Jeremiah Green started a window cleaning company in Arizona. The first year in business, it grew fast and he managed to pull in $250,000.
With goals of hitting half a million dollars by year two, it didn’t take long to discover he was going to need some help.
Asking for assistance isn’t always easy, but here’s how he did it and found a business coach to help him meet his goals.
“We did $250,000 in our first 12 months and I thought we could just do a half million the following year. What I didn’t realize is there’s a whole bunch of steps in between. That was a rude awakening.”
Hitting a wall before hitting your goals:
During the first year Jeremiah ran South Mountain Window Cleaning, he did all the operations himself. He knew, however, in order to keep growing he would need someone to help him tackle the workload. Fortunately, he was able to turn to his brother, which eventually led to a partnership. With this, he figured scaling would be even easier!
“A lot of people get into it thinking it’s simple to grow a huge window cleaning business… you’re just squeegeeing stuff. The task is simple once you learn it, but in order to grow it, you need to learn a lot of things on the business side.”
Every business has its growing pains, and for Jeremiah it came with hiring more people for his team.
“The biggest pain points were not understanding the actual financials of growing a business and making it scalable. For example, we hired a bunch of employees last fall and I didn’t understand the costs associated with employees, and how to forecast our financials - so we ran into some issues. That was painful.”
That’s when he decided it was time to ask for help. This is how Jeremiah went about getting a business coach to help him reach his goals:
1. Recognize when it’s time to ask for help:
For Jeremiah, his business hit a bump in the road that he considers quite painful. In order to avoid future missteps he had to accept his own shortcomings as a business owner.
“The deciding moment was when I accepted the fact that my current business knowledge and skills had brought us as far as it was going to.”
2. Do your homework:
This is where reputation comes into play. If you’re considering a business coach, be sure to review their credentials as they pertain to your industry, as well as overall fit for your business and goals.
“Getting clarity on our financials and what the next steps are for our business are what I needed help with. I ended up going with coaches that are very well known in our industry and knew they could help me with this.”
3. Know what you’re looking for in a business coach:
Jeremiah was looking for a few must-have qualities. Make sure your coach checks all your boxes.
“I was looking for someone in our industry that had grown a $1m+ business. And someone who is honest, maybe even blunt, and patient.”
Hiring a business coach has been an excellent choice for Jeremiah and his business, in fact he says he would have hired a coach from day 1 if he could do it all over again!
“Hiring a business coach has been the smartest move we’ve made. Understanding how to set a budget and follow it, how to price our services in a profitable way (not just to stay busy), and not being afraid to raise our prices and things like that in order to be profitable - it’s been a really good decision for us.”
Jeremiah and his team at South Mountain Window Cleaning have been in business for 2 years and have surpassed the half million dollar mark, with the help of his business coach.
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