In this episode, host Sheila Smeltzer interviews Greg Hiller of Sundance Window Cleaning in Park City, Utah. Greg shares how he left a comfortable corporate career to start his window cleaning business at age 50, driven by a desire for freedom and control over his future. Despite early challenges, he grew Sundance Window Cleaning into a seven-figure company within five years by focusing on hard work, strategic marketing, and building a strong team.
Greg credits his success to...
In this episode, host Sheila Smeltzer interviews Greg Hiller of Sundance Window Cleaning in Park City, Utah. Greg shares how he left a comfortable corporate career to start his window cleaning business at age 50, driven by a desire for freedom and control over his future. Despite early challenges, he grew Sundance Window Cleaning into a seven-figure company within five years by focusing on hard work, strategic marketing, and building a strong team.
Greg credits his success to perseverance, resilience, and maintaining a positive mindset—especially when facing major hurdles such as losing employees or handling unexpected accidents. He emphasizes that home service businesses need to view themselves as marketing engines, not just service providers. By reinvesting heavily in customer acquisition early on, Greg was able to build a robust client database and then reduce his marketing spend once the company reached a “cruising altitude.” His passion and optimism shine through, leaving listeners energized and motivated to push through challenges and scale their own businesses.
Show Notes
Transcript:
Sid Graef: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the huge transformations podcast. I’m Sid Graef out of Montana.
Gabe Torres: I’m Gabe Torres here in Nashville, Tennessee.
Sheila Smeltzer: And I’m Sheila Smeltzer from North Carolina. We’re your hosts and guides through the landscape of growing a successful home service business. We do this by interviewing the best home service business builders in the industry—folks that have already built seven- and eight-figure businesses, and they want to help you succeed.
Gabe Torres: Yep. No fake gurus on this show. Just real-life owners that have been in the trenches and can help show you the way to grow profitably. We get insights and truths from successful business builders, and every episode is 100% experience, 0% theory.
Sheila Smeltzer: We’re going to dig deep and reveal the good, the bad, and the ugly. Our guests will share with you the pitfalls to avoid and the keys to winning. In short, our guests will show you how to transform your home service business into a masterpiece. Thanks for joining us on the wild…
Sheila Smeltzer: Hi, I’m your host today on the Huge Transformations podcast. I am Sheila Smeltzer. Today’s guest is Greg Hiller with Sundance Window Cleaning out of Park City, Utah. You’re going to love this extremely uplifting conversation that Greg and I have about how having a positive mindset can absolutely get you through the tough times that we all experience as business owners.
Greg shares how he built a seven-figure business in five years. He did it with some coaching, but he also did it with a lot of perseverance and a ton of hard work. Greg provides some really tactical marketing strategies that ultimately lead to a “database goldmine.” I love that! I am super excited to have you join us today because I promise you are going to leave this podcast feeling motivated and totally excited to go out and crush it. Let’s get started.
Sheila: Hello everybody. Welcome to the Huge Transformation podcast. I am Sheila Smeltzer located out of North Carolina. And today we have Greg Hiller. Greg is with Sundance Window Cleaning out of Park City, Utah. Yes, I’ve loved going to Park City and skiing, Greg.
Greg Hiller: Yeah. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
Sheila: Yeah, this is great. So I met you recently at a Huge Mastermind, and so I’m looking forward to interviewing you today and getting to know you better. Can you start off by just telling our audience who you are and what you do, and we’ll take it from there?
Greg: Yeah. So, yeah, I have a window cleaning business in Park City, as you mentioned. We’re here in Park City, so it’s kind of more high-end residential, which is what I started with. And over the years, we’ve added some commercial, hotels, do a little pressure washing, gutter cleaning—kind of the regular services. And yeah, it just continues to grow every year. And it’s been a hell of a ride getting here these years later.
Sheila: I hear you. What did you do before you got into the window cleaning biz?
Greg: Yeah, well, primarily my career was in corporate, mostly logistics distribution in the end—used to run warehouses. But I’m kind of old-school. Started my way working night shift in a grocery store and then started picking orders in warehouses, and moved up to management, drove trucks. So I never went to college; just always been a grinder and a hustler.
