 And we're live. I'm super excited that you guys are joining me today. I am here with Doug Bryant and he is the owner of Fish Window Cleaning in Rock Hill, South Carolina. And he is here today to help us dispel some myths about house cleaners cleaning windows, right? I get asked this question a lot from house cleaners who like, hey, let's just add in a little bit of extra money by washing people's windows. And I do not want us to do that. Doug is going to tell us all the reasons why. So Doug, hello and welcome to the show. Thank you, thank you. Now I got to ask, how long have you been in the window business? Just about two and a half years now. Okay, and how did you get into it? Quite by accident. I spent 23 years before this in corporate America in the supply chain rolls, various supply chain rolls. And during COVID, I found myself looking for a new direction. And I always wanted to start my own business. I hadn't particularly looked for a window business, but I had gotten connected with a franchise consultant and he started talking to me about franchises that might be right for me. And he introduced me to Fish Window Cleaning and took me a few months to kind of get my head around it and get ready to kind of make a leap like that, but really the only regret I have is that I didn't do it sooner. And why is that a regret? I wish I could have done this. I wish I started this 10 years ago, maybe even more. I think I was ready to do something like this back then, but it was kind of easy and comfortable in the corporate world and they took care of a lot of things like your benefits and your 401k. It was out of sight, out of mind. It was really easy and it was comfortable. And so I kind of resisted that, but I wish I had done it sooner. Well, I'm really glad you're in the window business now because there are a lot of house cleaners that we want to know more about the window cleaning and we wanna know more about how to recommend window cleaners. And so we're hoping to get a lot of our questions answered today and I wanna say hi to our buddies here. Chris says hi, question. Chris, go ahead and ask your question. We're here today to answer them. Rachel says hi from England. Thank you for another live. Hi all the way across the pond. We're glad that you're joining us today. So I'm, and here's Chris's question. This is awesome. He said I have a small landscape and janitorial business, but I have had to get a job because no one wants to pay $25 per hour and I have no employees, just me, any suggestions. Yes, actually this is a fantastic question and I wanna answer this question after this show when I can actually spend more time on how to hire and talk about that issue. And so I will answer that in the questions below because today while we've got Doug on the line, I really wanna talk about windows. So I'm super excited to know about windows because I know as house cleaners we carry vacuums in our cars. We don't drive trucks, we don't have truck mounts, we don't have ladders, we don't have two story anything. So tell us what it costs and what is involved about running a window cleaning business because we kind of don't know. Sure, sure. Well, for residential we typically, we'll use a lot of the same tools that we use on the commercial side. But on the outside of residential, especially for second, third stories, a lot of times we use what's called a water pit pole system which is purified water that we run up a pole and brush the windows clean. So that keeps us from having to get up on ladders, also saves us a lot of time from moving the ladders around the house and climbing up and climbing down. So the safety thing and it's also a time saver. So that's a big tool that we use that is not really commercially available. You can't buy that at Lowe's or Home Depot or anything like that, it's a specialty item. So that's one of the tools that we use that generally you're not gonna have available to you. And I'm assuming to get the water up the pole it's like a pressure washer kind of thing, right? Sort of, it's in the same vein. There's several filters that the water runs through from your, we'll hook up to your water source at your house and it'll purify the water running through three different filters. And then through a small tube, it will run that water up the pole to the head of the brush that we use on the window. So it cleans the window without soap but it does so with purified water so it doesn't leave spots. I love that. Yeah. Now, do you have to be pretty strong to be able to hold those poles? It can get tiring. It's, you don't have to know, you don't have to be a weightlifter or anything like that but if you're doing it all day it does get rather tiring and you'll build up your traps and your triceps and things like that doing it but anyone can do it. So my question is, as a house cleaner how do you know when it's time to wash your windows? That's a, it's really a personal preference question. Our busiest time for residential each year, we're in the South, so we get a lot of, we get this just covering of pollen every spring and it lasts for two or three months. As that starts to die down in May or late May, early June that's our busiest season because people want that pollen off their windows. The other busy season as far as residential, busy-er season I should say is right before the holiday which is right now when people are getting ready to decorate they wanna put lights and all things on their house and their windows, wreaths, all those things. So they want their windows clean for that. Those are the two busiest times but we stayed pretty busy with residential throughout the year. So if a homeowner was gonna have their windows washed let's say they were gonna do a move-in, move-out cleaning and the house cleaner was gonna come into clean. We already know that by having the windows clean it makes the house look a whole lot cleaner. Do you have the windows clean then before they do that clean or do you have them do the windows after that clean? It really shouldn't matter for your, for a move-in or move-out, it shouldn't matter whether we do them before or after. Here is fine. And so if you were going to get involved in the house cleaning or the window cleaning business are there certain training classes or certain things that you have to learn that are maybe specific to your industry? Nothing that you can't learn on doing a little digging on YouTube or anything like that. This is a franchise that we have our own training program. Our main office based in St. Louis does a lot of training for us but it's not terribly different from what you would find on a, if you did a Google search or some YouTube digging you would find some basic techniques for how to clean windows. And there's all kinds of opinions out there as to what's the best and what doesn't work and some of that is personal preference but a lot of it is just experience the more experienced you get the more you'll understand what works for you and what doesn't. And I'm guessing experience with that training because you can do experience with like Windex and a paper towel all day. And that may not be the