Car Wash number one car wash number two and car wash number three generating this guy a combined sum of $6 million a year car washes need two things more than anything else per location early on we were hemorrhaging money all on a daily basis I wanted to quit I think most businesses fail not because they're bad but because they're average and today average isn't good enough 100% of the entry level employees are on the autism spectrum we didn't know anything about car washing and we know anything about employing people with Autism we had a weight list of over 600 people that wanted to work here no way that's where I would start if you wanted to get into the car wash business and didn't have a lot of capital his secret well stay with us to the end because it's an upand cominging style of Entrepreneurship that you don't want to miss $6 million a year you sure that isn't Walter White's car we get the Walter White questions a lot yes so what's the answer all right Tom it is good to meet you my friend likewise let's start with your childhood what was it like growing up brother father mom just give us an understanding of where you came from and how you ended up being here yeah you know the inspiration for the whole business and big part of my life is is my brother Andrew who who has autism so I'm his older brother by about 20 months but you know it was different growing up with a brother with autism than a typical brother so close in age right it was a different type of relationship but one that really helped to me develop into the person I am today it taught me I think to be more caring and empathetic at a young age so it sounds like he had a huge part about in developing who you are today that's what it sounds like to me is that the case yeah absolutely you just one brother no sisters Just the Two of Us yeah okay yeah just the two of us we can make it if we like all right Rising tide Car Wash has three locations across the fort lot of the area so give us your opinion on which location you think washes the most amount of cars a Coral Springs B marget or C Parkland comment below to see if you guessed right so you say that your brother Andrew is probably the primary purpose behind this business right but I have a question like why Car Wash why not any other type of business yeah so you know we looked at a lot of different businesses and what we were looking for there were some like fundamental assumptions that we were making and one was based on the limited body of research at that time was that a lot of people with Autism including what we saw with Andrew were you really good detail orientation strong affinity for routine and structure and process and then and we wanted something that was in the community because we our our Central thesis of what's wrong why there's such little employment for people with Autism is that society looks at it as a disability that requires sympathy instead of a really valuable diversity y so we wanted something that was really out in the community that could change that perception and then and this one's really important we wanted a service that was undifferentiated so meaning that there wasn't a lot of brand value in the market and we felt that with our story we'd be able to really differentiate ourselves beyond our competition because there's another reason to come to us besides just regular price quality speed the regular you know attributes of a service and that is the story that sh the story and the mission of the business yeah so where are we Tom we're at our Margate location this is the second store that we opened and it's our largest location and what's the difference between here and where we started this store offers both interior and exterior Services where the other one offers just the outside car washes so we do the outside car washes through the conveyor eyes system and then we also offer interior cleaning services right here so you Dad Mom your brother Andrew are running these car washes but when you got your first one wasn't there a lot of fear of getting into something you don't know you don't have no experience about yeah how did you walk that path that Journey what does that look like for you well so I mean we didn't know anything about car washing and we didn't know anything about employing people with Autism so we knew very very little about what we were doing what we knew was that we needed partners that could fill our knowledge gaps so we needed mentors and advisers that did understand those things so we went out and we tried to find those people early on we found a a really wonderful car washing partner in Sunny's Enterprises they're the group that actually provides our equipment for us uh and our chemistry for us that that washes the car so they're a really important partner in the operations of our business but they also have a whole training platform called Car Wash College so that was very helpful in teaching us kind of the fundamentals of the business we also found some disability employment Consultants that had worked on other employment um initiatives namely like Walgreens and tia craft at that time and we ran a test right before we bought a car wash we actually worked at an existing car wash for a summer you did when you say we yeah my dad Andrew we recruited a a group of 17 other uh people with Autism to train them the industry standards Goa and smart we needed it I mean we weren't ready to make that type of you know Financial commitment before we had some idea of this if it was going to work and luckily the owner of sunnes Paul fio he owned one car wash at the time that they tested equipment at and he let us use it for the summerow so that was really critical in our success that won't happen for everyone I mean I can't necessarily go out and say hey can I use your car washer That's Unique right in a sense I think the Brad thing right is that we're going to find people who know what we don't know we're going to try to find go out and find mentors early and then you don't know what we'll happen right and they're out there right exactly especially if you