Sheila: Very good. Yeah. Well, I resonate with that story. Same, same—never been to college. Isn’t it amazing how all of the different—from the time we probably got into the job world—how every single role that we’ve had throughout our career and our evolution as human beings has just absolutely given us the talents and the skills that we need for what we do today?
Greg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think more importantly, just the appreciation to be able to run my own business. I mean, like you said, the corporate career I had was great. It taught me a lot, took care of a growing family I had over the years. But I always yearned for freedom. I yearned to be out of the corporate bureaucracy, giving all my time and energy into that. And so, yeah, when the opportunity came to take that risk, to kind of go for it…you know, we live in a country that allows us to take those chances and succeed. So yeah, that experience—when I started my business, I was able to leverage a lot of that. But boy, there was a whole lot to learn to be an owner-operator, that’s for sure.
Sheila: Absolutely. And tell me, how has that freedom worked out for you?
Greg: It’s good. I mean, that was the motivator, right? Towards the end of my corporate career, I had a good career going. I had come off of a project that put me in Europe for two and a half years, implementing an SAP operating system in manufacturing centers. And when I got back, they gave me a job back in the corporation, working from home, making six figures a year with bonus. I had—it was like the corporate dream. But I was like a caged animal. I couldn’t take it. Being on that project changed me to the point I realized, “Hey, I can do anything. I always wanted to have my own business.”
When I was younger in Washington state, a friend of mine had a small window-cleaning business, and I would help him out a little bit on the weekends to make a little extra money. And so it was just kind of like, “All right, life’s too short, I’m just going to go for it.” And I literally gave two weeks notice to this corporate job, put a ladder on my Prius, and off I went. Life is short; I’ve got to go for it. I was 50 years old, staying up till two in the morning, studying marketing on YouTube—I mean, whatever it took to be successful.
Sheila: Good for you, Greg. So tell me, what does Sundance Window Cleaning look like today, eight years later?
Greg: Well, the freedom—I guess I never really answered that question. But yeah, almost eight years later, probably the last three years we’ve been doing seven figures. And for the last three years, so probably the fifth year in business, I hit seven figures. And my goal was to build a management team that would run my business for me to give me the freedom. And that’s kind of what happened the last few years is—I was really an absentee owner.
I bought a little property in South Carolina on a couple acres. It’s a fixer-upper, and I spent winters out there working on that, and I go out there once in a while—that’s kind of my getaway. I started doing a little coaching for my original coach. So I do a little bit of that. So yeah, I got the goals that I was going for—that’s what I was doing when I went for it, why I risked everything, is I wanted to build something that would give me the freedom and flexibility to have a different life. And yeah, I’ve been living that.
Recently I had a manager leave, so I’m kind of back in the business restructuring things. And that’s just kind of natural. But I’ve got really good people in my business right now that can take things over. But yeah, it’s been a ride. Those first few years, it was hard work. It was literally blood, sweat, and tears. There were times I just didn’t know if I was going to be able to make it; it was so hard. And then you start hiring employees, and you get so many disappointments through that process. You’ve got to have a mindset of hanging in there and not giving up, and that’s what I did. I stuck with it and finally was able to put a team together that could run the business.
I’ve got to pinch myself; I live a life today I could have never imagined. It’s incredible. It’s opened up other ways of thinking because I’m not the same person I was when I started the business. Yeah, I mean, when I left— the reason I waited till I was 50 to start a business is I honestly didn’t think I was smart enough or capable enough all those years to really run my own business. It just seemed overwhelming. And it took what it took to finally take that leap of faith and go for it. But it changed me. And now today I’ve got some other things going—I’m working on this AI receptionist business on the side, I have my place in South Carolina, I have these other interests that I’m doing, and also just continuing to kind of coach my own business, I guess, to try to improve it.
Sheila: Sure. Okay, okay. So there’s a lot there. I want to backtrack real quick back to Sundance. What does your team look like? If you were to kind of paint a picture for us of what your org chart looks like, what is your structure in your company? Because I’m sure a lot of our viewers are thinking, “Okay, great, absentee owner, he’s living a life of freedom, that’s why he started his business.” You really scaled it up quite quickly, Greg. I know that it feels like a long time in the grit and the grind that you’re talking about, but you really did it quite quickly. What does the business look like where you are able to step aside and do some other things that you love?
