AC Lockyer: 0:12

Hey guys, this is AC Locker here and this is building a lifestyle business presented by Softwash Systems. And well, we have a treat for you guys this week. This is not only one of our licensed affiliates here with SoftWash Systems, but a very, very good friend of mine. Now, we've been doing this now for almost a decade, I think. So, oh, yeah, 10 years, yeah, 10 years. And it's funny how it goes from client to confidant to friend and family, almost type situation. And I don't want to give away the whole bio and everything and of course, you could talk about, of course, being with phenomenal coaching and just how this has just grown, even the opportunity for you and the things that you're doing. But go ahead and introduce yourself, Jim, name your company, where you guys are at, and then give me I always tell people that non-softwashy businessy Give us the biographical information when you came from, what you did, what are your hobbies, who's your family, who's the real Jim McDonough.

Jim McDonough: 1:21

Okay, all right, very good. Well, AC, I just want to say thank you for having me on the show here today. It is really special, and I do consider you a friend, because we started out we didn't know each other and then, all of a sudden, we were at this relationship that these days where I support your mission and trying to help you create a thousand millionaires by 2040. And I know you've sped that up a little bit to 2030. And so I'm Jim McDonough, I'm former military, I'm the husband of Amy McDonough.

Jim McDonough: 1:52

We have been together for 40 years and, after my whole time in my military service in Army Aviation and had a very successful career there, we are located in Enterprise and in Dothan, alabama, or LA, as some people will call it, lower Alabama, that's right, lower Alabama. I have two adult children that we talked about building a lifestyle business. We'll talk about that a little bit later. We're a product of that and so our client base is very small. So in Enterprise, we're 28,000 people, and then in Dothan, we're 70,000 people. We're separated by 40 miles, so we have these micro centers of gravity and in there we were able to In 2021, we were able to break the million dollar mark using your model and we use that model for not only exterior cleaning soft washing your roof and exterior cleaning but also in our interior division is where IICRC mastered textile cleaners and an IICRC certified firm.

Jim McDonough: 2:58

So we use the same model for both businesses and so our affiliation here and what I like to say, the background of all that is after the military it was quite simple. I was not looking to get another career right out of the military and do that for another 20, 30 years, something like that. But I wanted to work for myself and so we started a small service service company and we transitioned our lawn and grounds division out and we bolted on soft washing because it fit our model better than going up the textile cleaning into fire and water mitigation.

AC Lockyer: 3:37

And so I want to jump in real quick here and first of all say thank you for your service. My family was a military family. Especially on my mom's side, Lieutenant Colonel CC Smith was an Air Force pilot and then on my dad's side his sister married an Air Force test pilot. Actually my uncle Bud that qualified, Bud Mallory actually qualified for the astronaut program and so I I never got a chance to serve. I just was not born in that wartime didn't get, you know, drug into anything. But I've always really, really, really admired the military and people have served in the military, the discipline and and and just everything that goes with it. So thank you so much for that. And the second thing is is hold on. You and I are pretty much the same age. How have you been married to Amy for 40 years?

Jim McDonough: 4:34

So I remember or something. I said we were together for 40 years together, yeah. So we dated for six years. We met at McDonald's when she was 16, I was 17. Wow, and just magic when she came in to the restaurant one night. And so we dated for six years and we've been married now for 33. And so it's amazing, we're in our 34th year of marriage and she's the love of my life. She's the corner of everything, no matter everything I've ever done in the military. Wherever she is, it's home. I'd live under a fridge with her, I'd live in a box with her. Wherever she's at, that's home.

AC Lockyer: 5:13

Well, that's. The other thing is, nowadays it's rare to run into and meet people that have been married for 33 years. Karen and I have been married for 32 years, going on 33. And I knew we were really close as far as the anniversary of our marriages and all. But it's rare. It takes a lot of commitment, a lot of understanding and it is you really just totally whacked, amy, with number one being a military wife and then finally, when she gets out of the frying pan, one being a military wife and then finally, when she gets out of the frying pan, you throw her into the fire and make her an entrepreneur's wife I mean, oh my goodness, oh what, that was not out.

Jim McDonough: 5:54

Yeah, entrepreneur's life makes the, makes the military seem easy.

AC Lockyer: 5:59

Oh, yeah, absolutely, oh, that is very true.

AC Lockyer: 6:02

Yeah, yep, absolutely, yeah, incredible all right, so go ahead and continue on with your bio. Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. Oh, that is very true. Yeah, yep.

Jim McDonough: 6:16

So after 22 years of service, one of the things that was popping up in my mind is a lot of times in the service I had folks that were telling me that you're just a natural salesman. I'm not a natural salesman, I just understand how to serve people and what they really want, and so that was easy for me to go. I can go into business for myself, and I did. We started a business.

Jim McDonough: 6:35

John Capodaro and I started our business in 2010. We made our first dollar in 2011., and it was Veterans Carpet Cleaning and Lawn Service LLC. In 2011. And so we needed two services to be able to generate enough money with a small client base. Right, we did. And then we transitioned the lawn division out and replaced that and bolted on soft washing you soft wash systems, roof and exterior cleaning, and that was one of the best things we ever did, because we got a better business model and it streamlined our interior division as well, and we followed that model. Today it's a great business model. Thank you for sharing that with us.

AC Lockyer: 7:13

Thank you. We always seem to land on this whenever I'm doing these podcasts. We're talking to people and some companies when you're in a smaller market. I was just talking to Justin Revels. He's in a smaller market and we'll talk about Phenomenal Products. I'm sure here he's he's one of your clients in the coaching program, right? But, um, yeah, it's it. Sometimes you have to have multiple services when you're in a smaller micro economy, like you were talking about earlier. And the landscaping and carpet cleaning at least from the conversations you and I had made you seem more like a jack of all trades almost cheapened you, and when you brought on the soft washing, you got rid of the landscaping pretty quick. Why?

