We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Matthew Crump. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Matthew below.

Alright, Matthew thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Talk to us about building your team? What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?

This is my third business. Over the years I’ve learned valuable lessons with the first two and have benefited greatly with the 3rd one from the lessons I’ve learned along the way.

I guess the best way to tell my story is to start from the beginning. Myself and my business partner are both firefighters in Alabama. We grew up in the Fort Lauderdale area of Florida and both moved at the same time and I eventually convinced Chris to join me at the fire department.

Everybody knows that firefighters usually have 2-3 jobs in order to get by. We were no different. In 2012 we started a lawn care business on our off days. We did ok. Probably made around $50k our first year but worked our butts off. We were both worn down. After two years, I sold my half to Chris and I went into the military serving 10 years with 20th Special Forces Group, one of only two national guard special forces units.

About 3 years ago, Chris started breaking into gutter cleaning because it was better money and a little easier work. Around the time, ammunition prices sky rocketed and the personal and home defense business I had started back in 2017 began to suffer because of it. Before long, I was splitting jobs with Chris again and helping him grow his gutter cleaning company.

But out of nowhere, many of our customers started asking us to do pressure washing jobs for them. We didn’t know how to pressure wash and didn’t have the time to fool with it so we kept pushing all of those jobs to a buddy of ours who was another firefighter and doing it on the side. Well, after we made him around $60k in a 4 month time span, I told Chris that we weren’t doing that anymore. I took the initiative to learn how to wash and we started another business. Chris brought his customer base and gutters to the table and I brought the ability to sell and to wash. Over the prior 3 years, we built the gutter cleaning company into one of the largest companies in central Alabama. We set a goal of trying to make $150k in our first year. Today, we are 4 months in and just now getting through winter. (Off season for pressure washing) and if we keep our current pace, we will break $250k in our first year. The problem, is that in the last two weeks, we’ve picked up over 100 new customers and if we can grow and manage all of the work, we should crush that $250k!

What sets us apart… our story is that we are firefighter and veteran owned but we also only employ firefighters and veterans. We especially want to focus on helping guys who are transitioning out of the military or fire department and who are looking for a stable and rewarding job as a civilian which allows them to be home more with their families. That was the entire reason we started this business. After 16 years as firefighters and 10 years in the military, we have missed our fair share of memories with our wives and kids. Now we are taking steps to be able to step away from those careers and transition to a more rewarding life at home, being our own bosses.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I am most proud of us for learning lessons over the years and applying them to this business. We are now enjoying the success of past mistakes that we took the time to do differently this time around.

I am proud that we took a chance and bet on ourselves to be successful so that the future for ourselves and our families will be better than they would have been.

What sets us apart is the fact that we only employ veterans and firefighters.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

When Chris and I first started discussing the possibility of starting this business, we had to sit down and figure out how much money it would realistically cost.

As firefighters, we didn’t have a ton of money laying around and so we knew we would need an investor. As we began discussing it with friends and family, we had an overwhelming amount of people offer to buy in to our company. It was at that point, we realized that we were on to something special.

Chris and I are both very good at selling ourselves. Talking to people and networking. We are even pretty decent at cleaning gutters and pressure washing. What we aren’t good at was running businesses the right way.

The best thing we did was seek out an investor who was also a business mentor. He and his wife have multiple startups. They do this as investments and are running multiple successful small businesses. Bringing them on board not only funded our startup but it forced us to get rid of a lot of bad habits out of convenience and start doing things the right way. It was one of the best decisions we made.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Starting Ladder 41 Exterior Cleaning is the pivot. We both want out of Gov work. We want to be our own bosses and be home with our families.

(Ladder 41 meaning- Matt (me) works on Ladder 4 and Chris works on Ladder 1 at our respective departments. The name tells part of our story and advertises that we are firefighter owned)

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Ladder_forty_one
• Facebook: Ladder 41 Exterior Cleaning
• Other: Website currently being built