AC Lockyer: 0:13

Welcome to Building a Lifestyle Business. I'm AC Lockyer here. Of course this is presented by Softwash Systems and we're going over to the eastern side of the United States this week and we're going to be you're in Pennsylvania area, right, correct, central Pennsylvania there. And this is Jacob, and Jacob has got a great story, great family. So I'm just going to let you kind of take it away, Jacob. Give us, as I always say, the non-soft wash systems, non-soft washy, biographical information on you and your family, what you guys like to do and all that kind of stuff Absolutely Well.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 0:56

Thank you, AC, for having me on, for inviting me. I'm definitely excited to speak with you. Give a little bit of insight about myself, about our softwashing business. So I guess, to start with the personal stuff, obviously my name is Jacob, jacob Sukhorukov. I am married. My wife is Anya Sukhorukov. Many of you know her. She runs Softwash Accounting.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 1:22

So we have two young sons. The older one is Levi and he is going to be three and during the winter the younger one is Artem and he is about one and a half now. So we, like AC mentioned, we're from central Pennsylvania. Specifically, we live right outside of State College Pennsylvania. So if there's any college football lovers, we used to live about a mile from the stadium. We moved recently from Beaver Stadium, nittany Lions. So that's the geographic area where we're located. A little bit about I, I guess, my, my history. I grew up in in the former Soviet Union. My family immigrated to the United States in 94, so I was 8 years old. I came over here and we immigrated to upstate New York, in Syracuse and I lived there for years.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 2:24

I did my college there. But my background in terms of profession, what I've done I've worked in a lot of different industries. I started in the food industry when I was a teenager. I've ran pizza shops, I've worked in restaurants and there was something actually at one point I wanted to pursue as a career. I love to cook, spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Both my wife and I cook all the time. It's just, it's a passion we have. Interesting fact I actually did a year of culinary school when I was young. I was pretty serious about pursuing that and then just life led me down a different path. So after that I went to real school, as you could say, and I was in the medical field. I worked as a nurse for years and I really enjoyed that, but I wasn't one of those that was called into the field. Nice, Some people grow up to really love that job.

AC Lockyer: 3:26

Yes, yes.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 3:27

And for me it was more to get my mom off my back and I knew that at some point I needed to have a profession that had some reputation attached to it and money-breaking possibilities. So I did that for years until I just realized that that was not for me. It wasn't something that I wanted to do long term. I knew a lot of older nurses were pouring out and wonderful people. I mean it's definitely, it's a profession that's needed, but it was not something that I knew I was going to enjoy for the next 40 years of my life.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 4:05

I knew I was going to enjoy for the next 40 years of my life and right around that time I met Anya. We're both Christians, we're people of faith, and I met her through our. We went to different churches and our church was having like a joint camp and I was the youth leader at the time at our church, worked mostly with, with, uh, middle school aged kids, sure, and, and Anya, my, my future wife at the time was the administrator of this camp that we're we're having and that's how I met her and, uh, I know it sounds cliche, but as soon as I saw her I knew I was gonna marry her and uh.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 4:44

So it's an interesting story how we met and stuff. But that's how we met and we got married. It was a little bit over a year from the point that we the first time we met to when we were married. It was a little bit over a year and that's kind of how I ended up in central Pennsylvania. It was my wife. She's also from the former Soviet Union. She was very young when she came here with her family also refugees. It was a tumultuous time in the Soviet Union in the early 90s. We were both born.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 5:23

So she was living in State College, pennsylvania and when we're going through the process, when we're engaged and planning our wedding, I would visit State College quite often and I found the area it's got great people, there's a lot of opportunities, there's a lot of things to do. It's a very small town but it has a big town feel to it because of the college. Demographically it's a beautiful place for a business because there is a very tight-knit community. But the average income, the average household income, in our area is fairly high as compared to most of rural Pennsylvania. So then I moved here. I've been here for about 10 years. Half of that time I actually was.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 6:24

After my medical field I got into framing and working in the construction trades and when I moved here I obviously met a lot of new people, great people, and developed some friendships. And two of my close friends were starting a construction company and I ended up jumping on board with them, not knowing a whole lot about construction, but I knew how to reach people, I knew how to communicate, I knew how to just my nursing background, how to document things, how to administratively make things happen, and then there was definitely a learning curve. Through construction and learning we ended up growing a fairly large and successful construction company. It's still around. I'm no longer part of it, but I learned a lot about business at that time and it was at that time I also realized that I don't want to work for somebody else. I want to be in charge of my own time.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 7:30

Anya and I have always been pretty good with our finances, making sure we're not carrying a lot of debt. We're not very materialistic people, so I don't need to have a fancy car or a big house or designer watches and things like that. That kind of never appealed to me. But the aspect of business where you get to control your time and how you spend your time and not being kind of bogged down with you know, bill the HR manager breathing down your neck making sure you're clocked in at 9 o'clock to 5 o'clock. Right, that was not something, and I've worked plenty of jobs like that. I've worked with a lot of different managers.