Jim McDonough: 7:59

Well, for one, the barriers to entry for landscapers or lawn service companies were very low, and so what we're also looking at as the income per calorie burned for soft washing is very much a different category, and so we weren't pressure washers. We specialize in roof cleaning and then exterior cleaning. So the specialty, the danger and the things associated with that roof cleaning because it's very visible and, let's face it, when your roof fails, everything you love is put at risk Right, so it's a big piece and it causes a lot of issues. And then for us it was awesome when we were able to get some of the collateral from companies like GAF or the Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association. We're able to put that in front of our client base and then say, well, this is the cause to what is happening inside your home. Tiling, growth, traffic lanes are all coming from this glorial capsulamigma infestation in your driveway, and some people really freak.

AC Lockyer: 9:03

Yeah. They really join in together and nicely fit in together. Yeah, so okay, 22 years in the military, and so tell people kind of what you did, because I don't know for you it's mundane, for people like me it's really cool.

Jim McDonough: 9:19

I started out as an enlisted foreign observer in the artillery in an aviation seat that was an aeroscout observer. So we called for an adjusted indirect fire. I did that for about three and a half years. Then I went on to warrant officer candidate flight school and flew many different Bell helicopters the UH-1, the OH-58 Alpha Plus, all the way through the Delta R models. So the Kiowa Warriors and you can kind of see it behind me but my lighting is not so great up there but armed reconnaissance was the mission. And then, at the very end, the last four and a half years, I was recruited for the aircraft shoot down assessment team. That's the Army's component of the joint combat assessment team. And so we did aviation combat forensics. We went and looked for threat weapons and their effects against our aviation platforms, both manned and unmanned, to identify how they interacted with the aircraft and then figure out and reverse engineer material and non-material solutions to reduce the vulnerability of our platforms. That's a mouthful. That was 12 years ago. That was pretty good for a recall.

AC Lockyer: 10:22

So basically the layman's terms on that, guys, is when helicopters got shot out of the air, they would send Jim and John there to figure out why it happened. Could we keep it from happening? And you know, was it pilot error or did they just? Were there vulnerabilities in the aircraft that they could fix? And that's right, that's right. And you said highly technical, that's right. That's right.

Jim McDonough: 10:43

That's right. And you said you finally tagged the goldfish. That's right. That's right. Try to make it easy here, but we didn't do accidents. We did intentionals Right, and there was an intentional act to take down an aircraft. Someone's got to go and figure that out. And I think one of the most honorable things was the fact that our dad had a story to tell.

AC Lockyer: 11:06

And we were the ones that captured that story and we saved lots of lives after that, so it was very honorable. That's very, very cool. So you have your wife Amy, and you have I believe is it two daughters, two daughters.

Jim McDonough: 11:15

Yep, one's 25, Alexander. She's out in California right now, Palo Alto, getting her PhD, and she wants to be a licensed therapist when she's finished up. And then our youngest, Jordan, just finished and graduated from the University of Alabama, and she has now moved to Minnesota at St Thomas in law school. And so Amy's a dietician and so she's always doing lifestyle modifications based on nutrition. I'm a business coach, Alexandra's a therapist and Jordan's a lawyer. You do not want to come to our dinner table and throw a victim card out. That's right.

AC Lockyer: 11:55

That's right. When the Schmidt hits the fan, the McDonough's can bail you out.

Jim McDonough: 12:00

That's right man. Yeah, you'll get a bounce on at our table, that's for sure. Oh, my goodness, yeah.

AC Lockyer: 12:06

Yeah, that's great, that's funny.

AC Lockyer: 12:09

So you come out of the military and that's one thing is about the military is you can retire from the military and you still have a lot of great years left to you and a lot of people from the military like my uncle Bud, like my Uncle Bud, uh, he went into, uh, basically government jobs and so he became a uh, basically a zoning inspector for, uh, the county of, I'm trying to think, Lee county, down by uh, Port Myers, and then eventually, uh or is it Collier County is one of the two and then eventually went to work for the city and so he retired from the county.

AC Lockyer: 12:44

He retired from the city, he retired from the military and when he finally retired, he was making more money retired than he was when he was working, because he had three retirements. And that's what a lot of people out of the military do, because you retire from the military in your 40s and you're like I got a lot to do here. I, I could still go out and have a whole nother career, and so you decided to be an entrepreneur. Why did you do that?

Jim McDonough: 13:12

Well, I think a lot of us suffer from what Michael Gerber calls the entrepreneurial seizure. It's a one-second decision to go. You know what I'm gonna work for myself, and then there's another one of those seconds that you have at the end. You know what I'm going to work for myself, and then there's another one of those seconds that you have at the end You're like I'm out of here. But what I'm talking about here is so.

Jim McDonough: 13:31

I looked at it because I wanted to have a little bit more control in my life. I wanted to have more free time, chart my own course, my own thing. But my main thing here was I knew in the military and I was a product of the military system is the fact that leaders are built. Leadership is more caught than it is taught, and so I knew that, no matter what we did, I was 43 years old. My body was in still a really good shape. I had about another good 20 years of being able to work if I wanted to work that hard. But I knew I needed to start using this, and so, whatever we were going to get into, we knew we were going to start developing people and build a small team. Well, it turned into be a little bit bigger than that because of our philosophy, and so it wasn't always about money. For us, it was about replacing some of our military benefits that we were receiving, but with about replacing some of our military benefits that we were receiving, but with the retirement, it really took all that pressure off, so we had more freedom to maneuver than most.

