The pressure washing supply store near Nick Lesko’s base in Round Rock fills bleach tanks for fifty or sixty washing companies every week. On a recent visit, the owner of the shop next door walked out, past every one of them, straight to Lesko, and asked him to come wash her property. Her explanation doubled as a mission statement for everything he had spent on starting a pressure washing business the professional way: your truck, the look, the fact that you’re veteran owned. I could have asked any of these people at any time. I waited for you.
Lesko told the story on a recent episode of Everyday Excellence with host Todd Baldwin of Everyday Media Group, and it captures a founder running two deliberately different companies at once. Texas Patriot Contracting, now roughly four years old, is a general contracting and construction management firm doing public commercial work for state agencies, cities, and counties around Austin. Patriot Power Washing, launched this past January, is a residential and commercial exterior cleaning company, concrete to roofs to windows, that he built to look like the real deal from day one. One business is won by bid, the other by brand, and the episode is a rare side-by-side look at what each model teaches.
It is also a veteran’s story in the most practical sense. Lesko decided on the Army at sixteen, enlisted in high school at seventeen with his parents’ signature to improve his odds at West Point, earned the appointment, and served as an officer before leaving the military earlier than planned on medical leave. His advice at the end of the hour carries the whole arc: “Know that it’s gonna be hard. But it’s one thousand percent worth it.”
Servant Leadership, and the Layoffs That Built a Contractor
Ask Lesko what West Point left him with and the answer comes instantly: servant leadership. “You’re not doing it for yourself, you’re doing it for other people,” he says, and he credits the mindset for his private-sector transition, where rank means nothing. “Someone can flip you the bird and say, I’m done.” Leading subcontractors who do not work for him meant asking rather than ordering, and his favorite tool was humility: walking onto job sites as the new guy and saying, can you teach me? Can you explain this to me?
The entrepreneurial model came from watching his father the hard way. A civil engineer who moved the family to Texas in 2005, his dad was laid off three times in three years as firms were bought and shuffled, then decided he could not keep doing that with two young kids and started his own general contracting business, now twenty years strong. The irony Lesko admits openly: watching the stress of his dad’s business made him want nothing to do with entrepreneurship growing up. It took the Army ending early to change that.
“Dad, You’re Gonna Hire Me”: A $3,000 First Year
Back home on military leave with the paycheck clock running out, Lesko spent three months applying for jobs that went nowhere. Then his father’s project manager no-called, no-showed, and quit, and Lesko seized the moment: “Dad, you’re gonna hire me. I’m gonna be your project manager. You know where I live.” He managed his father’s projects for a paycheck while building Texas Patriot Contracting on the side, and he is honest about the runway that gave him. Year one brought about three thousand dollars in revenue, procurement odd jobs and dirt deliveries. Every year since, the company has quadrupled or better, and this year is its best by far.
The early mistake he names is greed. “You’re not gonna retire off of one or two or three jobs,” he says; the fix was learning his lane, respecting the specialists he cannot underbid, and leaning on the certifications his veteran status earns in public procurement. The business model is deliberately lean: what the insurance world calls a paper contractor, no yard, no equipment, no W-2 crews, just bid work and a trusted subcontractor network. The overhead savings are enormous; the trade-off is scheduling around subs he does not control, and the expensive lesson of assembling crews who actually work well together, because one unfamiliar sub is “like throwing a wrench into the machine.”
When the Contracts Dried Up, He Built a Second Business
2025 was brutal for contractors chasing public work. The jobs Lesko bids either vanished, ballooned beyond his scope, or shrank until, as he puts it, the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. So he and his father, who became Patriot Power Washing’s angel investor, went hunting for a second revenue stream they could learn. Painting, electrical, and HVAC all stumbled on licensing and the truth that the good guys go work for themselves. Then came the Fourth of July, a pool deck, and a pressure washer in hundred-degree heat. It was oddly satisfying. People get paid for this. Three or four months down the YouTube and Google research rabbit hole later, he knew the industry, liked its growth curve, and pitched his dad.