AC Lockyer: 8:14

One of them included all-you-can-eat pizza.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 8:16

Yes.

AC Lockyer: 8:20

Which was a huge benefit at the time. I don't know if you look back on that time in your life and go man, I could have stayed with all I could eat pizza the rest of my life.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 8:30

Well, you know what? I still eat pizza pretty often. That's actually. It didn't ruin it for you, no, never. You know, working that job, I actually became a very good pizza baker. Working that job, I actually became a very good pizza maker. So I've done all sorts tossed pies, machine-pressed pies, pan pies. So maybe next time we get together I'll make a pizza for you, ac. Oh, that would be wonderful.

AC Lockyer: 8:57

Especially if you use cauliflower crust, because I am diabetic, but I can probably cheat and have a piece or two. Yeah, my wife worked for a pizza place called Pinocchio's Pizza. It was a chain out in West Texas and so when we were dating we used to dream about having our own pizza restaurant and we were going to call it Old Times Pizza. And we had all the names of the different pizzas, like the Teddy Roosevelt was our pepperoni pizza. It was speak softly but carry a big stick of pepperoni.

AC Lockyer: 9:26

You know the old timer, you know, was the model T pizza. You know it was cheese or cheese, you know.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 9:33

So my heart sings to the pizza business and I think in a lot of ways, pizza really is an analogy for life, because pizza, you know, anytime you say the word pizza, everyone has their own idea of what a pizza is, what it looks like, usually round, uh, toppings and and uh. You go across the nation to different pizza shops and just the the quality, the level of ingredients, the final product in in a simple like, I guess to. To boil it down, it's all the same thing, right, you have a dough, you have a sauce, you have some cheese, you have some toppings. But the care with which all that is put together and the right ingredients that go into it make a huge difference in that bite, in that bite of pizza, at the, at the very end of it and stylistically, everybody, like you mentioned, everybody has a different version of what pizza should look like or taste like.

AC Lockyer: 10:35

You got the thick crust or the thin crust, you got the cracker crust or the doughy crust, you got the you know, hand tossed, or I mean you just go into it and I mean I the most interesting pizza I ever had and this is a tangent, but it's interesting and this is what makes podcasts great the most interesting pizza I ever had is I was in Quebec, canada.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 10:57

And and I had escargot pizza Escargot, that's caviar right, right snails on my pizza.

AC Lockyer: 11:08

I was having pizza with a guy his name was Denny fushay and uh, denny, um, great guy, uh was, was in the soft washing for a while, and so I was up there visiting him and helping him with his business and he took me out for pizza and he ordered a pizza with snails on it as the ingredient and I'm like really snails, and I tried it and it was good. So you can literally put anything on a pizza. That's interesting.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 11:37

You're. You're a braver man than I could try snails, but maybe if I'm ever in Quebec I'll take a look at it.

AC Lockyer: 11:46

Yeah, and so you went down the slippery slope of entrepreneurialism.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 11:53

Yeah, yeah. And my first taste of that was really in the construction world, where I got a sense of that freedom. I was able to come and go as I pleased, I was fully in charge of my own schedule and my compensation at the time all our compensation was really based on the results that we were able to provide. So no one you know the other two partners. We didn't hold office hours for each other or keep track of each other. We just assumed that the other person is doing their job and we would know if they're not very quickly, because things would just not come together.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 12:34

There's a lot of moving parts and I really enjoyed that aspect of it. I made decent money doing it but I was able to. Especially, anya and I were freshly married at this point and I wanted to be able to spend time with my wife and plants to travel and see places. So that was the first taste of it and at that point it was probably a year or two years into it I started looking for opportunities to start my own business and we're looking and I looked at different franchises and had different opportunities that were kind of in front of us that we're looking at and that's kind of what led me to Softwash, which is kind of an interesting story about how I my first contact or my first experience in softwashing, so go ahead and roll right into that. Let's talk about that Absolutely so in construction we did high-end sidings, private metal panels, different fiber cement type of panel systems, and one of the things that we would run into is contractors that we've worked with after a few years reach out to us and ask us hey, the stuff that you guys put on the wall, it looks great, but it has this funk growing on it.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 13:55

How do we clean it off? And obviously my first instinct at that point was well, just pressure wash it. You can't. Some of these surfaces are delicate, you can't pressure wash them. So we started doing some research and figuring out and reaching out to the manufacturers and all they would say is a mild soap solution with a cloth, which you know makes sense if you're doing, if you're doing your house and you have the time.

AC Lockyer: 14:21

Yeah, it makes sense if you're washing your car, but scrubbing your whole house with a washcloth and a mild soap solution is not how you want to spend your Saturday afternoon.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 14:30

No, no, and this was. These are some massive buildings 40, 50, 100,000 square feet.