Jim McDonough: 14:32

But when we started Veterans and I say this because no matter what the name of it was, because in 2014, we renamed it Veterans Cleaning Solutions and a lot of times we are confused or people just don't know that we're really not a cleaning company so we're a leadership development company, and so we provide deep and essential cleaning services for those that want to lead a healthier lifestyle everywhere they live, work and pray. But that ministry that we have in the background there of being a leadership development company is there's a lot of blue collar kids that are out there that decided not to go to school, didn't have the money to go to school. They were really smart and in some cases, we're a little bit of a safety net to keep them out of prison, right, and so what we do is we teach people how to clean. First thing we do is we put them in the driver's seat of a vehicle. They got to have a driver's license, but we say you're now in charge of another person's life.

Jim McDonough: 15:30

We do responsibility, and so we start developing young men and women. We put seven into the military. We had three that came out of the military, put three back into the military, so we've got 10 that we know they may not be a good fit for us. When I say that that's actually not the right words, I meant to say we're not the best fit for them. They've got greater potential than what we can give them, and so it's not about us, it's about how can we take them from where they're at, find them where they, meet them where they're at and get them to where they want to go using our framework and we only have just a little bit of time.

AC Lockyer: 16:05

All the people that come through your businesses this is my 34th year in business. Coming up here in October will be my 34th year in business and I look at the hundreds of people that have come through my businesses over the years. What is the impact I made on them? Did I bring them in at one level and release them onto their next job at another level? Did I improve them? Did I give them For me being a person of faith? Did I give them a higher evaluation or higher opinion of a walk, a faith walk with Jesus Christ, or what a lot of people call being a Christian? You know, and so you only have this little bit of time to take these people and touch them, and they've been placed in your stewardship and, like you said, you're a leadership development company. They will learn a skill, they will learn how to clean something, but that will be the thing that will make the lasting difference in their life. It will be what you put into them to improve them as a person makes that difference in their life.

Jim McDonough: 17:12

That is right. One of my other mentors and AC, you are one of my mentors, you're one of my big mentors, and so I really do appreciate everything that you've done for me, my family, you've done for all of my team members and their families, and so you and Karen have been so gracious to us, and so that same graciousness has to pass through us. We're a river. We don't want to be a lake or a pond and store it all up, and so all of God's gifts pass through us, and I like to associate myself with people that have the same values and that same mindset that you just explained, and that's what we try to surround ourselves with, not only within the team members inside the business, but the other businesses around us that compliment us, because we throw off a lot of business. I can't do it all, I don't want to do it all, but I do have a compliment of folks around us, and that is where I think the magic really happens as well.

Jim McDonough: 18:03

We work on the individual, and so Zig Ziglar, my other mentor, talked about working on self-image, and when we work on someone's self-image, you can change a person to the core. That's right. And so, through quarterly counseling and coaching and just doing life assessments and really figuring out their goal and tying it to something bigger than them, tying it to their children or their grandchildren. And now it's not about them anymore and they're not working for money, they're working to make sure that their children and grandchildren or whatever their cause is is at the forefront, and it removes them from a transactional relationship and places them right in the center of a transformational relationship. So very much so. Thank you for letting me articulate this and get it out, because I don't get to be able to talk like this very often and I really do hope so many people see this, because this is good.

AC Lockyer: 18:55

Well, and it is good. And now it'll be recorded for posterity. You can play it to your team members and you can say this is what I was trying to say all the time. That's right, yeah. And so you decide to take this entrepreneurial journey and for a lot of people, because we're building a lifestyle business people want freedom, they want to be in control of their own destiny, they want to be able to build something, they want to have an impact on people's lives, they want to do ministry.

AC Lockyer: 19:22

All of those things that we talk about are part of this lifestyle business package and is the reason why we decided to become entrepreneurs because we want to better our lives. We don't want to just have a J-O-B, and there's plenty of people that do have jobs. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with having a job, but for a select group of people, they want to be entrepreneurs. And there's even a select group of people that want to be entrepreneurs, that have all the skills and everything else to own their own companies. But maybe they've done that before and now they're just ready to go to work for somebody else, where they care deeply about the organization and they're an entrepreneur, but they just don't want to put their signature on everything and have all the debt and everything that sometimes comes with a business and so owning that business, there's a reason for that.

AC Lockyer: 20:08

It's a tool to accomplish what we want to accomplish in life and help us achieve our life's goals and dreams. And so, as you started evaluating, you touched on this. But as you started evaluating different businesses you could go into, you started with, of course, the carpet, upholstery, indoor cleaning and landscaping, and you eventually just landed on cleaning. Why cleaning?

Jim McDonough: 20:33

Okay. So, first off, it's a needed service. It's never going to be replaced with AI and it's not going to be replaced with robots the type of cleaning that we do. That we do. Yeah, it's reoccurring, and so this bacteria that's down in the South and all over the East Coast, so glucapsa magma love it. We can't prevent it, but we can inhibit it and we can slow its return, and so we're always going to need it, both inside and outside, and so I just kind of looked at that model, as I didn't want to install driveways. I did that in high school, but that's once and done. I wasn't going to sell homes because of frequency. We looked at these models to try to really understand what was going to be the flow, the cash flow, the stream, and so what was going to be the effort going into it.

AC Lockyer: 21:21

Right, and that's a lot of reasons why big companies sometimes go into restaurants is because people have to eat every day. Food businesses are high dollar businesses and you kind of go down the pecking order. If you build a house, you might build a house or move once every 5 years. You might pour a concrete driveway once every 10 or 15 years, but when you look at the frequency of different things in people's lives, cleaning is something that needs to be done semi-annually, usually two to three times a year and sometimes once a year. But you're back in with that customer over and over again because that acquisition dollar when you advertise you get that customer. You just don't want, as you just explained, a one and done. You want to be able to visit with that customer on a regular basis and continue to have that relationship and provide a very needed service to them but also income back into your company. So it helps you build something that's more sustainable more quickly. That's right Stability is the key.

