We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cameron Moody a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Cameron thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

At every point of the growth process, building your business involves taking risks. Whether that means spending money you have worked hard to earn, taking your hands off of your business to hire someone to actually DO the work, or just going on a limb to START your own business, becoming an entrepreneur requires you to be vulnerable and put yourself out there.

Part of the growth process for me started with developing what I felt were foundational pieces needed for my business to exist whether business was steady or slow. I wanted to have what I felt was a “home base” before I started to really scale up my business, because I wanted to make sure that when the calls started to come in and business happened fast that I would be able to handle the demand. The one thing that I was worried about in growing this business was that the demand would move faster than the supply could keep up with, so I wanted to make sure I had my “home base” set in place before taking those steps.

For me, that home base was a website, a set of social media pages, a pre-established system of how I approached detailing every vehicle, and a few “sets” of supplies for when I hired new employees. I wanted to have those things be my home base for two main reasons:

1) When I met new clients, I could send them somewhere solid to get information about our services

2) When it was time to hire new employees, we could hit the ground running and get them prepared to start working at the high standard that our customers expect.

That being said, this came through making mistakes and learning from them. There were definitely moments early on where I would be at a detail and one of my clients would ask if I did “x, y, or z.” Because I didn’t have the supplies for it, I couldn’t serve them in that way. However, whenever a moment like this happened, it allowed me to add supplies and services to my repertoire so that as the business grew, the quality of the work improved as well. This expansion allowed me not only to increase my rates to bring in more money as a business, but it also led to an increase in business due to my clients’ satisfaction with the quality of our work.

This increase in business then led to me needing to start the hiring process, because it reached a point where I could not keep up with the demand by myself. Having this foundation, the home base that I mentioned above, in place prior to this point allowed me to feel comfortable taking on new employees and trusting that the quality of work that they would produce once trained would be at the level that our customers expected from us. During this process came learning on their and my end. I had to learn how to step away from their work and not micro-manage them, and they had to learn to take risks and be comfortable receiving constructive criticism. This, of course, led to moments where they made mistakes and customers weren’t completely satisfied. However, I think these moments are not only beneficial, but they are NECESSARY in the growth of a business. The most effective way for businesses to maximize growth, and for people to grow, is to maintain a culture based on trust so that the individuals working for you feel like you trust them to do things on their own and are okay with receiving constructive feedback when their performance isn’t at the standard you are trying to maintain. This will lead to employees that are self-driven and motivated to maintain a high standard of work.

Lastly, I feel like it is important to understand that this home base, this foundation, always has to be flexible. The training system we have developed, the website that potential clients visit before deciding to reach out to us for service, the services that we offer, these are always things that can be updated if it means our brand improves.

It is important to strive for the balance between “sticking to one’s guns” and remaining true and consistent to the system that has been working, but also being able to adjust and make changes if it means improving your business and allowing it to stay competitive.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

For those who are just getting to know about the business, Island Shine as a brand concept started long before I decided to create Island Shine Mobile Detailing in 2015. I am a firm believer in the idea that every single individual who exists on this Earth has the ability to SHINE, and that we should always spend time tapping into that SHINE. The idea of someone shining can describe so many different things, and there are so many different WAYS for us to shine. We can shine by being successful in our profession, by being dressed for success, by having a fresh new haircut, by driving around a brand new (and clean) vehicle that turns heads, or just by being a positive person that other people enjoy being around. Ultimately, to SHINE is to create and/or do something that leaves a positive, lasting impact on the world around us. The Island Shine brand began because I had a dream and I decided to follow it. It is our mission to inspire and motivate others to go after their dreams and tap into the inner SHINE that exists in all of us.

All of that said, Island Shine Mobile Detailing was created with the thought that people who enjoy having a clean vehicle, but don’t have enough time to do so on a regular basis, deserve to have a convenient and quality detail service that comes to them. Driving around a shiny, clean, fresh-smelling vehicle is a GREAT feeling, and is one way to tap into that inner shine. The first “on-paper” job I ever had was when I was 15 years old, living in Hawai’i. What was that job you ask? You guessed it: detailing cars. I have dreamt of building my own business, and have kept myself busy taking steps toward that dream ever since. Therefore, I understand what it is like to feel as if you are not giving your vehicle the love and appreciation it deserves. There’s nothing that shines brighter than the island sun, and that’s the type of shine that we aspire to give every vehicle that we detail.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The biggest lesson I had to learn, and that I am still learning as a business owner, is how to find the balance between effective leadership and micro-management. I believe that there is a spectrum of leadership, with hands-off leadership on one end and micro-management on the other. The most effective leadership falls somewhere right in the middle, and that is something as a growing business owner that I am constantly trying to master. As a business owner, it is important to stay true to your vision but understand that you have to relinquish control in some ways for the vision to be able to come to fruition. Having to create a culture where you support and lead your employees, encourage self-reliance, provide constructive feedback, but also not be too hands off to where they stray too far from your vision.

Initially, I felt like I could take on the world and handle everything on my own. I came to realize very quickly that in order to grow this business to the level that my imagination and vision wanted it to grow, I had to be able to effectively lead and create a certain culture as opposed to trying to do everything on my own.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When I left home (Hawai’i) after graduating high school, my initial reason for going to school was to play basketball. I had the thought in my head that I would play Division 1 basketball coming out of high school, and upon graduating, I made my decision to attend Washington State University driven solely by the thought that I would try out and make the basketball team as a walk on. However, I soon realized that the dream I had of playing Division 1 basketball required a lot more than I was aware of, and would be a lot more difficult than I had originally thought.

I ended up pursuing a degree in Broadcast Production, which came from my love of everything Film, Video, and Content Creation. In the midst of earning this degree, I gained some knowledge that called me to education, and I immediately pivoted to pursuing that as what I wanted to do. I went from being focused on basketball and video production to focusing on education and service, and that is how I ended up in my current career as a high school counselor. That said, my desire to start and build my own business never left me. I always had the desire to work for myself, to be a creator of my own destiny, and to teach others the value in being able to do this, and starting my own business while working in education allowed me to be able to satisfy both sides of who I wanted to be: an entrepreneur and a public servant.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.islandshinemobiledetailing.com
• Instagram: @islandshinemobiledetailing
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/islandshinemobiledetailing
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameron-moody-201359113/
• Twitter: @islandshine808