AC Lockyer: 14:35

So yeah, there's next the next 10 Saturday afternoons, Right.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 14:39

So I always thought there was something that was on our radar. We're trying to figure out how to do that. And I remember I came home one evening and Anya was home. She was on the couch and she's like hey, I have this awesome video I want to show. And it was actually AC on YouTube soft washing a wall.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 14:59

And I remember seeing it and I'm like I thought to myself there's no way. That just looks way too simple, way too easy. You know, commercial construction doesn't have easy answers ever in anything. So we started doing some research and that's how we stumbled upon SoftWatch systems and then Anya reached out to you guys and you guys invited us to discover SoftWatch and this was in 2018 still so quite a few years ago and I remember we flew down and we spent a couple of days. We actually went to your personal house. We did I remember we did the brick wall next to the playground, at the entrance to your development. Yes, and up to that point, I was still a skeptic. Obviously, I saw it. I saw a lot of the presentation. I was certainly impressed with Softbox Systems as an organization, ac, a lot of the people that we're meeting. They were very friendly, very outgoing. It seemed like the values that you guys had as a company really aligned with my own personal values you know the values that anya and I uh have in common or that we share. And, uh, it was when we saw that brick walled and I'm like this is this guy's really onto? Something like this is this is definitely.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 16:21

I was very interested and we spent the next probably month just every day talking about soft washing, driving around. We flew back to state college, obviously, and we were driving around looking at all the homes, looking at all the roofs. I was doing research into what competition we had around and there was really no one that was offering that type of service in our area. So that's when we decided that we need to, you know, jump into this and we made the call, we ordered our first system from you guys and at first it was going to be a division, a separate division in the bigger company, and I just because soft washing is, most of you know, is really a residential service. You could absolutely apply it in commercial senses, but for most people, especially starting out, residential market is where it's at.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 17:19

It's definitely where you cut your teeth for sure. Yes, yeah, and us working in commercial. It wasn't flowing together. So at one point I remember my father-in-law actually came over and I've had my truck, I've had the system on the back of it and it was sitting outside of our house for 90% of the time and every once in a while, for the first six months that we had it, I'd go out and I'd do one job. My father-in-law was just like he told me you have to either sell all this and go back to working your job and live a normal life, or you need to just jump both feet in and actually make something out of this. It's usually like it's painful watching. You know you're, you got a truck payment, you have the system and stuff like some startup costs that that we had. So that's when I prayed about it.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 18:12

Me and I talked about it, and then it took me a few more months to figure out how to exit the company that I was with without leaving them in a pickle and their training mountain placement. Long story short, that's how I got into soft wash and never looked back.

AC Lockyer: 18:30

So I'm not sure how they say it in the South in Russia, but in the South here in the United States we say you had your crap, or get off the pot moment.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 18:39

Exactly what it was. I don't know what that would be in Russian, but I'm trying to think if they have something, they have something similar. It's probably a little bit more colorful language, though. Yes, though, yes.

Announcer: 18:59

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 is absolutely free. Spend the day exploring soft wash systems and disruptor manufacturing. You'll see the business and marketing systems developed by AC at work. But no open house is the point without food, so be sure to stick around for lunch To register for this free event. Please call 855-763-8669 to reserve your spot. We look forward to seeing you at our next open house.

AC Lockyer: 19:39

I'm cool, so I know that, yes, you had a little bit of a slow start, but things definitely started building momentum, and we were having this conversation the other day. Let's talk about how you really started, without giving away trade secrets or marketing secrets or any of the good stuff we do here at soft wash systems. I want to encourage people because the story is the same whether it's a soft washing company or a carpet cleaning company or a landscaping company or an air conditioning company, or it could be. You're a lawyer and you're hanging out your shingle and you're starting your own practice, or even a doctor. These things don't. You don't hang up your shingle and bam, business comes in the door. It takes some work. We were talking about that the other day. Let's talk about that absolutely.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 20:30

Just like anything else, anything in life that's worth pursuing, you have to put time and effort into it. You have to put time into it, and the first thing I did is I wanted to fully understand what it is. What is the service that I'm offering Soft washing using S-Age and surfactants to clean it but I wanted to understand it much more so that I could take that and present that knowledge to potential clients, so that you can present yourself as an expert.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 21:01

Exactly, exactly. I wanted to. It was actually in our original website. Our mission statement was we want to set the standard for soft washing in our region. We've really focused on that, and the reason for that was I knew sooner or later I'm gonna have competition. Sooner or later people are gonna copy this, they're gonna be out there, and I wanted to position myself where position where our company was the one that was leading that charge, if you will.