AC Lockyer: 22:26

So yeah, yeah, yeah. At what point or how did you find SoftWash Systems? Tell us about your SoftWash Systems journey.

Jim McDonough: 22:56

We love you. You do great work and you're also taking care of our lawns on the outside. You're so meticulous with our bushes and our trees and things and you keep us up to date. Would you pressure wash my house and I'm like we don't do that. I don't have those.

Jim McDonough: 23:07

Let me figure. After about the third time a customer asks you it's something you're like, oh, maybe you should entertain this. So I just put a package together and pretty soon we were pressure washing and I was like we were just putting soaps through a regular basic pressure washer. We had a pressure washer in my partner's garage and we started cleaning a couple of homes. Well, that took some effort, right, and we had some damaged screens and some other things and we had some plants that we blew apart. So we thought, well, it's got to be easier.

Jim McDonough: 23:35

So we found this thing that we were downstreaming and we were ex-jetting, and so we were just, you know, we went cleaning faster, but, my gosh, we were just killing plants wholesale. It was a nightmare there. We'd put two times the amount of money into landscaping than we did for charge for the job. And then we're like we got to find a better method. And then it was you had a landscaping company. Well, yeah, exactly, now I had a plant replacement company, right. So we were able to find softwash. We found this goofy guy standing on a roof wearing this hat that looked like Crocodile Dundee. He's spraying stuff on a roof and it's just melting away in front of your eyes. We're like it can't be that easy, there's no way. And we found the Discover Softwash and so we went to Discover Softwash and now I believe that's you call that the open house. Is that right?

AC Lockyer: 24:28

Yeah, so we've just shortened it. So many people are doing so much more online right now and not traveling as much, so we've made a lot of our stuff available online, but people still want to come in after they've done the online stuff, want to come and kick the tire.

SoftWash Systems: 24:47

So we're doing a shortened format now that's more of an open house. You've heard AC Lockyer talk the talk, but wouldn't you like to see him walk the walk? Now is your chance, and it's absolutely free. Spend the day exploring soft wash systems and disruptor manufacturing. On Friday, september 27th, you'll see the business and marketing systems developed by AC at work. But no open house is complete without food, so be sure to stick around for lunch. To register for this free open house event, please call 855-763-8669. We look forward to seeing you on Friday, september 27th.

Jim McDonough: 25:29

Very good. Well, here's to those that are thinking, that are watching this right now and they're thinking about going into this business go there and kick those tires, go see what AC is built. It is just absolutely amazing because, if you remember this, you installed our skid in your driveway and you're building them in your garage. Yes, you wouldn't even think that that was even a possibility. How much a company can grow in such a short period of time. Congratulations, my hat is off to you for what's.

AC Lockyer: 25:56

It's still my garage. It's just around 18,000 square feet of garage.

Jim McDonough: 26:03

You have a garage and just attach a house to it and you'd be good to go. So we went down to Discover Softwash and had a million questions driving down there on the way back Didn't really say a thing because now we were processing everything. But we could see it. We could see it bolt in exactly what we needed to do. We could get rid of the pressure washers and we came back home and we started buying chemicals. So we bought your chemical line first. We started, we built our own system to get things going to, kind of just proof of concept, let's make sure this works first, and it did. And then we purchased a, a skin. We got the education and it just started to build from there.

Jim McDonough: 26:42

And because I was retired, I had some freedom to maneuver. Um, I asked to serve you and so how do I help you? Um, either instruct or teach this? Because I think it was yeah, I thought of that at that time it's very viable for a lifestyle business. We weren't calling it that back then, but it absolutely is. And so I was able to help you and serve you on the educational side.

Jim McDonough: 27:05

Once an instructor, always an instructor. I was a flight instructor, so you just find a different podium to speak behind, and I went through all of your training no-transcript and invited on the board of directors and be able to serve you and your team and the licensed affiliates in the field for three and a half years. That was an amazing opportunity, and so I'm a guy that found you on a video from YouTube and served your organization and it's just an honor and I still do that. This last weekend we were at the huge convention, right, and my goal is to help you reach that thousand millionaires by 2030, if we get there and so you guys helped with setup and even came into the booth and manned the booth a little bit and then I feed you.

AC Lockyer: 28:12

That's right, that's right, that's right.

Jim McDonough: 28:16

I'll do a lot of things for food, a lot of things for food.

AC Lockyer: 28:19

It seems like food is a constant variable in our organization.

Jim McDonough: 28:22

That's it. That's it, wonderful stuff. So again, thank you for the opportunity to serve your organization, and I continue will. And so now, today, I serve your organization through phenomenal business coaching.

AC Lockyer: 28:35

So tell us a little bit about Howard Partridge and his phenomenal business coaching organization and how that ties in with software systems. That's right.

Jim McDonough: 28:44

And so at some point, you're going to reach a point in your business where you're going to struggle, and you're going to struggle hard. And so, for me, one of the best decisions we ever made was to hire a business coach, and this absolutely took us to the next level, because what was really limiting us is what we didn't know, so you just don't know. Once you learn what you don't know, that's where you now get to start making these incremental or exponential leaps in your business is when someone looks in and says, yeah, are you thinking about this? Try turning this, do this over here, stop paying attention to that, do less of this, do more of that and then you're going to have a breakthrough and someone just to listen to you oh, just a sounding board, just a sound partner, that's it right there.

Jim McDonough: 29:31

A business building buddy In the military. I had a battle buddy In life. Today, amy's my life partner there, so I got a life buddy. But having someone inside the business, separated from you a little bit, is just so great to have someone that can really be on your board of directors informally, at a low rate, and so phenomenal business coaching.