have a social mission right because people are really willing to help Paul probably wouldn't have done that for any car wash operator but he did it for us because we had a mission and he cared about that y alternatively right if you didn't have a social Mission and you were just trying to learn the business M you can go work at one right you can say hey what's the best car wash in the country let me just go work there for a little while start on the line you know take an entry level job yeah doesn't have to be long too I mean exactly few months and you'll learn a lot yep so Parkland that was existing failing you bought that but we're at Margate and then we were at uh corl Springs corl Springs yes thank you can you break down the numbers on the cost to develop this one and that one as well real estate as opposed to tech building and so on just interesting to find out because it's heavy on Capital so how heavy so the real estate for this market location was 1.5 million the one for Coral Springs was just under 1.3 million you have then the site development costs uh which are essentially like getting the property to where it's ready to be built on M just a pad yeah so we're talking a few hundred, uh for each one there the equipment for each one's around a million dollar and then the building you know is a couple million dollars are all in costs for both this one and our curl Springs on we just under $5 million a piece each okay yeah man that is yeah so if you're thinking of getting in and doing exactly this unless you have 5 mil well so you don't need 5 mil I mean you can so what most Car Wash operators especially when you're we're starting up you use a SBA financing at least in this market if you're in a market where the real estate is cheaper uh and there's not the same building codes cuz South Florida everything has to be concrete and steel because of the Hurricanes okay you could probably do it for maybe maybe half a million dollars um in in liquid capital for in a different Market did you finance all that yourself with SBA for both locations at yes we use SBA and then after a couple years we refinance that into regular commercial debt we're at the entrance of our Margate location nice this is where the dirty cars come in that's right you've had access to I think a luxury a lot of us don't and that is capital yeah which is a good thing uh for somebody that doesn't have that can you elaborate a little bit about on the process of the SBA Loans I know people can detail or Google the rest of the details but what's it like been for you yeah so uh you're right we were very blessed to have access to Capital that allowed these businesses to form and that's the way that we approached it the SBA financing is a really important um funding vehicle for a lot of car watches and including us you can essentially as a new business owner right purely on projection you're able to access about 80% of the total project cost gotcha uh that can vary a little bit it could go up a little bit it could go down a little bit depending on how comfortable they are with you as an operator uh for us we got 80% and that allowed us to really be able to to do these locations with the amount of money that we had to do them yeah what's one key thing they look for in order to give you that loan successfully would you say is it a business plan is it an oper a business in operation that's proven itself what is it I think it's really important to find a bank that's comfortable with car washes so there's um butt bank that we work with Paradise Bank in uh bokeh they they do car wash deals all the time so they know they understand the location it's their yeah they understand they look at the demographics of the location and say okay this is a viable site they look at you they get to know you you have to write a business plan and you know my dad had had business experience at that point I had a business degree so they were comfortable with our business um you know acument in order to execute it yeah guys if you want to know if you want to know how much out of the $6 million a year across three locations that he gets to keep we'll elaborate on those numbers a little bit later so keep on watching Tom what are the advantages and I would say disadvantages of potentially hiring a team and staff withm I think the single largest Advantage especially for uh a retail type business like this that has a lot of entry-level employees is that there's a lot a large pool of people who really want to work when we when we open this location it was 2017 the regional unemployment was like 3.4% so it was really difficult to find anyone to to hold down jobs let alone the staff 455 new jobs at a new new car wash we had a weight list of over 600 people that wanted to work here no way it was we we staffed this store in a matter of 2 weeks so many people with Autism that want to work that are capable of working what people don't understand is that people with Autism there's only uh 16% of that population have significant intellectual disability 84% of the autism Community are totally capable of holding most jobs man that's really cool and yet you're seeing somewhere around % unemployment among that group and that's just because we don't do the work or we don't really think about hey let's try to bring this group of people in right you're not going to find this group of people the same way that you're going to find a typical group of of employees a huge thank you to our sponsor HP running a business is no small feed but it's easier with the right tools a reliable business notbook book like the HP dragonfly G4 powered by 13th gen Intel core vpro processors can be a GameChanger for busy business owners the dragonfly G4 gives you seamless Wi-Fi connectivity and a Sleek foldable go anywhere design with hours of 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failing did you take out a loan yes so initially because it was failing we weren't able to get a bank loan so we got a loan from the seller so they financed it for the first year until we were able to then get by bank bank