AC Lockyer: 21:36

You always want people to look like they're pursuing you and your standard, not just meeting you at the bar. You've always got to lead.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 21:47

Exactly so. A lot of research, the classes that you or SoftWatch Systems offered was absolutely pivotal for us because I learned so much. There's so much information that's condensed into it and what's interesting is I often go back to these classes, even now, where when you read through it the first time, it's all kind of simple, it makes sense, you understand it. But every one of those bolting points is a selling point and that's how I've always approached it. I um anytime I go out to a quote. You know I have a. We developed a script that we would follow, but I I wanted to be almost the same script, but I wanted to highlight different aspects of soft washing. Every Well, depending on you know what I would see or what I thought would draw that particular client towards. You know using us and working with us. So I guess my recommendation to anyone, either starting out or anyone that's already in the industry, is, first of all, you have to deliver a good service. You have to.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 22:58

At the end of the day, you want to make sure, if you're promising people that you're going to clean their home, you're going to clean their roof, their sidewalk, whatever it is, that it is done well. And this is something I? I spend a lot of time training my guys on being able to just look at something and see if it's cleaned to a satisfactory level or not. So we really that was my huge step. 99% of the jobs at the time I was doing myself and I would not leave until I knew the place looked clean and that the homeowner was there and they would do a walk around with me and I made sure that they looked at everything and they were very happy and that, especially in our area, where people talk to each other, there's a strong sense of community here.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 23:50

It really helped us early on because it was to the point where, if I'm walking around and say I just cleaned your house, ac and you and I are walking around and I think that we did a fantastic job, everything looks great. If I sense any kind of hesitation from you or if I notice you looking at something in your eyes, keep going back to that, I would bring it up and be like AC. I want you to be happy. I want you to recommend friends and family. What is not to your liking, yes, in an honest and gentle way, and people will tell you and then they have much more trust for you, because you know they're not even saying anything.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 24:32

I'm just watching them and I can see by their body language that they're not happy about anything. I'm just I'm watching them and I could see by their body language that something they're not happy about something and would figure it out and, uh, at the very start, that really helped us solidify a good reputation and word. You know, word of mouth travels slowly, but it but it travels far and that's how we, that's how we started, that's how we started, that's how we would start. Building up our client base is a lot of word of mouth, referrals, obviously, everything that SoftWash Systems taught us in terms of popcorn marketing and the wraps, sublimation t-shirts. We put all those things into practice. All those things into into practice and we would. We would put our yard signs out. I would talk to at least one neighbor while we're cleaning, another neighbor while we're doing a quote and never trying to sell them on really anything I would just go there, talk to them and explain to them what we're doing.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 25:31

Hey, we're going to be spraying some solutions next door at fred's house. You might smell a little bit of bleach. Here's why. Here's what we're doing. Um, here's my card. By the way, if you, if you decide you want to get a quote after you see his house, feel free, you may give me a call. Um so a lot of relationship building.

AC Lockyer: 25:50

So I use an I use an analogy, and the analogy is because one of the things that you and I were discussing is really the lack of advertising that you do that you don't do business for one year Most everybody in the room raise your hand. Two years, three years, okay. If you've been in business for three years, leave your hand up. Okay, good, now, of all of you that still have your hand up, how many of you guys are still paying for advertising? If you're no longer advertising, lower your hands. If you're using paid advertising Google, angie's List, stuff like that Facebook truck company leave your hand up. If you're a two truck or more company, put your hand down. Okay. So now I'll have, probably in a room of cleaning companies our industry you're going to have of 100 people, you're gonna have 25 hands still up in the air. Okay, I'll say, okay now, if you've been in business for over three years and you still only have one truck on the road and you're still advertising, I've got some tough news for you. You're like, okay, so, okay. Well, I'm going to give you an analogy real quick, and the analogy is this and because we use the current times, you know Donald Trump, when he ran for president the second time he did not get reelected. Everybody said you know on that side it was a stolen election. No, he had a 33% approval rating. A president has never been reelected with an approval rating less than 40%. Okay, and then at this time, you know, joe Biden's still president and I'm like Joe Biden right now has a 32% approval rating. He's not going to get reelected. Well, we all know he's for sure not getting reelected now because he's not even running for president anymore. And then I would look at people and say, listen, if you had at least a 33% approval rating that means one third if you did 100 customers in a year, 33 of them would move over to the next year and use you again. And then if you a third of the next year's customers approved of you and would use you again, they move over to the next year. So in three years, 33% plus 33 is 99 in three years between your satisfied customers and any referrals you might get out of them.

AC Lockyer: 29:04

In three years. You should basically not have to advertise anymore just by having a 33 job approval rating. And now I've got all the contractors in the room sitting back and forth looking at each other. They're like okay, I'm like now. If you're three years old and you're still having to advertise, that means you have a job approval rating less than Joe Biden and everybody's like, and everybody would laugh and everything because it's funny and it's slightly edgy, because it's slightly political and everything else, but ps. You know, donald trump had a low approval rating too and he didn't get re-elected. But everybody's like, oh. And then I start telling them if you have a 50 job approval rating, how long should it take before that one truck is busy enough, it's self-sustaining, you don't need to advertise anymore and people are like well, 50% two years, I'm like right.

