What motivated you to start your business and what is your vision for the future of the company?

I started OneWash 15 months ago to help pay my way through school when I was 20 years old. I am originally from Thunder Bay Ontario and moved to Kelowna to attend school at the Okanagan college. I have always wanted to be an entrepreneur and we have grown an amazing team at OneWash. I envision growing this business to the largest property detailing business in the Okanagan.

Why do you deserve to win the Best Youth Entrepreneur Award?

I genuinely don't know if I deserve to win it as I don't know who else I am competing against. I know that I was nominated by someone for this award so I will list some of the things we have accomplished in the 15 months of operation. When I was 20 years old making the business plan to start this business I told my parents back in Thunder bay about my idea to do this. They immediately shut it down and said I cannot afford to start something like this as I only had $2500 to my name with no vehicle, no job and no source of income to afford rent in Kelowna. They were right but I believed in myself and I signed an extended 4 month lease at the student residence where I was already currently staying at the Okanagan college to secure myself a spot to live for the summer (which was $2500). My parents and I did not talk for a while during this period as they were upset I would not be returning home and were worried and doubtful in my vision. After I secured a spot to live I maxed out three different credit cards to buy a 09 two toned chevy pick up truck, a pressure washer and some other basic equipment to get started. I kept telling myself burn the boats and that by not giving myself a back up plan there was no other option then to succeed. I had emptied all of my savings and maxed out three credit cards at this point and was $15,000 in debt. I began knocking doors every day to try and find work. When I was starting out on the doors I was doing the labour I did find for very cheap just to slowly climb out of debt. One of the first things I purchased after I got myself out of debt was an online sales course tailored for window cleaning and pressure washing as I knew if I can increase my conversion rate at the doors I can begin hiring employees to help me with the labour. In the first year of operations we operated under a different name 'Clean. & Clear Kelowna' I had three workers working for me not including myself. We did $129,000 in sales. Made a $2500 donation to the West Kelowna Pro fire fighters association and became 'Service Master Restore' Main vendor. As an entrepreneur I live by the 'red car theory' it goes like this- If I were to ask you right now, how many red cars have you seen today? the odds are you probably wouldn't be able to tell me the exact amount of red cars you've seen. But, If I were to tell you at the beginning of the day that I will give you $1,000 for every red car you see today. By the end of the day you would be able to tell me the exact amount of red cars you saw throughout the day. The same thing goes for opportunity, if you are always looking for different opportunities in un foreseen circumstances you will find them. The biggest objection I was facing at the doors after the fires was that the home owner was going through insurance, I didn't know anything about the insurance industry or how to help these people clean their homes but I began making calls to insurance companies and learned how the process works and that insurance companies use restoration offices to handle the restorations. So I picked up the phone again and called every restoration company in the Okanagan. Most of them turned me away as I was a sole proprietor at this time and wasn't an established company in the Okanagan. I didn't care, I kept calling. Then, eventually I got in contact with a man named Robert Newing who is the Owner of the Service Master restore franchise in the Okanagan. It took quite a bit of convincing for him to give me a shot but eventually he gave us a shot and this was a completely new world for us as the house was completely covered in fire retardant and no one knew how to clean this off. I did some research on the SDS of the fire retardant used in the fires and found out there was a rust component in it and I knew if we used a good degreaser on this we might be able to get it out. Sure enough after 3 days of testing chemical mixtures it worked and the project turned out great. From that point on we became Service Masters main vendor because most of the other pressure washing companies were gauging prices and charging 7x the amount we were but I didn't think that would be fair and I don't want to run my business that way. After our first year I reinvested into the company and bought a new work vehicle to improve our optics as well as a new cargo trailer and new equipment. I worked on the trailer all winter figuring out how to properly do the plumbing in the trailer to lower our turnover and increase our efficiency at each job. In march while I was prepping for my school finals and right before I started production my trailer wash stolen, luckily I was able to recover the trailer with minor damage but all of the equipment was stolen. I understand as an Entrepreneur and a person that bad things are just part of life and was pretty positive about the situation but it was a pretty big hit and we did lose roughly $10,000 in equipment. I replaced all of the equipment the next day and started production the following day as scheduled. bumps down the road are part of the journey and are bound to happen, this is where you learn. This year I have 5 employees including myself and we are on pace to do $250,000 in sales. We also recently won about 40% of the Okanagan Colleges Kelowna campus bids for window cleaning and pressure washing. We are also nearing in on 100 5 star reviews which will put us in the top 5 in the Okanagan for google reviews. One of the buildings being my old home where it all started at student residence. I have also reached out to all of the other restoration companies and have now been allowed to fill out vendor agreements. I did this to prevent other companies gauging insurance companies and increasing everyones premiums in the event something like this happens again. I will attach photos as references to the story from the beginning to where we are at now as well as me guest speaking at one of the entrepreneurship classes I was invited to. That is a brief version of my story. Like I said I don't know If I deserve it. I was humbly nominated and you can be the judge. either way I hope you enjoyed a snippet of my journey so far :) LInk to Castanet article- https://www.castanet.net/news/Kelowna/478191/Kelowna-business-owner-and-student-has-trailer-full-of-gear-stolen Link to first restoration on Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/p/Cxtuk--v3Vn/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== All the best, Ben DeAgazio

Why do you think you should win the Premier’s People’s Choice Award?

I think there are likely many other Entrepreneurs that are more deserving than me for this award. I am only in my second year of business and I hope to be honoured with that reward one day but I can't imagine that I am more deserving than some of the other amazing entrepreneurs in our community.