financing smart seller financing uh next one F man 6122 how can I start this type of business with low Capital what type of challenges would one face when starting it I know it could be a long answer give it to us in 10 this model of car washes cannot be done with little Capital it's a real estate Capital intensive business by its nature I would say I've seen on your on your your page there's lots of mobile detailing type uh videos that that's where I would start if you wanted to get into the car wash business and didn't have a lot of capital cool yeah that is low cost entry uh with your success today if you could go back to you as a fresh graduate what is one piece of advice you'd give yourself work in the car wash first before doing it I would have gone to work at another car wash for a while if you could wash any celebrities car who's would it be Elon all right El come on we're waiting for you Rising tide here in Fort Lauderdale what's one piece of tech you wish existed for car washes the ability for us to uh talk to all of our retail customers like toast a better POS system okay what's the most cars you've ever washed in a single day a little over 1 12200 wow all cross three no one so total cross here at marget yeah wow dude that's pretty cool if you weren't in the car wash business what would you be doing I'd probably be in management consulting last one from PW JV $6 million a year he asked you sure that isn't Walter whites car we get the Walter White questions a lot yes so what's the answer I don't know we'll leave it at that thanks for your questions Tom what can you tell our audience when it comes to competition some people fear competition some people embrace it what's been your experience what's your uh thought process on that so our first location we have a really good competitor about a mile away from us which is quite close MH so they're you know a national operation the owner of the company lives in that community so he's he's at that store a lot and he is really an elite level operator so for me that was very helpful because I got to watch and say like this is what it's supposed to look like so let me go there I I stole a lot of things for that I saw them do rip off and duplicate exactly I mean I see I see what they're doing I want to kind of emulate those things and it pushed me to be better I think most importantly though and this is something that my dad tells me all the time is that regardless of the competition you cannot control that right you canol this all you can do is focus on what you're doing right so it can provide you more motivation to do better but at the end of the day focus on your business making your business better doing as good as you can do and let the things that you can't control let them out of your mind so you've got one location that you bought existing you got other two ground up let's talk about the advantages and disadvantages uh for buying existing as opposed to building buying existing versus buying a a ground up it really depends on what the market is for the multiples of each car wash right so if the multiples are high for an existing business it's better to build one cuz that way you're able to um essentially immediately appreciate the asset once it's operating but it takes a ton more Capital it takes a bit more capital I wouldn't say it's a ton more Capital when the multiples are low and you can buy a existing car wash for uh a reasonable amount of money then you can benefit from essentially appreciation in that asset once it's uh operating for a while and you're able to turn it around typically typically you're going to buy a car wash that's struggling and have to turn it around buying existing business any in just like in any business if it's a good really profitable business it's going to be really expensive but for someone who doesn't have a lot of capital the the Avenue would be probably an existing business right you can work up a salary financing deal things like that yeah I would I would agree with that for sure the other downside to doing a ground up is that takes a lot longer to get into business right takes two years plus to from the time that you execute the purchase agreement to the time that you're actually operating right where when you buy an existing one I mean you be in business tomorrow yeah what's your advice on having the the best pricing structure for the market demographics 6 so on what's what's the process so for us we're looking at uh competition based pricing we've got other car washes in the market we're trying to be as price competitive with our competition driven by so somewhere within 10% of the market we offer a a basic Car Wash that's you know between $8 and $9 depending on the location it's an easy way to get into try us and then we go all the way up to you know 25 on the outside and 37 on the inside what about like the Walmart way you know Sam Walton like went to all the stores saw what their price was and then went and totally underpriced everybody yeah I think you definitely you be flocked with the business I think some car washes have done that I think for us we want the mission to be associated with a premium service so because of that we want to be you know generally like right around if not maybe 10% higher than our competition competition makes sense good model can you break down the numbers for us for the first location Revenue margins how things looked maybe in the first 12 months as you acquired it so that original location right it was struggling when we bought it it was washing about 35,000 cars a year so you're talking about somewhere around $600,000 a year in Revenue like I said we have a fairly High fixed cost it's really not making any money at that point it's and and our first first few months in fact as we tried to build the business we were losing money at a pretty good clip up to up to I think our biggest loss was at like $3,000 in a wow um ouch so it was it was tough at the beginning and then you know as uh our quality um improved and our reputation grew in the in the community and people kind of