AC Lockyer: 30:01

If you have a 75% job approval rating 75% of your customers if you ask them, would they use you ever again? How long does it take for you to get completely busy and not have to advertise for that truck anymore? It's 18 months. Do you have 100% job approval rating? It's one year. Actually, at 100% job approval rating, it's less than one year.

AC Lockyer: 30:22

Because your customers are referring people to you at such breakneck speed that in six months you're busier than you can humanly possibly handle. And we've had some people come out of soft wash systems, come out of Top Gun, go to their areas, start their businesses and in six months they're swamped. It's because they're doing really, really good work. And I just tell people, I say listen, if you go out and you do a good job, if you answer the phone, if you show up, if you do what you said you're going to do, if you look at the customer and make sure they're like you just said, they're absolutely happy.

AC Lockyer: 30:57

Do not let me walk off your property. If you're dissatisfied at all, please tell me what can I do. Don't just be non-confrontational, passive, aggressive and let me leave. Tell me where did I fail? Did I fail anywhere? If they go, no, I'm completely happy. You did a great job. You did a great job, and so that's really what you have to do nowadays, to make sure, because advertising is very, very expensive. It's very expensive, and so, from what you were telling me the other day when we were talking, you have achieved that. You have one truck right now, and what advertising are you doing?

Jacob Sukhorukov: 31:43

So we, outside of our very first year, using Angie leads to get the ball moving initially, to get the ball moving initially, and even that was very limited. We've never run any paid ads. I've never, and it's not. I wanted to at one point just to try it out, but it was kind of hard to figure out. I'm not super computer savvy. I know how to use computer but I'm not, you know, setting. I wasn't the one to set it up. We've actually never run paid ads outside of uh print materials. Like I think I mentioned, we we had uh software systems design a booklet for us and we get probably a thousand of those printed every year and we hand those out. Um, that's our main form of marketing. Is, or advertising, is those booklets that we give to anyone that we see and the truck wrap and then doing a great job and, to add to what your point was, do a fantastic job, but things are going to go wrong, things are going to go wrong, plants are going to get burnt.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 32:55

Especially if you're new to the industry, you're just starting out, and I would use each one of those opportunities to build our brand, if you will, or build trust in people, because many things went wrong, something got damaged, somebody wasn't happy, and it's not the issue. It's how you resolve the issue that really builds trust in people, where I have some of my strongest clients that refer us all the time for people who, during the process of working with them, an issue would come up. They would be upset. Um, sometimes I would have to, you know, because I don't get upset and I'm I'm not a very passive guy, I'm a very passionate, I'm a russian, you know, so I have a lot of passion I'm not an angry guy, but I I will stand up and defend myself, and that's right.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 33:46

I believe in um, so a lot of times I'd have to walk away and be okay. But it's not really about me, right? It's about building a future for my family. It's about building a successful company that then, you know, could be a vehicle for me to accomplish what I want to accomplish for my family. And I'll think about that and I'll come back and humble myself and I'll be like miss smith yes, we made a mistake. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Something went wrong. I will fix it for you. Let's talk about it. What would make you happy? What can I do to set this straight? To walk away, not only you being happy with the service, but you feel like we've developed a relationship that you could refer me to to your friends and family, that you'll trust us next year to come back and do the same thing and avoid the issue at this time. And I have so many examples of exactly these types of situations where they helped propel us even further, even further, yeah, because.

AC Lockyer: 34:50

I tell people all the time, jacob, that it's not that great companies don't have bad days. Great companies know what to do with their bad days, exactly, yeah, yeah. So that's the focus is be the great company. It's not that great companies don't stumble. And you humbling yourself to go back and ask that question to the customer and then making it right. You humbling yourself to go back and ask that question to the customer and then making it right. It's almost like screwing up on a job has 10 times more of the value than doing a job right the first time, because you get to show the customer your character and it endears them to you even more.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 35:26

Absolutely, and it's a huge help and it goes in line with I learned as I was going through it and every single house I would clean, I would get better at setting the correct expectations, which then I think setting correct expectations with your clients is also really important to relationship building, because I've watched other people. I've watched. I have local friends who are my competitors and I've heard what they say to clients and it always kind of baffled me. I'm like you haven't even seen the house. She just called you, gave you an address, you quickly measured it on Google on your phone and you call her back and you're like, yeah, we'll get everything cleaned. I'm like, how do you know you're going to get everything cleaned? You didn't see the house. There's things on there that I guarantee are not going to come off, especially if you're just going to soft wash it.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 36:22

So every single job I did, I got better at setting expectations because I would pay attention, I would see what the siding would look like or what a particular stain would look like. I would see and test. Okay, what if we clean it this way? We clean it this way, we pump up the SH a little bit, we put more soap in it and you kind of experiment and you get a really good idea of what it's going to look like when it's done, because new siding is going to clean much better than old siding. Right Oxidized aluminum is going to look pretty bad, almost no matter what you do.