Greg: Yeah. Well, I guess I could go a little bit through the progression of it—what led to today, I guess. First and foremost, it was me and my Prius with a part-time helper. The first year, I did a whopping 70,000 in sales, my first year in business. And that was me, a helper, me on the cell phone, 30 feet up a ladder with a scratch pad every time I’d get a call come in.
Then maybe the next year, I believe I got a part-time person in the office. I was able to grow it by another 200, 250,000 in revenue the second year. And that was due to, one, having a coach that I hired that first year—a shout out to Jim DuBois at Window Washing Wealth—just a fantastic guy, fantastic program. It helped propel me to where I am today, having that coach that first year. It seemed like an enormous investment, but I didn’t start this business to be mediocre. I started it to build a seven-figure business that ran itself. So I invested in the coach.
So I went from basically hiring a part-time office administration to, when I could afford it, finally taking some of the calls and going into my CRM, booking things. Then each year, I grew about a quarter million in revenue. And that was tough—that’s no joke trying to grow at that rate. It was not easy, especially in my business in the mountains. It’s super seasonal here. We go through—we’ve got to hire up hugely in the spring, roll through summer, and then you crash in the dead of winter to nothing. And then you’ve got to redo it, rinse, repeat, every single year. Tough business to run. Those seasonal folks out there—I get it.
Then I added—I took one of my really good technicians and made him an operations manager. Then I finally got an office person while still using Jill’s Office another year. I can’t remember exactly the stages, but basically today, my org chart is a general manager, an office manager, an operations manager, and a virtual assistant. And I still use a call center as a third backup because I always want somebody answering the phone.
Then I will come in physically to the office in May and June—that’s the peak of the season—only because we’ll hire 12 technicians. We will literally hire 12 brand-new people with no experience and have them ready to run routes within two weeks.
Sheila: What does your training program look like?
Greg: Well, it starts with videos. You want to just build videos. I just did simple little clips of everything we could think of and just hosted it on YouTube. That was just easy at the time—I know there’s lots of other ways to host it now. And then, yeah, we start them out with YouTube, going through a series. And then we physically have them learn the fanning technique right out the gate. They might even spend a whole day just learning the fanning technique. Then we send them out on jobs. Basically, we pay them 20 bucks an hour for a week—that’s their training. It costs 800 out of pocket for each brand-new person, and then they convert to a percentage-based pay at 15% after that. They’re expected to hold their own after a week of training.
Sheila: Okay, so you are doing performance pay.
Greg: Yep, yep. We’re trying for 25,000 of revenue per month out of a two-person crew. When you look at the ROI on that training, it’s still good. So that’s also why I’ll come in in May and June just to help support that training effort. I’ll look for technicians that might be struggling, and I’ll work personally with them a little bit. That’s just kind of my way of helping the team out. We used to do a lot of jobs, but I told them, “I’m retired from climbing ladders anymore.” But now I’m like, “Okay, I think I’m done, but I will help with the training every year.”
Sheila: Awesome. Very good. I wanted to dive back in—thanks for painting that picture. I think it’s really important that people and our listeners understand what the company looks like. Because whenever we go to conventions or we’re listening to podcasts, we really size ourselves up a lot to what other companies are doing. But it’s a good thing, in my opinion, because it really allows us to benchmark and be like, “Okay, wow, Greg’s doing 25,000 for two technicians per month.” That’s really good stuff to share because that tells another company that’s listening, “Oh my gosh, that’s possible.” We can do that.
