It's CEOs you should know. I'm Adam West here today with Courtney Lightfoot, CEO of Squeegee Squad.
Welcome, Thank you for having me. Adam.
I've seen your signs places, I've seen your logo out there. Tell me about Squegee Squad. Give me the old elevator pitch.
Yeah, absolutely so.
Squeegee Squad started out as just a small window cleaning company started by brothers Jack and Joe Rupzegger, and over time they built it and started branding and looking into franchising, and so over the last years we've grown to about seventy five plus units. And so the greatest thing about Squeegee Squad is not only is it window cleaning company that services residential customers, we also are in the niche of high rise and commercial.
So we're the only actual window.
Cleaning franchise in the United States that offers both of those services to their customers. And so it's given us a wide open feel of kind of how we can operate and really monopolize in a metropolitan an area in a residential area.
Yeah, so did it start here in the Twin Cities.
It did, and so they actually just started it in nineteen ninety nine and wow.
Yeah, and so we just celebrated twenty five years of window cleaning with them. And they started just in the residential market themselves, and so kind of came from different
backgrounds and fields. They thought they were going to go on to different career paths at that time, and ended up that window cleaning was actually making them more money than the current jobs that they were in, and so they kind of went down that path servicing residential customers and so they kind of built out organically a huge company at that time, so maybe a million dollars in residential, which would transfer to about two million dollars today. And
so then they started looking more into developing. We have a really good system here. We've we've built all of the things on the back end, we have technology to support this business. And then they started looking into franchising, and so in two thousand and five they were approached as part of I Franchise Company Group, and so they met with people, they developed all the legal all of
the supporting documents to really start the franchising. The funny story is that Jack, one of the brothers, was thinking that it was really going to take off.
So as soon as they were registered in all the states. He thought that the.
Phones were going to go ringing off the hooks, and that definitely wasn't the case.
So it's been it's been a.
Long haul of really figuring it out and expanding the franchise organically, which has proven to be a really great model for where we are today. And so it was just honestly the three of us, Jack, Joe and myself building and supporting franchisees from two thousand and five on. And so the first franchisee actually signed on in January of two thousand and six in Minnesota, so he started in the dead of winter.
Yeah, that's one of the things I wanted to ask you about. But I mean, yeah, yeah, just I mean, as we record this r at the end of February and I should probably just getting ready to really ramp up here.
Yeah. And so across the nation, we do have some seasonality that we will experience. We've definitely supplemented with other services that we can kind of fill the gaps. And so some of the northern climates will offer snowplowing because they already have the trucks in there. They'll just put a plow on and be set for the winter. We've also integrated some interior painting as an option too, So we're consistently looking at how can we supplement income for
those that experience maybe a lull due to seasonality. We do also because we're in that commercial niche, however, have great relationships with our customers where we can offer interior window cleaning.
When it's too cold.
Most times people think it's probably too cold to clean windows, you know.
But we're out there at thirty two degrees.
And sometimes below still cleaning exterior windows.
So that's impressive. So did you was there always a vision for like a national model or was it concentrated here in Minnesota more?
I think yeah, it was, like I said, really hard to get into it first, and so we had a few starting out in Minnesota, and then the owners actually moved to Florida for like a temporary time and just started a corporate unit at that time to really start to expand nobody knew who we were, our name, we didn't have any recognition across the country at that time, and so that was kind of the path and actually Florida now is probably one of our most populated franchise within the.
United Funny Florida came to my mind before, except in the summer. I don't know if that's like the opposite of Minnesota. You're trying not to cook on the side of.
The building exactly.
It's a little bit different there too, but that each market has a unique thing. So because they have consistent salt water hitting their windows, it's always pressure washing season and it's always window cleaning season.
You mentioned some things, but what makes Squeegee Squad different from everybody else?
Yeah, So I would say it is that family approach because we have a really small support system in the back end. We have a team now of ten on the corporate side, and so for us, that's that's great. It also provided some growth to really expand and support for our franchises, but it also allows us to have relationship with them.
So people are calling.
