IDL103 Season 3: The Power of Potential with Tom D'Eri

How do you train yourself to recognize the true value of the people that work in your company? What are the factors in your business that allow people to do their best work? How can you recognize learning opportunities for your business?

Tom D’Eri is the author of The Power of Potential which releases on January 24th. This book is an essential read for any business with a special focus on systems and recruitment. Tom and his father, John, are the founders of Rising Tide Car Wash where they employ and empower individuals with autism. In this episode, Tom reflects on the challenges and the value that he, his father, and the company have derived from the endeavor, and how you can apply the principles that served him well.

Meet Tom D’Eri

Tom D’Eri has dedicated his career to unleashing human potential by creating organizational systems and culture that empower people to grow.

Tom is the Co-Founder and COO of Rising Tide Car Wash, an organization that employs over 90 individuals with autism in a successful car wash business.

Tom is a Forbes 30 Under 30 social entrepreneur and is the forthcoming author of The Power of Potential: How a Non-Traditional Workforce Can Lead You to Run Your Business Better.

Visit Rising Tide Car Wash and connect with Tom on LinkedIn.

IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• Leverage underutilized strengths - 09:43

• Listen to your people - 16:33

• Be intentionally developmental - 22:20

Leverage underutilized strengths

There are people in your teams, communities, and circles that have the knowledge and skills that you need.

Find the people that have the answers and bring them into your circles. Which passions, skills, and abilities do your people have that can be brought to the forefront? That is going to push your business to the next level, and upwards from there.

Listen to your people

How many times has there been someone on your team that has struggled? It can feel easier to just write that person off as a no-show or as not-equipped for the position.

However, listen to them.

Look out for the hiccups that people experience in their company, and rather than always thinking it’s the person’s fault, consider how this could be a learning curve and an opportunity for your business to grow.

Additionally, this will help the team feel more comfortable around you. They will feel more comfortable failing because they now know that failure with you is psychologically safe, which creates spaces for growth and true vulnerability, and therefore true success.

Be intentionally developmental

Notice the strengths of the people around you, and within yourself as well – how can you bring them to fruition? How can you make them real?

Can you be developmentally focused and intentionally developmental?

How do you encourage this mindset in yourself and others?

The foundation of the culture in your business is laid out in the systems that you put in place around the people who work in the business.

Use problems as opportunities to find new skills in your people and ways to move forward. Welcome the little problems because they offer growth.

Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:

BOOK | Tom D’Eri – The Power of Potential: How a Non-Traditional Workforce Can Lead You to Run Your Business Better

Visit Rising Tide Car Wash and connect with Tom on LinkedIn.

Sign up for the roundtable at: hello@theimpactdrivenleader.com

Check out the Practice Of the Practice

www.tylerdickerhoof.com

Visit theimpactdrivenleader.com and sign up for the workshop!

About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast

The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.

Rate, review and subscribe here on Apple Podcasts or subscribe on Stitcher and Spotify.

Let’s leverage the strengths that are available and are being underutilized.