AC Lockyer: 36:56

Yeah, why did they even make that stuff?

Jacob Sukhorukov: 37:00

So setting correct expectations with clients when, when you're there on the sales call, is super, super important. Or I think we close a lot of jobs just because I tell them that I can't clean it. Think we close a lot of jobs just because I tell them that I can't clean it. I know it's counterintuitive, but I know a lot with my clients. When we're out to a call, there's certain things that I know we excel at, that we can do well, that we're very profitable on, and then there's other services that I know that we break even or lose money on. Let me back up. I guess when we go through it and I do a walk around with a client during the sales process, I'll point out certain things that I don't think will come out and I will tell them ahead of time that we're not going to be able to clean this. Naturally, the question is always well, you guys are the professional cleaners, how come you can't clean it? That's when I go into well, we're actually we're not really cleaning.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 38:00

What we're doing is we're treating the site, and you could go into a whole tangent talking about how the algae grows. What causes it's it's, it's spreading, what are the factors that allow it to grow quicker, oh, slower, uh, how do we approach it? How do you deal with with that, versus soot from your chimney or you know, a grease stain next to the um, to the grill, and that? Just every single one of those is an opportunity to show your level of knowledge, your professionalism, and each one of those is just another notch in a client's trust towards you. And then I just something is like I use services and we hire people for different things and I've I always pay attention to what, what expectations they're setting, and then you kind of match that. And it used to be when I first started my first couple of houses that we quoted.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 38:54

We set the bar really, really high for ourselves right right, and then it was impossible for us to deliver at that, at that level, and then, no matter what you do, the client's not going to be fully happy. Yeah, you've talked yourself up to this level, you've delivered. There's a discrepancy, um, so I think that's something a lot of business owners neglect to, to really think about or consider, um, and I think it's it's very important to set the right expectations, don't be afraid to say well, that that might not come out, that might.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 39:28

You know. That requires an additional cost for us to go through and remove that, because that requires an additional cost for us to go through and remove that because it's under promise and over perform you know, and and and and just set realistic expectations and walk the customer through the whole process for sure, for sure.

AC Lockyer: 39:46

So one of the things I want to touch on is what's really really cool about you and your wife is you mentioned that you don't live in the shadow of the stadium anymore. You moved and so you guys bought yourselves a little farm. Right, bought yourselves a little farm. You work from home. Basically, you, you office out of your home. You have the truck at your house there, and then your wife works from home.

AC Lockyer: 40:10

So we're, you're, you're of an group kind of y'all's people's age and a little bit younger. That it's really a big deal to kind of have a work from home kind of job, entrepreneurial. You know Anya's on Zoom meetings all day long because she has her softwash accounting business and she's not just an accountant, she's a literally almost a financial coach for people. You know, in a lot of ways, yes, it's just incredible the job that she does and and you guys get to see each other virtually all day long she's there with her kids. You've got a little farm. I mean you're like of of the. You're kind of like you're almost a, a millennial but almost generation Z. You know, kind of age group. That's like the dream for everybody have a little farm, grow our own vegetables, you know, have jobs where we can work from home and raise our kids. I mean, you've really achieved something. Was this your plan? How did this all come together?

Jacob Sukhorukov: 41:19

Absolutely so I want to say part of it was our plan, part of it is just the Lord's providence and his blessing in our life.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 41:28

So I definitely ascribe to the idea that none of this really is off of my mind. I am a steward that's holding on to, that's responsible for certain things financially, business-wise my family, our property but ultimately I'm just a caretaker of it. But there's definitely a lot of planning that went into it Since Anya and I got married. To give you an idea, almost for the first year of our marriage we didn't have a TV, we didn't have the internet at our apartment and I still had a flip phone. This is not even 10 years ago, it's about a couple of years ago. So what do we do? How do we spend our time? Well, after work, we'd come home.

AC Lockyer: 42:16

We do have two kids, so we'd always spend some of your time, yeah.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 42:22

But we would come home Both Anya and I are avid readers. We'd read a lot and then we'd sit there and actually discuss what we wanted our life to look like, where we wanted to be in five years, in 10 years. What types of jobs are we working? How are we making money? What is our ultimate goal? Right, as a married couple now? That's creating a family where do we want to go? What do we want to accomplish?