started to learn about what we were doing the business started to take off uh we had our first break even month in October that that year so that was about um 4 months after acquisition yeah 4 months after after we actually opened it we grew steadily at that point for a few months and then we had a big moment where uh we were featured on the night on the Nightly News so we had our story told to a big audience and that really the business started to take off from there that month we washed 8,000 cars and then we we grew all the way up to we washed uh like 15,000 cars uh 6 months from them so we continued to to to Really grow and and you know at that point when we're washing you know like 15,000 cars a month our margins are about 50% so 50 yeah once you're when on those months where you're really you're washing a lot of cars you've got You' H spinning you got the process in place that's awesome that's when you're really doing well is that about the uh average industry standard you say to shoot for 50 plus% um so as far as gross operating income yeah I think so as far as our Nets what we're looking for is somewhere in the 20s so with no experience absolutely no experience in running a car wash right what were the first couple months like for you like what did you learn right that's what we want to hear from you yeah I think the way I got through it and what really helped me was being solely focused on it this was the only thing in my life that mattered at that moment and you know I was younger I didn't have a family I didn't I didn't have a wife at home or anything like that so it allowed me to really just give 150% all of my waking hours were dedicated to this so I had some flexibility in my ability to just keep learning keep working keep improving the business keep keep improving myself I realized that all on a daily basis I wanted to quit there was always this right flash point in a day where like maybe it was a customer that was really stressful or something broke and I had to try to fix it and I had no idea what I was doing or I had an employee issue and I just like you know in my head like it just became like okay here I am in this part of my day again I'm going to make get through it just like I did every other day in the quitting part of the day yeah exactly then I'd go out onto the floor and I'd talk to our employees autism and a lot of them are just a joy to be around no matter what and it was like okay this is why I'm here I'm here for my brother I'm here for my family I'm here for these guys and that got me through those things let's talk about the money mat right you developed that with your team how do you think other entrepreneurs can Implement that in their business not necessarily A Car Wash business yeah so I me the general concept right is that we're trying to make things structured Visual and clear and as simple as they possibly can be right so we were struggling with uh essentially being able to keep our our cash out organized the money would get all jumbled up when they were doing their nightly closing and then it if there was a mistake it'd be really hard to find where it was so we needed a solution to make that more clear and that's what the money mat does it essentially organizes the cache so that we know where you know each machine has its own little spot the formulas are written all all out so it's it's easy to track the whole process visually through the system so really what what I think the takeway is for other entrepreneurs is if you have a system that a lot of different people are using on a daily basis it's really important to make that system as clear as possible to make it as visual as possible and to work with your team members who you feel like they they struggle the most with these things right so whoever is struggling the most that's the person who you design it with the opportunity because if it works for them then it likely works for the rest of the team all right on a ligh or not Tom what's one of the surprising funkiest weirdest things you found at one of your car washes we found a a pink uh foam sword in the middle of the car wash once it must have been in somebody's like pickup bed and it flew out that's it team had a lot of fun with that one that's cool what about like jewelry and coins and all that is that common yeah especially in like the self-service vacuum the Vacuums at least once a year we have a lady like suck up her like engagement ring and hopefully the filter catches it but we have had times where it's just like can't we can't find it so they do come back and they're like I lost my ring like a big Panic like oh my God I lost my ring like you got to think of some technology to prevent that yeah well the the filter usually does but you you know usually usually does but then it's a wedding ring yeah you know that usually yeah it's usually a big deal a big deal honey where's your wedding ring uh I went to Rising tide Car Wash it's gone and it's gone other than team members with autism why do customers choose you over their competitors what else can you highlight on that yeah we're really focused on consistency of quality speed of service and then providing a really good you know customer experience and and all of that comes from our employees and our systems that we set up right so because we have employees with autism like I mentioned they're extreme users of organizational systems we have to make things really clear really efficient really consistent for them to be able to operate our systems effectively it makes the business more resilient because it means that we've had to really in intentionally solve for each of the little touch points of the course of the day so that makes all of our operating systems run pretty smoothly pretty consistently so the customer knows what they're getting every time so that Rel relates the speed of service and the quality but then just like every other service business right you want to feel you're cared about that people like are happy to talk to you and our employees are genuinely happy to be at work much more so than a typical