Cleaning Service Company
Chapman Cleaning was a 20-year-old cleaning service company owned by Eric (name changed for privacy), doing around $2,000,000 in annual sales.
The owner was extremely knowledgeable about his industry and how he went about his business. The issue was, he had no experience leading employees, so the more the company grew, the more difficult it was for him to manage staff and onboard new employees. His leadership skills were lacking, and he thought that working long hours was the solution to all his problems. Like many of our clients, they looked for solutions everywhere else, but they never looked at themselves as being the bigger part of the problems that they want to solve. It's common for many CEOs to blame everything and everyone but themselves. In this case, after owning this business for so many years, Eric realized that something needed to change, and he wanted some outside objective influence to make that happen.
The owner finally became fed up with overworking himself and finally got to the point where he had to fire a few nonproductive employees. He had reached his wit’s end and knew he needed to do something but wasn't sure exactly where to start. He decided to hire us to bring his company out of its rut.
We immediately started working on his leadership skills, hiring skills, communication skills and began building a team by first eliminating some of the problem employees, and letting the remaining employees be aware of how serious he was about increasing overall productivity. The owner was very attached to some of the employees that he needed to replace and was very slow to agree on making the difficult but necessary decisions. It was a bit ironic, because as we walked him through the changes he was resistant to, he actually found that one of the employees was relieved to be let go because he had been anticipating it months prior to his final day. We showed Eric that when you make your expectations clear, productivity picks up dramatically.
Within a few months of Coaching, productivity doubled amongst all employees. Therefore, profits were up about 15 to 18% by the end of the first year. Moving into the second year of the Coaching relationship, we made some additional changes, continued focusing on his leadership skills, and his business grew by over 25%. It didn't take long before his 50-hour weeks became 40 hours, and as he continued to delegate effectively, he only needed to be there about 30 hours per week, if that!