Jacob Sukhorukov: 42:49

And and I think it's very important to take the time to sit there and think about it and talk about it with your spouse, you know and figure out exactly where do you see yourself? What is this all for? Why be a business owner or why work in the corporate world or why do any of it? And once you figure that out, you know planning it out is the easy part. It's understanding what you want to accomplish and once you know where you want to get, a lot of it is just math, days and numbers.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 43:25

And we've kind of worked back and ultimately, our goal was we wanted to homestead, we wanted to create a life where we had some land, where we could grow things, where we could keep different types of animals, where we could become as self-sufficient as possible and rely on just the soil that we owned. That's been a dream of ours for almost since we got married, and everything we did was always measured against that backdrop. I meet people all the time and they're like, well, I want to do this, or I want to accomplish this, and my question for them always is okay, what did you do? What action did you take today to move towards that yeah.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 44:13

And, sadly, a lot of people don't take actions. They visualize things. They could even take the time to write them out, but ultimately all your dreams are just a number of actions away that you have to take, that you have to work towards. So all this that we have now, it's a blessing, but we plan for it. Obviously, things change, but we're very patient. We're wise with our money. We don't spend frivolously. We love nice things to ourselves. We're not hermits that live without anything. We have plenty of hobbies and things that we like to pursue.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 44:57

But it always came down to you have to bring in more than is leaving your account every single week, every single month, and you want to make sure you're taking actions towards the goals that you have or the vision or the life that you've pictured. You're taking actions towards the goals that you have or the vision or the life that you've pictured. You want to constantly, constantly like uh. Harvard partridge talks about it in his book failure to implement. Everyone has a plan, everyone has an idea, everybody wants something, but you have to do it.

AC Lockyer: 45:27

You have to take actions and you have to do it mike tyson says everybody has a plan until someone punches them in the mouth. Exactly, there's a follow through of that plan for sure. Well, I just think it's so cool because, you know, for you guys the soft washing thing has worked out well and and I'll give Anya a little plug for her business here give Anya a little plug for her business here. Her name for a company is called SoftWash Accounting and she does accounting for SoftWash Systems licensed affiliates and does you know? Basically she's like a fractional CFO controller and helps with accounting and really has quite a little program package together. But she has a a nice long list of soft wash systems license affiliates that she does this for and and and and. So I I kind of sit back and I say, well, you do the soft washing, and then she handles all these soft washers money and helps them financially with, with where it all goes and how she puts it together and and gets their books right and helps them with their accounting.

AC Lockyer: 46:33

Um, quite a business, you don't get quite a business off of this.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 46:37

Well, you know that I'm the guinea pig for anything that Anya wants to try. I do know that, yes, All the ideas you know, and some of them work better than others, but that's in essence how she was able to, you know, have such a great service that she delivers, because I was her first client and I could tell you, I remember my first year doing this and this year doing it, and the difference in profit is staggering.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 47:09

I think during the tribe time that I don't. It always breaks my heart to see business owners work so hard all year long. You know they're grinding away, they're doing everything they're supposed to do, and then winter comes and they look in their cupboards and they're all empty and I felt that I was discouraged. I'm like, why did I go through all this? And at one point it seemed like I had a bunch of money in my bank account and then winter comes along and I had to rely on it to pay the bills for us to get through. So so that's a it's an important component of running your business is understanding how money flows through it, kind of like this idea.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 47:59

I don't know if you're familiar with skill stacking, where you could learn to be an amazing exterior cleaner. You could soft wash anything. That skill set is not enough for you to then build a business on no Right. You need to learn how to then hire people. Hire people how to train people, how to work, systematize things you know, and every single level that you go up, it's it's a new skill set that you need to learn. And it seems like the financial management is something that, because it's such an emotional thing and it's close to you know people's emotional well-being, because it's tied to how much money you're bringing in what you could afford, that. Everyone thinks they understand how to do it, but very few people actually master the the skill of being able to manage your money wisely.

AC Lockyer: 48:53

Well, I know one of the things that, when we were talking last week, you mentioned is you work this month through this month. Your season finishes here, your season starts back here, and you do this during the off season. So finish that off. You know that thought. Tell me the story behind that.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 49:15

Well, when I got into this, I realized it was a seasonal business and, like I said the first year, it was tough because I didn't put enough money away for the four months and I didn't know enough at the time to know that there was other ways that I could have made money during the winter. I just, you know, I was going to take the winter off and financially that was tough. It almost got to the point where I probably, you know it wasn't far away from picking up a part-time job to get through the winter and the following winter or the following season. I vowed to myself that I'm not going to go through that. I'm not going to put myself in a position where I can't pay my own bills. So we implemented a lot of financial changes within the company that allowed us to then, at the end of our second season, to have a nice amount saved where it covered all the bills for the next four months and there was. There was enough left over for me and Anya to to take a vacation two, two vacations actually and travel a little bit.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 50:18

And it was the second year that I decided that, as long as I soft wash, november through March are going to be time off for me. We're going to spend with my wife, with my family, pursuing things that we want to pursue. We like to travel, we like to cook, we like to host, we like to spend time with our family. I have a very large extended family, so we set that as a goal and that's what we do every single winter, and about four weeks from now I'm going to shut down operations. For the most part, we still leave a skeleton crew on. We still do quotes, there's maintenance and things that we've done, but a good 90% of the time I'm going to be working our farm now and spending time with my sons and with my wife, and that also gives you an opportunity to just sit back, take a deep breath, almost like a sabbatical Right, a sabbatical where it allows you to really analyze okay, well, how did this year go? What do we want to accomplish next year? What systems do we have to put in place?