right experience that you're trying to perfect. Those are, that's really lesson number one is like get rid of that stuff and use professional equipment, mops and squeegees, not Windex and paper towel or newspaper or whatever. We've always heard that you should use. Well, you know, it's interesting because a lot of the resorting to window cleaning that way is because there isn't a proper technique that is taught to house cleaners. Number one, number two, because we don't have the special wands with the purified water filters in it. We don't have some of the tools and I know that some of the insurance is different. If you are expected to get on a two-story ladder the insurance is very different than if you are inside someone's house standing flat footed and you're just moving a mop or a vacuum. And so what are some of the differences that we have to look at as far as if someone we're gonna go into the window cleaning business? Well, one is we try to stay off ladders wherever possible. If we don't have, that's one of the reasons the water bed whole system is great. That keeps us at least on the outside. We can't use it on the inside because of the water but when we outside it keeps us off ladders. We use extension poles. So we will put our and it's hard to describe here, but we have hand mops that fit onto an extension pole and that pole will go up 12 feet or so depending on what pole you're using. So we try to clean from the ground wherever possible. The more practice you get with that, the better you get. So in terms of safety, we try to do everything we can to stay off ladders. That's not always possible. Sometimes on residential you'll have these indoors, you'll have these high foyers with windows that you just can't get from the ground. Even though your whole, your extension pole might reach it, it just, you just can't get a good angle on it and you have to get up there with a ladder. So there are times we do that, but we use, first of all, we use, the only thing we use are OSHA approved equipment. We don't use anything that's homemade or anything like that. We follow all the safety rules. We have someone spotting or holding the ladder for someone else to go up. So people aren't doing this by themselves. That's a big reason people get hurt, trying to move ladders and go up and down by themselves and no one's blocking. So we try to do all those things we can, even if we have to go on ladders for safety. And that also helps in a lot of ways with the insurance. Now, I don't know the specifics of what's the difference between the insurance costs for when you do and don't get on ladders. I know the insurance is expensive, very expensive for us, but and we try to keep track of how much time we spend going up ladders on individual jobs that gives our insurance company an idea every year of how much we're putting ourselves at risk, I suppose. Does that change the cost of your insurance based on spending more time on ladders versus not as much time? It would, yes. Interesting. So if you're, if we have in our system, when we enter a job, we can put how many, how much time during that job we're gonna spend on ladders. And we try to keep track of that so that we're honest about what we're doing and what we're, the safety protocols and things like that. So our insurance takes that information every year, recalculates it and gives us a new price. But like I said, we just try to keep that at a minimum wherever possible. And is that factored into your workers comp as well or is that something different like a general liability policy? I'm not quite sure. I don't wanna say yes or no on that one because I'm not sure whether it covers which one it's covered under or whether it applies to both. But the total price does fluctuate based on how much we are using ladders. Speaking of ladders, I think maybe I know that our society kind of likes that if it leads, if it leads, it leads kind of a thing. And I'm curious to know in some of your training, have you heard any stories of people that have either fallen off ladders or that they've had accidents because they weren't following the OSHA standards or they weren't being careful? Yeah, we've heard stories. I mean, nothing has ever happened within our business. We're very careful. Most of the other fish franchisees are, you know, take, wash and say most. They all take it very seriously. We've heard of things happening where someone will be kind of walking along a roofline and no one is spotting them. No one's watching and warning them and they're just going about their business cleaning and they don't realize how close they are to an edge and they'll step off. So things like that have happened. But again, it's really just about training your people, making sure they're aware of those risks, making sure that no one does this stuff alone. Someone's always watching and spotting and giving warnings and things like that. Well, I appreciate you saying that and I love the fact that you guys are so careful because you can't run a business if somebody's in the hospital with a broken back. I mean, you just can't. And like you said, there are certain times you can't use your magic wand. I'm gonna call it the magic wand of the filter system because inside many of the homes, especially where I live, they do have the two-story great rooms or they have the two-story entryway windows and then in order to get up there, it's very tall up there, like 12, 15 feet up there. And in order to, like you said, get a good grip or a good angle, you gotta do something fantastic up there to make sure that it's clean. Otherwise you see the spots from all the different angles in the room as you walk by. So how do you bid for that? I mean, I'm guessing you have to do a walkthrough on the job, right? We typically, well, we do have to walk around. Usually we're only walking around the outside of the house to price it. If there's anything special about the inside that the homeowner is asking for, we'll go inside. But a lot of times we're just, we're going from one place to the next doing estimates throughout the day or throughout the week. So we will typically just kind of walk around the outside and we can get a really good idea of what we're dealing with. Now, doing that has its pros and cons because sometimes you don't realize, you look up at a window and you give it a price and then you don't realize that, oh, on the inside there's no second floor there. So you have to get up on a ladder. So you have to be careful about pricing things by just walking around the outside of the house. But we do our best to try to take into account and the more you do this, the better you get at it. So just like in the house cleaning business, we like to recommend window cleaners because we don't clean windows ourselves. And the exception to that would be a glass sliding door that would take you from like the kitchen outside to the patio, for example. I know in Florida we have lots of those, like a home will have three sets of those, one coming out from the primary bedroom, one from the living room and one from the kitchen. And that's kind of an exception to the rule. But if you can