Thread by @Codie_Sanchez

How did this 23-year old buy a $250k revenue biz for just $1,000?

Here's the story of the "Squeegee God", @SqueegeeGod

In 2017, Johnny Robinson started a window cleaning business with his buddy as a side hustle

They spend $150 on start-up materials

Here's how the first 4 years went:

In 2021, Johnny will do close to three-quarters of a million in revenue

AND $175k ish in profit.

His operation is a well-oiled machine with 10 W2 employees

But wait until you hear about the acquisition he did to really get his business to the next level

Earlier this year, Johnny got a call from an insurance agent with a deal for him.

You might be wondering: How does a 23-year old have an insurance agent in his corner?

Because he networks.

Johnny belongs to a BNI-style group with only 1 member of any given profession.

The insurance agent told Johnny he had a Medicare client who was looking to sell his window cleaning business. The seller was a 60-year old man eager to hang up his hat due to health reasons.

Johnny worried about being able to do a buyout but got curious.

He arranged a meeting and found the seller’s business had been consistently generating $200k+ in revenue over the last 3 years.

But there was a problem.

Johnny’s seller was out of touch with the market. For one thing, he was charging his clients way below the market price.

If Johnny was to buy those accounts and raise prices right off the bat, he would most likely lose much of that business.

He also couldn’t afford to raise his prices slowly.

So, Johnny made an unconventional proposition:

He suggested that for every client of the seller that converted into Johnny’s, he would pay 15% of that account in their first year.

Then, 10% in their second and finally, 5% in their third.

Needless to say, tempers flared.

Negotiations stretched on for three months.

But with a little patience and a whole lot of educating, Johnny was able to close the deal.

It has worked out for both parties:

So besides this win-win acquisition structure, how else did Johnny scale from $200k to over $700k?

Well, he employed tech to do his work for him.

Rather than using word-of-mouth to ask his clients for reviews, Johnny set up a drip campaign.

By integrating NiceJob with his CRM, his customers got an automated SMS text immediately after their job was finished, leading them to Facebook/GMB to leave a review

If that went unanswered, the SMS text was followed by two well-timed follow-up emails, each asking for a review

Showing up in the top 3 of Google My Business = More Organic Leads = Free money.

By leveraging tech tools in a space that’s otherwise antiquated, Johnny was able to exponentially increase his profits.

The next bottleneck was capacity.

With dozens of leads in their pipeline, Johnny was booked as far as 6 weeks out. Which is longer than anyone would wait for their windows to be cleaned.

Day in and day out, Johnny, his co-founder, and their five in-house employees, were out on the field working as efficiently as they could.

But even that wasn’t enough to keep up with the demand.

The duo considered hiring more W2 employees. But it would have cost too much time and money to train new hires

So they switched to the next best thing. Subcontractors

By outsourcing their workload to smaller window cleaning companies, Johnny’s entire operation took an uptick

It goes to show that you can make a killing in almost any business, even one that's been around forever.

I think Johnny's success can be replicated in almost any industry and location.

You tell me: What other industries could this be done in?

Tech + Talent + Proven Profits

Want more detail's on Johnny's success?

Check out my newsletter piece about how he killed it in the window cleaning business: contrarianthinking.co/this-23-year-o…