service business I think your typical service experience you experience something a little bit different at our stores because our employees really care about their jobs that comes out and that it creates an experience for our customers that's rare if I have a choice I would personally go here as opposed to just no Mission exactly no story right y the story is sell right you guys uh comment below if you have a similar business other than a car wash we'd love to hear from you but you have an incredible story and how that impacts your business right cuz clearly here with what you're doing Tom that's a big part of what you're doing Tom let's talk about media and what it does to really any business let's talk about yours specifically when were you featured on what platforms what did that do to your business and what can somebody watching do to either go after that to get that exposure or do they come to you yeah yeah so um had a huge impact really we do very little paid advertising because we mainly rely on earned medium so almost zero almost zero much smaller than a normal car wash and it really all stemmed for us at least from we had a big Nightly News piece right early on and that essentially we were able to get that because we were talking to a lot of little groups right um doing like little documentary interviews little like online um like mini docs and one of those got seen by Harry Smith uh who was uh one of the main anchors on the Nightly News at the time and he came out and he did an interview and from there we got on the Nightly News the second time we were on the Today Show twice we were on the cover of Entrepreneur magazine big features in Inc magazine and National Geographic magazine what got you on there is it the story yeah 100% it's been the mission based got very little to do with I mean you don't really see power watches in major media very often right right it's all about the story and and that's really driven you know a a big part of how the business has been successful and as far as how other people can do it yeah if you have a really good story I encourage you to to you know be active on soci social media they're going to see that like that goes on to their feeds it also you know when you search that on Google you see it and I I'd say that's probably the what I would recommend okay as a new business leader Tom what kind of leader were you and how have you grown over the last couple years I know there's a key word discipline compassion that maybe we can touch on and what does what does that mean yeah yeah so at first I was a bad leader uh I really um you know I was young I was inexperienced I thought that in order to lead a team effectively I had to all the answers and I had to just tell people what to do but I didn't know what I was doing right so candidly I didn't know what I was doing from an operating perspective I had really very little idea how to run a successful Car Wash I knew even less about how to really manage people and and and get people to you know essentially be able to respect me and and hear what I'm saying and not you know be afraid or be frustrated by you know everything I'm asking them to do yeah that took a while and um I think it was easier for me because we were really committed to the mission of employing people with Autism and I felt comfortable being in service to that portion of our team which is about 80% of our team I read a book at that time that had a big impact on the way that I operate this business called the emth Revisited by Michael Gerber it's a classic entrepreneurship book but it was really the right time for me to read that because it's all about building process and structure and routine into a business which is exactly what our team members really need to thrive and what I needed to do to stay sane and you mentioned discipline compassion and and that is part of the leadership ethos that we preach here which is very related to what I just said in that in order for us to execute our mission of employing people with Autism we have to be disciplined operators so we have to hold everybody the same standards we have to have Clarity in everything that we do and we have to push people to the edge of their comfort zone and that's how people grow and that's how we maintain consist consistency and Clarity among our team and fairness among the team and that's what makes the whole thing run I know we touched on it briefly but I want to come back to it a little bit in terms of as a whole customer service but then if we backtrack systems people and the team members with autism how all that comes together to then create a better customer service experience can you elaborate on that a little more yeah so we've had to think really critically about every customer service interaction right so without um a lot of scripting and a lot of coaching our employees with autism really will struggle with those uh impromptu social interactions that really gets to the core of the the the disorder MH so with that it's been a blessing in that we're able to you know see and and train on a lot of different scenario Based training right so if a customer says this I'm going to say this if a customer has this issue I'm going to do this if I can't answer the question I'm going to go to my manager uh I'm going to you know we have the these fun FAL customer service rule so we have one called the 3 minute rule so if a customer has a request that I can complete in under 3 minutes I'm just going to do it for them I'm not going to you know even if it's not part of the service I'll just take care of it so like having these clear things right it allows our team members with autism to function better but it also allows us to just be consistent in the way that we approach our customers right so our customers get the same type of responses from everybody because it's all trained and it's all uh very very clear so your connection with the community obviously plays a pivotal role how does one watching develop that in their local market the best source of talent especially if you're hiring entry-level