Chris Cannon came to pressure washing from a long way up. Before he started, he climbed towers for 10 years, and the job kept him on the road. His wife stays home, and he wanted to keep it that way. “I had to find something that kept me home,” he says. Starting a business, he figured, was the way to make that work.
Cannon runs The Cannon Pressure Washing out of Jefferson, Georgia. The company washes houses, roofs, driveways and walkways and cleans commercial properties across Jackson County and nearby towns such as Braselton, Commerce, Winder and Athens. It also hangs Christmas lights.
The start was not elaborate. He watched a few videos online and had a pressure washer in the garage. “I literally quit the job and started pressure washing full time in the same month,” he says. He had wanted his own business for years but could never settle on which one. Washing stuck. “I just enjoyed it, so naturally it kind of worked,” he says.
By his account, what he offers comes down to promptness and relationships. He sends an estimate fast, then shows up and gets the work done fast. A homeowner who reviewed the company said Cannon warned it might be a week or two before he could get there, then arrived the next day.
He keeps up with other washers in the area, too, and has worked alongside other companies on occasion. “I’ve had washing companies help me on washing jobs just because I didn’t have enough guys or equipment to do it or I didn’t know how to do it,” he says. Asking, in his words, means you “swallow the ego pill.”
More than half of his work is residential, though he says he prefers commercial jobs. Commercial work, he says, is “definitely less emotional” and more transactional. Houses bring more time with the people who live in them, and he loves his residential customers too. “I still love talking to my customers,” he says.
He doesn’t oversell what he does once he’s there.
“I don’t do anything revolutionary,” he says. “I just clean.”