Jacob Sukhorukov: 51:28

Instead of jumping from one service is over and now we have to really quickly jump into another service that we're going to do for the next two months, you know, and by the time that's wrapped up, it's like well, when do you take it? When do you take a breath? When do you? You know, you're not going to earn all the money in the world, and and if you feel like you need to, well then you need to stop spending money um so, yeah, yeah, some people spending habits, there's enough money.

AC Lockyer: 51:54

But that's been my dream, for everybody is is. I've always had people you know say but I'm an AC, you know soft washing is a nine month out of the year business. What do I do for the three months of winter? And I go, you take, you put money in the bank, you take them off, you travel, you spend time with your family, you go hunting or fishing. You come down to Florida and visit me. You enjoy your life.

AC Lockyer: 52:18

Everybody else is like no, I got to hang Christmas lights, I got to do this, I got to do that. I got to come up with winter work. I got to plow snow. I got to. No, no, stop, stop. My dream has always been for everybody for this to be a seasonal business, work nine months out of the year and relax three months out here. So you have two jobs where you guys work from home okay now, a farm, your own land to work your home, and a company where you get to take for you four months off during the year and spend great family time and vacation and everything else. Sounds like to me. You've built a pretty great lifestyle business and you still only have one truck, right?

Jacob Sukhorukov: 53:12

um. Well, first of all, it's a big thanks to, to you, ac and karen, and uh everyone at softwash systems that's been instrumental in in helping us and uh really in formulating and shaping my own thoughts and ideas and how I approach these things. But yeah, we, we currently only have one truck. We have a second system, um that we bought from one of our competitors. It's a soft wash system system, um. So next year we are going to finally start to scale a little bit more um, but even then, my uh, I have this growth strategy.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 53:48

That's not a growth strategy, and I call it reluctant growth, where I don't try to expand until it gets to the point where almost my my customers, my clients, are almost demanding it from us at this point. Right and so. So next year we're going to be, we're going to have a second truck on the road, um, but yeah, we've done all this from with one truck, and most of it I mean obviously any, obviously Anya works and stuff too, but a lot of this has really been from what we learned from UAC, from all the wonderful people at Softwatch Systems, and that has really been the vehicle to allow us to do the things that we wanted to do, the things that you know. When I first moved to State College it was, our anniversary was a couple of days ago and we got married exactly nine years ago and I moved two months before our wedding my job I was a maintenance guy making 12 hours an hour and nine years were able to accomplish, you know, more than I ever thought that I would accomplish nine years ago.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 55:01

And even then, I don't think the journey's over. It's not like we've reached the pinnacle. I feel like there's still so much ahead of us and so many things to look forward to and so many more things to accomplish and so many more things to accomplish. And Anya and I are at that point where, just like we were when we first got married, and we spent time just talking to each other and figuring out what the next step is we're kind of back to that point where now we're sitting and we're trying to figure out okay, well, what does the next 10 years of our lives look like?

Jacob Sukhorukov: 55:34

Where do we go, how do we want to organize it. You know what are the new skills that we're going to need to learn to be able to accomplish this. You know, take this next level up if you will so, and for you to do that, it's important for you to have time off, for sure, yeah, need that recycle time.

AC Lockyer: 55:54

So you're pretty happy you found SoftWash Systems.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 55:58

I am ecstatic, it's been and I'm not just saying this, because you know you're inviting me on your podcast.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 56:04

I could. I truly believe it, and anyone you know that comes and asks me, I think the world of AC, I think the world of soft wash systems. It's certainly has given me an opportunity unlike anything that I've experienced yet in my life.

AC Lockyer: 56:21

So well, bow to you. Well, thank you very much and we're very proud of you guys. So there we have it, guys. Another great story about somebody that's built the lifestyle business. But this is really kind of the complete package here. You know just the farm, homestead and the two kids and the wife and the jobs where they get to work from home and four months off a year to spend time with the family and travel. You can't beat that. It's just a great story. Thank you so much, jacob, for being on the podcast this week.

Jacob Sukhorukov: 56:53

Absolutely. Thanks for having having me. It was a pleasure and I look forward to seeing you okay, cool.

AC Lockyer: 56:59

So, guys, if you liked this, this is a great story for you guys, go ahead and like the podcast here and go ahead and share it and please subscribe so that we can alert you when the next one comes out. And, as always, guys, thank you for hanging out with us here building a lifestyle business sponsored by soft wash systems. As always, I, guys, thank you for hanging out with us here and building a lifestyle business sponsored by SoftWash Systems. As always, I'm AC Lockyer here. This is Jacob, actually. This way, go forth and prosper. See you on the next podcast, see you all later.