There are certain moments in life that tattoo themselves onto your memory.
The day I met Melisa. The moment Reece was born. Dropping Baden off at college and driving away trying to keep it together. You know the kind. The ones you can replay in perfect detail decades later, like a movie you have memorized frame by frame.
The day I picked up a squeegee for the first time is one of those moments.
I know. I know what you are thinking. A squeegee? Really, Gabe?
Stay with me.
Raleigh, 1992. A Kid, A Van, and Zero Clue.
It was a sunny morning in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. I was seventeen years old, and I had just met a guy through my sister who owned a window cleaning company. He needed summer help. I needed summer money. Deal done.
We pulled up to a commercial building. The owner looked at us and said, “Get out, guys. Here is the job. Let’s get the outsides done.”
That was my training.
No onboarding. No demonstration. No “hey, let me show you what each tool in this bucket actually does.” One guy handed me a pole. Another pointed at the wall of glass. A third guy explained what a squeegee was by handing it to me and walking away.
Instructions were given. Organized chaos followed. And somehow, I started scrubbing glass.
Here is the picture: a seventeen-year-old kid from Southern Pines, riding around downtown Raleigh in a work van with a crew of guys who looked like they were running a mob operation. Jokes were flying. Music was playing. Jobs were getting done. And I genuinely believed I was absolutely crushing it.
I was not crushing it.
I was a goofy kid with a squeegee who had no idea what he was doing. The crew set me straight pretty quickly. Nicely, but clearly. “Hey man, you missed a spot. Hey, those aren’t clean. Hey, watch how this is done.”
And here is where the first real lesson showed up.
Lesson One: Honest Feedback Is a Gift, Not an Attack.
When that crew corrected me, I had two choices. Get defensive. Or get better.
I got better.
I got competitive, actually. Something inside me clicked. I did not want to be the weak link. I did not want to be the guy who had to be told twice. That feedback, delivered without any sugarcoating, flipped a switch in me that I am genuinely grateful for to this day.
Think about what most people do with criticism. They take it personally. They pout. They quit.
I see this constantly with young entrepreneurs and new business owners. Someone gives them honest feedback about their product, their pitch, their work, and suddenly that person is the enemy. The world is unfair. The game is rigged.
No. The feedback is a gift. Unwrap it.
The guys in that van were not being mean. They were being honest. And their honesty made me a better window cleaner faster than any training manual ever could have. It also made me a better business owner. Because when you learn early that the fastest path to improvement runs straight through honest feedback, you stop fearing criticism and start chasing it.
Lesson Two: There Is No Such Thing As a Bad Job. Only a Bad Perspective.
I thought window cleaning was a dead-end gig. I genuinely did.
I was seventeen. I figured I would do it for the summer, go off to college, and eventually land something impressive that I could brag about at parties. Window cleaning was just a placeholder. A way to make money until real life started.
But here is what I did not expect. I liked it.
I mean, I really liked it.
Every single job had a beginning, a middle, and a very satisfying end. You show up, you clean the glass, and you leave with a finished product you can see from the street. There is no “pending review.” No waiting for someone to approve your work. The glass is either clean or it is not. And when it is clean, the customer sees it immediately. They thank you. They smile. Sometimes they tip you. Every single job is a tiny standing ovation.
Try getting that feeling from a spreadsheet.
By the end of that summer, I realized something that most people never figure out. There are no bad jobs. There are only bad mindsets. The job does not define the opportunity. You define the opportunity by what you bring to it and what you are willing to learn from it.
Window cleaning was not a dead end. It was a launchpad. I just did not know it yet.
Lesson Three: When You Love What You Do, the Money Figures Itself Out.
Here is the part where I tell you something that sounds like a bumper sticker but is actually the truest thing I know.
When I stopped thinking of window cleaning as “a job” and started thinking of it as something I was genuinely good at and genuinely enjoyed, everything changed. My income went up. My reputation grew. My business expanded. Not because I worked harder in the traditional grind-yourself-into-the-ground sense. But because I stopped fighting against what I was doing and started going all in on it.
I am not being poetic here. I am being literal.
When you love your work, you study it obsessively. You solve problems with excitement instead of resentment. You show up early not because someone is watching but because you actually want to be there. Customers feel that energy. They refer their friends. They become loyal. They stick around.
I have been in this industry for thirty-four years. Thirty-four. And I can tell you with a straight face that it has never felt like work. Not once. Even on the hard days, I have always felt like the lucky one. The guy who gets to go out, shine some glass, and put smiles on people’s faces.
That is not an accident. That is what happens when you align yourself with something you are built to do.
Lesson Four: Find Someone Twenty Years Ahead of You and Buy Them Lunch.
Seventeen-year-old Gabe had a lot of enthusiasm and almost no wisdom.
What saved me? Mentors.
I have always had a knack for gravitating toward people who are about twenty years further down the road than I am. Guys who have already made the mistakes I am about to make. Guys who can see around corners I cannot see yet. And I have always made it a priority to listen to them. Really listen. Not just wait for them to stop talking so I can say my thing.
That habit has saved me more money than I can count. It has saved me years of wasted effort. It has handed me shortcuts that would have taken me a decade to find on my own.
And here is the thing: I am still doing it. Right now, at this stage of building Window Ninjas into a national brand, I am still actively looking for the people who can take me to the next level. The learning never stops. The moment you think you know enough is the moment you start falling behind.
Young hustlers, I am talking directly to you here. I see you. I was you. Posting content, chasing the highlight reel, trying to look successful before you have built anything.
Here is what will actually accelerate your timeline: find someone who has already built something real and make yourself indispensable to them. Ask better questions. Listen more than you talk. Be coachable. That single habit will carry you further and faster than any viral moment ever will.
The Squeegee Was Never Just a Squeegee.
That summer in Raleigh was not just a summer job. It was a masterclass.
In honest feedback. In perspective. In the connection between love and excellence. In the compounding return of good mentorship. In seeing opportunity where other people see obligation.
I did not know any of that at seventeen. I just knew I liked riding around in a van, cleaning glass, and getting paid.
But the lessons were already happening, whether I recognized them or not. Life is funny that way. The most important classrooms rarely look like classrooms.
So the next time someone hands you a mop, a squeegee, a broom, or a task that feels beneath you, pause before you roll your eyes. Ask yourself what it is trying to teach you. Because if you are willing to look, there is almost always something there worth learning.
The glass is cleaner than it looks. You just have to change the angle.
Keep Shining.