stand flat footed and it's right there where the dog brushes his nose up against the window and you get all the smudges, we will clean that. But other than that, we don't do windows. Do you, as a window cleaner, also recommend other services, not house cleaning service, but let's say like a window company that could replace a broken thermal seal or something like that? From time to time, if we have a company that we're aware of that we trust and we know the reputation or we've worked with them before, we will recommend various other services that we don't perform ourselves. I was just asked yesterday about someone that were, can you repair my screens if they have holes? No, we can't. That's not something we do. And honestly, I don't know a company. I'm not aware of a company personally that does that. I know they're around, but I couldn't recommend any going because I've never worked with anyone like them. Well, and that's a fair question. I know that somebody came to my house today to do a service, but because he has very tall ladders that go up, my first question was, oh, there's someone with a ladder. If they're skilled and they're comfortable on a ladder and they're insured for a ladder, could they replace that shutter that fell down in the last storm or whatever? Yes, we've done some things like that as long as work we feel qualified to do it. Like the situation you just mentioned, all the time when we're cleaning a second story, an open foyer or something like that, if they have a chandelier with bulbs out, they have the bulbs will change while we're up there. If there's a ledge there that gets a lot of dust and they can't get to it, we'll dust it off before we clean the window. Things like that, little things, if we're qualified, if we feel qualified and safe to do it, we'll do things like that. But I'd rather recommend professional for something more technical. We have a business here in our little business park that does window tinning. That's their business. And I know their work. I feel very comfortable recommending them to people. So when they ask me, do you know anyone that tints windows? Absolutely, call these people. But if I'm aware, I'll do that. Well, tell me about the window tinning because I know when we moved to the house that we're in, the way that the sun rises in the morning, we've got a whole row of windows, we didn't want it to discolor the hardwood floors. And so we had all of those inside windows tinted so that it would shade the flooring from being discolored or whatever, just for resell value on the home. So does it change or does it affect the window cleaning when you clean a window that has that tinting on it? It can, yes. It can be very, we have to be very careful when there's a window tint. If it's a film, a window tint film that's applied to the window, you can actually buy tinted windows. That's a different story. This was the film that they put on. So that's more common. I'm probably less expensive, I would imagine. If it has a film on it, the actual cleaning is the same. We don't do anything different. However, once in a while we will use if there's a spot that needs to be buffed out, we'll use a product. Like, typically we clean this open water but if there is something that's really hard to get at, so you have some adhesive or something like that, we have some products that will get that off. And if it's a spot that's just not coming out with a regular microfiber towel or wherever towel we're using, we will sometimes use a very fine steel wool to buff that out. Doing that on a film, will, chemicals will eat through it and the very fine steel wool, even though it won't scratch windows, it will scratch the tint. So we have to be very careful about not using things like that on a window with tint. So we just have to be very aware whether or not there's a tint on it because if you get to cleaning other windows and you don't realize there's a tint there, you can ruin, you're not gonna ruin the window, but you can ruin the film and have to pay to replace that. So we don't wanna do that either. Well, and I'm glad you brought that up because I think every industry has its don't do this moments, right? Where there are little things that you kind of learn by trial and error from where I sit, I get hundreds of calls a week of people that are like, I used steel wool on something they shouldn't have and it either scratched something or they used a pumice stone on something that they shouldn't have used it on or whatever, thinking, oh, it worked really well on this one surface, it might work really well on another and all surfaces are not equal. So I'm really glad that you brought that up because it is the reason why as professionals and home service providers that we are in short, in case there's an accident and for some reason we goofed. Yes, absolutely. Well, you mentioned something a minute ago that caught my attention about the chemicals that you use and you said you use soap and water and I'm guessing that's one of the reasons why when you're outside and you use the cold as the filtering system that I would imagine that would be safer than spraying chemicals up there on the windows that then could backfire and come out on your plants and other things. So tell me about that. Yes, so, and we don't use these things a lot. This is just very specialized situations. When there's an adhesive stuff, maybe you've had some, you put up some Christmas lights or something and you put some tape on the windows to hold them there or whatever. If that adhesive is, we're having trouble getting it off with soap and water, we have an adhesive remover that we'll use. It's very hard on your hands and your skin. So we use gloves when we do use it, we're very careful about those things. Also, when we do, we'll talk, I'm sure at some point we'll talk about hard water stains or mineral deposits. That's something that we will use. It's a different cleaning process than just soap and water. Those spots will not come off with soap and water. It takes something a little more heavy duty and there's a cream that we use on that and that's actually something that it takes a lot of elbow grease to get it out even with those products. So we actually bring in an electric buffer or just buff the window to get that out. And I'm imagining that that has to be done on a ladder or a lift of some sort because you can't do that from a pole. It's typically, you don't really see that a lot and I don't know if that's true across the board but we mostly see it on lower windows and one of the main reasons we do see it is because the homeowner has a sprinkler system and that sprinkler system is probably using well water and that water is either hitting the windows directly or it's splashing onto the windows over time that will build up and if you're not cleaning your windows regularly that will, it just, it'll get to the point where you have to go to that extra step of using harder chemicals, takes a lot more time, it's a lot more expensive. So it does happen. So are there a lot of areas that have hard water that really need that service that you're offering? We see it a lot, we