type Talent like we are is the high schools so we'll build relationships with the specifically the special education teachers and the job coaches within those high schools tell them what we're trying to do and they will bring us candidates and what's also great about that is you get to know the autism community so they start to you start to build brand Advocates right away through doing this and then as the word grows and and and the program becomes larger the hiring program becomes larger it is able to really I think develop a a strong base of people in your community that that are really willing to sing your Praises well here's the big question I love numbers out of the 6 million what margin of take-home do you go for what's what's a Happy Time margin we shoot for in the industry average which is about a 20% net profit are you happy with that yeah would you like it to be more I mean we always want it to be more but no no we're happy with it what we want to be able to do is is is operate within industry standard margins yeah wait wait wait 81% of you who continue to regularly watch our Channel have not yet subscribed yet do you know that if you do please do so right now you provide value to us and we provide value back by bringing on on Bigger Better guests that you can learn from so take a second hit the Subscribe button we appreciate that a lot every business has setbacks it has failures whether at the Inception in the middle wherever right what were some of yours yeah how did you get through them whether it was a tool system a person yeah talk to us about that yeah big failures early on you know like I was saying we were hemorrhaging money to start and it hurt and it's scary you know my dad had put a large portion of his life savings into this business to make it work to make it work for Andrew to make it work for me he's letting me lead it even though I like said I had no idea what I was doing and I wasn't doing a great job at first and that led to a a staff of mainly people with Autism that were confused frustrated lethargic it kind of looked like it wasn't going to work frankly I think if we weren't so committed to the mission we might have just started to hire just like a regular car wash does and we would have had regular car wash results because we were so committed to the mission it it forced us to figure out how to innovate through it so it forced us to build that discipline forced you to innovate yeah why do you think most or a lot of car wash businesses fail how would you prevent that with your experience so far I think most businesses fail not because they're bad but because they're average and and today average isn't good enough so there needs to be something that I like that makes them different we're not just donating a portion of our sales to some far off cause that you know may or may not resonate with people it's it's lived every day at the store and the customers see it every day it's very authentic that's pretty cool and I think that that type of differentiation can really save a lot of businesses that are struggling how did you know you were ready to expand to your second location which is marget and then the third one here at Coral Springs so it's taken us a while right so our our first location we opened in in 2013 about a year and a half after that we were like okay we're ready to to take the next step we think we can do another one the processes and systems are in place well enough where we feel like we can expand to the next store but car washes take a while right so but from the time that you put a purchase agreement on the property you have to get it entitled you have to get permits you have to build it that's a 2-year process so it took another two years from there before we we were able to open up from 2013 acquisition yeah to 2015 opening up is yeah actually so was 2013 acquisition 20 you know end of 2014 we were like okay let's start looking for another store and then we start that process in 15 and actually open the store in 17 oh wow then you know we open and it was tough at the beginning but you know because we had a lot of the processes and systems in place and had already well trained staff it wasn't terrible it was like a couple months of Helter Skelter and then it it was was back to normal and then the third one honestly it wasn't so difficult we had been through it we' built before we understood how to do it there was still you know it's still expensive it's still finding the property it still takes forever but it was a lot less stressful two more things so at which point from the location one did you thought okay we're ready for two was it a financial decision what is was it a systems and processes in place that proven themselves they boil down to we felt we could grow Integrity because we knew like what we were doing was working but also the business is making money so we want to make more money you can grow each location's revenue for sure but at some point you're not going to grow too much more Revenue wise at each location they mature it's a ceiling yeah yeah for I mean sure there's a little bit of you know you know leeway you do always a little bit better but if you really want to take another jump you need another store what is the most valuable piece of advice you've ever gotten think of a couple it's got to be from my dad and he always says there's no magic there's just hard work and I think a lot of us expect there to be this like lightning in the bottle moment that all of a sudden we're successful but that's not really how it works it's a lot of hard work and effort and incremental progress before suddenly now we get that big break and we're ready to capture it but it wasn't an overnight thing it was something that required dedication and consistent hard work that's awesome so in other words magic happens in the hard work right correct Chason magic start with the hard work first that's right power of potential a book that you have written what inspired you to write it in a nutshell give us a summary yeah so a couple years ago we when we were getting