Jim McDonough: 29:53

I was introduced to that in 2013. Our business was really struggling hard because I wasn't listening and I wasn't following the model, because I thought I was smarter than UAC and that never turned out good ever. And so I was introduced to Howard Partridge and we started utilizing his training in the inner circle, and it was just incremental, every single year that the coaching paid off, and so it wasn't like 10Xing the business, but we were 10Xing our investment every year, and so that's what was really fundamental we were learning the systems, we were implementing the systems, and it just led to some great, great growth that we needed. Because I talk about being a leadership development company, because the first person that needs to grow is the leader. Your business will never outpace the growth of the leader drug its leadership self yeah, your business will never outgrow you.

AC Lockyer: 30:50

That's right. You've got to grow you to grow your business, that's right.

Jim McDonough: 30:53

You want to be a 50 million person. You've got some growth coming, oh yeah.

AC Lockyer: 30:57

For sure. Don't be about it, man. Oh, it was funny. You said I'll never be smarter than you, ac. No, that's not true. I'm growing all the time and I get humbled all the time. The older I get and the more responsibility I get and the smarter I get humbled all the time. The older I get and the more responsibility I get and the smarter I get, the more humble I get. You just start to realize, man, I'm the big numbnut standing in the way of everything. So if I don't get better, I got to get replaced. And if you don't want to get kicked out of your own business, then you got to get better. That's right. These are about to leave our businesses and their business goes out of business. And whose fault was it? It was our fault, you know, because we didn't know when to make those strategic moves. And of course, Howard Partridge and Phenomenal Products again is another thing that just just seamlessly goes in together with soft wash systems. Because, you want to talk about Phenomenal Products, Softwash Systems in the Ziglar organization, and just the triad that that creates and the mindset I mean I never got a chance to know Zig Ziglar.

AC Lockyer: 32:05

I had heard of Zig Ziglar but I get people all the time saying, man, that stuff you're saying he sounds like Zig Ziglar and I'm like I guess I've never even listened to Zig Ziglar. And then started getting into Zig Ziglar and I'm like I guess I've never even listened to Zig Ziglar. And then I started getting into Zig Ziglar stuff through Howard Partridge and everything, and I realized, man, it's like somebody was sticking that stuff in my bottle as a baby or something. Because that's how I grew up and it all works so well together being able to offer our licensed affiliates the ability to have a coaching company that just laces in to coach our licensed affiliates that are coming up through the ranks. It's just really a great package that we have that makes us completely different than anything else out there in the exterior planning industry.

Jim McDonough: 33:06

I agree with that. There's no other model with these capabilities and the enablers to help you get to where you want to go building this lifestyle business. There's nothing else out there that's like this. It's wonderful, and so this is kind of by God designed, but it's interesting. You talk about Howard Partridge, you bringing those two systems together, and then I'm just a guide. I understand your system. I've been howard's organization since 2013. I've been in here since 2013 and god put you and howard together. That wasn't me, and so and then all of a sudden, to see the two of you talking, I'm like, thank you, lord. You talk about lining up. That was just uh, it was just by divine, divine appointment.

AC Lockyer: 33:50

So and then I'm no spoiler alerts here or anything else, but, um, you know, this january, uh, phenomenal products and soft wash systems are coming together as the waypoint convention, so it's going to be uh, it's going to be pretty cool to put 350 plus people in one room that's gonna be big, that going to be some brain power and some love going on in there.

Jim McDonough: 34:16

That's pretty neat, that's for sure. That's for sure, yep, a lot of hugs going on in there, so that's good.

AC Lockyer: 34:23

Yeah, give all the Softwatch Systems people a little dose of Sherry Perry.

Jim McDonough: 34:26

There you go there you go oh, Sherry, that's right, she's one of Good people. My, oh, scary, that's all right, she's one of Good people. My pods teacher she facilitated that. For years I was in her pod. She's important to me a lot.

AC Lockyer: 34:37

Yes, yep, yeah, so you asked me a question before we got on here and we're talking about licensed affiliates licensed affiliates and you asked me a question about that. Because not everybody understands that, Go ahead and ask me that question again, because you really wanted to address that.

Jim McDonough: 35:03

Very good. Yeah, because this has been on my mind a lot. We're softwash roof and exterior affiliates and so I would like you to just basically just kind of cover really quick what's the difference between being a softwash systems affiliate and a company or a guy that soft washes. And this is really for our clients that are out there, because the clients need to hear this piece of what I think AC is going to drop, because it's going to be gold right here.

AC Lockyer: 35:25

Yeah, somehow back in the day, back to the day, I didn't even use the word or the phrase soft washing. When I started my company, I called it the exclusive Mallard systems. I didn't like pressure washing. I used my background in horticulture to come up with something better. There's got to be something better. We always ask that question and so we came up with what I was calling the Mallard systems. Back then and later it started to become known as soft washing. So I decided to call my company that. I started to put people into the soft wash roof and exterior cleaning business. I decided to call it Soft Wash Systems.

AC Lockyer: 36:08

Honestly, when I went to go by the URL, I was, frankly, kind of surprised. It was available. I was like what? Nobody's bought this yet, and so we've built over the years, which was what started, with a product line and soaps and equipment and everything else eventually evolved to kind of what I call the Mary Kay for men. We do have women in our organization, but it's funny to say Mary Kay for men. We do have women in our organization, but it's funny to say Mary Kay for men. The ladies love it, but Mary Kay for men, where we're all using the same equipment, same chemicals, the trucks were the same but there were different brands on the trucks and we put the Mary Kay sticker on the truck, so to speak, which is the soft wash authorized sticker, and that was good. But what started to happen over the years is people would watch us and people would watch us and they would try to copy or replicate us from what they could see on the outside. And on the outside it's really easy to wrap a truck. It's really easy to put together a website. It's really easy to call yourself Performance Softwash or Patriot Softwash or ABC Softwash.

