The Value of Coaching with Josh Melton

The first area that Josh and I touched on were our stories and how they intersected.  Josh and I were friends first. We had mutual respect and trust for each other. That's why I invited him onto the Smart Cleaning School Podcast in June 2021. That episode is called, "The Cleaning Road to Nineveh with Josh Melton". That episode was a mirror to me and I saw another guy with the same story. He had aspirations outside of cleaning. He tried to run away from cleaning like Jonah ran the opposite way of Nineveh. Once Josh turned his heart in obedience back to the cleaning business he was supposed to build in 2019, everything changed! I saw that and realized that it was true for me too. Within 2 weeks of that interview, I asked Josh Melton to come Coach Josh in my life. He accepted.

Josh shifted gears to talk about the value of coaching. We made three cases why the free help available in cleaning groups can be dangerous.

1. The information is free. There is no investment involved by the advice giver and advice receiver. Josh says we all need skin in the game, spelled P-A-I-D.
2. Don't take advice from people without fruit on the tree. The fruit must be the fruit you want. How do you know an advice-giver has that fruit?
3. Advice-givers that don't know your specific situation can only give general advice even if they have fruit on the tree. Specific advice creates accountability and accomplishment.

My goal was to go to Florida in February 2022. We completed the "New Freedom Vision" and "The Fight was Worth It".

May 24, 2021 Where we were when we recorded our first interview
Our cleaning business was a residential & commercial mix called Carfagno Cleaning, serving the Indian Valley of the Philly suburbs. I was already well networked and good at acquiring customers. I had no systems for scaling, no employees, no desire to grow. I was a 16 year solo cleaner. I cleaned 2 days per week for $70k profit. Our revenue split was $5,325/mo commercial and $2,025/mo residential. That’s $7,350/mo total cleaning with a 72/28 comm/res split. This split used to be 90/10 res/comm in my first NY business. 

May 23, 2022 This interivew, 1 year later
After FL, we lost 4 team members. Josh helped us add 2 more offices and hired 5 more team members to get our commercial business to 16 buildings, 7 team members, and $10,475/mo comm rev (97% increase, doubled in 5 months).

C3 grew in 3 stages:

1. Delegate - I needed time back to clear the space to scale. We hired an accountant on a monthly basis to takeover our QBO. We hired a payroll company to offload a lot of time and mistakes. I invested in Swept to offload and automate scheduling and operations.
2. Identity - We changed the name from Carfagno Cleaning to Carfagno Commercial Cleaning or C3. We created the 5 levels of the C3 Experience and the C3x Now website. We created a company mission, culture, and core values. We got new company T-shirts with our new logo and nametags. We have a new look! This created a foundation for all of our systems to stand and it helped a TON with hiring.
3. Hiring & Marketing System - We added a robust system to screen and filter the right professionals to interviews for the C3 Team. Josh helped me revamp my marketing system with the Project 100 and getting specific on who we were selling to. He helped me change my quoting system and match my proposals to the image of the C3 Experience. This is how we grew so fast and able to go to Florida!

5 Questions to Answer for YOU to GROW!

1. Why do you want to grow your business? I wanted to take my family to Florida
2. Who do you want to serve? We want to serve professional office spaces.
3. Where do you want to serve? Locally, nationally?
4. What will you serve? McDonald's, Chick-Fil-A, Ritz?
5. How will I serve? Mission, vision, values

General points from this interview:

• We all need 3 communities. We need peers to run with, mentors to mentor us, and mentee to mentor.
• The Jahari Window Coaching Concept models us to 4 windows that Ken taught in the episode, "We All Need  a Coach". The Blind Spot is a window 3 term. These are the things we don't know about ourselves that others do know about us.
• Josh asked me what I liked and disliked about coaching. I liked the real-time tactical help using Marco Polo with Josh mixed with the weekly Mindset Monday coaching calls. I was able to take a proven model and apply it in my own company. I didn't like the blind spots that Josh found, but my wife did and ultimately I did too. I didn't like Josh pushing me to take more action vs overthinking! I didn't like leaving money on the table. Josh coached me to keep margin over money. They helped us get to Flroida.

Josh Melton is a co-owner of Athens Cleaning Company in Athens, GA.  He is the host of the Six Figure Cleaner Podcast and coaches in the niche of professionals cleaning part-time for small, professional offices.  As for me, make sure to check out the many free & paid resources available at the Smart Cleaning School website.