Carolina Cleaning Boys clean up

Carolina Cleaning Boys clean up

A summertime job pressure washing homes in the North Carolina sun just might have become a hot career. East Carolina University business management and Honors College student Sam Dewar and twin engineering students Nick and Zach Willer won the Miller School of Entrepreneurship's ninth Gene T. Aman Pirate Challenge with their company, Carolina Cleaning Boys. The annual pitch competition has elevated their side hustle, causing them to rethink their futures.

"It could definitely become a 'real' or full-time job - we considered it, probably the last couple of weeks," said Nick Willer. "It wasn't really something that was in the playbook a year ago, but things are changing now."

The trio earned $50,000 in cash and about $60,000 in in-kind services for accounting, business space, legal services and apparel. Twelve months ago, the three friends and roommates figured their pressure washing business would go away when they graduated because they would be going into industry - Dewar as a financial advisor and the Willers as engineers. That was then and this is now.

"I think if we can keep growing it and keep scaling, eventually we want to franchise," Nick said. "So if we're able to franchise and keep building it up, I think that could be a possibility for us to take it full time."

The Willers and Dewar first met when they came to ECU to run track and cross country, which they did for a few years. The trio started working together a couple of summers ago because the Willers had experience in pressure washing and Dewar had a landscaping business in high school. Then they started making a nice profit.

Dewar decided to get his certificate in entrepreneurship and, last fall, took a class with Miller School of Entrepreneurship senior teaching instructor David Mayo. Mayo is also the director of the Aman Pirate Challenge. As such, and as part of the class, Mayo told the students that they had to sign up for the first round of the APC last October. So, Dewar signed up and involved his best friends and business partners.

"We didn't take any entrepreneurship classes last year, so to be frank, we really didn't know about [the Aman Pirate Challenge]," Dewar said.

"It's really rewarding for me, in the classroom and in the Pirate Challenge, because if you really want to do well or scale your ideas or make a big impact on the world, entrepreneurship is the way to do it," Mayo said. "I think there's a myth that students can't start their own companies right out of school. They absolutely can. And all of these students today demonstrated that."

The seniors advanced past the first round in October and the second round in February. During this process, they started making changes to their company and have been able to grow it over the past six months. They credit the mentorship and support within the Miller School for where they are right now.

"I've got to give a lot of credit to Sharon and Charlie Justice. They've worked with a lot of really great teams and businesses," Dewar said. "Sharon especially helped us a lot. We met with her weekly, and she helped really develop our business from a business that was making a lot of money to a business that could scale, and really be able to outsource a lot of the work that we were doing."

Although they are graduating in May, all three Carolina Cleaning Boys are entering master's degree programs at ECU. Dewar will be in the Immersive MBA program, and the Willers will be in the accelerated engineering master's program.

The cash prizes they won from the APC final round will help them buy a new truck and pressure washing equipment to expand their business. They have one part-time employee currently and hope to hire three or four more. The trio said their not-so-secret recipe for success is their customer service.

"What we noticed is a lot of our competitors lacked that, and the industry as a whole didn't have it," Dewar said. "By being a little more communicative, a little more personable with each person we interacted with, we were able to really build a relationship and then eventually have them give referrals to others."

"You have to make a conscious effort to treat people right," Zach said. "It's really easy to skip those steps, make quick money. But if you're in it for the long game and having a successful business … you need to have customer satisfaction first."

The ninth APC had a total of $250,000 in cash and in-kind services for the winners. All six finalists were awarded cash prizes. All-in-one Greek life streamlining platform Simple Greek came in second and won $15,000. Health care artificial intelligence assistant Clinic Wire came in third place, winning $10,000. Huddle Wealth, a business that aims to help student athletes who are now getting paid revenue sharing, won $5,000. In fifth place, roadkill recycler CarriOn was awarded $3,000. Rounding out the group, in sixth place was dating app Mingle Maps, which won $2,000 and an additional $5,000 from Red Shark Digital. The judges had some challenges ranking the businesses.

"Oh, asking you to pick your favorite is like asking somebody to, you know, pick your favorite child … It's virtually impossible," said APC judge Jennifer Capps, CEO and executive director of the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE). "When you're in a mix like this, sixth place doesn't mean you lost anything. It means that you did exceptionally well out of all of the teams that were fighting to be here tonight. So I don't consider there being a winner or a loser necessarily, just different levels of potential for success at this moment."

Fellow APC judge Henrik Skalmerud traveled in for the final from Oslow, Norway. He played tennis at ECU and graduated from the College of Business in 2011. Recently, his company Bsure AS (Bsure) was awarded funding through the Pirate Entrepreneurship Fund, which is a multi-million dollar fund launched by a group of ECU supporters to aid in, among other things, entrepreneurship. Being an entrepreneur himself, he said, he is impressed with what the College of Business is doing.

"One of the things that I did reflect on today was how mature and how far they have come, to where they are in school," Skalmerud said. "I did not have that focus (entrepreneurship) in school. I did not have a business idea like that. All these business ideas are great. It's really cool to see how it's actually possible."

The celebration came with real-world timing, as the final round was on Tax Day, and Dewar said he had to go home and send off his taxes. Which, from now on, might just rely on the accounting services they will soon receive.

"I think the investment and the hope that everyone's poured into us has been the biggest factor," Dewar said. "When we started this, it was definitely kind of a side hustle, something we were doing just to make money. But the amount that we've been poured into by ECU, specifically the College of Business and the entrepreneurship school, it showed us that this could be something that we take after college. And so getting that guidance and that mentorship from everyone within the faculty is something that's really changed our perspective on things."

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