do. Like I say, the biggest, I think the biggest culprit that I see is sprinkler systems. It can be caused by rain too and I don't know the specifics of what causes it chemically or anything like that but when it does happen, if you keep the windows clean regularly it doesn't stain, it doesn't stick to the windows but if you don't and especially if you got a sprinkler system that every day is hitting those windows over time it's going to be hard to get off. So that's, there's things that you can do to avoid it but there are, you know, there are areas where we see it and there's nothing they could have done. It's just the area they live in. As I travel, I've seen some windows that I'm like, oh no, I wouldn't want to clean those. Those are like terrible with the hard water stains and so discolored that it looks like it really devalues the outside of the home. Yes. And we've, you know, I try to point that out when we're doing the estimate before we even come to the house to clean. I try to make that, make it a point to point that out to the homeowner, listen, we're going to clean this open water it's not going to get this out. If you want this out, we can do it but that's a different job on a different day and a different cost and we can talk about that but it's just so you know because when we don't, when we don't make that clear up front we'll clean the windows, it doesn't come off and the homeowner's not happy because they expected that to come off. So what I hear you saying is setting realistic expectations as a key element in customer satisfaction. Absolutely. If there's something you know that you're not going to be able to get or it might not look great when you're done with it we always try to point that out just to make sure that listen, this is the job we're doing versus you know what you might be expecting and if you don't want to hire us that's absolutely fine we just want to make it clear that we're not going to be able to get that off with the price point we've quoted you. And so is there a better time of the day to have your windows clean like morning versus the evening or hot sun, no sun? Well there's different opinions I think that generally you don't want to do it on hot sunny days doing it in the sun is not bad I think you'll see out there people will say don't clean your windows on a sunny day I don't necessarily agree with that but when the sun is beating directly on a window our solution is just soap and water but if we're not quick but by the time we soap up the window and get our squeegee to clean it up it's already drying and it can leak streaks it can be very difficult to clean on a hot sunny day especially when the sun is beating on a window Other people say overcast is the best time to do it I don't necessarily disagree but my one complaint with overcast days is when you're looking through the window and trying to get it clean you don't have a contrast you don't see that contrast from the sun so it will look clean to you but the next day when the sun comes out you might notice that you missed a spot or you have a streak or a grip or something like that that you couldn't see when it was overcast so that's the only downside to cleaning on overcast days Temperature wise I would say ideal conditions are 60s or 70s we live in the south in the summer it gets well into the 90s regularly we try to get as much as we can done in the morning hi we'll be there at 5am well that's the thing you can't clean the windows in the dark so we can only start so early but we just do the best we can when there is windows we're cleaning with the sun is beating on them and it's hot we just use a little less dope, a little more water and we just try to be as quick as we can to get that done before it streaks so it's not an easy answer to that question and everybody has their own opinion but ideal conditions I would say somewhat funny 60 to 70 degrees a day like today there you go so what about weather I mean I hate to say but this sounds like a really weather related business if it's raining and pouring outside you probably can't go out and start washing windows sometimes true I mean with our business you know for fish window cleaning we really focus on commercial cleaning so we do more businesses than residential I know we're talking more residential here but on the commercial side many of the businesses we clean have awnings over their windows so if it's a shopping center or a script mall something like that typically they have an awning over each window in case as long as there's no lightning or thunder we can clean you know throughout if they don't we can clean the inside and come back when it drives up and clean the outside we have ways of working around it residential is a little tougher I'll admit because you typically don't have awnings over the windows so you have to try to either get the inside while it's raining and hopefully it stops raining you can do the outside or come back another day or later in the afternoon or something like that but we do have issues now I feel like we're lucky in the south we get a lot more sun and a lot less rain we don't deal with snow so I think there's you know if you were to have this conversation with somebody in Wisconsin you would get some different answers but I think we're lucky in that in that respect but we try to work around the weather as much as possible and like I said we don't anytime there's any hint of thunder, lightning or anything like that we're not out there but if it's just raining and we can get under an awning we'll do it well and that is a curiosity because there is the whole eastern seaboard in the United States that has just brutal winters and so there's lots and lots of snow and I can imagine the time where there's no window washing at all during the winter time when it's you know zero degrees outside and you know three feet of snow or five feet of snow and you know then what and I can only imagine just by the salt that's in the air and the stuff that gets spewed around how dirty and salty and sandy the windows must get just from the evaporation of water in the air and when it rains it comes back down and I can only imagine it must be a mess if anybody here has questions or comments and you're from the eastern seaboard tell us what you do because I'm curious we have Eunice Williams here who made some fun comments she said happy Friday my husband and I own a cleaning business and we only do windows ourselves that open up where we can clean them from the inside and we also have been cleaned from the outside from the outside warm warm the inside and I'm guessing those are the windows that you pull down the window pieces and you clean the insides and then put them back up and I've done that as well but only what I can reach and inside my own house before for a professional job we find somebody like Doug here to help us she said also if we ever do any other types of windows residential or commercial we would subcontract that work and I think I'm in the same situation because I and Eunice says yes I live in Wisconsin I know what he's talking about oh wow check it out so you're actually from Wisconsin