By Wyatt McAvoy, Head of Product at Village. Founder of College Boys' Home Solutions, a $50K pressure washing and home services business he ran before college.
When people ask how I found customers for my pressure washing business, they expect to hear about ads, lead gen services, or some growth hack. The real answer is less exciting and more repeatable: I posted on Nextdoor, for free, every week, for six months. That's it. That was the engine.
Here's exactly how it worked, in order, with the numbers.
Step one: the first post
I started posting in March, right when the Georgia weather turns and homeowners start looking at their driveways and siding again. The post itself was simple. Who I was, what I did, the fact that I was a local college student running my own operation, and my number.
That last part — the college student angle — mattered more than anything else in the post. People on Nextdoor aren't scrolling to buy from companies. They're there because it's their neighborhood. A local student hustling to build something is exactly the kind of person they want to root for. The post wasn't an ad so much as an introduction.
I never paid to boost anything. Every post I ever ran was free.
Step two: the rhythm
One post a week, every week, March through August.
That consistency was the whole strategy. Any single post might get missed — people are busy, feeds move. But week after week, my name kept showing up. By midsummer, I wasn't a stranger posting an ad. I was the pressure washing kid people recognized. Familiarity is trust, and trust is everything on a neighborhood platform.
The math on that rhythm: roughly 25 posts over the season. Each post averaged 3 to 5 leads. Those leads converted around 90% of the time. Run the numbers and that's somewhere between 75 and 125 conversations, and the overwhelming majority turned into booked jobs. That posting habit, which cost me nothing but ten minutes a week, built a $50K business.
Step three: the response
Leads came in two ways. People would comment on the post, or they'd reach out directly — at the number I listed or through my website.
Either way, my rule was the same: respond promptly. Not within a day. Within the hour if I could. On Nextdoor, the first credible person to respond usually wins the job, and a fast reply signals exactly the kind of reliability people are hoping for when they hire someone off a neighborhood app.
The conversations themselves were natural. No script, no pitch. Usually I could give a price upfront based on what they described, and we'd have the job booked for that same week. If the job was harder to read, I'd offer to come out for a free quote. The free quote did two things: it secured the job before they kept shopping, and it put me face to face with the customer, where the work ethic and the handshake could do the selling.
Step four: playing offense
The weekly post was the baseline, but I didn't just wait for people to come to me.
Nextdoor is full of people asking for help. "Anyone know someone who pressure washes?" "Looking for a reliable lawn guy." Those posts are live demand sitting in the open. I watched for them and responded promptly, same playbook: college student, local, here's my number, happy to come give a free quote.
Those request posts were some of my highest-converting leads, because the customer had already raised their hand. All I had to do was be the first good answer.
Step five: the flywheel
Here's where it compounds.
A job done right on Nextdoor doesn't stay private. Customers would recommend me in the comments when neighbors asked for referrals. Some posted about me unprompted. Every recommendation was social proof I didn't have to write myself, sitting on the exact platform where my next customer was already scrolling.
And the customers themselves came back. A driveway gets dirty again. A deck needs another pass next spring. I kept the relationships warm — friendly, professional, easy to book — and one-time jobs turned into a recurring base. By the second season, a meaningful share of my work came from repeat customers and referrals before I'd posted anything at all.
That's the flywheel: post weekly → respond fast → do great work → get recommended → repeat customers → the posts get easier because the name is known.
What I'd tell anyone starting today
You don't need an ad budget. You need a rhythm and a reputation.
Post every week, even when it feels repetitive. Answer fast, every time. Give people a price or a free quote on the spot. Lean into who you are — if you're a student, say so, because it's an asset. And treat every job like the referral machine it is, because on Nextdoor, it literally is.
The platform hands you the neighborhood. Consistency does the rest.
Wyatt McAvoy is Head of Product at Village. He ran College Boys' Home Solutions through high school, founded Niche Supplements at the University of Georgia, and is a Finance major at UGA's Terry College of Business. He will be interning in investment banking at Houlihan Lokey in summer 2027.