Name: The 3-Step Framework for Unlocking Hidden Opportunities in Your Car Wash
Uploaded: 2026-02-18T21:16:29.395Z
Duration: 34 min 4 s
Description: The 3-Step Framework for Unlocking Hidden Opportunities in Your Car Wash

Transcript for "The 3-Step Framework for Unlocking Hidden Opportunities in Your Car Wash": We're thrilled today to welcome everyone to our Rinsed Masterclass, where we're going to be talking with Brink results and Steve Goudreaux and Paul Dagar. And what we're going be talking today about is this topic of a three step framework for unlocking hidden opportunities in your car wash. We all have those opportunities. We all want to unlock them, but sometimes we're not exactly sure how to go about that. So with me today, as I mentioned, I'm Kyle Doyle, VP at Rinst. Work with the SalesPath product, but work with lots of our great customers on unlocking marketing potential, CRM potential, SalesPath potential. With us is Steve Goudreaux. Steve, I've known for, you know, Steve, I have gray in my beard. That makes me feel old, but it also makes me feel old when I say I've known somebody professionally for over twenty years, and that's you, I've known you for a long time. Steve is the president of Brink's results. He has been helping car wash operators for literally decades, unlock opportunities, solve problems, a lot of them around sales and training and service creates real, real impact. So thrilled to have you with us today, Steve. Thanks for being here. Thanks Rob, absolutely, I appreciate it. And we also have Paul Dagar. Paul, I've also known, I've just realized for fifteen years, which is maybe why we kind of have the same outfit on Paul. What's going on like gray sweatshirt with the blue? Yeah, think we're looking good. Welcome Paul, who is a great operator in Southern California. Appreciate it. Thanks, Kyle. Yeah, I remember our first encounter. So we'll hopefully this will be as good as that. Well, yeah, hopefully it's less painful. No, I'm just kidding. So what are we talking about today? We're talking about problems that everybody has. And so, you know, maybe you feel alone sometimes in some of these, but you're not. So we see up here, hiring employees is a challenge. Training them is a challenge. Getting membership numbers to where we think they should be or by getting past that plateau that we get stuck at. Knowing where exactly the biggest opportunities are, sales and volume going up and down, kind of riding that roller coaster, equipment issues, managers not coaching the way we want them to be coaching. And that's some of the things we're going to be talking about today. But when you think about these problems, a lot of people say, okay, this kind of represents where I am today. So I know where I am, I know what I'm frustrated with, I know what I want to overcome. And then sometimes often it's because we see other operators that maybe are not having the same problem or they've solved it or they're successful in a way that we want to be. We say, okay, that's where I want to go. But this in between is this black box. We're not exactly sure exactly what the path we should take to get there to get those results that we're after. And so that's really what we're talking about today. The big question, if you want to put a name on it is how can I actually achieve results like more volume, higher membership counts, better margins, and stronger managers? How are we going to do it? We're going be talking to Steve and Paul today about the Brinks Result three step framework. As I mentioned, Steve and Brinks Result have been doing what they do successfully for decades and they have this really well worn and proven framework of using these three steps. So Steve, let me get you involved here. Take us through these three steps of assessment, analysis and plan, and then training. Okay, when we get invited to an owner's wash, we do so with a great deal of deference because car wash business is not easy. People that are in business are successful in business deserve a lot of credit. And we approach their operations very carefully. So the first step in this three step framework is just the structure that we work with. So everyone kind of knows where we're going, what we're doing. So the step one is assessment. So we see what's happening in the business. I'll come back to that in a second. Then when we see what's going on in the business, we do an analysis, decide what needs to change and put together a plan. And then the last part, and this is the part where people don't understand and it's what the most work that we do is we install systems and skills that drive measurable results. We do training. We're out on the driveway kind of people opposed to in the office. And what we're doing out there is we're showing people exactly and precisely what are the steps they need to be It's called systems, how to exact system. So let me go to the assessment part first. We look at several different factors here. One is operational performance. When you come onto the property and we usually mystery shop at least once before we visit a property, You know, how are they performing? Is the place clean? Are people friendly? Are they enthusiastic? Are they working hard? Just the overall stuff that you walk on to any property, any car wash, you'd be able to pick up at a different level. Good could be improved really excellent. I've got to search hard for the places for improvement. After we look at performance areas, we look at customer service experience. That's very important. Usually one of the things that we do is interview customers, get a feel for why they're coming there. The Edgewinder Watch Club members is certainly one of the biggest and most important statistics today because it becomes a subscription industry. The total number of cars watched is always a question that people ask. We get interviews with key people. We talk to the managers, assistant managers, supervisors, and people to greet the customer. And the Exterior Express era, that's about 75% of the employees. And then we check-in on stuff