How He Built a $500k Holiday Lights Empire

This week, I sat down with Chris Rios, founder and CEO of Ultra Shine Window Cleaning and Holiday Lights, based in central Kansas. Chris started out as a full-time firefighter and paramedic, picking up window cleaning as a side job just to pad the paycheck a little.

A few years in, he added Christmas light installation after noticing other window cleaners doing it, and that side of the business took off so fast that he eventually took an early retirement from the fire department in 2023 to run it full time. Today Ultra Shine services more than 250 customers a year across Wichita, Salina, Hays, Manhattan, and the surrounding area.

We covered how he almost quit the lights business after year one, why he brought window cleaning back into the fold after stepping away from it, what the marketing mix looks like for a seasonal service, and how tariffs on Chinese-made light products squeezed his supply chain this year.

The Key Takeaways

Below are the most essential insights from my conversation with Chris that you can apply to your home services business today.

1. A Side Hustle for Extra Cash Started With Windows, Not Lights

Chris started as a full-time firefighter and paramedic and began cleaning windows on the side purely to pay some bills and have extra spending cash. He ran the window cleaning business for several years before Christmas lights ever entered the picture, and the two services later got combined, separated, and combined again over the life of the company.

“I was started as a full-time firefighter, paramedic, doing that, looking for a side job. Started the window cleaning business. Did that for several years just kind of as a side job to pay some bills and just have some extra spending cash.”

— Chris Rios

2. He Almost Quit Christmas Lights After Year One

About three or four years into window cleaning, Chris found Christmas lights and started hanging them, but he almost walked away after that first year because he just wasn’t feeling it. It grew from there into a business that now services over 250 customers a year across central Kansas, from Wichita to Salina, Hays, and the Manhattan area.

“That really took off for us. I almost quit after year one. Just wasn’t feeling it, but it’s kind of grown to where we do service over 250 customers a year now, all over central Kansas.”

— Chris Rios

3. The Math Made the Decision to Leave the Fire Department Easy

Around 2017 and 2018, Chris realized he could make more money in a three-month Christmas light season than he could working a full year at the fire department. He knew by 2023 he could take an early retirement and focus solely on the business, and burnout from the stress of first responder work, combined with wanting to be home more with his kids, pushed him to finally make the leap.

“I started realizing, you know, I can make more money doing this in a short three-month period than I could work a whole year at the fire department. So we really went gung-ho. I knew by 2023 I was going to be able to take an early retirement from the fire department and focus solely on the business.”

— Chris Rios

4. Cold Kansas Winters Made Lights the Perfect Companion to Windows

In Kansas, window cleaning work dies off once the weather turns cold in October, so Chris was looking for something to carry the business through the winter months. He saw other window cleaners in a Facebook thread hanging Christmas lights, already had the ladders and a customer base in place, and found it was a natural transition into a similar, slightly more affluent customer type.

“It’s a lot of the same type of customers. They have a little bit more of a disposable income. They want to splurge on themselves, on their houses a little bit more. So it was a good carryover to add the Christmas lights to that business.”

— Chris Rios

5. Christmas Lights Alone Now Bring in Around Half a Million a Year

Ultra Shine runs with two full-time employees handling installs, a virtual assistant managing invoicing and scheduling on the back end, and Chris jumping in on bigger jobs himself. The Christmas light side of the business, including seasonal displays and permanent color-changing lights that customers control from an app, brings in right around half a million dollars a year.

“Christmas lights, we do honestly right around half a million a year. And that’s Christmas lights and the color changing permanent lights as well. We do those on homes all over the area that customers can put up and leave up and change the colors with an app on their phone.”

— Chris Rios

6. Home Shows Sell the Permanent Lighting Better Than Anything Else

Chris relies on home shows to demonstrate the permanent color-changing lighting, letting prospects control the app themselves and generate leads in the moment. The rest of the marketing mix includes Facebook advertising, yard signs, door hangers, and a referral network that pays a kickback to anyone who sends new business his way.

“We set up a nice display at a home show and let the customer control the app, let them play with it to get leads that way. We also do a lot of Facebook advertising, yard signs and door hangers. A lot of our main traffic, we also use a referral network.”

— Chris Rios

7. Scheduling Routes and Tariffs on Chinese Products Are the Two Biggest Headaches

Keeping installers grouped in one area at a time, rather than driving all over the state, is a major scheduling challenge, so Ultra Shine starts booking clients and collecting deposits as early as July and August. On top of that, tariffs on Chinese-made Christmas products hit hard this year, with vendors holding stock at the factory hoping tariffs would drop, then getting bottlenecked in shipping and customs once they didn’t.

“Right now, product getting product in, the tariffs hit us this year pretty hard because all Christmas products came from China. So that was a huge market and hit to the economy for us. That’s been a pretty difficult task, just having product on hand to be able to go install it whenever we book a customer.”

— Chris Rios

Looking Ahead

Chris and his team have already expanded into the Dallas Fort Worth market this year, running jobs there with a brother-in-law and a couple of other installers on the ground, and he plans to expand window cleaning into that market in the spring. Closer to home, he wants to grow the window cleaning side into Wichita and other parts of Kansas, aiming to become as dominant in that space as Ultra Shine already is in Christmas lights, where a Google search for central Kansas Christmas lights puts them at or near the top of the results.

“You search on Google for Central Kansas Christmas lights, we’re one, if not the number one. We’re one of the top two that pop up for that. So we’re pretty proud of that over the 10 years we’ve been doing the holiday lights. But really just kind of growing our market and expanding as much as possible.”

— Chris Rios