so those are some tough areas I would imagine other fish franchisees up in the north they do clean throughout the winter they say residential drops off quite a bit during the winter but they still very much clean a lot of the commercial accounts through the winter that's what kind of feeds them until the residential comes back around in the spring and they also use some solutions in their cleaning mix like your windshield washing fluid type material that will keep the water from freezing to continue cleaning they still have to have access to the windows so if there's four feet of snow there's not much they can do but if they can reach a window they'll still clean at the winter wow that's really interesting there's a lot of stuff here to think about that I haven't really dug into so that's interesting what is the main difference between residential and commercial when it comes to cleaning techniques I think you know generally cleaning a window is generally the same we're going to clean both windows the same I think the difference the major differences are one time because a residence is there's a lot of things that you have to kind of consider that you don't have to on commercial commercial goes very fast we're in and out of fast food we're going to clean both sides of the windows and move on to the next business on residential you're going to spend on a decent sized house I don't know what's average but we typically spend two to four hours on a house and that time includes we're going to come in first before we can do anything we have to take your screens off we clean the screens inside and out we clean around the frame of the screen we also raise any you were talking about double hung windows earlier that you raise up until 10 we'll raise those up and we'll clean out all of the junk for lack of a better term out of the tracks and then we'll set the screens aside close the windows go back outside and clean the outside after that's finished we'll come back in so there's and there could potentially be some furniture things like that that we need to move back and forth so there's a lot of time involved in all that so and there's a higher level of scrutiny as you can imagine this is someone's home it's sentimental you have to be very careful you know it's not like you're in a business and you knock something over it breaks okay fine they just replace it and you pay for it but not that that happens a lot but you knock something off or off that's sentimental or they can't replace you have to be very careful so that takes time and so the major issue and major differences I should say between commercial and residential is time and then you like I said you have other obstacles not obstacles I shouldn't say that but you know you have the screens and the tracks and the in the sills you have to wipe down and you know moving furniture back and forth sometimes so those things take time so from a house cleaners perspective I'm super curious how do you guys clean those windows seals because I know for us and we do them on a move and move out clean we don't clean the windows but we do clean the windows sills in the tracks and so we have to raise the windows and we have to vacuum out all the garbledy gook and then we have to spray them and we got this little tiny oxo deep cleaning brushes where we brush both sides of the little ledges and what have you and then there's a little I don't know like like a little rubber spatula end of one of the oxo deep cleaning brushes that's not gonna scratch the window panes and we can like wrap a paper towel around that just go in and clean up all the gunk how do you guys do it well I would I think it's safe to say we're not we're probably not as detailed as all that we're like we will raise the windows and we typically use some type of brush we actually use a lot of these little you ever seen the little brush that the umpire uses to sweep off the plate yeah we have those in our bags and we'll use those to brush out any any loose dirt or debris there so we'll get as much of that as we can out and then we will use wet towels that we have dipped in our in our soap solution and we'll bring them out and then use those to just get in the cracks and and little crevices and clean what we can out so we're not getting q-tips and getting into the every tiny corner but we get you know basically it's going to look a lot better than it did if there's any mold we get that off so the technique is probably not as detailed as what you just described but we get we get most of it out the homeowners can see a major difference and it is clean so you mentioned obstacles a minute ago and right now it is the what is the first week of November and I know it's true in my house there's a double pane window and then there's a screen and between the window and the screen there are spider webs and the spider webs have come and made their homes I don't know trying to get inside or it's just warmer or it's I don't know what but they're all spider webs like we did not plan this for Halloween they just kind of like appear right so how tell me about like the spider webs and stuff how do you guys clear out spider webs when you're taking the screens off and yeah we just take a we have what we call a cobweb duster and it's just a little round brush and then we get we just kind of clean all the cobwebs we can see get up in the corners and kind of spin it a little bit it'll kind of get rid of all the little little crevices all the little things up up there like you know whether it's spider web or just to breathe from from the from the winner or whatever but we just clean them off and and then we'll continue to do the tracks and so we deal with a lot of that fun stuff you can't be you can't be afraid of spiders and do this job I don't think what are some of the costs that a homeowner needs to take into consideration when they're trying to justify the price of window clean well I think you know we hear in both on the commercial and residential side we have customers or potential customers that say you know I'll just clean it myself but you can save money that way you can save money you won't have to pay us but in the long run we have the right tools we have the right training we do it in a third of the time that it will take you to do it so it's a trade off you have to you have to kind of look at is it really worth me especially if you're getting up on ladders is it really worth me risking my health to try to do this versus and we're not that expensive so I think in general there's there if you're if you have the right tools in the training more power to you but what I generally will tell people is in the long run you're going to save money and maybe even your health by letting us do it for you once or twice a year on the residential side so in my personal opinion and this is based on 30 years in the house cleaning industry there comes a certain window where I recommend homeowners not climb on ladders anymore I'm like okay I love the fact that you want to try and I don't think it's a good idea based on everything I'm seeing and so at what point would you recommend that a homeowner