that's a little harder to quantify the attitude and culture of the company. But every car wash has a different culture to some degree. I've never been to two car washes back to back that they have the same culture. It just doesn't exist. Everything's a little different. Then we look at the systems and procedures that exist and the ones that don't exist. And then of course, at the financial results. So we really get a good feel for what's happening. How long does this process normally take you, Steve? It's about a two and a half to three day process. And again, we're aware that we're just getting a snapshot. We're getting a picture. We don't find out everything but we find out enough with our experience to be able to say, okay, here's which way we need to go. Yeah, that really leads to the second area, analysis of the plan. And I know what my partner in prime Paul Dagar talk a little bit about that. I'll tell you on this analysis. I mean, way Steve describes the first part of it, I look at it like a car wash MRI. I mean, we run you through the we run you through that scanner. By the time you come out, we know, you know, we've got the results of the test. And so we build on that for the changes needed. And I'll tell you that probably one of the biggest decisions, for me as a car wash operator was that I decided I did need to make a change. I mean the reality of that change was necessary was very important and so we seek when Steve says we approach us with deference That's exactly what we do. Change is important. So we identify, you know, what we say are the things that are going well. Well, you know, if we run you through the MRI and you get a clean bill of health, we'll tell you. Yeah, we'd love to tell you that. Just like any doctor giving you a checkup, you know, you get a clean bill of health, let's go to the next step, come back in six months. But, otherwise, in terms of defining the areas for improvement, it's everything you can imagine. Recruiting, equipment, technical systems, unlimited washclub sales, virtually every type of training you can imagine. And then for, you know, my experience is sort of go back to basics. I mean, there's things that we forget about and we go back to that basic operation and systems. And we set an objective to be reached and those objectives have been reset with priorities, right? Everyone has priorities. We try to tackle these with strategies. And in my view, you know, we create this what I would call the quickest path to profit, right? A straight line between the issue and the solution. Next step in terms of proposing the changes to be made. Look, Steve said it, we're empirical, we're practical. These are not theoretical things that we're coming up with. But we get very, very practical, very fast and assign a budget to it. As far as, dealing with barriers to success, we want to make sure we design solutions for barriers. And here's where change comes in. We're looking to discover, right, what are those? Are they? Is it me? You know, I'm the owner operator. Was I the barrier? And my whole was it management or was it something different than that? Well, those come out very quickly in this process. And then effectively we set up a schedule. I mean, this is a realistic timeline. I mean, it's a lot for, you know, sometimes somebody they're so used to their four walls and their own world. Sometimes it's hard to spot some of these things, but I think having that objective sense and also realizing that a lot of these things are repeat patterns that we see operators struggle with in the industry. It's nothing wrong with any of us. It's just these are challenges we're going to run up against. So to get that kind of objective analysis, I could see how powerful that is. We'll jump on to the next one. You wanted to walk us through training, Steve. Yeah, okay. This is my favorite piece of information to talk about. I could talk about this for a long time. But this is what we do. This is what our strength is. This is what we're really good at. For example, unlimited washcloth. Okay. Now a lot of people are doing this but not only do we work on the menu and the pricing but the details of how to sell. You know for each individual car wash we put together a 50 page workbook basically on how they handle objections or questions to get their car wash. We customize everything. And then we give them the exact words to say and we practice and we role play it. And when we get out there in front of the customer, we're knowledgeable. That's somebody who's brand new even to the industry. So the level of detail and the level of customization and the completeness of the systems is what's all different about us. So that's true in recruiting. Hardly anybody's ever been trained on how to interview people properly and how to select properly. Online training, we have three curriculums of online training for an entry level person and for management and for maintenance. And then the next package of systems down below there, cost controls. Everybody believes that they're running at the lowest possible costs. Almost always we can show people how to improve those numbers. Management development, how to really coach people, how to run meetings, how to hold people accountable. And then systems installation, you know, facility appearance is so critical today. The preventative maintenance is we've a pretty rigorous program. And so learning how to manage KPIs and volume metrics. Great example is Paul and he's unique and as an owner, he embraced all the changes and that's not always true. Sometimes people can make some of the changes now some later some overall Paul let you talk about your your own results you know through my career of owning and distributorship and development, we came upon Lakewood Car Wash. Well, Lakewood Car Wash was probably conceived back in the late 50s and it was built in the early 60s. It's called Lakewood Car Wash because it was the first car wash in town and throughout its entire history was a full service car wash and the town knew it as a full service car wash. So