How I Built a Window Tint Business, Sold It, and Turned It Into a CRM
This video breaks down how Tint Wiz actually started.
It wasn’t built as a software idea. It came from running and scaling a real window tint business.
In this clip, I walk through how we grew Window Tint LA from $350K to nearly $3M, what started to become challenging as we scaled, and how building our own internal system led to what eventually became Tint Wiz.
If you run a service business, this is really about understanding when growth shifts from sales to systems, and why the right system can change everything.
Most software starts as an idea.
Tint Wiz didn’t.
It started inside a business that was already working.
And more importantly, already growing.
Starting Window Tint LA
In 2014, we started Window Tint LA.
First partial year, we did around $350,000.
Then we were on pace for a million.
Then past that.
2015 → about $1M
2016 → about $2.3M
2017 → about $3M
The business was thriving.
There wasn’t a problem with demand. There wasn’t a problem with sales.
The challenge was what happens when things keep growing.
What actually becomes hard as you grow
When people think about growing a service business, they usually think about marketing.
More leads. More calls.
That’s the easy part.
What gets hard is everything after that.
scheduling appointments
routing jobs efficiently
keeping track of customer info
quoting on the spot
following up properly
invoicing
getting reviews
And doing all of that consistently.
Not just when you’re involved.
But when your team is involved.
That’s where most businesses start to feel friction.
The business wasn’t breaking, but I could see where it would
We weren’t struggling.
We were growing fast.
And when you grow fast, you start to see problems before they happen.
You can feel it.
You can see where things are going to fall apart if you don’t fix them early.
For us, the biggest issue was simple:
There was no software that actually fit how a window tint business operates.
Everything we tried was either:
too complicated
too basic
or not built for what we actually do
Scheduling a consultation, driving across Los Angeles, taking measurements, quoting on the spot, and following the job all the way through…
There wasn’t a system that handled that well.
So we built our own CRM software
Not to sell.
Not to launch.
Just to support the business.
We started building in 2015.
And we didn’t try to build everything.
We focused on the biggest bottleneck first.
The first thing we solved: Scheduling
If you operate in Southern California, you understand this immediately.
A job that’s 3 miles away can take:
30 minutes
or 2 hours
depending on timing.
So scheduling wasn’t just about putting something on a calendar.
It was about:
grouping jobs by area
aligning installers and salespeople
reducing wasted time
helping admins book intelligently
That one improvement changed everything.
Because now:
calls could be handled faster
schedules made more sense
more jobs could be completed per day
Then we built everything around it
Once that worked, we kept going.
We added:
on-site quoting
job tracking
notes and photos
status updates
invoicing
review follow-up
We weren’t guessing.
We were just solving the next problem we ran into.
The real advantage wasn’t the software
It was what the software allowed us to do.
It gave us consistency.
Now:
admins could answer the phone and sound confident
salespeople didn’t need years of experience
installers had clear direction
nothing got lost
We could hire people outside the industry and still operate at a high level.
Because the system carried the process.
What we didn’t focus on
This is important.
During all of this growth, we didn’t:
redesign our website
obsess over branding
change logos
tweak colors
We had the same basic site the entire time.
Because we were focused on what actually moved the business forward.
If we had time to invest, it went into:
systems
operations
content that brought in leads
Not things that looked better but didn’t perform better.
Selling the Window Tint Business
By 2018, we sold Window Tint LA.
We were acquired by American Window Film.
From the outside, it might look like a typical outcome.
Build a business, grow it, sell it.
But for me, the sale wasn’t just about the business.
It was about what we had built inside of it.
The shift from retail service to b2b software
Selling the business wasn’t something that just happened.
It was something I started thinking about because of the system we built.
At that point, I could clearly see how valuable it was.
Not just for us, but for the industry.
At the same time, I also saw the reality of where my time was going.
Most of it was going into running the day-to-day operations of the business.
Very little of it was going into improving the system that was actually driving a lot of the results.
And that didn’t make sense to me.
The more I thought about it, the clearer it became:
If I could remove myself from operations, I could go all in on the software.
So instead of asking,
“Do I build another service business or focus on the system?”
The real question became:
“How do I create the space to focus on the system full time?”
Selling the business was the answer.
Turning it into Tint Wiz
Once the business was sold, that’s when the focus shifted fully.
What we had built internally as a tool to support our own growth
became something much bigger.
Not because we set out to build a software company.
But because we had already built something real.
Something that worked.
Tint Wiz wasn’t created from an idea.
It was created from experience.
From pressure.
From needing something that didn’t exist.
And once I had the time to focus on it fully,
that’s when it became what it is today.
Why this matters
A lot of software is built without real-world use.
It’s based on ideas.
Assumptions.
Feature lists.
Tint Wiz was built inside a real business, under real pressure, solving real problems.
That’s why it worked.
If you run a service business
At some point, growth changes the game.
It’s no longer about:
how hard you work
how good you are at the craft
It becomes about:
how your business runs
how consistent your process is
how scalable your systems are
If you don’t build systems early, you’ll feel it later.
If you’re thinking about building software
Start with something real.
Don’t try to build software first.
Build something that works inside a business.
Then expand it.
Because the strongest products don’t come from ideas.
They come from necessity.