who's always been a do it yourself or kind of switch gears and say hey you know what I'm now that fun age where I think it is wiser for me to actually outsource this to a company I don't think there's a magic age but I think you know for me it's I think you get to a point in life where you have the disposable income to pay for it versus when you're younger you might not have that and you just kind of suck it up and do it yourself but I think generally as you get older it's riskier so you have to take that into consideration it's not worth your health I mean it's worth your health and especially if you haven't done it before it looks simple from the ground it always does but when you get up on a ladder and you're up 20, 30 feet it's not as simple as it looks sometimes so I would recommend if you are at an age where or at a station in life where you can pay to have it done it's one of those things that you might save a couple bucks overall but it's not worth the risk we're headed into the holidays and there are a lot of people I know myself included I always get trapped trying to find something for parents that are a good gift for the holidays that is not something that's just going to clutter their home and I think window cleaning is a great gift because it's something that you're going to need a couple of times a year tell me about packages that you guys might sell that would be a great gift that somebody could be thinking about getting for like the holidays for their parents or an elder sibling or somebody that can't get on ladders sure well we offer gift certificates in any amount so you can just contribute X amount towards window cleaning that's the easiest way to get a gift certificate that's the only cost for that house the only difficulty is we got to get out there and walk around without them knowing so that might be difficult but if you can get them away from the house long enough for us to go look at and price it you can buy a gift certificate for that exact amount but yes, great gift, great idea for parents and things like that I think it's a great gift especially if you have those parents that really do it like mine they love to try to do those things themselves and they're getting older a lot of times nothing happens but there's that one time that it could well and my parents are at that age and so I have to start thinking in terms of what are they trying to do they're going to go to the farm and they have orchards and things and like my dad will go out and try to pick apples and things like that so I'm always thinking, okay this is a ladder activity can we send somebody in to wash the windows can we send somebody in to go pick the apples from the trees can we pay somebody to go stack fire wood up against the side of their house so that they have it for the winter and are there things like that that maybe they brush the snow off the roof in the winter so that he doesn't try to get on a ladder try to climb on his house because I just I just don't want him up there anymore and so and you just brought up a really good point can we get somebody away long enough that we can go do a walkthrough and we live in a neighborhood where you cannot all the neighbors will go oh there's a strange company that's like wandering around your house and they'll text the people and whatever so what's the best way to do this do we do we say listen mom dad I want to get you window cleaning for Christmas and I don't know how much it's going to cost and I don't want to short change you on the gift can I have the company come out and give us a price and an estimate and then set a date and would you would you be cool if somebody comes wandering around your house to do that is that the best way to do that well it's that's certainly that's fine that works well what can what you can also do a lot of times if you can get me good pictures of each side of the house where I can see all the windows in pictures sometimes I can price it without going out there so that's another possibility if you can figure out how to get pictures without somebody getting too nosy or asking about why you're out there taking pictures so that's another way you can potentially do it but you could also I mean we can take a guess before we come out there and say you know send us a picture of the front of the house and we can take a maybe even the front in the back and we can take a rough guess and say we think it's going to cost roughly this if you want to get the gift certificate for that and then we can adjust at the time of service if you need to so that's another way we can do it we certainly don't we don't want to get the police called on us walking around the garden when someone when someone calls me for an estimate and and I say hey is it okay if I come by if you're not there I just want to walk around the outside do I have your permission to walk in the backyard and I would make sure that no one's going to be calling the cops on me but it hasn't happened yet but you never know well and it's weird because like today a neighbor texted me and said there's somebody wandering around in your bushes that this thing happened this very day and I was like that's weird and it was only weird because we don't normally have people wandering around in our bushes so that was weird so that I texted my husband and I said is there any reason somebody should be wandering around in our bushes and he said yes I hired a guy to come fix the outdoor lighting and I was like oh okay it's cool right but because that I knew I was like I got nosy neighbors I've got those nosy neighbors like they're they're my neighbors those are the people that are are going to call the cops on you I haven't had the cops call on me but I have had nosy neighbors come over and say what are you doing here and and I kind of like you know I don't know whether I should say it's not my business really to say but I don't want the cops called so a lot of times I'll say listen I'm doing an estimate I've been asked to come here you're welcome to call the cops but we do you have do you have markings on your vehicles like a sign or something that says we're fish window cleaning and so that it's we do have we have that on our cleaning vehicles so so when somebody's cleaning our vehicles are logoed and everybody can see who we are my personal vehicle though is not sometimes I'm out there doing estimates in my personal vehicle so I always wear you know our our gear our logo and our colors but my vehicle does not have any markings on it so there has been times when people are like where are you here and I'm quick to show them like look here's my fish window cleaning here's my stuff and like I said I haven't been in trouble yet but I always try to get I always try to cover my maces and make sure that if someone knows I'm going to be walking around their backyard and just usually stop by and do it without their permission there you go okay cool we've got a question here Mary says I have double pain windows with fog between the pains and they look awful is there anything I can do about that and then she says I rent so the short answers that happens you have a