I don't want to take all the credit for it. I've got a fantastic partner, but we got together and acquired this location and decided, look, we're going to keep it a flexor. We experienced some early success and that led to literally us being, you know, a leader in town. We set up good community relationships. We set up good PR and we did hire a good staff. Really, we operated for ten years. And one day Alex gives me a call and goes, look, you're not going to believe this. We have a car wash going in across the street and it caught us a little bit off guard. And of course, I rolled through my Rolodex and the first guy I called was Steve Goodra. He came by and he says, look, you guys, you've got a great location. But one thing he revealed is we really had just become satisfied with our level of success. And I say that with all due respect, you know, we were successful. Satisfied is not the word I'd like to end with. And Paul, let me ask you, was that hard in that moment? Is that hard for you as an operator to kind of hear? The heart was realizing he was right and we really needed to get out of the forest, you know, to see the trees. It was bad enough somebody came across the street and then Steve came and really revealed our number one issue. We have great plans and a great location, but what we did not have was the management, internal management and systems needed to take us to the next level, particularly compete in an already competitive market now with somebody coming across the street. So what he did was basically bring in the recommendations that we needed to train new management. I built my reputation on bringing people I knew into the business. Steve says, well, we're going to hire a guy who's never been in the car wash business, who's never walked on a car wash except to wash his own car. And I want you to trust me, we're going to train him and he's going to be great. We agreed to set up a training program to speed up our process. We were already doing good, know, but when you're doing one hundred car hours, you need to be able to speed that process up, particularly if you're going to add to it. And he realized that even though we were good, we were missing some of the finer points of teamwork. And then he said, look, you know, we need a marketing plan, a strategy, not just, you know, what you think is best for next, but a strategy for building an unlimited washclub. We had great volume, but volume is not the thing that we realize is going to protect us against competitor. It's unlimited wash, it's loyalty, not just volume. It's where you get your volume. So Lakewood two point zero was, if I give you an idea, it took us twelve months. We had a twelve month hire. Today we have a new manager that he hired for us a year ago, helped build assistants and supervisors to meet that expectation, the manager's expectation and help him through what we needed. Trained all of our salespeople. We were fortunate we had salespeople inside. We did that training. If you want a metric, we increased our unlimited washclub by 43% and we were already doing well. And I'm going to give a plug here. We brought a wrenched in, right? So now we have data on what we're doing and we brought SalesPass in so that now we have a system for training that's consistent and helps build that and effectively retrained our entire staff to actually manage the process of washing cars, right? Get them off the property. Everything worked out great. This is the shameless plug, but now we're going into Lakewood 3 Today, Kyle, we close the car wash today to reload all of our equipment, redo our site, and for the next thirty days prepare ourselves for the next, you know, ten years if we want to call it that. Our objective is to increase our unlimited washclub by another 30%. We have a brand new facility management program and of course we'll have a fully you know brand new car wash with equipment. If you look at it the way I see it, we got like a '56 Chevy with a big old bat VA in it, right? You don't want to race us. And this is the goal that we have for not only ourselves, but our crew, our customers and, you know, our families. Yeah, that's an awesome story. And I appreciate you telling us Paul. What do you say to the individual? So there's a lot of great car washes out there. The owners are happy with the returns they're getting right now. Tell me about, because it feels to me that we're moving to this world where change and the velocity of change is not going to slow down. Competition's not going away. You're kind of going to almost always be evolving the business and making it better. How did you get used to that new rate of change and just get used to not being complacent anymore and sitting back and being content? Well, again, I think I admitted to you, you know, I had ten years of growing the car wash with fairly limited change. But here's what, you know, the best part of it was. Mean, I do things outside of the single car wash. Know that the greatest thing that's come is technology for us. We now have technology we never had before. The fact that we have the private equity in our industry has accelerated that. We finally have people who are interested to come in and, you know, build things up that we never saw before. Well, license plate recognition. We didn't know who our customers were necessarily. We just knew the ones that signed on. So what I would tell you is the next ten years, it'll be very, very exciting technologies that are taking us to a new level data, which we never had before. And it takes this kind of environment to sort of push us out of our nest and say, look, you know, if we want to make it, we better get busy with it. And technology of these systems are the number one thing. Get used to it. It's not going away. Yeah, no, I would agree. So guys, we've asked everyone who's registered for the class to give us some questions that they'd like us to discuss. So I wanted to put one up here. How do I find more killers? I call them the all stars, those salespeople that are extremely competitive motivated, to