Every Business Has a Story. Here’s Ours.
What started with hustle, borrowed equipment, and early house-washing jobs in high school has grown into one of Kansas City’s trusted names in residential and commercial pressure washing.
Chapter One
It Started With a Hard Conversation
Before KC Splash ever washed a driveway, Daniel was a soccer player — good enough to play ECNL, one of the top levels of club soccer in the country. But the travel that came with it was expensive, and it was stretching our family thin. We actually sat down and talked about whether he could keep playing.
What bothered Daniel wasn’t the thought of leaving the team. It was the stress it put on everyone else. He didn’t want to be the reason money was tight — so, at an age when most kids would let their parents figure it out, he decided to do something about it.
Chapter Two
“Dad, I Want to Pressure Wash”
He’d been watching kids his age on TikTok making real money washing driveways. He came to me dead set on it. I told him to take my lawnmower and go cut grass instead — safer bet. He looked at me and said, “No. I saw this on TikTok. I want to pressure wash.”
So we started with what we had: the little 2.4 GPM pressure washer from our garage. His first wash was our own front deck — no pay, just practice. Then he and his buddy Matteo started knocking on doors, doing driveways, walkways, and back patios for whoever would say yes.
Chapter Three
When It Got Real
Once it was clear Daniel was serious, I jumped in on the parts a teenager can’t do alone — set up the company, opened business bank accounts so he could take cards, built him a website, and got him on Google so people could actually find him and leave reviews.
Then it happened: his first order came in off the website — a driveway, already paid for. He asked when it was scheduled. The answer was “five minutes from now.” He threw his gear in the back of the SUV and went. From then on, the web kept sending customers, and he kept loading up that SUV and showing up.
Chapter Four
The Customer Who Started It All
His first real, sizable job was Nancy’s place — Pine Hill Farm. It started with her back deck, Daniel and Matteo working it together. Then Matteo got hurt — and Daniel’s brother Johnny stepped in to take his place. Matteo never came back, but Johnny never left.
From that deck, Daniel and Johnny took on the whole barn — scrubbing years of grime off the stall fronts and the full length of the aisle. It’s the job that proved they could handle something big. Daniel still cleans for Nancy today, basically for free — she’s the one who gave a kid with a borrowed pressure washer his first real shot, and he’s never forgotten it.
Chapter Five
Every Dollar Went Back In
Daniel has always been a saver. Instead of spending what he made, he poured it straight back into better equipment. He saved up for his first 4 GPM commercial-grade machine — night and day from the little home unit — then saved again for a second machine so he and Johnny could run two jobs at once. Johnny picked up a truck they could share, and suddenly KC Splash could be in two places at once.
Chapter Six
The Drive to South Dakota
He kept saving until he had about $14,000 — and then he found it: a brand-new commercial pressure-washing trailer with hose reels and a soft-wash system. These normally run $22,000–$24,000. This one was half price. So we drove all the way to Rapid City, South Dakota — out in the Black Hills — to get it.
His friends thought he was nuts to sink everything into a trailer. He couldn’t have cared less. Once he had that hose reel, a truck, and a real setup, everything changed — that’s the moment the hobby became a company.
Chapter Seven
Straight A’s and $1,200 Days
All of this while he was in high school — and pulling straight A’s. His teachers knew what he was building. They’d let him slip out early for a job, half-joking on his way out the door: “How much you making today, Daniel?” Some days the honest answer was twelve hundred dollars.
He went all-in on the business side too, and won the Missouri DECA state championship in entrepreneurship for KC Splash.
Chapter Eight
The Full Ride
Senior year, Daniel washed the home of a William Jewell supporter. The man got to talking with him, liked what he saw, and tracked him down. William Jewell was launching a new entrepreneurship program — and he wanted Daniel to be the face of it.
Daniel had been planning on community college. Instead, it was worked out into a full-ride scholarship. He’s earning his degree there now — and still shows up on job sites every week.
Chapter Nine
The Climb
Daniel reinvested nearly every dollar he ever made back into the business. Here’s what that discipline turned into, year over year:
Every machine, every trailer, every truck — bought with cash he earned and saved. No loans, no handouts.
Chapter Ten
Same Standard, Bigger Scale
His brother Johnny has been the backbone of it all, right beside him on the jobs and the customers. Daniel keeps a small, hand-picked crew — two trusted, clean-cut guys who meet his standard. He’s turned down plenty of friends who didn’t; he won’t put the business’s name at risk.
Last year he added the Beast — a ride-on rig for parking garages — plus a dedicated building-washing rig and two trucks to pull them. Same standard he brought to a driveway in tenth grade, now at commercial scale. All of it paid for in full.
Chapter Eleven
The Ripple — and Where It’s Headed
Something we didn’t expect: watching Daniel build a real business lit a fire under his classmates. Four or five of them went and started their own companies after seeing what he was doing. That might be the part I’m proudest of.
Today he’s become one of the go-to names for pressure washing in Kansas City — he knows everybody, helps everybody, and people like him. He’ll have his degree soon, but the plan is simple: keep building KC Splash. It’s his, he loves it, and he earned every bit of it.
Ready to Be Part of the KC Splash Story?
The same standard that started on a borrowed pressure washer goes into every job we do — residential or commercial. Let’s get yours on the schedule.