Most people in his line of work prefer commercial accounts, the owner of City Wide Softwash says, because they usually come with fewer headaches. He goes the other way. Residential work, he says, gives you “a bigger impact.”
The St. Louis company takes both kinds of jobs. Its service menu runs from house washing and roof cleaning to storefronts, awnings and parking garages. Asked which he likes more, he picks houses.
Part of the reason is the work itself. He says he takes “great pleasure in before and after projects.” He likes taking something that looks “dirty and nasty” and making it look “brand new.”
Much of that work relies on soft washing, a lower-pressure approach meant for surfaces a hard jet can damage, such as shingle roofs and vinyl siding. The company’s own explainer saves full pressure washing for tough surfaces like concrete, which can stand up to it. Its listed service area starts in Kirkwood, Webster Groves and Crestwood and reaches out to Chesterfield, St. Charles and Arnold.
He did not start out washing houses. He studied entrepreneurship in college, then spent more than 10 years doing mobile car detailing. He moved to exterior cleaning because the work was “similar, easier to scale and easier to do,” he says, and because he liked it better.
City Wide Softwash is a one-man operation. He partners with a friend on bigger projects and hires friends when a job needs more hands.
He keeps his standard simple. “I always do what I say I’m going to do,” he says. When there is a problem, he makes it right. He says he got that from his father.
The rest of his reason for preferring houses has to do with people. “People aren’t numbers for me, they’re relationships,” he says. He sees himself as being in the business of building relationships with people more than collecting customers.
A storefront gives him one client. A street of houses gives him many. “I prefer residential because I get to impact more people’s lives and meet them more often compared to commercial,” he says. “So it’s just more touches per community with residential.”