broken seal somewhere in the window there's a broken seal you cannot fix that without replacing the pains if you're a renter I you know you can talk to the talk to your landlord try to figure out if they they will do something about it but there's nothing we can do to get rid of that aside from replacing the window or at least replacing the pains and we don't do it ourselves that's a that's a common a common issue where the thermal seal is busted and it looks really foggy and it looks awful and it it does have to be replaced but many of the window installers usually run about a 10 or 15 year warranty on the windows absolutely if your if your house is newer especially within 10 years figure out and a lot of times when you raise the window on the screen or somewhere around the frame there will be a if you don't know who made the windows you can find the name of the company on there call them a lot of times if it's been less than 10 maybe 15 years they will come out and replace it for free so that should be your first call try to get it done under warranty but if it's older there's really not much you can do except replace and like I said I see it every day I have a couple on my house that are like that and it's just I haven't I haven't really got to a point where I'm like it bothers me enough to have it done but but it does look awful and what Doug is talking about is if you'll raise the window usually when you raise the window there's a little tiny strip about like this on the bottom of the window and underneath there is usually a little sticker and if you'll take your smart phone and slide it under there and take a picture of the little label it will tell exactly the code that is needed for them to come out and they know the sizing they know the kind of window they know all the details based on that little sticker that's there and it's hiding so you usually don't even know that it's there but if you raise the window and you look underneath it's usually a white or a gold label so there you go and that's what Doug is talking about that's another thing that broken seals we will point those out when we're doing estimates just to say listen just be aware that's not going to go away when we clean it so it's very very important to make sure that they understand that because a lot of homeowners just expect that you know it just needs a good cleaning but that's not the case when a homeowner is thinking about having their windows clean what are some of the preparation steps they can do leading up to having your company come out and clean the windows well I guess the biggest thing for us is just move anything that's right up next to the window where we can't reach it if you've got a couch that's right pulled up right against the window we don't need a lot of space you don't have to move it out six feet we only need about a foot of space just to get between there to stand and clean the window that's the biggest thing is just if you have furniture that's blocking the windows or keeping us from getting to them that's the biggest in terms of preparation screen out that's great we will do it for you but if you want to take those out and honestly you know we talk about screens I it's personal preference but I recommend to whoever I can if you're not using those windows you're not opening and shutting those windows take the screen out you don't need it the window looks much better without the screen and you know you you're we're taking it out and cleaning it and putting it back and you're never raising that window I know in my own house I either have the air the heat running all the time so I keep a couple screens and a couple of strategic windows in case I want to freeze but if you keep every screen on every window if you're not opening all those windows there's some that you can probably take out I will caution though when you do that especially on older houses if you do that and take your screens out you're going to store them before you stack them up in a pile and put them in the garage or the attic or whatever take some like painter's tape or something like that or masking tape on each screen label which window it came out of because even though it's the same size screen same size window as the one next to it houses shift and settle as they get older and if you take a screen out of one window and try to put it into the one next to it it might not fit even though it's the same size because they get used they kind of forms around the window that it's been in so I would say if you're going to take those out and stack them up great but label them first in case you ever want to put them back or you're selling your house and you want to put them back in there or just tell the new homeowner which screen is which because you can have a hard time putting that screen back in if you don't put it in the same window it came out of just a word of caution but I always try to sort of recommend that if you're not if you're one of those people that you just you in the spring come you just raise every window yep and get air coming in that's great but if you're not your windows look a lot better without the screen so get them out of there that is an interesting interesting tip and I want to highlight something you just said and it's really interesting Doug said use painters tape and painters tape really over duct tape or masking tape or anything else because they will leave a residue on the on the window painters tape won't so do yourself this favor type or write the words because you can just use a magic marker or like a sharpie pen standing inside left to right one two three four windows this is window number one and circle it and then next on the next one standing inside left to right one two three four this is window number two and circle the two that way you know oh there are four windows I know exactly what room I'm in this is the this is that standing inside not outside left to right and then you'll know exactly what window it is so I love that tip what a great tip that is yeah I'm so happy about that and look here's another thing on the on the screens look I sorry but there's when when spring comes and you raise all those windows and you want to get the fresh air in if you have it clean those screens um you're bringing in as much pollen and all this stuff as you are probably more of that than you're bringing in fresh air so it's coming into your house so if you're going to do that and you're going to leave the screens in you're going to raise the windows in the spring take those screens out during the winter and clean them so that when you do do that you're going to have less like gunk and stuff flowing into your particles flowing into your house and one of the things that Doug is talking about and I also live in the south I'm in Charlotte North Carolina which is right up the street from where Doug is so when Doug talks about pollen oh let me tell you about pollen so we have a bright neon yellow flyer that we leave when we clean people's homes in North Carolina for all during the spring starting about in mid-February all the way through to about April and it says please close your