work at our washes selling memberships. Paul, maybe you can take this one. Well, sort of team off from our own experience. Look, the question is, you know, how do I find them? Not where do I find them? I want somebody to answer the question of where do I find them? You know, sometimes you don't have the luxury of that, but we got lucky. And, you know, we started out right. We had our killers internally. We just needed to give them, you know, we needed to give them the training, the coaching and the accountability to really get successful. So we really grew our model from inside. But there's a couple models for that in the industry, right, using existing CSAs or really like you say, go out and hiring with salespeople. But what I what I really look at when I see this is, you know, why does somebody want to come work for me? Why is somebody going to come there? If you want the best, then you need to be the best. You know, you need to be attractive to the people you're looking for. And we're still in the kind of business where word-of-mouth has got us our best results. We're in a community of people who know that our wash is open. They know we're stable they know we pay well they know we have the best bonuses they know we train well so really when you look at it our own employees have gone out and told everybody you know who we are we've attracted some great people And I would just say, you want to make yourself attractive, then you will attract what you look for. And so you've got to basically go out there and be bold and say, look, you know, I'm only looking for the best. I'm not going to be satisfied with less than that. So I'm looking for winners. I will train you. I won't just show you. I will train you. I will be there side by side to teach you and train you. And I'll give you sustainable systems, systems that are repeatable that you can learn from be successful and obviously you know in my world I always say fast pay makes fast friends well we pay well we pay good bonuses we promote that way and, we set goals and reward winning. That's the way we've done in the past. Yeah, that's great. It's kind of funny because you have to be a good salesman to get the good salesman. You know, the salesmen and women, you have to have a good sales pitch to them and not take it for granted, that they'll just naturally, you know, wanna come work for you. So that's a great point. And I think the training is another big piece of it, right? When people know they're coming into an environment where they it's not just about producing the numbers. It's about I'm going to give you the path and the training so that I know you can hit those numbers. So I think that training is a really powerful piece of that. Another one, once a site has hit a substantial amount of members and conversion rates have leveled off and churn rates are good, what are some approaches to bring in more members when it feels the area is saturated? Well, it looks like I'll take that one as well. Again, you can fill in the data for conversion rates and churn rates. My understanding is, you know, from what I've read upwards of 25% on the conversion, the churn rates somewhere between 78% when you combine voluntary and credit card. We're over 4,000 members and we're still trying to hit those kind of rates on a regular basis. But the first thing is, if I just look at the question, would say, you know, is it really saturated? I mean, I think true saturation is probably rare. But the bottom line is you've to develop new channels. I mean, we started doing things like, you know, creating new membership entry points, let's call it that QR codes at the vacuums and the pay stations, reaching out to the public. You know, let B2B. This year we have a big campaign on B2B, everything from large employers to gyms, apartment complexes, whatever it takes, cop. And so I would say, you know, that's one thing that if you're not going out and looking for it, it may not it's not going to show up on its own. But the other thing that I found was we may have a look how to put it. We may have an underutilization of our planes. I mean, we may think that we're saturated in a plan. Really, it's underutilized, but we should move people around. I mean, should we should give them the opportunity to step up. And so we're really looking at that. And finally, with the kind of data that we've been given with rents and some of our CRM programs, we're able now to really analyze the data better and see, do we have members in the right slots? And we're finding that there's ways of testing that. I mean, you've got to be willing to experiment and are you in the right plan? I mean, that's an experiment. So, you know, we're testing some of that. And I think we're probably pushing toward a little bit more urgency in our in the way we do this without discounting, right? Limited enrollment times, give a bonus for a new member. We never did founding members. Well, we're doing that now because we're changing plans and changing prices. So we're establishing a founders member type style for these new tiers. Those are some of the things that we've come up with and bring this help us out. Yeah, and I think one of the things you didn't mention that is clear in your answer though, is just the relentlessness with which you need to approach it. You just need to uncover every stone, just keep the foot on the gas and good things will happen. The single biggest reason why sales more sales on one when they watch clubs are not being made. You'll never guess. The biggest reason is people don't ask. They tell them some sometimes about it but they never ask the question that you'd like to join. They wait for the person to do it. Now Rinse came along and the sales staff really the first time people understood my gosh there's a lot of people that are just not even being asked so it was accepted. The second biggest factor is that there's no follow-up to that. And that's still a challenge now. It's like, our percentage is X. Okay, it's much better. Obviously, we know that now. Are you gonna do about it? Pointing out to the people that you didn't ask. Okay, that's fine. That takes you only so far. So the other coaching and things we're talking about still very important. It just that Ritz gives you a great tool to make it even more effective. You can't tell me anymore you greeted every single customer unless you actually can see it. Yeah, less places to hide. All right, the next question. What are some tips for building leadership and accountability with managers and supervisors? Okay, well, off, let me start with the obvious is that, you know, defining what it is, what is good leadership? What exactly is it in a car wash is number one. If you ask five managers to give you a description of what their job is at the same wash, they will tell you five different answers. 