How Tech Pros Build $500K Window Businesses Fast

This week, I sat down with Nick Zemanek, owner of Pink’s Windows Pittsburgh. Nick spent roughly 12 years in consulting and tech, most recently working at Meta on augmented- and virtual-reality programs, before leaving corporate life to launch a window-cleaning franchise in March 2025.

In his first seven months, Nick grew the operation to three vans and eight team members. We covered why franchising felt like the right middle ground between buying a business and starting from scratch, how recurring service turns a modest ticket into a compelling business, and why hiring for customer service has been central to the early growth of Pink’s Windows Pittsburgh.

The Key Takeaways

1. He Planned the Leap Before Leaving Tech

Nick did not walk away from a tech career on a whim. He had been saving, living below his means, and looking for something he could own for years. With young children at home, he wanted to show them what it looks like to take responsibility for building something of your own.

“I had kind of been planning for this for years to do something to call my own. Living below our means, I would say, and saving for it.”

— Nick Zemanek

2. Franchising Was the Middle Ground Between Acquisition and Starting Cold

Nick explored buying a business, especially tech agencies and manufacturing-adjacent companies, but was not comfortable personally guaranteeing a $1 million or $2 million acquisition loan. A franchise gave him a proven playbook without the same debt exposure, while still requiring him to build and operate the business himself.

“You’re not starting from scratch. You kind of have a playbook, but you’re not taking out that huge loan that you have to have a personal guarantee on.”

— Nick Zemanek

3. Recurring Service Makes the Economics Work

Pink’s average residential invoice is around $400 to $500. The opportunity is not a single cleaning; it is returning to the same home two, three, or four times a year. By November, Nick was already returning to houses his team had served during the spring launch, giving the schedule visible recurring revenue.

“This is the business that you want to be in: the recurring side.”

— Nick Zemanek

4. A Simple Service Can Still Have Room to Win

Nick was drawn to window cleaning because customers immediately understand the offer and his market had limited visible competition. The model did not require a complicated sales cycle: homeowners and businesses have windows, they need them cleaned, and the team can deliver a reliable service.

5. Hire for Hospitality, Then Teach the Trade

Rather than looking only for traditional blue-collar experience, Nick hired people with service-industry backgrounds. His early hires came from coffee shops and other customer-facing roles, then learned window cleaning on the job. He found that customers are far more forgiving of a missed window when the person who served them was professional, responsive, and easy to work with.

“We’re hiring for customer service and then we’re teaching them to window clean.”

— Nick Zemanek

6. The First Team Determines How Fast You Can Grow

Nick hired two strong people in the first week so he could focus on growing instead of personally supervising every job. The first three hires grew into general-manager and team-lead roles. Scaling to the third van still took focused recruiting and training, but the team made it possible to step out of day-to-day field work.

7. A Franchise Playbook Speeds Up Learning, Not the Work

Pink’s provided equipment lists, marketing partners, launch guidance, online training, and in-person support. Nick emphasizes that a franchise does not remove the need to recruit, train, sell, and execute. It makes each hour more productive by removing trial and error, but the owner still has to run the operation.

“There’s a playbook, but it’s really up to the franchisee to execute on it.”

— Nick Zemanek

Looking Ahead

Nick sees Pink’s as both a growing Pittsburgh business and an education in how to launch and run an in-person service company. The early growth was demanding, particularly hiring fast enough to keep up with demand, but it gave him confidence that he can build more businesses in the future.