Greg, let’s talk about—I’ve heard you use the word “faith” a lot. I’ve heard you use “perseverance,” “hard work,” and before we got on, you told me you were “old school.” I’d like to dive into that a little bit. In the window cleaning/pressure washing/home service industry, it’s a really low point of entry, right? There’s a lot of people. I think I was interviewing someone—they said they went on Google and typed “What is the easiest startup business?” and window cleaning was number five. Doesn’t surprise me—600 bucks, you’re out the door, right? But where I’m going with that is, where do we want to…? We’re talking about the old school. There’s a lot of new guys in the industry. That’s really what I’m saying. So take us back. What do you feel is the ingredient to success? What are the ingredients to success? Because you and I both, I mean, I’m 49, you have a little bit on me, but we’re in the same age range. We’ve been around a little bit longer—there are probably a lot of young viewers listening. But let’s talk about what you feel it takes to succeed.
Greg: Yeah, well, I say “old school” because I came out of high school in 1985. I don’t know if you were a little younger than me back then, but that was a recession back then, right? If you could get a job, you kept a job. So my first job out of high school was rooming with some of my high school buddies and moving to the big city and working a graveyard shift in a grocery store. I ended up doing that for almost seven years, grinding away, making 10 bucks an hour to scrape enough money to buy groceries and pay rent. That went on for years.
I tell a story though, too: the grocery store I worked for was owned by a retired Marine sergeant. It was an IGA, and there are 2,000 IGAs in America, right? Man, we had to learn every customer by name. We had to stop everybody in the aisle, ask them if they needed help, take out groceries, mop the floors every day. We had to do everything perfect or we got yelled at. Couldn’t get fired because it was a recession/depression. But after working there for three years, this little IGA in Tacoma, Washington, got first place in the United States for the fastest growth, the best customer experience from all these KPIs in the United States. It taught me what hard work and service can do for a small business. I learned it from Ken Adams—Ken Adams IGA.
That’s a whole other story, but old school. Then I went from there—working seven years in a grocery store—to then picking orders in a warehouse, and then driving a semi-truck, unloading 40,000 pounds by hand down a ramp into restaurants on a graveyard shift for 12- to 15-hour shifts back then, driving a semi. Hard work. So when I finally got into management, my corporate career was all about putting in long hours, having that work ethic.
So when I decided to start my own business, I brought that work ethic right there. Yeah, window cleaning, pressure washing—it’s a low barrier to entry. Yeah, a lot of people can do it. There are a lot of guys and gals out there starting it up every year. But what separates those from a real company, from a real successful business, is the work that’s put in behind it. Like I said, when I started my business, I had the Prius, I had a ladder, and I got on my mountain bike and hung door hangers until it got dark every single night. Then I would jump on the computer and study everything I could find online in marketing until I finally got a coach a year later, which helped me with marketing—because you’ve got to get marketing going. We’re not just in the service business, we are in the marketing business. If you want to be successful, you’ve got to learn how to market.
But that work ethic—plus in my personal life, I had some failures. That time I worked graveyards in a grocery store, I was 26 years old, living in a single-wide mobile home with a beat-up car. I started drinking too much. I lost my wife and three kids at the age of 26, and wanted to end my life. My life was broken; everything was destroyed. I hit a bottom. Thank God I found recovery, which also found me a higher power, which found me a God, which gave me faith. Because I’ll tell you what—if I hadn’t had faith, I don’t know if I would be where I am today with my business.
It’s one thing to go out and make a nice hourly wage cleaning windows by yourself. To take it to growing into a seven-figure business and putting up with all the bullshit you’ve got to put up with to get it there—it took faith. It took faith in God. And I understand—I never believed in God growing up. I don’t judge anybody for anything; if it’s faith in yourself or faith in your community or faith in your family or whatever your faith is, find some faith because you’re going to need it. You’re going to hit some walls, and you’ve got to get past that. I believe success—this is what separates most people from success and not success—are the ones that don’t give up, that keep going no matter how hard it gets, that keep going.
I’ve had times where I lost my entire crew. I’ve hired people that took drugs and crashed my truck into downtown and a bunch of other cars. Right? I used to hear stories from these big companies, and I’m like, “Oh my God, I hope that doesn’t happen to me.” Well, it all happened to me. You just have to get through that day, get to bed, wake up the next day, and keep on going.
