Nathan Hall is the Managing Director of Chemwash Rotorua and Hamilton, and a Business Owner Programme and Icehouse Coaching alumni.
This Kiwi Business Story is based on a podcast from 23 March 2023, and all figures quoted are from that time. You can enjoy the complete podcast here.
What does a day in the life of Nathan look like?
Generally, it’s an early start. I used to be more on the tools, but not so much anymore. I'm in the office early, before most people start work, as there's no distractions, so I’m far more productive when nobody's phone is ringing and emails are coming through! You can get through the things you need to get through.
Then the rest of the day is spent in the office, liaising with clients, our staff, and whatever's needed to keep the day moving. The further we get along, the more I sit in an office, which comes with its challenges of trying to still be active, but I’m enjoying it!
Where and how did you start?
My parents owned the business – they’re now retired. They'd done it for around 32 years. I started two days before my 13th birthday - school holidays and weekends.
When I left school, they said you have to go and do something else before you're allowed to come back here, and the following year I did Gateway and an electrical apprenticeship and got qualified. But it wasn't really for me and I came back to Chemwash in August 2014. Mum and Dad retired in March 2019, and my business partner and I bought it off them in April 2019.
We do exterior cleaning – right from small garden paths to the biggest buildings that you can imagine. The bigger the better! It gets the grey matter stretched, and we're still able to service our residential clients as well.
What piece of advice would you give yourself at the start of your business journey?
I think you only know what you know, and without somebody guiding you, who's had the experience, you can flounder and get off-track pretty quickly. Being able to ask for help, before you actually realise you need help, is probably the piece of advice I'd give.
How was your coaching experience?
Without Jamie [Brock], we probably wouldn't be in business anymore. It got to the point where I didn't enjoy coming to work. From the outside looking in, it was okay. But from the inside, Gav [Tomsett], Zach [Hall] (business partners) and I weren't dealing with work very well.
We started using Jamie in May 2021. The big thing for us is the accountability that you get. You’re a business owner, the guy at the top, everybody looks to you, but who's holding you accountable for the things you need to be doing?
Gav, Zach and I all had our roles, but we weren't doing them because we were putting out fires where we shouldn't have been – because the other guys weren't doing it or I thought he was doing it or he thought I was doing it. That’s probably quite a common thing when there's multiple people involved.
So Jamie came in and said, ‘you guys have got to sort your structure out. You’ve got to work out who's doing what and how are you going to do it?’ It was quite simple, but we needed somebody to show us how to do it. We've been meeting with Jamie monthly ever since because we can see the value he adds to the business as a whole.
How was your Bay of Plenty Business Owners Programme experience?
It was good being able to sit with a group of other business owners. Whether it’s staff or work or whatever, you've all gone through the same thing at different times. Being able to talk to other business owners in a safe environment… you can be pretty open and honest around what you’re doing.
Then some of the key takeaways from it really cemented the things we were doing already. I'd learnt quite a few of the things inside the programme because we were already working with Jamie. It reinforced some of them, and then gave me the confidence in myself to implement them, keep doing them, and drive the conversations inside the business to keep us moving forward.
What excites you most about the future of your business?
Being in control of your own destiny, really. I’m enjoying the growth of the business that brings more people in, because our goal, when we employ somebody, is that the day they leave, they're a better person than the day they started. And so as we grow, there's more of an opportunity to affect people's lives in that way.