Tyler Dickerhoof

Podcast Transcription

[TYLER DICKERHOOF] Welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. Man, good to be here. I hope you're doing well. If you're watching on YouTube, see a little bit new of a background, have some cool things in background, my family, a little Ohio State, Michigan, the gumball machine that was in my grandparents mechanic shop, their garage. Little different. Excited to share that. But I'm glad that you're here listening in. If you're a first time listener, so glad you're here. If you're a subscriber, thank you. If you're not, hit that subscribe button, whether it's on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcast, so that way these episodes come to you. I release every Friday, and man, I'm excited. Today's guest, Tom D'Eri, an author of Power of Potential, a new book releasing on January 24th. You're going to learn a lot from the book, some great points. If you're involved in any type of business where you have systems, organization, where you're hiring people, you're going to get tremendous value from this book, from this conversation with Tom. Tom and his dad, John got into the carwash business, Rising Tide Car Wash located in Parkland, Florida. If you're in Florida, go there. If you know about it, I'd love for you in the comments. Tell me about Rising Tide. They started the carwash, one to serve a community, serve Tom's brother Andrew, who is autistic. As we learn about just all the elements that they had to figure out as leaders, as business owners, difficult things, you notice Tom talks about, it was a struggle, there was a point like, ah, but they were committed because of Andrew and his community. You're going to learn some great elements, which I share in my conversation with Tom, are the, it should be the gold standard. Can't wait to follow up with you at the end. Thanks for being here. Appreciate it. If you're part of the Impact Driven Leader book club, excited for you to be a part of that too. Find more at theimpactdrivenleader.com or tylerdickerhoof.com. I'll come back at the end of the episode and we'll wrap things up. [TYLER] Tom, welcome to the podcast, man. [TOM D'ERI] Tyler, I'm so pumped to be here with you today. [TYLER] I am thankful. So one thing that I'll share right now for you so you can hear this, the ability to have guests on this podcast that are either writing books or leading in spaces that are just unique and different and how I found yourself was just a Instagram with Harper Collins leadership book is coming out, obviously very soon after the release of this podcast, it's almost like this treasure that I find because it's a unique different conversation that we get to have right now in the world of leadership. This is what I want to say, this is my belief, I want you to take and run with it, what you and your family has figured out about leading and about recognizing the tremendous value in people should not be a one-off, it should be the gold standard. What do you think to that? [TOM D'ERI] I appreciate that, man. Yeah, I mean that's a high bar but I will say that what we've learned, so we started this business to employ my brother Andrew, who has autism. It's been a winding road trying to understand not only do we, how do we employ Andrew, but we set this goal of employing people with autism for 80% of our staff. Really early on, before we even had a business model. We were like, this is, this is the goal. 80% of people with autism, let's find a business that can do that. We liked car washes, eventually that's what we came to but what was so interesting and going through this whole thing is that our employees really have inspired us to build the organization around them. We started our relationship with talent backwards compared to most organizations. We said, we want to employ these people. What's a good business model to do that with? That's, it's, I wouldn't necessarily say any business has to do that, but it's been really eye-opening to help us really understand like what are the factors that make people feel valued, that make people really do their best work? We've been intentional about that since day one, and that's helped us like build really objective hiring, identify all these problems that a lot of businesses struggle with and often fail because of, but don't necessarily blame their failure on those things because they're like these like sticky little problems that we just accept as like, this is how business is. Like, it's hard to find talent. There's not that many good people. It's hard to differentiate your business. It's hard to make people follow your directions, hard to hold people accountable, all these different things and we end up blaming it on competition or economic situations when really your relationship with your team can solve so many of those problems. [TYLER] Obviously, this podcast about leadership, it's something that as you just sliced that apart, that was my personal experience. It was like I kept wanting to look externally because I didn't want to do the hard work of looking internally and you just hit on that. It's like when you see the limitations externally, even though those limitations actually are like beyond magnified abilities at times, you want to, you're forced to say, "Ooh, how am I the limiting factor?" As you, whether you recognize it or not, most businesses that go in aim to do accomplish anything, their limitation is usually internally and it's not the external. It's trying to figure out how do I manage through the internal so the external actually performs? That said, I want you to go back, and you mentioned that you guys started the carwash, Rising Tide in order to employ your brother, share with myself the rest of the audience, what that journey was like until you got to that point saying, we need to do something better here as a family, but also for the community. [TOM D'ERI] So if you're in the autism community, you understand that there's a really limited job opportunities for people with autism. The unemployment rate is something like 80% underemployment among people with autism. What's so striking there is that only about 16% of the autism spectrum has like a significant intellectual disability. So there's a ton of people out there that can really hold down employment and be awesome employees just don't get a shot. That was our experience with my brother. He had graduated high school, he'd done all this work when he was young to help mitigate some of his behaviors and really just grew into a really agreeable, good-hearted young man and it was nothing for him. In fact, the program that he was in which was filled with wonderful people, but hadn't gotten anybody jobs. So it was like