Sheila: We all could. I was just thinking we could write a book—10 small business owner contributors, writing a book of all the crappy stuff that we’ve been through. I think I’ve learned pretty much everything I’ve learned the hard way. I feel like that, and I’m starting to finally get smarter than that. But there’s also this element of going for it and not being afraid to take that leap of faith and to go after the thing. Whenever you choose to do that, there’s just a lot of responsibility that comes along with it. So that’s where that grit and perseverance and faith comes in. I love your story about the IGA.
I think about my very first job at a high-end men’s clothing store in downtown Davenport, Iowa, fitting men with these really high-end suits, all that stuff. Talk about learning service—how to serve that high-end clientele, that sort of thing. It was sales, too—I had to sell merchandise. I had to convince these stingy old guys to buy this stuff. It’s fun to rehash that at this stage in our career and say, “Wow, that really did help me out,” right? I love that story so much. I really appreciate you sharing that with us.
Sheila: Can we go in a little bit different direction? You’re talking about marketing. Marketing is very important, and it doesn’t come easy to a lot of us. Some of us have to hire out certain portions, and there are so many different marketing channels, plus having to have repetitive campaigns to be able to hit those channels over and over again. But what has worked for you in regards to marketing? Give me a little bit about branding. By the way, I’ve been to your website—awesome website. I really thought it was great. I encourage any of our listeners to check out your website at Sundance Window Cleaning. Just a really good model—very clean, easy to navigate, to the point. It was great.
Greg: Yeah, and boy, it took me a while to really understand marketing. I threw so much money out there sometimes just to see what would stick on the walls and got disappointed. It took a while to really get my head around understanding the principle of what you’re trying to accomplish with marketing.
With the basics, what you want to do is—Google is king in most cases, right? You’ve got to have—ideally you want organic SEO coming up in your market. There are ways to do that by having a good website, having everything tagged appropriately. This is where third-party, once you can afford it, to help support your SEO is important because there are keywords and videos and different things you can do to organically boost your SEO. I don’t want to get too much in the weeds, but at the end of the day, you’ve got print, EDDMs, you’ve got Google, you’ve got Facebook. It’s not hard to figure out all those avenues. It’s all out there today. The key thing is you want to track everything. You want to have a tracker. You want to have a list of all your marketing avenues, what your spend is. You want to ask every customer that calls you, “Where did you hear from us?” You want to capture that ROI on your marketing spend. That’s the basics of it because that then informs you of where in your market and what’s working and what’s not.
What I’ve come to learn over the years in trying different things—and I also used HomeAdvisor when I first started. It was a love/hate relationship; mostly I hate. I don’t use it anymore because what I hated about it was having to quickly answer the phone and be the first one and put up with all kinds of crap. So I don’t use it anymore, but it helped boost me. What I learned in HomeAdvisor was, after the first year, I’m like, “Why am I doing this? Why am I spending the money?” All these leads I lost…well, when I went and looked at it, I had a slightly positive ROI after that first year with HomeAdvisor. Of course, the light bulb goes off: “Wait a minute. As long as I keep those customers happy, the following year I get to profit. My margin will be good on all of those acquired new customers.”
The way I view it today is, when I’m in growth mode—even if I break even on the ROI or the cost of customer acquisition—it’s not ideal; I always want to do better than that. But even if I break even, that’s not such a bad thing because your database becomes your goldmine. When you acquire that customer and it’s in your database and you service that customer, you can then begin to market directly to that customer. Once you have a customer, it’s easier to raise your pricing on them than trying to get a higher price to get a new customer. So your database is gold.
So tracking your marketing spend… When I was early in my marketing days, if I had the capital, I now would have probably known to spend upwards of 30 to 35% of my revenue on marketing because I’m in that growth mode. I’m buying customers. I am going out and paying a customer to come on board with me to hopefully stay with me for five to ten years so then I can upsell them and raise prices on them. Part of my success was just massive customer acquisition every year. I can’t tell you how many estimates I run around and do every year—it’s crazy. Obviously, if you can do estimates remotely on Google, great, but I’m in a custom-build market and I prefer to be there. I get excited.
Sheila: Hey, I love that. You’re really passionate about that.
Greg: Customers are everything.