100% of the time, the chances that all five will say the exact same thing would be extraordinary. I haven't had it happen yet, but hey, I only got thirty years into this. We'll see. So defining what great leadership is, what does success look like in measurable terms? So that's the objective. And the way you do it is you tie accountability to numbers and behaviors. Okay? Managers can't measure, can't manage what isn't measured. We've heard that before many times. So, you know, a list of key performance indicators because they're looking at that daily or weekly scorecards, regular reviews that focus on numbers and trends, not just excuses. So when managers see the scoreboard, leadership starts to become real, more tangible and less of an intangible nature. And then what we've been talking about all day today is a coach manager on how to lead, not just what to do, but how to do it. Okay, so how do you run an effective meeting? Most people have never been taught that. How do you coach underperformers? How do you get feedback without getting into a lot of conflict and a lot of anger? So the how to details is the kind of stuff that we do and it's what people need in order to be a good leader. And then you've heard this many times inspect what you expect. The fastest way to lose credibility is saying standards matter and then never checking them. Leaders must walk sites, review reports, follow-up on commitments. It's amazing when we do assessments and we listen in to people at the pay stations and people are talking to us between customers and so forth. It's amazing how ownership and site management above has so much more respect for what we're telling because they know we've been out there on the site. We've been there. We've not done it. So it makes a big difference. Just making it tangible, making it tangible and is really the key to creating great leadership. Yeah, excellent. That's great advice. If we look at the next one is our last question here. How can I train employees to continually provide great customer service site oversight? Okay, Really a tough one. Okay. Everyone struggles with this. The first key is to understand just one thing. Customer service isn't just a personality trait. It's a system. Okay? If service quality changes from site to site, it's usually because training is inconsistent, expectations aren't clear, or accountability fades. So again, we go back to the same thing. What is leadership? What is customer service? What is it exactly? Now you gotta standardize what great service means. You gotta tell them. You can't really coach people to be friendly if they're not. You can coach how customers are greeted, what gets set in the pay station, how you handle a problem issue, how memberships are explained. You can give people those answers and train them and practice role play. Hardly anybody ever does any role play of any kind of procedure in any car wash. It's another great missing system out there. Most service training is too abstract. They'll say be nicer, be friendlier. What does that mean exactly? So, showing people exactly what bad service looks like. Here's a bad way to respond to a customer's complaint. Here's a good way. So, black and white clarity. And then coaching consistently, not just when there's a problem. We got a problem out here. We got to solve it. So, as part of somebody's overall development, this is a check mark on a box. You say, okay, we've trained them on this. We've gone out, we follow-up. He knows it. Now it's a matter performance. So, clarity, clarity of what it is, what behaviors, especially I'm supposed to display up the driveway. Yeah, that's excellent. And it's, you know, all of these things, problems that we see regularly, but it's amazing how much of them when you just make them tangible, when you create systems that everybody is aligned with, that they're documented, you know what they are, it really starts to unlock these things that were mysterious before, but they become repeatable. Gentlemen, it's been great talking with you. Anything you want to close with Steve? Any final words of advice? Well, two things. I got three things. First of let me thank Paul very much for coming aboard and singing our praise. We appreciate it. Paul's now, he's gone over to the other side. We got him working now as an associate with us. We appreciate it. We really appreciate the customers that are out there that have worked with us because as Paul vividly described, takes some courage to say, let's look in the mirror and see what we can do better. Everybody's got an ego and really anybody who's making money in the car wash business has a level of success they should be proud of. So we thank them as well. And I especially want to thank the people we work with. We have a great team. I've been in the industry a long time. It's the best team of the training consultants we've ever had. And we're finally following some of our advice ourselves on us. We're getting better. Excellent. Well, guys, it's been great to be with you. If anyone in our audience wants to reach out to us at Rinse, you can click this get demo button. And if you want to reach out to Paul or Steve, their contact information is there as well. So thank you so much for spending some time with us, and we look forward to our next chat.