Us on a regular basis for support and questions, whether that's you know, related to the business or just venting about how difficult their day was.
And so yeah, it's great cool.
So I think the great thing about us is that somebody can be reached at any time for any questions.
What markets do you kind of see the most opportunity in moving forward?
Yeah, so we're just dipping our toes and going to the western coast. We just have a franchise that kind of signed on around Seattle, small market, a little bit around Portland that just signed on, and then we have in northern California, so three that we're just starting in the West coast here, but we'll really see a lot of opportunity for growth and expansion there as well. There's still a lot of market left actually for our industry, so we're excited to see it continue to grow.
Do you say seventy five units so far.
So we're about seventy five owners. Some of those are multi unit owners, and so yeah, we're probably over like one hundred and twenty locations.
I would say right.
Now, if you're driving around right now, you may I don't know if you guys still do this, but I just remember your logo being on signs, you know, in neighborhoods. Do you still have that same logo?
And we do have that same logo, and so kind of going back when when the brothers started it, it was Jack and Joe's Window cleaning. That was their names. That's how they started it. When they moved into franchising, then at that time, they said, you're going to have to rebrand. There's too many Jack and Joe's this across
the country. It really has to be something unique. And they were both actually walking through Best Buy and walked by the Geek Squad and so the brothers at that time at thought that's a great idea, and so they thought Squeegee Squad. And it's honestly one of the greatest things that our customers continually comment on that they love the name. It's so catchy, it's hard to forget. And so at that time that's been the brand and the logo.
Since that time, did somebody internally develop the logo or is that it did.
We did have a marketing team out of the Twin Cities that kind of helped us expand and grow that initial branding package.
And you've been there for I don't know about since the beginning for a very long.
Time, right, Yeah, I've been with the company just over sixteen years. Started with them as an office administrator and was pregnant actually with my first when I started, so it was it was supposed to be potentially a temporary fill in job for me when I had my child.
They approached me to come back, and being a new time mom, I wasn't quite ready to leave my son, and so I said I'd be willing to come back if I could take my baby to work with me, already knowing the office and what that looked like and felt like I knew it was probably a possibility, and they agreed. So my first child came to the office with me for the first two years, and so.
That was great.
They valued a lot of the same things that I valued, family and time and kind of being able to juggle and balance both. And so luckily technology definitely got better over time, and I was able to start working from home probably within like year four of the company of working with them, and so that allowed me to have the best of both worlds, continue to be there for my family and also support them and be there for the business as well as it continue to grow.
Do you have any funny stories from over the years, either your own or ones that you've heard about, you know, the window cleaning process and things that happen out there in the field.
Yeah. Absolutely, So there's always going to be a funny story here there within our franchisees and we get together with them once a year at convention that we hold in Florida, and so it's always a great time to kind of share those stories connected network. And one of them actually had to do with a waterfed pole, not for sure if you're familiar with that, So on the outside of your building, if you have maybe over like four or five stories, we could start accessing from ground
level and still clean the windows with a pole. And so it's not a very inexpensive piece of equipment. And so we had one location that shared a story that their employees actually put it on the ladder rack, which is on the back of a truck, and didn't strap it down, and so they lost it on this side of the road. And and the funny part is that then the owner found it in the ditch as he was driving by the job or on the road the next day, and.
So they were able to recoup it.
And the next day they put it on the ladder rack again and they lost it again.
So just continual.
Yeah, it's it's funny now, I think he would say. But yeah, you were.
Talking about high rises before. And I did a thing where I repelled off of one of the hotels here locally, and I was worried as I was coming down. I think they used to warn the people in those rooms that hey, there's gonna be people coming through here, not on the glass, right right next to the glass. I don't know if anything weird like that has ever happened.
We're surprised, but I don't think there's been surprise as efforts yet. But I think most most are really good, and we have that communication to let their customers know or let their tenants know that we're going to be off the side of the building. We've actually in a few markets been able to work with hospitals and have our crew dress in costume to repel off the side of off the buildings as well. And so I think that's happened for us in both Denver and Oklahoma City.