Sheila: I love it. I love it. I love it. Basically what I’m hearing is your growth plan was high customer acquisition, big marketing budget in the beginning, load up that database, then you dialed down and focused your marketing on that recurring revenue.
Greg: Yeah. Once—I used to say, “Hey guys…” And I don’t want to—talking a lot about me, but I can’t speak to the success of my business without talking about all the employees that I’ve had over the years that helped get me where I am today. But I would tell my team, “Hey, once we get to that seven-figure mark—once we get to that million dollar—we’re kind of in that plane taking off, right? We’re burning a lot of fuel. You’re burning a lot of customer cost acquisition to get up to cruising altitude. Once you get to cruising altitude…”
For the last few years, my marketing budget dropped to even 5% because I hit a point in my seasonal market that outside of adding winter services, the growth always comes in my busy season. I want to cap out at a certain point and then focus on cost reduction, margin improvement. Once I got to cruising, my marketing spend dropped, and then I was able to leverage that cash towards better wages for my employees, 401(k), healthcare. That was a great thing to finally achieve—a certain revenue mark we as a team were trying to get to. Then I started adding benefits into my organization to share the wealth a little bit with my team.
Sheila: Wow, that’s great. On your seven-figure business, what type of marketing budget do you have? How much of that today?
Greg: We’re hovering about 10% because being in a resort market, there’s a lot of turnover, a lot of people that sell, a lot of people that move. It’s a higher turn rate than more of a stable environment, I find. Over the years, Park City has grown so fast. When I first came in, I didn’t have a ton of really talented competition—there were tons of bucket bobs running around all over the place. But now I have a lot more competition that’s sophisticated, that has consultants, and they’re doing really good marketing in my market. So I have to bring my spend up a little bit on my marketing to maintain what I have. But we dominate, organically, SEO. That’s a plus I have as well.
Sheila: Very good. For non-marketing dollars—somebody just starting out and needs to start getting their name out there—what do you recommend?
Greg: Doing what I did: door hangers and yard signs. That’s your biggest bang for the buck. Like I said, when I started my business, I would spend several hours a week, sometimes a whole afternoon if I had the time, just riding my mountain bike to neighborhoods, leaving it up against a tree, jogging to doors. I would blast hundreds and hundreds of door hangers on all kinds of properties. I even door-knocked a few times when I was like, “Okay, I’m ready to make some money.” So that, to me, was the best bang for the buck.
Obviously, you’ve got to have a Google Business page—get that organic SEO going, get a website, get keywords in there, get your services in there. You’ve got to start building that immediately. If you can afford to spend a little bit on Google ads, a little bit on Facebook ads, just to get your branding going in your market…
I saved up for my first EDDM campaign—Every Door Direct Mailing through the U.S. Post Office. It can be kind of pricey, but that’s one avenue to get new customers. It took me a couple of years to save up enough for that, and I didn’t do it right. You’re supposed to target a targeted area two or three times over a couple of months, and I broke even on my first EDDM campaign. I think that cost me 4,000 in a small market. But I got one big job out of it that I had for years and years and years, and it more than—
Sheila: More than paid for your 4,000 investment.
Greg: Oh my God, I saved up for two years, I spent 4,000, and I got one job out of it. But that job ended up feeding my business a lot of money.
Sheila: I love that. I love that. I don’t know about HomeAdvisor anymore—the buying leads. I learned something a long time ago—and we won’t stay on that, but I did it for a short while as well, and it felt very cutthroat. I kind of got to the point where I thought, “I don’t even want to compete with these guys. I’m better than this,” so I just…
Paying for a lead—I learned something a long time ago from a colleague: a referral is sending someone you care about to someone you trust. And I’ve always believed that when you build that trust with people organically—because I’m sure that you have this because of the type of person you are and the type of culture you probably have in your company—you probably have a lot of existing client referrals.
Greg: Yeah, and I should add that to the marketing. When I was smaller, I was on every single job, and if my customers were home, I always tried to strike up a short conversation, get to know them a little bit, be really friendly, and then not be afraid to ask them for the referral. I would just say, “Look, I’m starting up this business, I’m trying to grow it, it’s a tough market. Anything you could do to help me—tell any of your friends or neighbors about me—I would really appreciate it.” It doesn’t hurt to ask, and you’d be surprised if you put it like that how many people are willing to help you out, especially when you’re first getting off the ground.