all this media attention we had all these parents reach out to us and say how do I build something like Rising tide in my community and so we did an entrepreneurship training course with the University of Miami to try to understand you know and and guide these people to build these types of autism focused organizations but what we learned is that it's really difficult to build a business specifically around a social Mission and it's a lot more Dynamic of a strategy to embed it within an existing business concept so for us that meant wow you've got all these small business people mediumsized business people that struggle to find talent that struggle to differentiate uh the their businesses in a crowded Marketplace that are struggling to build these different systems to scale and we feel like we have a solution in our social missions and in in all the Rel ated learnings to it to really solve those issues and to really help small mediumsized businesses so that's who the the book is for it's for these small medium-sized Business Leaders who are looking for really a dynamic Advantage for their own organizations all right so I got to ask though you had a day with 1,200 cars running through here there's got to be people that come back and say oh I got a scratch or oh you did this or as you can see the rising tide Car Wash rule let's take a look and show our audience like this is here for a purpose a reason right so how do you deal with people that come back and say oh youve broken my light or you scr yeah help us understand that world things so like the biggest issue with car washes is that people don't really look at their cars before they come get a car wash right they look at it real closely after yes so you get a lot of people that maybe they were at a shopping center 6 weeks ago and they got a scratch they didn't notice it and then they get a car wash and say oh my God you scratched my car so that happens every day I mean almost every day we have to deal with some degree of claim that we've damaged a vehicle oh wow and that's why we have you know we really invest in sophisticated cameras so we're looking at like 4K cameras where we can really zoom in on every aspect of the car and see any pre-existing damage before I Comm in the car is already fully scanned boom fully scanned nine out of 10 of the claims you're going to show the customer hey look sorry that was there already I can't take responsibility so that's that's an easy solution the cameras are right here so we we got to AR basic Bally yeah exactly you've got an arch just like it's a it's a car wash Arch that we've got six cameras on and wow what does this cost you this setup you think um I think the whole thing cost about $4 $5,000 not bad yeah I mean it saves us I don't even know how much in clean I can imagine Tom and then we have a really wonderful um camera management system called live reach which essentially makes it super easy for us to like clip cameras send them to customers have like a just a very systematized and professional damage claim management process W so you can actually send them a video they don't have to show up here you don't have to do a whole face to face exactly what so we always try to diffuse the situation right okay sir like Madam let me take down your information so we have a form that we fill out take pictures and then we said we'll get back within 72 hours so we can kind of diffuse the situation a little bit create a little bit of space so everybody's calm yeah and then we can just objectively say okay was the damage there or not that's cool what's been your smartest move that you can think of uh so far I think the most impactful business move that we made was buying an existing location to start that was struggling because it allowed us to create a bunch of equity in that location which then we were able to leverage to build more awesome so you actually took Equity out of that one and put down on two and three and so forth that's that's a good plan what's one thing you would do differently today if you were to start all over again I would have spent 3 to 6 months working at the best car wash I could find 3 to six okay to really understand what it takes to run a good car wash operation that would have been been my number one thing I would have done you didn't do that I thought you said you worked a little bit somewhere so I worked we we we ran this test right where we trained people on like the basic processes we we recruited them we hired them we trained them that gave us the answer to our fundamental question which was can people with Autism work in this industry effectively but it didn't really teach me the the realities and the nuances of the business and that I think as an employee being immersed in it like actually having to serve customers every day and actually having to you know work with the equipment every day I would have learned to a deeper level what was needed and it would have been great to be able to go to somebody who's an excellent operator and see the way that they do it so I could have that mental model and not have to build it over time like I did gotcha so from what I understand you're a pretty avid reader Tom give us three to five business books that just absolutely are your top favorite yeah so I've mentioned it a few times but my number one favorite book is still the emth Revisited by Michael Gerber that's had a huge impact on me I really also like uh Atul gandi is the checklist Manifesto everything that the heath Brothers have written specifically power of moments is my favorite one of the heath Brothers books but all of their books are excellent and then I really like Kim Scott's IAL cander okay all right my friend well it's been a pleasure I have learned a lot and I'm I'm sure our audience have as well thank you very much it's been a pleasure if you're interested in cleaning cars make sure you check out episode 139 with a 23-year-old Allan who started a mobile detailing business go detail with 500 bucks and scaled it to $75,000 a month take a second to like subscribe we'll see you next time