a real eye-opening moment for my dad and I to be like, we got to do something because this is not going to happen. He actually, we were like researching this and my dad sent me to Andrew's school, we were actually just talking about this last night at dinner, he sent me to the school to like observe and like see what's going on, to understand like what is the reality. After like two weeks I went back to him, I was like, "Not only is Andrew not going to find a job, but no one is going to find a job here because it's not set up for that. It's set up to be an adult daycare essentially." While that's needed, in some cases, not needed in Andrew's case. My dad was an entrepreneur for his whole career. He'd built a few businesses and had had some successful exits I had just graduated my undergraduate business degree and I wanted to be a social entrepreneur. That was my goal. So it wasn't necessarily to work with people with autism, but it was like, how do we use business to have social impact? That was my idea. So he was like, "Tom, let's do this. I'll sell my business and we'll do this together. Like at least we can say we tried. Worst-case scenario, we tried, it fails, you've got a great to story to tell and you can go off to business school, or if it works great, you won't have to do that. We'll have a great business and we'll have helped a lot of people along the way. I mean, it's been a long journey since then but luckily the business is successful. We've got three car washes, we're employing just under a hundred people and they're very profitable and we're looking to continue to grow the organization. [TYLER] So there's the book obviously coming out, Power of Potential, what really motivated you to say, hey, we need to find as a community, as a world where instead of trying to create just daycare systems, let's leverage the strengths that are available that are being underutilized. [TOM D'ERI] At first we just really believed in Andrew. We knew Andrew could do something, but we really didn't know anything else about people with autism. We knew Andrew in like a small group of his friends. So we had to like go out and find people who knew the things that we didn't know. We went out and did a bunch of research and we tried to find people who were autism experts, people who had employed people with disabilities and other businesses and we found some really great people. Some people were like, you're nuts, this is never going to work, but there were some people that believed in us and some people who had had some experience with like larger organizations like Walgreens. There was a consultant who we hired named James Emmett. He helped us, like build some of our early prototypes. We, at this point, we were like, okay, let's try car washes. We found this awesome organization in Florida called Sunny's Enterprises, which happens to be like the largest manufacturer of car wash equipment in the world and we had to really convince them that this was going to work and that you should help us do this. So we got, we were lucky enough to get an audience with the CEO Paul Fasio, and we made our pitch and he was like, "Look, I don't think this is going to work, but if you can do something good with our industry, I want to be a part of it." So he let us set up shop at the only carwash that he personally owned. He owned a carwash in Homestead, Florida to test equipment. He is like, "You guys can have at it. We'll set you up and you can test out the idea." We did that in summer 2012, and we brought in like 15 people with autism, trained them up on like the industry standard processes and wanted to see if they could meet those standards and wanted to see what customers used say. We got really positive feedback. They were able to meet those industry standards and Paul actually came down one day, looked around, watched the crew, and they were, he was like, "I would hire these guys." So like, okay, let's do it. Let's buy a carwash. We bought a carwash in Parkland, Florida and we put together our model and at first it really didn't go so well, not because of how well our employees with autism were doing, but because we had no idea how to run a car wash. So it was like, just put your head down, learn this incredibly nuanced industry, which I think most small, medium-sized business owners can appreciate that like, there's so much nuance to every industry, to learn all these different things and then learn how to structure it around our employee's unique skills. At first it was like, oh my God, we made a mistake. Our employees with autism, like they can't do this. We're getting crushed out here every day. But as we set back and we're like, okay, it's chaos around here and we know people with autism don't typically work well in that situation. In fact, most people don't. So let's build some structure. Let's color-code things. Let's build really strong processes for everything that we're doing. We had good processes for like the way that you would actually clean the car, but like virtually nothing else. So we didn't have good processes for the way that we opened the store, closed the store, kept the location clean, interacted with customers. All of these things were not particularly well structured. So we were like, okay, let's structure all of this. All of a sudden our employees with autism started to thrive. They started to do a killer job. This was my first real experience where I was like, wow, they're the, this isn't just what we're saying. They really are awesome employees, but we have to do the work to build the business where they can be successful. As we learned over the years was that their challenges weren't autism challenges. They had the same challenges as everybody else, but they were just more apparent. So they actually helped us see a lot of these problems, these flaws and the normal hiring process, we're just like a do I like you or not interview and learn to like build really clear structure and clear objectives around what we're supposed to do with every aspect of our business instead of just throwing people out there and being, okay, go do it and if they don't do well, it's their fault, not the fact that you didn't give them clear guidance. We did that over and over and over again for every aspect of the business and the business took off because of that. Eventually, we were like, okay, this probably translates to a ton of small-sized businesses. You hear all the time that they're struggling to find talent, that they're struggling to diversify themselves, stand out in a really crowded, sometimes homogenous good service like a car wash. There's not a lot of differentiation. This is a way to get really good talent, but also build the business