windows for this reason the pollen is like a yellow film and it will come in through your windows because I mean it's so tempting to open the windows and get the fresh air coming in and that pollen will come right in your windows and it settles on all of your surfaces and it's kind of a gunky think think of like a light honey feel or you touch it and it just kind of sticks and then it gets inside the keyboards of your computers and it gets on your remote controls it gets on your game consoles if you have stream decks I don't know what you have in your house but all the little fine particles of whatever you have like if you have fabric that has like a fine tapestry oh it just goes right inside there and it sits in all the crevices if you have oil paintings that like sticks on all the different textures OMG I'm telling you do not let the pollen inside your house right because when the house cleaner comes in your price is going to double when they got to go through and try to remove all of that from your house and like Doug is saying and then you got to breathe it and if you have ever had allergies pollen is one of the biggest triggers so while we're all about the fresh air I'm telling you put on a pair of walking shoes and get out the door and go out and go walking to get your fresh air but do not let it inside your house because it's going to wreck your windows and it's going to wreck all of the fine furnishings that you have in your house and it's going to get stuff on your tapestries and your carpets and inside don't get me started don't get me started don't do it so Lynn says I can't have a screen on a sliding door because it's in Myrtle Beach Myrtle Beach yes and so questions on sliding doors what what do you recommend for sliding doors really nothing different I mean there's nothing different that we do in terms of cleaning keep the frames clean if you're you know if you're opening in a lot get those tracks I would recommend this for not the sliding doors but any windows in your home open them and close them once in a is if you don't, we've been in houses that they haven't opened the windows in years, and we try to open them and pieces pop off and then the door, and they won't raise or lower, they get stuck, so they're made to open and close, do that every once in a while. So even if you're not using it regularly, now, granted, the sliding door you're probably gonna use more often, but clean the tracks out of that even when you're just daily use every once in a while just clean those tracks out. But in general, just open and close these things because they're made to move, and if they don't, they'll get stuck. What advice do you have for people that have older windows that have window panes in them and they're not double window panes with the panes on the inside? There's nothing different in terms of cleaning. I mean, first of all, call us, but there's really nothing different in terms of how we clean it or how you care for it. New windows are super expensive, so stick with what you have if you can and let us clean them, but no, there's really nothing different about how to maintain those. Okay, cool. As a professional house cleaner, I have been in people's homes that their windows were old enough that they have window panes, and as you start to clean them, some of the window panes just like chip off and erode. So in that situation, please call someone like Doug, don't take the liability, let Doug's company take it. Let them do it because they do know windows, okay? They've got little tricks and things that they know, and they have tools that they can use, and maybe like he said, the brushes that they use, it's a lighter, gentler brush that's not gonna damage stuff. So the reason as house cleaners, we don't do windows is there are tiny nuances about the windows that are really best left to a company that does that all day, every day for a living. They know how to do it, and instead of us trying to just do everything for our homeowners, because we wanna help, there are other companies like Doug's company that specializes in a specific set of tasks that will, this is not an upsell project for us, this is actually something like carpet cleaning. We don't do and there are very good reasons why, okay? And so this is the reason we wanna meet people like Doug, and we wanna have Doug's company come and do the windows instead of us doing that. So if you don't know a window cleaner, I'm gonna recommend that you challenge yourself right now to get online and to find one, join a Facebook group or whatever, ask all the questions you have, and meet some window cleaners that are in your area so that you can recommend a window cleaner when the customer asks you. It's important for us not only to know what we do do, but know what we don't do and we don't do windows. Yeah, if you're, and just let me add to that, if you're a house cleaning company, to try to develop a relationship with someone who does windows or does power wash, or whatever it is that you're being asked for that you don't do, we have relationship with a power washing company here locally that they don't do windows, they don't do power washing, but we recommend each other because our customers ask for that. A good place to do that is your local small business meeting groups, networking groups, B&I, whatever it might be, most of them will have, they'll only allow one type of business in each group. So they have a window cleaner, make that the one that you connect with, develop a relationship with those companies, and then you'll know it'll be easier for you to recommend them if you know their reputation, you know who they are, you talk with them, rather than saying, I found this one on Google. So try to develop relationships with companies that do the things you're being asked to do that you're not comfortable with or not ready to do. I love that. Oh, this is awesome in our time. It's up, how did our time disappear so fast? I wanna say thanks to everybody that showed up, you guys, it was just awesome to have you here. You made my day being here and I appreciate all of your comments and it's great having you here, so thank you. Doug, tell us where our listeners can go to find you and those that are in the North Carolina, South Carolina, Rock Hill area, where can people go to find you and hire you? Sure, well, I mean, fish is all over the country, we're the largest window cleaning company in the world. We have 275 locations throughout the US. My particular territory covers Lancaster and York County in South Carolina. If you wanna find us anywhere in the system, just go to fishwindowcleaning.com, type in your zip code and it'll get you to the right franchisee. If you wanna get a whole of us specifically, fishwindowcleaning.com slash 3248 or our phone number is 803-902-2223. And I'm gonna leave links in the notes below that just so that you guys have access to that. Thank you so much today for all of the insights and inspiration and for letting us know why house cleaners don't clean windows. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you for the questions. I enjoyed it. This has been awesome. Thanks again.