AC Lockyer: 37:18

Softwash started to become a generic description of a technique for cleaning roofs and exteriors. And what people didn't realize is, along the way we were building an organization, a lot of people liken us to Chick-fil-A. There's a lot of places you can go buy a chicken sandwich, but when you look at Chick-fil-A, chick-fil-a self-describes themselves as a leadership organization that just so happens to sell chicken. Very, very much like what you said at the beginning of this podcast. Okay, very, very much like what you said at the beginning of this podcast. And so there are other companies that send their people to chick-fil-a's campus in georgia to be trained on leadership, not on making a chicken sandwich.

AC Lockyer: 38:05

And so what makes soft wash systems very different and being a licensed affiliate with soft wash systems, this is very different is and this is not braggadocious it is the quality of the people, the quality of the equipment, the quality of the chemicals, the quality of the education and the absolute level of commitment to doing things right in a systemized way so that no matter where you go in the world because we're in eight countries now in three territories no matter where you go in the world, if you choose a soft wash systems license affiliate, you get the same service with the same training and the same equipment, the same chemicals. Everything is the same and the standard is not similar to our competitions. Okay, I give a talk called the apples to apples, apples to oranges and apples to pears. It's about not being comparable to your competition and we're so far and above and beyond anybody else that does softwashing. Not because other people can't softwash, it's because our customer service, our follow-up, our safety, our education, the way our people are certified, the training Every single assistant, tech lead, tech, salesperson, admin gets certified in an organization and their certification goes on the wall in the offices organization and their certification goes on the wall in the offices. But just the level of professionalism and training that we do allows us to get the workers comp that we have, allows us to even get liability insurance, allows us to even get vehicle insurance.

AC Lockyer: 39:44

Because the rest of the exterior cleaning industry right now is absolutely caving. People are getting up on roofs without safety ropes, they're not adhering to OSHA 1910 standard, they're mixing chemicals that are not compatible with each other, burning their lungs and creating issues and killing plants and everything else. They're getting in auto accidents. They're damaging roofs, they're damaging surfaces, they're.

AC Lockyer: 40:10

There's so much ill going on right now in the exterior cleaning industry that when you hire somebody based on a pretty website and a slick wrap and the word soft wash, you really just don't know what you're going to get, because we couldn't protect that word soft wash. It's descriptive, you cannot trademark it. You cannot trademark power wash or pressure wash. Because you're describing something, you're washing something softly. People don't realize you can't trademark a word that is descriptive. And so people are right now using that term while still using pressure washers, using that term while still spraying eight gallons a minute at 3,500 PSI on surfaces that can't handle that and it's just amazing to me.

AC Lockyer: 41:02

People will say to me well, why hire one of your soft wash companies? I'm like, really, did you see the shield on the side of the truck? No, I didn't. I don't know if I saw the shield or not. Well, when they came out, how did they do? Well, they ended up killing my plants and I got some one strokes on my siding on the side of the house. I go.

AC Lockyer: 41:18

I really hate to hear that you did not hire a soft wash systems license affiliate. If you had, it's not that we don't ever have bad days, but it's very, very unlikely that any of that kind of stuff is going to happen. And if it had happened, our customer service is so good and so fast and that we take care of people so proactively that I mean people, it's. It's, you know, it's not good companies, not that good companies don't have bad days. Good companies know what to do with their bad days. And we train our people. We're so well equipped, so well trained leadership stuff. We train people how to sell without being sales people. Do a consultative. We are so well-equipped, so well-trained Leadership stuff. We train people how to sell without being salespeople, do a consultative sale. It's just such a difference when you hire a software systems licensed affiliate. Even though I've tried to describe it, right now I can't describe it. You just have to do it.

Jim McDonough: 42:15

You have to experience it because it is an experience. It's an experience. Our whole system, the system you have built and standardized. If there was a standard in the nation and possibly the world, because you're in how many countries are you now? In Eight countries now, on three territories. Here we go, and so an international standard is being set. And you started that. And I've asked you many times how is there a way that we can standardize the exterior cleaning world, like has been done with the IICRC on the interior side? And so you've set those standards and you're carrying a torch far in front of everybody else. And that's one of the reasons why I really like this, because there is a set of standards that I will bear Okay, and they're not always easy to comply with, but they're there for a reason because it protects the customer, protects the plants, protects the company and it protects our planet.

AC Lockyer: 43:07

And it goes even above that because we're very, very, very picky with the people we let into the organization anymore.

AC Lockyer: 43:15

There was a time when we would put between 90 and 100 people into the business every year and we're down now to about 20, because we make them sign an actual licensing agreement, we make them go through criminal background checks, which you'd be surprised how many people can't pass the criminal background checks. We're just very, very picky. Our new process now is every single person that wants to join SoftWatch Systems, to become a licensed affiliate, has to go through a final one-hour interview with me, and if I just don't get warm fuzzies about you, you cannot be in SoftWatch Systems. And so we've gotten very, very, very selective. And it's hurt a lot of people's feelings, frankly, because there are a lot of people that are out there in the business that didn't cut the mustard to make it into softwash systems. We're that exclusive now and it's to protect our customers, it's to protect our name and our brand, it's to protect the customer's property and their family, it's to make sure that people don't get victimized and there's a lot at stake. So we're very, very picky.

Jim McDonough: 44:30

Trust you and I thank you on behalf of my clients.

AC Lockyer: 44:33

They don't know what you've done for them, and we hope they never have to know or appreciate it. That's right. It's one of those things that it works if nobody realizes it's in place. That's right.

Jim McDonough: 44:48

Yeah, yeah, thank you for answering that. That, I think, is going to be very beneficial to the licensed affiliates and I hope that our licensed affiliates show that little clip right there to their customers. Yeah, that'll be a good thing.

