On this episode of the Huge Transformations Podcast, host Sid Graef sits down with Aaron Harper, founder of Rolling Suds Power Washing, to unpack what it really takes to build a scalable, coast-to-coast service business—without burning out or selling hype.

Aaron walks through his journey from Hollywood talent agencies (working around names like Will Smith and Jesse Eisenberg) to B2B sales, and eventually into franchise development—helping grow service brands by hundreds of units before launching Rolling Suds. He shares how he walked away from a near seven-figure “dream job” offer while his wife was six months pregnant so he could start his own franchise brand from scratch, raise capital for the first time, and acquire Rolling Suds.

Resources:

The Huge Insider podcast downloadable action guide

The Huge Mastermind info page

Huge Foundations Facebook Group

Transcript:

Hello everyone. Welcome to the Huge Transformations podcast. I'm Sid Graef outta Montana. I'm Gabe Torres here in Nashville, Tennessee. And I'm Sheila Smeltzer From North Carolina, we are 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.

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. We are 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. Journey of entrepreneurship. Let's dive in.

Hello my friends, it's Sid Graef. This is the Huge Transformation podcast. Thanks for joining me today 'cause we've got a great conversation with Aaron Harper. Who is Aaron Harper? Aaron is the founder and was the CEO until he hired a new CEO of rolling SUDS power washing. And that is the nation's first coast to coast power washing franchise.

And you're like franchise. We're a bunch of solo business owners. You're gonna learn a ton from Aaron and how deliberate. And thoughtful. They have been in developing a franchise brand for power washing and really helping raise the level in the industry across the board. So we had a great time on this.

We talk about a lot of stuff. There's a lot of resources that are mentioned, book books and podcasts and concepts and all of that. All of that's gonna be in the show notes. You can learn, you can check it out there. Um, but with that, please join me in this conversation with Aaron Harper and get to know my new friend and yours, Aaron Harper.

Welcome to the Huge Transformations podcast, everybody is your listening. Uh, the Huge Transformation podcast is all about the journey, the journey of a business person, entrepreneur, usually in home services, but where they started and how they became successful and some of the challenges along the way.

And I'm really excited I've got Aaron Harper on with us today. And as your, your name tag says Aaron, founder of Rolling Suds. First of all, thanks for being on the show with me today. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to get, uh, get to know you and, and talk about, uh, talk about all the stuff that we're gonna talk about.

Yeah, a hundred percent. So I've got like 4,000 questions for you, but, uh, a little bit of background for you is not for you about you. So you grew up in California, you were a skater, surfer kid, got into, uh, looked like you wanted to get into the film industry and as an agent. Mm-hmm. And then somehow transitioned out of that and started working as an employee and a franchise, carpet cleaning franchise, and then kind moved up the ranks and then, uh, there's a whole lot more to the story.

One thing that I, I can't wait to, we'll do it a little bit later, but you and I share something in common that is so obscure. It's like one in 10 million. I was shocked when I saw it. Not in what, just in some of the homework. Um, which, which might be fun for us to discuss a little bit, but how did you go from the.

Skater kid to arts and entertainment, wanna be an agent and to get into franchising, like, tell us the backstory. I'll dig in a little bit more as we go. Yeah. So, um, you know, I, I, I, I grew up, uh, in Southern California, you know, my grandfather was really into film. I was really into film. I studied film. I saw Entourage, thought I wanted to be Ari Gold, except just a little bit nicer.

Um, and, um, and, and then, you know, kind of put that, put that goal in my mind to, to do that. Um, left college, ended up having an internship, working for, you know, a, a, a producer, um, movie producer. Then went and worked at, um, talent agency and ended up working my way up as kind of an assistant slash like a agent and training.

Working on the teams of like Jesse Isenberg, Melissa, Leo, will Smith, and like a bunch of other ones. And, uh, basically realized that like I didn't want anything that my bosses had and they were miserable. And it was just like I was working so, so hard. And I'm not afraid of hard work, but like it was, I mean, if you know anything about the Hollywood industry, like it's about as bad as you, as you think it is in terms of like all of the stereotypes that you've heard about the backside of the Hollywood industry are true and then some.

And so it was just not a life that I wanted. I was really miserable. And, um, you know, I, I just said, made the decision to kind of abandon, abandon ship there. Um, worked, uh, in kind of a B2B sales role, um, to try to put some numbers on my, on my skillset. Like I learned a lot during that experience. Like, I learned how to manage really difficult personalities.

I learned the importance of relationships. I learned how to stand out in a crowd of many aggressive, hungry people. So I, I, I, I value the experience, but it wasn't where I wanted to be 20 years later. Right. And, but in Hollywood, like so much of what you do is based upon who, you know, what parties you can get into, like all these different, like who, who you can have coffee with, like very kind of, um, obscure and like unquantifiable things.

Mm-hmm. It's like very squishy. It's like what's your, your reputation like? So I wanted to put some numbers on my, my efforts and ended up working at a Fortune 15 company and being their top sales rep. Nationwide, um, and said, okay, I, I've got something here. And a buddy of mine was working in franchising, had a carpet cleaning brand, and um, he said, you should get into franchise development.

And I was like, well, I don't really want to build Wendy's location, so what are you talking about? He was like, no, like 1-800-GOT-JUNK is a franchise. Chem Dry is a Fran franchise. Like there's all these businesses that in the home service space that are franchised that you can, um, that you can grow and build.

And, um, I loved the idea of helping people become business owners. So I emailed his boss every three weeks until he hired me with no response, no responded emails, um, till like email number seven. Okay. Um, and um, and then I just worked in, so I worked there, um, grew that brand by about 200 units in three years, then worked at a car, uh, drywall repair franchise, grew that by about 223 units in two years.

And then I was like, wait a minute, I can do this on my own. Um, and I left that to go find a business to franchise in the service space. Um, I wasn't particularly looking for a power washing business. Um, I was looking a bunch at a bunch of different industries, HVAC, roofing, plumbing, solar tree care insulation, lawn care line striping, epoxy coatings.

Like we looked at, like, I looked at like 23 different businesses, but, um, power washing like the, the, the Wendling started, um, rolling uds in 1990. And, and they're just great people that I knew I could partner with. Um, and it was a great business. It's, it's a great business and I knew it could, I could replicate it in any, any market.

We went into and acquired the brand in January of 23, and since January of 23, we launched our first two franchisees in June of 23. And we've gone from a single location, power washing business in Pennsylvania to 328 units operating in 30. 36 states, um, nationwide now. Okay. So that's, there, you're, that's the Reader's Digest version and jumping and going from beginning to end.

Let's dig in, in the middle just a little bit. Sure. Well, in, in, uh, 2022, I, again, in that year, it's when you left the, uh, the, the patch franchise thing mm-hmm. In, uh, the, your bio since you were fired in like January, 2022 and your wife was expecting at the same time, which seems like a really scary time to go, Hey, I'm gonna.

Not get another job, but we're gonna go build something. We're gonna get in franchising, but I don't even know what it is yet, like sell that. So it's actually him saying how you sell that, it's actually even worse than that. It's actually, yeah, it's even crazier than that. So my, um, my job that I was working at wanted me to take on a brand from scratch that they would've paid me...