The Power of Peers

In 2017 I attended a meeting in Clearwater Florida to learn about how to form an industry peer group.?A few months later, two other janitorial contractors and myself got together for our first “peer group” meeting.?We started meeting once a month on a conference call, performing site visits annually, and slowly and carefully adding members to our group.?One of the requirements to be in our group is alignment of values.?We are all Christian business leaders seeking to better the lives of our team.?We are all seeking to grow our companies the right way, and we are all working in non-competitive areas of the country.

This group has been truly valuable to me over the past five years.?We have met regularly since 2017.?We talk about struggles and victories, we hang out and have fun together, and we evaluate each others’ companies to provide an outside view of how things are going and how our companies can improve.?I was the first “victim” of the peer group audit in October of 2017.?It was our first-ever audit, and we learned a lot in the process.?The results were valuable, but hard to swallow.?It was evident that I needed to make some major adjustments in my leadership.?

Fast forward to 2022.?We gained a ton of experience after performing four different audits over the years and it was time for the team to come back to ESS Clean.?On September 2, 2022, the group showed up again in Urbana to do their stuff.?It was an intense couple of days with multiple interviews, tours, reviewing financials and analysis.?The report came in and I was relieved and excited about the results.?The team recognized many improvements since 2017 and identified a few areas of weakness.?We celebrated the week with a fishing/skiing trip before going back to work.?Here are a couple of the takeaways.?

1.??????In 2017, ESS had a goal to reach $10 million in revenues by 2023.?We will reach our goal at the end of 2022!

2.??????ESS Clean is good at the goal setting process, but we have done a lousy job of aligning the company goals with individual professional goals.?This is chaning for 2023.?The leadership team has already fine tuned our four goals for 2023 and we have developed multiple strategies to reach those goals.?Leaders are already starting to develop their professional goals around these four main company goals.

3.??????Our leadership team has an opportunity to grow with more intentional personal development and leadership development.

I have learned a great deal from my peer group over the last five years.?I love them like brothers and they call me out when I am headed down the wrong path.?Not everyone can have a great professional peer group like I do, but I encourage you to think about your inner circle.?Who do you have in your circle that will show tough love??Who encourages you when you are down??Who celebrates your successes with you?

As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17??(NIV)