AC Lockyer: 45:02

So the next thing I'd like to find out is okay. So, veterans, you alluded to earlier that you guys, of course, are in a 25,000 person market and starting to branch out into a 70,000 person market market. Between the two of those, it's not 100,000 people, I mean, it's still bringing both of those markets together. It's still very, very small town, and so when you look at that, you said that you broke a million dollars, correct, so that's a huge feat and you still have more room to grow there. So tell me about the future of veterans, where are you taking this now?

Jim McDonough: 45:45

Yeah, very good. So what we're trying to do is what we're working to do every year and the market has a say in where we're going with this, and so we're trying to get to $1.5 million. Where we're going with this, and so we're trying to get to a million five. That's where we want to be able to have that base revenue in there with a 20% EBITDA, with that then at 37% of 1.5 million, and that 37% is our market share in Dothan. That should allow us to go brick and mortar and cover all of the expenses for the facility. But just by moving trucks and putting the tank here in the yard is going to primarily cover all that. But what we're looking at is the recouping of the dollars that's going to be associated with standing up a second branch, so I don't want to do it too fast. I got to make sure that it is funded properly and that's what we're really working to build To make sure that that happened in 2019,.

Jim McDonough: 46:39

Amy and I put our house on the market. It sold in 11 hours. It took us 11 months to find our next home. We moved into Dothan. I moved the family to Dothan to start selling and growing relationships here to be able to hit that mark. And then, of course, covid hit and we've been making some adjustments that mark. And then, of course, covid hit and we've been making some adjustments ever since.

AC Lockyer: 46:59

And so now, I'm going to go back just a second here. You talked about going brick and mortar and getting your second location. I'm going to ask Madeline, who is just our absolute she's a whiz, she does such a great job in our creative services department to go ahead and pull up right now on the podcast a picture of your current facility, because I just have to say, Jim, we made it the cover page of our Facebook page for a while too. You did an incredible company photo there in front of your nice little shop. It's kind of a country, kind of People call them bar to mediums now and it's a nice middle building with a wraparound porch and everything else. You have a beautiful facility. I'm hoping you do something very, very similar in Dothan, because it's such a great look. You got a great little freestanding facility Right, and that helps too when you're building a lifestyle business. You own that building there in Enterprise and then you're going to start working on owning the building there in Dothan. That's correct.

Jim McDonough: 47:59

That's correct, and so multiple streams of income. We're not going to build a massive facility because we don't need a massive facility. It's got to be adequate. We go on site to do all that cleaning, and so we just need a safe place to do our work and to be able to and occasionally store some of our equipment when we have some freezing days. But other than that, the back of our shop is where our rug facility, our rug bath is at our rug spot, and so that's a pretty important piece. To have a key location that legitimizes the business at the five-star company level. It professionalizes you. There's no doubt about that the five-star company level.

AC Lockyer: 48:37

It professionalizes you. There's no doubt about that. It does, for sure, very, very good. So you'll expand to Dothan. You'll get to about a million five. You're going to go ahead and get a second facility going and now that puts you in a position where you're looking at, you have your military retirement, you've got a business now that will be turning off some profit. But you had to bring some key people into your organization to make that possible. Let's talk about those key people.

Jim McDonough: 49:02

Well, thank you, let's go there because these are the heroes that run it every day. So Scott and Nicky MacMahon and so they are a blended family Scott's got 22 years, he's retired, also in the Army Reserve. They're a wonderful company husband and wife combination. I actually was recruiting Scott. Over four years that sweet man would come and eat lunch with his wife, nikki, who is our director of admin. Scott is now our director of operations.

Jim McDonough: 49:32

But Scott just finished his college degree, was a bit stuck on where he was going to grow in his existing career, which he had 20 years at a natural gas company here in town and it's a very successful, very large gas company. But he didn't see where he was going to have growth and so I just asked him, kind of worked with him every day to figure out who Scott was. But I knew he was loyal and he was smart, as all get out, and he would work hard, and so he's a veteran, fit right in with us. And we also have Kim, which is Nikki's mother, scott's mother-in-law. She works in our marketing to work relationship marketing, and so we've got a triad of people and I know companies and books will tell you not to hire many people from a single family, but it does put you at risk. But when you got the right people and the right rewards in place and they love this business and they are fighting just as hard to keep everything going every day because it's always a struggle, that kind of stuff and so we've got a beautiful team. And part of what we're talking about here AC is the fact that we are a leadership development company. That's right. I coach them, they coach our assistant managers, the assistant managers worked out into our technical ranks and so, just like the military, your officers are working with your NCO Corps, your NCO Corps is working with your junior enlisted and we grow together. That's right. That's what we're doing. We approve it inside.

Jim McDonough: 51:00

Michael Gerber talks about your business as the prototype franchise model. That's what we're doing. We're blueprinting it and we had last year we had seven companies come. Well, this year we had seven companies. So far this year, seven companies come visit us to take a look at how we're doing this in a little tiny town. See how you run it yeah, a little tiny town and be in the top 7% to 10% of all businesses in the United States.

Jim McDonough: 51:24

And I don't know if most people understand this, but when you look at Main Street, whatever town you're in, businesses that actually make a million dollars and this would be, according to the Small Business Administration, only about 10% of all businesses right now make a million dollars a month. That's right. It's a very small percentage, yeah. And so people are thinking, well, I'll just build a million-dollar business. There's a lot of work there and it is tough to get there. But once you get there getting there and then staying there, then that and then growing through that you're going to need some help and it's not as easy as most people think. And recruiting.