Sheila: Yeah, I agree. Making it part of your end-of-job procedure for your technicians… It’s a question; it’s an ask. All we’ve got to do is ask. What are they going to do—say no? “Hey, if you really love what we did for you here today, do you have any friends or neighbors that might be interested in our service, too?” If they had a good experience, they are so happy to turn you over that lead. That is the best way to grow your company, in my opinion. It takes longer, but when that lead comes to you, there’s already a sense of trust. You’re not competing with the other guys; you’re not having to worry about your price as much. You’re able to put your best foot forward and be like, “Okay, well, so-and-so referred me, so here, I’ll do the same thing for you.” Usually they’re high-margin jobs because people are just willing to do business with you because they trust you.
Greg: Right.
Sheila: Greg, we have covered so many really cool things today, and I love learning your story. I love that we went down the marketing path, too, because marketing—it’s a grind in itself, right? Trying to figure it all out. Everybody comes at you: “Do this, do that.” You could spend a lot of money. It’s really great that you shared your marketing experience, and you gave some very direct solutions for our listeners. I really appreciate that.
Are there any final thoughts you have as we wrap up today’s podcast?
Greg: Yeah, just kind of on that marketing note, probably one other thing I’d add is try to be proactive. I used to be reactive: “Oh no, it’s slowing down in August. Oh my God, quick, let’s send some postcards out, pay for a Google ad.” No—look in advance a couple of months before gutter season, a couple of months before window cleaning, a couple of months before your pressure washing. Be ahead of it. Get it ready, get your materials ready, get your print ready, get everything set up, and launch it in advance. Be proactive in your marketing, not reactive. That’s one other thing I thought of.
Sheila: No, that’s fantastic, and I love where you’re going with that because it really starts with how much money do we want to… You’ve got to spend money to make money, unfortunately. That’s why you do as much footwork and referrals early to build up momentum, and then save some of that profit to reinvest back into marketing, right?
Greg: Exactly.
Sheila: Because it’s that percentage of revenue—we have to decide what type of mode are we in? Are we really trying to grow this year, or are we wanting to do it maybe a little bit more organically? Whatever that looks like. Coming up with that revenue and then backing it into what is that specific market you want to serve, and what is that potential there, and then how are you going to get to them through the marketing channels? And then knowing that you need to hit them up several times throughout the year for that repetitive branding. At that point you’re just building out a calendar. If you follow your calendar—like we all do as business owners—you can stay on track with that. Really, you’re kind of beginning with the end in mind and then backing it into a plan.
Greg: Exactly.
Sheila: I love it. Such good stuff. I’m thankful—thank you for leaving us with that final marketing tip. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you better today, Greg.
Greg: Yeah, well, thanks for having me, Sheila. It’s fun. I get excited talking about the business. I guess my final thing is yeah, thank God for America. Thank God for the opportunity where we all have a chance to live the American dream and to go for it and put it all out there. I just wish all of the folks that watch or listen to this absolute success. Just believe in yourself, put in the work, don’t give up, get mentors, listen to good people—just go for it.
All of the pain—it’s temporary. Every time you’re faced with a problem, it’s just an opportunity to get stronger. It’ll change your life, and success will come, and it opens up doors. Early on I was like, “Oh, how did I walk away from that paycheck every two weeks I had coming in?” Now I’m like, “Man, I would never go back.” There’s not a problem in the world that can come along that would stop me from being in this world. It’s the best thing. God bless America, man. I’m telling you.
Sheila: Your passion is absolutely contagious. Even me—I’ve kind of had a rough day today, but you’ve got me feeling really good, Greg. I love it! I think our listeners are probably feeling really good, too, and I really appreciate those words of inspiration because we need that. We all need it, and I really, really thank you for sharing that today, from the bottom of my heart.
