People ask me all the time what the secret is.
How does a kid who started washing windows at 17 end up building a franchise company? What’s the trick? Is it the marketing? The pricing? Some magic squeegee technique passed down through generations of window cleaners?
I hate to disappoint you. There’s no magic squeegee.
Here’s the secret, and I’ll give it to you for free right up front: the secret isn’t the business. It’s the system.
Stick with me for a few minutes and I’ll show you why that one idea changed my life, why most small business owners never figure it out, and what you can do about it before you go to bed tonight.
The Squeegee Is Not the Secret
Let’s start with an uncomfortable truth about my industry.
You can buy a professional squeegee for less than a large pizza. A ladder, a bucket, and a few towels won’t break the bank either. Learning to clean a window well takes a few weeks of practice. Learning to clean it fast takes a few months.
So if the tools are cheap and the skill is learnable, why do most window cleaning outfits stay one guy and one truck forever?
Because they built a job, not a business.
The work was never the hard part. The hard part is what happens when the phone rings and you’re on a ladder. When your best guy calls in sick on your busiest day. When you want to take your wife on vacation and realize the whole operation lives inside your head.
That’s not a skill problem. That’s a system problem.
You Are Not the System
Here’s the trap almost every owner falls into. I fell into it too.
In the early years, I was the system. I answered the calls. I quoted the jobs. I trained the guys by having them follow me around. I knew which customer wanted the screens put back a certain way and which one had a dog that would steal your towel if you turned your back.
It felt like control. It was actually a ceiling.
Michael Gerber wrote about this decades ago in The E-Myth Revisited. Most small businesses aren’t started by entrepreneurs. They’re started by technicians who had what he called an entrepreneurial seizure. A great technician thinks, “I’m good at this work, so I should own a business doing this work.” Then they spend the next 20 years doing the work, plus all the other work, plus the paperwork.
If your business can’t run without you, you don’t own a business. You own a job. And the boss is a real jerk, because the boss is you and you never let yourself clock out.
What a System Actually Is
Let’s make this simple, because “systems” gets thrown around like it’s some corporate word that requires a consultant and a whiteboard.
Think about a great chef versus a great recipe.
A great chef can make an amazing meal. But only when the chef is in the kitchen. Only one plate at a time. And when the chef gets the flu, the restaurant closes.
A great recipe lets a 19-year-old line cook make that same meal on a Tuesday night while the chef is home asleep.
The chef is talent. The recipe is a system. Talent is wonderful. Systems are scalable.
Look at McDonald’s. Nobody is going to tell you it’s the best burger in America. Ray Kroc wasn’t even a burger guy. He was a milkshake machine salesman who noticed that a little restaurant in California had figured out how to make the same food, the same way, fast, every single time. He didn’t buy a burger. He bought a system.
That’s the whole game. A system is just a way of doing something that is:
- Written down, so it doesn’t live in one person’s head
- Repeatable, so it works the same on Monday as it does on Saturday
- Teachable, so a new person can learn it without you hovering
- Measurable, so you know when it’s working and when it’s not
That’s it. Not complicated. Just rarely done.
The Four Systems Every Service Business Needs
If you run a home service business, or any small business for that matter, start with these four. Get these right and you’ll feel the difference within months.
1. Getting the phone answered. Every missed call is a customer calling your competitor next. If leads depend on you picking up between jobs, you’re leaving money on the table every single day. Who answers? What do they say? How fast does a quote go out? Write it down.
2. Doing the work the same way every time. Customers don’t fall in love with great work. They fall in love with great work they can count on. A simple job checklist does more for your reputation than any ad you’ll ever buy.
3. Getting paid and getting reviewed. Collecting payment and asking for a review should happen the same way on every job, automatically. Not when you remember. Not when the customer seems happy. Every time.
4. Hiring and training people. If training is “ride along with me for a week,” you don’t have a training system. You have a hostage situation. Your time is the hostage.
Systems Aren’t Boring. They’re Freedom.
I know what some of you are thinking. “Gabe, I didn’t start a business to write manuals. I started it to be free.”
I hear you. Here’s the twist. The manuals are what make you free.
Think about GPS. Before it, every road trip meant folding maps, wrong turns, and an argument in the front seat. GPS didn’t make driving boring. It made driving easy, so you could actually enjoy the trip.
That’s what a system does for a business. It takes the thousand little decisions off your plate so your brain is available for the big ones. Where to grow. Who to hire. What’s next.
A business without systems is loud. Everything is urgent, everything is a fire, and you’re the only one with a hose. A business with systems is quiet. Not because nothing is happening, but because everyone knows what to do when it does.
Do This Today: The Thursday Test
I promised you something you could use today. Here it is. I call it the Thursday Test, because a system isn’t proven on your best day. It’s proven on a random, boring Thursday when you’re not there.
Step 1: Make the list. Write down everything you personally did this week. Every call, every quote, every invoice, every “quick favor.” Be honest. It’ll be longer than you think.
Step 2: Circle what only you can do. Not what you do best. What only you can do. Most owners circle about 10% of the list. The other 90% is stuff you do because you’ve always done it.
Step 3: Pick one task and write the recipe. Choose one uncircled item. Next time you do it, write down each step as you go. Don’t make it pretty. Five to ten plain steps is plenty.
Step 4: Hand it off and watch. Give that recipe to someone on your team. Watch them do it once. Wherever they get stuck, that’s not their fault. That’s a missing step. Fix the recipe, not the person.
Step 5: Repeat next week. One task per week. In a year, that’s 52 things that no longer need you. Think about what you could do with that time.
Here’s the line I want you to remember, and feel free to steal it:
A system isn’t done when it makes sense to you. It’s done when it works without you.
Why I Built Window Ninjas Around This
I spent about 20 years as a franchisee in someone else’s system before I launched Window Ninjas in 2018. Those years taught me something I never could have learned on my own: when you’re buying into a franchise, you’re not really buying a brand or a logo or a truck wrap.
You’re buying the recipe.
You’re buying the years of wrong turns somebody else already made so you don’t have to. The training, the call center, the playbook for what to do when things go sideways. That’s what we obsess over at Window Ninjas. Not because systems are exciting to talk about at parties (trust me, they’re not), but because they’re the difference between owning a job and owning a business.
Some people read an article like this and think, “I’ll build all of that myself.” Good. Some of you should. Use the Thursday Test and get after it.
Others read it and think, “I’d rather start with a recipe that already works.” That’s a smart conversation too.
Let’s Talk
If something in here hit home, whether you’re running your own business and feeling buried, or you’ve been thinking about owning something instead of working for someone else, reach out to me directly through gabesalinas.com. No pitch. No pressure. Just a real conversation with a guy who spent a long time being the system before he learned how to build one.
And if you know someone who’s working 70 hours a week because everything runs through them, send them this article. They might not thank you today. But they’ll thank you on some quiet Tuesday a year from now.
The secret isn’t the business. It’s the system. Go build yours.