AC Lockyer: 52:04

It's a long game approach and I love what you said. It took you four years of talking to Scott while he was in eating lunch with his wife and just really listening to him, and just that relationship you built up. You were able to convince him to go ahead and make the move to come over with you guys. And a lot of people just don't realize, jim, that you don't run ads for those types of people. Those types of people already have good jobs. That's right. The only way that you get those key players into your organization is you have to become a recruiting machine and you have to go out and find those people and little by little bring them into the organization. I mean, you remember Whitney? Okay, right, that brand softwash. This was for me Back when I was still doing business consulting. She worked for a sportswear apparel company that did amateur athletic league uniforms for sports teams, and so I was consulting that company and she was there, and when she was ready to leave from there she bounced over to another one of my clients. It was a construction company. They were looking for somebody. I knew that she was available, so I introduced the two of them and orchestrated that move for them. And then she called me one day and said hey, listen, construction industry is a little hard. These people cuss more than I thought they were ever going to. I've spent a couple years here. I think I'm ready to move on. I said, well, hey, now she was two years removed from my client, the first client that I had her with and said, well, let me talk to Joe and ask Joe. And so I talked to Joe over at the construction companies and he said, yeah, she's going to leave and yeah, I don't mind you trying to hire AC.

AC Lockyer: 53:53

And then I brought Whitney on and Whitney was at first. She said to me. She said, well, I don't really want to work for you. I'm going to start my own accounting company, and you know, but I'll, you know, I'll help you guys with your accounting. And I said, great, you know, karen, you know she doesn't know a lot about accounting.

AC Lockyer: 54:12

And I had Whitney start just coming to the house one day a week, right, and help Karen with the books. And I had Whitney start just coming to the house one day a week and help Karen with the books. And then one day a week became two days a week. And then one day she mentioned that her computer was dying. So we were at Sam's one day and they had this really nice computer for sale and I said we're going to buy that computer for Whitney. So we bought it and the next day we gave her a new computer, and that was three days a week. She was with us in four days a week. A new computer and that was three days a week, she was with us in four days a week.

AC Lockyer: 54:45

And you know how big of an asset Whitney was. Now she's off as a partner, running and an owner at Wise Coatings, achieving her life's goals and dreams, and got married and everything else. And I only had her for about I think it was about six years that she ran SoftWatch Systems for me. I only had her for a little while, but I had her for a little while and look at what has happened now. But I would have never, ever, ever got a person like her by running an ad. That's not where you find people like that. You find people like that in your life and then you befriend them and then you move them in little by little into your company and that's a huge tip.

Jim McDonough: 55:19

That's right. You're never going to find super stellar performers, a players in the ranks of the unemployed. They've already got a job. You've got to develop your systems so they can see the systems, the automation that they are able to plug into to be able to lead their people. And if you're bringing management down, they better have management skillset. And then once you're attracting them and you build yourself into that talent magnet, people will then move to you, they'll be gravitating to you and then you'll not have an issue with finding talent because your talent will find talent and it'll just start developing. I don't have much issues finding people in town. It's really finding people with morals and values that will allow to come on the team, because you're inviting them. You don't just get a. We don't hire hands because we know there's too much at stake. That's right. Too much at stake, yeah, yep, and you will build into people, you'll pour into people. You'll work with their life's goals and dreams. You're going to cry with some of them and it should be personal, because there's a lot of people.

AC Lockyer: 56:19

It's done right yeah, these people that say business is business, family is family, church is church. Don't trust those people. It's all the same bowl of goulash. And if you don't, if you don't realize that you're fooling yourself that's right.

Jim McDonough: 56:32

These are transactional people you ought to be. You want to be a lifestyle business that's going to have great people for a long period of time. You have to be a transformational soul yourself. That's right.

AC Lockyer: 56:43

Yeah, All right. So, as we close this out, Jim, what I like to ask everybody is if there was somebody listening to this podcast right now and you're encouraging them to make the right moves and they were considering soft wash systems, look into the screen right now and tell them why should they consider soft wash systems or partnering with soft wash systems to get their lifestyle business going. There we go.

Jim McDonough: 57:11

So if you are on that fence or you're looking at making that decision, if you're listening to this video, I highly recommend that you go to the open house. You go down and you take a look at the facility. You get to meet AC and Karen, but you get to meet the staff, so you know what your support network is, your support net behind you is all about. You'll get to see all of the elements that AC and I have discussed here today, that AC has meticulously built for your benefit. Ac is planting seeds and acorns in the ground. He's growing massive oaks. He will probably never sit in the shade that you will.

Jim McDonough: 57:49

This is an incredible individual You're not going to find. I don't know if you're going to find anybody that's in this segment right here that's going to care about you as much as any other company will. He doesn't even know you yet, but he's got a big heart and he loves people and he will work hard to help you succeed. You got to put in the work, but he's done so much. Right now he's exponentially cut time off your success horizon and we got a great easy business. The model is just super easy to follow. I highly recommend you pull down and get the pro forma and you fall in love with that spreadsheet before you fall in love with all the trucks and the wraps and the shiny stuff. You better know that pro forma and you better understand education is where you're going to trade time for a skill and that skill is going to pay the bills. He's already built all that framework to develop those skills quickly so you can start building your lifestyle and building your dream.

AC Lockyer: 58:53

Thank you. Thank you. Us and guys listen. If you liked this, go ahead and hit like down below, hit share, go ahead and repost this on social media, but also to subscribe, because about every week it's about 48 of these a year that we put these out. There's going to be more great discussions like this and whether you join SoftWatch Systems or not, there's always golden nuggets. There are so many golden nuggets just in this talk, jim right here, that even if you're not in soft washing, if you're landscaping, if you're painting, if you're pest control, it doesn't matter. You could still learn a lot about building a lifestyle business, right, guys? So this is AC Locke here with Jim McDonough. As always, go forth and prosper. See you guys later.