Okay, well, we’re going to knock off for today. We thank all of our guests and listeners for learning some more about Greg Hiller. If you want to look him up, it’s Sundance Window Cleaning in Park City, Utah. Also, Greg, real quick, can we just do a quick plug for Busy Virtual Receptionists?
Greg: Yeah, so part of the beauty of this is I have a little extra time, so I’m starting another gig—artificial intelligence phone receptionist. I’m in the process of building it, so it’s not quite done yet, but it’s going to be called Busy Virtual Receptionist—B I Z Z E—virtualreceptionist.com. Hopefully I’ll have it rolled out in a couple of months, and basically it’s going to do what a call center does, but it’ll just be an AI. They’ll be able to take appointments, put it on a calendar for you, lower cost, works 24 hours a day, gives you no grief as an employee, hopefully. Hopefully some of you can take advantage of that. Because when I look back early on—man, I love the call centers, but oh my gosh, the overages and some of the costs associated with having that call center broke me a little bit financially back in the day. I think the future is really AI receptionists, especially for small companies just getting off the ground—low cost, can answer the phone, answer questions.
Yeah, that’s part of the beauty of being an entrepreneur now—I can try stuff like this. So look it up—it’ll probably be out there in a couple of months.
Sheila: Love it, that you share that. It absolutely fills a need, especially in busy season. To hire another person in-house or to go with VA or call centers can get costly, especially hiring somebody, and then to hire somebody temporarily, that’s payroll taxes and all that. So you’re absolutely filling a need. In busy season we could use—I don’t know how many “busies” we have to bring on, but we could probably bring on three or four easy in the next three to four months. That’s awesome! I congratulate you for the innovation itself and the boldness of starting something totally new in the AI space. That’s awesome, Greg.
Okay, well, thanks for sharing with us today, Greg, and thanks to all of our listeners here today at the Huge Transformation Podcast. We’re going to sign off, and we hope you guys all crush it.
Greg: Yeah, thanks, Sheila. It was great. I appreciate it.
Sheila: Absolutely. We’ll see you soon, Greg.
Greg: Okay, take care. Bye-bye.
Sid Graef: Hello, my friend. This is Sid. Thank you again so much for taking your time to listen to today’s episode. I hope you got some value from it. And listen, anything that was covered—any of the resources, any of the books, any of the tools—anything like that is in the show notes, so it’s easy for you to find and check it out.
Also, I want to let you know: the mission for The Huge Convention and for this is to help our blue-collar business owners like you and I to gain financial and time freedom through running a better business. And we do that in four ways:
Number one is our free weekly newsletter—it’s called The Huge Insider. I hope you subscribe. It is the most valuable newsletter for the home service industry, period—paid or otherwise. And this one’s free.
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Next, of course, is The Huge Convention—or The Huge Convention if you haven’t been. You’ve got to check it out. It’s every August. This year it’s in Nashville, Tennessee—that’s August 20th through 22nd in 2025. And it is the largest and number-one-rated trade show and convention for home service business builders. We’ve got the biggest trade show so you can check out all the coolest tools and meet the vendors and check out the software to run your business. And we’ve got world-class education and educators and speakers that will teach you how to run a better business. And it’s the best networking opportunity that you can have within the home service business.
Then lastly, if you want to pour jet fuel on your business, check out The Huge Mastermind. Now, it’s not for everyone. You’ve got to be over 750,000 in revenue, and you’re building toward 1 million, 5 million, 10 million in the next five years. It is a network, mentorship, and mastermind of your peers, and we help you understand and implement the Freedom Operating System. We’ll go into more detail, but you can get all the information on all four of these programs and how we’ll help you advance your business quickly just by going to thehugeconvention.com and scrolling down to click on The Freedom Path. Or, of course, you can find the links here in the show notes.
Sorry, I feel like I’m getting a little bit wordy, but I just want to let you know of the resources that are available to you to help you accelerate and advance your beautiful small business. So keep on growing, keep on learning, keep advancing. If you like the show, go ahead—if you would—go and take 90 seconds, give us a review on iTunes, then subscribe and share it. Man, it would really mean the world to us. It would help other people as we continue our mission to help people just like you and me. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you on the next episode.