So if somebody's listening to this and thinking this might be a good business that I want to get into, I like cleaning up like windows, whatever, how do you get involved or how do you become a franchisey with Squeegee Squad?
Yeah, so we do have a process in place. Most people can go to our website to reach out and fill out a contact forum, at which point are our marketing or sales team would reach out and make that communication.
I think the.
Unique part is that part of our sales and marketing team is still our owners, the original founders, and so you're getting to have that upfront communication with them right away, whereas other systems you maybe have to, you know, talk through a few different people before you actually get to make that introduction with the owners, and so it's just introductory calls at that point. We do have a few other steps in process as far as you know application.
We give the opportunity to meet us in person at our office here in Minnesota as well, and then we're walking through the steps, and should they want to proceed, we would just go ahead and continue down those steps as far as figuring out territory markets with them and kind of doing a little bit of that business planning to see what it's going to look like for them as they onboard as well.
I'm thinking maybe there's not much of a real estate component to getting started, but not much of a.
Real estate component at all, and actually we say and recommend, depending on starting capital, that most people can start this business out of their home. We do have plans in place for them to excel and expand quickly on their revenue tracking, and so the goal will be eventually to move into a shop space or something that they would be able to continue to expand and service their market.
So tell me a little bit about like when you're a new franchisee, maybe the support and you know the day to day as opposed to maybe when you've been around for a little bit.
Yeah. Absolutely, So when you are a brand new franchisee, you've signed the agreements, you've made the investment with us,
and we've started to partner with each other. We have a few onboarding processes in place, and so we have a support team within our office that will connect with you prior to our franchise training week in which we'll walk through a lot of the tasks we needed to help you set up as far as your entity, your you know, your banking information, We have all the steps in place that you're going to make sure that you're
checking all of those areas off prior to starting. And then we do offer and require that they come to actual training with us in Minnesota, and so they're here for a full week and that's a full week of hands on training, business learning, coaching, and a lot of technology in there as well. And so it's a full forty hours of consistent classroom slash hands on training to kind of make sure we're at least touching on.
All of the areas that we service or offer within our business, actual windows, including.
Cleaning actual windows. And so we do also have someone on our team that's revise a lot of this safety training that's necessary. So when we're doing high rise repelling, we're you know, OSHA compliant, we work with iw c A, We're doing all of the necessary steps to make sure that everybody is trained in and very able and capable
of actually going up the side of the building. And so even with that first full week of training that they experience, we know that they're not going to be ready to go back to their market and take on some of.
Those high rise jobs.
And so what we do offer at that point is that we can have their employees come and train with us, or we can maybe work alongside them on a job that they have and train in at the same time. And so we're offering to make sure that we're we're consistently having that at our forefront of our mind that everybody is doing this very.
Safely and is there ongoing training as the there is established here.
There's absolutely ongoing going training opportunities as well, so we'll all do some remote training post that training week as well, so going further into you know, accounting, further into technology.
And then we do host with our business coach, you know, monthly weekly cadence calls as well with each franchisee, so they have someone to consistently reach out to with any questions that they have to bounce ideas off, you know, not everything we've we've definitely made decisions in some of our marketing and how we've approached the business, and we've made mistakes along the way, and so part of it is we've made a lot of the mistakes up front so that these people can really get out of the
gates and kind of know where to go, know how to market and and really get off the ground running.
I was going to ask you about the marketing because that's changing all the time.
Right, consistently changing.
Yeah, we used to it just do you know, print and advertisements and magazines, and we've definitely moved into a lot of the SEO website presence marketing as well. But we do find and recommend still to all of our franchisees that door to or is still going to be the best marketing.
Out to ask, Yeah, if it's if you come back to the old, tried and trude or or old yeah, you know, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely, especially in the residential market. And so you know, we're going to recommend that you have somebody canvassing the area for a while.
You mentioned yard signs.
We still utilize yard signs to kind of just continually get the brand presence out there so that somebody has that consistent point of Squeegee Squad to reach out to.
