Sheets. We had really good recruiting processes. And I've built really solid systems for recruiting. The general thesis behind recruiting is A, it's a marketing problem to solve. So all the same things, internal customers, external customers, like same things, videos, marketing motions, you know, messaging, speed to lead customer experience, like all of it applies, like direct proxy parallels. And then the second part of it is you need to always be recruiting, not just when you need someone, you need to be doing it 365 days a year, but that's hard to do because you doing those interviews and talking to people and putting them kind of on a waiting list, building this little talent bench, it's just difficult for a lot of business owners to do.

22:52So we built out a ton of automations to kind of accomplish this. And then when AI started really becoming a lot more accessible, that's when we launched Hirebus as an AI recruiting company that does the job writing, the posting, the scheduling, the management, the communication with candidates, the interviews, their screening process, the resume analysis, the benchmarking, like all of it, and just tease up the top 3 % of talent without anyone having to like do a lot of that manual work. So it saves people tons and tons and tons of time and gets you the best quality fit for people. And that all kind of worked out really well because I kind of built it with Weiss Codings is kind of one of my first real needs to kind of have that process built in.

23:38and then also built it for our conquerors who were my coaching clients at the time because they were saying like their number one biggest pain point was trying to get people. So that led to me exiting Conquer and sold that to Housecall Pro and then moving into Hirebus full-time, which is what I'm doing now. I still own Wise Codings. I still have a bunch of other businesses that I own as just an absentee owner, kind of an investor, but Hirebus is my full-time of focus right now. So I grew a, uh, we were most recently a home health and hospice company and we went from zero to$12 million in a few years.