Environmental Construction Services is honored to be a 2013 graduate of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program’s first cohort (class) in Philadelphia. The tools and strategies offered through this best-in-class entrepreneurial initiative continue to help our company create jobs and other economic opportunities within the Philadelphia region. Some of ECSI360’s accomplishments as a 10,000 Small Businesses graduate include: acquiring other businesses, securing capital, quadrupling sales, opening offices in other locations, establishing an international presence and, most important, growing our team from 5 to 32 employees.

An additional benefit of the 10,000 Small Businesses program is continued coaching and guidance after successful completion of all coursework. Our opportunity presented itself as a private, all-day coaching session with high-level professionals from both Bloomberg L.P. and the Goldman Sachs Group in New York City, June 2014. The Bloomberg/Goldman Sachs team assessed ECSI360’s current expansion model from a financial perspective to determine how costs related to our growth would impact our financial health.

The coaches also examined our business’s current ownership structure to identify the more viable cash-flow route: tapping into the company’s equity versus use of debt-financing facilities. Creation and fine-tuning of an exit strategy was also placed under the coaches’ analytical microscope for consideration. Several immediate changes we made after the Bloomberg/Goldman Sachs coaching session include:

• Switching our payroll services to a more construction-industry-centric firm

• Training our people internally to transition over to a software suite that can process our consolidated accounting, project management, and payroll-services needs

• Implementing per-project partnerships to alleviate the cash-flow risks of contractual self-performing high percentages

• Eliminating wasteful spending and duplicate orders through analysis of all company expenses

• Incorporating the Gordon Growth Model (i.e., the Dividend Discount Model) into our financials when determining ECSI360’s valuation