His father’s instinct was the classic starter play: a Home Depot washer in the truck bed and some door knocking. Lesko’s brain, he says, is wired the other way: go big or go home. They invested heavily in a professional truck and skid, website, and branding before the first customer, and launched in January. The reasoning was twofold. He refused to be seen as the weekend warriors, and he wanted every capability on day one, no growing pains, no turning down jobs for lack of equipment. “It was an expensive decision, but in the long run it’s going to pay off. I already know what the rig can do. Now it’s just, let’s put it to work.” The supply store story, and the downtown Austin client who accepted a quote thirty seconds after his business partner saw the truck on the website and declared this is our guy, are the strategy cashing its first checks.
What Is Working Now: One Owner, Two Classrooms
Running both companies at once has turned into a business education no MBA covers, though Lesko is halfway through one of those online at SMU too. Pressure washing taught him sales: contracting is ninety-nine percent bid work, an art and science of being lowest while profitable, while washing is pure selling, reading each customer, learning that the most expensive neighborhood can house the cheapest buyers, and finding the price balance after giving work away early and overcharging elsewhere. Contracting taught him operations: coordinating plumbers, electricians, painters, and carpenters into a machine. And the washing side is teaching him the owner-operator’s paradox: customers love that Nick answers the phone and Nick shows up, a competitor’s longtime client just told him quality dropped when that owner started sending young kids, and his 2027 challenge is hiring his first washer, attitude over skills, paid handsomely, without losing the value of the face.
The marketing engine is young and climbing. An SEO agency he met through his BNI chapter rebuilt his visibility and now has Patriot Power Washing ranking number one in Round Rock for pressure washing, with growth the agency told him is the fastest they have seen. Leads have already arrived from Perplexity, Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini, a striking proof point for a ten-month-old brand, and the next conversation is Google Local Services Ads, intent-based rather than interruption-based, once the launch cash burn gives way to steadier revenue. Magazine ads produced nothing he can trace; the truck produces stories weekly. Culture, meanwhile, already exists at two people: his concrete sub routes new work through Texas Patriot Contracting unprompted because Lesko refuses to squeeze him on price. “Take care of your people and they will take care of you,” as Baldwin summarized it.
The Lesson: Track Every Lead to Revenue, and Keep Your Agency Honest
Lesko’s marketing setup is the healthy version of a relationship most owners get wrong, and he set the terms on day one: “I’m not married to any agency. I’m more than willing to give this a shot, but if it’s not working for either one of us, I want us all to be transparent and communicate that.” What followed is what good looks like: responsive communication, monthly meetings, real updates, and rankings that moved. Baldwin’s on-air reaction was genuine relief, because the agency world has earned its bad reputation one over-promise at a time, and finding an ethical, transparent partner out of the gate is rarer than it should be.
The advice Baldwin layered on top is the step most owners never take: track every lead through the funnel to closed revenue. Knowing a lead came from organic, ChatGPT, an LSA, or a paid ad is half the picture; feeding back which leads were quality, which closed, and what they were worth lets a business see ROI by channel and lets a good agency prove its value season after season. That lead-to-revenue tracking, paired with a simple review cadence, one ask a week is fifty-two reviews a year, is the same transparency-first philosophy the team at Everyday Media Group runs on with its own home service clients, some of them for more than a decade. Whoever a business works with, Lesko’s standard and Baldwin’s playbook together make the checklist: transparent terms, real communication, tracked leads, revenue feedback, and reviews asked for while customers are happiest.
Key Takeaways From Nick Lesko
- Look like the company you intend to become. The go-big rig and branding cost real money before the first job, and it now closes deals on sight, from the supply store walk-up to a quote accepted in thirty seconds.
- Diversify before you have to. When 2025’s public work dried up, a second business built on researchable skills and a growing market turned a drought year into a launch year.
- Draw the line between helping and charity. His hardest lesson as a people pleaser: giving away work costs your subs their hours too. “We aren’t at the bazaar. I’m running a business.”
About Nick Lesko
Nick Lesko is a West Point graduate and Army veteran who owns two companies in the Austin area: Texas Patriot Contracting, a general contracting and construction management firm serving state agencies, cities, and counties, and Patriot Power Washing, a veteran-owned residential and commercial exterior cleaning company based in Round Rock. Reach either business at Texas Patriot Contracting LLC, https://www.txpatcont.com/ Patriot Power Washing LLC, https://patriot-powerwashing.com/
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