All Right, clean glass, clean windows, clear view is awesome. What are some of the other benefits of having you guys clean windows?
Yeah, so a lot of it comes down to building maintenance as well. And so we will come across a building where a customer reaches out to us, they potentially haven't had any cleaning services for multiple years, and at that point you start to have failures on the outside
of your businesses on the building as well. So you'll have you know, ceilans cracking, you'll have water coming into the building from points, just different staining on the building, which also you know, for property managers is a huge key point in trying to keep your clients all happy
that you have renting or leasing from you space. But in seasonality, you'll also come across homeowners that clean windows are really We had somebody work in our company that said clean windows are good for the soul, and so customers will get their windows clean and they just they have that service done and the sun comes in so much better. And yeah, so simple process, but I think it definitely makes a benefit for customers.
Do you offer inside cleaning as well?
We do offer interior cleaning as well, and so we do have our you know, employees that work within them. They're all background checked and so everything is done formality and by a process to make our customers comfortable as well.
Certainly, I mean, you can't give away everything because you want people to use your service, but like any tips for I mean, I feel like I can never get windows clean.
So I mean, yeah, tips, I'm not going to go with the brand.
Secrets, but have your own products and everything.
But yeah, and years and years of experience and kind of learning the right way, but yeah, I think I think what I've learned is that it's a service that most people either say is maybe not worth my time, and so I would rather do something else on a Saturday, like take my kids to their sporting events, or go on vacation or do some other things with their time, whereas they say, this is a nominal fee that we could pay somebody else to come and clean our windows.
Yeah.
Talking to Courtney lightfoots CEO of Squeegee Squad, I'm sure you've seen their logo. What would what advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to start any business.
Yeah, I would definitely say do your research, kind of connect with the right people, whether that's going to be account other business owners that you might know, to kind of go through the initial steps, making sure you're just dotting all those eyes and checking the tea's because there's so many different steps within a business to startup that you might not be considering, and you always want to be ahead of it rather than have something thrown at
you after you've already started your business. And so for us, I think it has been making connections and being wise with who we're consulting with to really know are we making the right moves. And as an entrepreneur, you're going to find that you're going to wear many hats over the course of starting your business. And so even as I mentioned for the three of us, I learned accounting,
I learned legal process, I learned tech support. And so you're going to kind of fulfill those roles within your own self for a while as you're starting out your business, and it's going to force you to really expand your knowledge as well, and then you're going to very quickly find out if you don't have time capacity for those things, you're gonna have to find the right person that has those skill sets that maybe you don't have or don't
come naturally to you. So kind of just planning that out as an entrepreneur as well.
What kind of tech support are we talking here?
Yeah, so our brand actually has its own proprietary software to operate and run the business.
So it's called Squadware.
One and it's actually been through four iterations over the years. And so software is definitely a constant evolving product. And so we have our own team that is continually developing, working with our franchisees to consistently hear what do we need to do next, How can we have this better work with our company to be more efficient, And this gives us the capability to do that.
Where do you see Squeegee Squad going in the next five to ten years.
Yeah, absolutely. I think probably in the next five years. It might be a lofty goal, but we would like to have the United States kind of sold out as
far as territory goes. We kind of imagine it to be roughly around two hundred and fifty locations that we could say we've kind of tapped out the market here, and that's going to require us to definitely grow our internal headquarter support as well along the way, And so I think that's where we're at, and then at that point we'll kind of just be in maintenance mode of you know, continuing to support the franchisees. There might be a business that sells and then we help the new
owner kind of roll up and start again. But more long term after that, I think is when we kind of sell the United States, would be to look into other countries at that time.
How can people get a hold of you, whether it's to order up some service or they want to be a franchise or whatever.
Yeah, the best way to reach out to us or get contact its would be to visit our website at www dot squeegee squad dot com and you.
Do other stuff besides just windows.
We do we do press you, washing, got her cleaning, soft washing, culking, so just a variety of services as well.
Courtney Lightfoot, CEO of Squeege Squad, thanks for stopping by. CEOs you should know.
Thank you.