so it can scale and you can free yourself from a lot of these issues that plague so many small and medium sized businesses. At the end of the day, have a story to tell that really resonates with a lot of people. [TYLER] There's a, I don't know if you're much of a sports fan, Tom, I didn't figure it out, huge football fan. At the end of the football season. There's something that I realized early in my career, and I credit Bill Belichick for helping me understand it and this is where I see it, Bill is classic, those aren't football fans. Bill Belichick, the now coach of the New England Patriots is all about teaching people to do their job, just do their job, but he's also phenomenal at recognizing unique skills and then exploiting those skills so they work within a system or benefit everyone around them. When I was reading through preparing for this and I'm like, that's all you're doing/ you're exceptional at it, but you made this comment where the limitations or the strengths are more apparent in the general person with autism than it is and everyone else, because we either mute it, we lie about it, we try to downplay our limitations, our abilities and I think that's where, again, going back to the comment I made earlier, the process that you've just laid out, should be the gold standard. The difficulty, I think is in that of are we clueing ourselves in to look for those strengths and those limitations and instead of discounting people for it, celebrating those. [TOM D'ERI] You can do that with anyone. It doesn't have to just be people with autism. How many times, if you're a leader, you manage a team, how many times has there been someone on your team that's struggled and it's just been so much easier to write that person off instead of getting in there with them, be like, "Okay man, what's wrong? Why are you having so much difficulty with this?" Let them talk. They may give you excuses that you initially think are erroneous, but I bet you there's some nuggets in there that can really help you fix something in your business, something that's not particularly clear, something that could be way easier that everybody is tripping up on but most of the people can navigate it well enough where it doesn't like hit you in the face where that person can. And that person is your extreme user. They are the long tail that often has issues that everybody else has, but they're just hit by them a lot more. So you have an opportunity to work with them and design something that works for them and if it works for them, it will work for everybody else. That's also, that helps people feel like you care about them. Even if you are not the person who's struggling, when your team sees you take those extra steps with that person that's struggling and help them do better, the team feels more comfortable about failing. So it's like, okay, this is the way he responds when somebody fails. It's not, screw you're out, you stink. It's, let me get in there with you and let me try to fix something and maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, but I'm going to get in there with you and try to solve it. That opens the door to psychological safety, to accountability, helping your team feel purpose because they feel like they can grow, they feel like they belong, and there's a future there. These tend to be very little actions now. I think you throw gasoline on the fire when you intentionally bring in people into the organization who have barriers but I think you can do it either way. [TYLER] Well, I think it's like a lot of times either, it isn't the unknown. It isn't the known that's so difficult. Excuse me, it's the unknown. So we go into a situation and we know, hey, this is going to be a challenge, then it's a lot easier to work through and you accept what's going on. I think as leaders, that's where oftentimes we expect it to just be easier instead of like, no, I need to get better. I think as you mentioned this, you and your dad, you were forced to get better, one, because you were in it. You weren't going to like, ah, this doesn't work. We'll bail. Forget about it. Let somebody else do. It's like, no, you were committed because of your brother and his friends. I admire and applaud that. So often we find him businesses maybe that isn't the case or the leaders not, but that piece that I would call empathy that you talked about, just that ability to say, hey, we're going to work through this together, is the greatest, I think skillset a leader can employ to work through those things and get buy-in, like you talked about, to make people feel safe and then all of a sudden all these problems seem to work themselves out. [TOM D'ERI] That's right. And you hit on it there, it's that you're forced to do that work. And that's what's so interesting about these targeted employment programs. So we're an example of one. We're dedicated to employ people with autism. There's a variety of them, there's other organizations that look to work with people who have recently gone out of prison, homeless people, the whole gamut of individuals with barriers. But what's so interesting about it is that it is like an organizational commitment to helping people work through their problems, that you are naturally going to say, okay, we're bringing these people who I know have some challenges. So it would, wouldn't make a lot of sense to me just write them off because of those challenges. That's the whole reason we're doing this. So let's get in there with them and me, as a rookie leader, there's no way I would've learned this if we didn't have that commitment. Because even as a person who was really dedicated and had read like all the cutting-edge management books and all the leadership books, I could tell you, I could quote these books, but I didn't put it into practice because I had already internalized this idea that like, the leader is the boss. If people don't understand, I'm just going to speak louder to them and if there's a problem, it's their problem. Those weren't things that I would've ever said out loud, but I had internalized that from leaders that I had experienced previously from popular culture and frankly, it's like an easier way of being. So the mission forced me to actually put into practice all these things that you read about that you know are important but are hard to do. And I think a lot of organizations would really benefit from that, even if it's just a small part of the way that they hire, the way that they do their business and their operations, I think there is a place for it that can really transform the way you relate to other people and the way you relate to work. Yeah, [TYLER] I mean it's, to me that is, that's the great evolution that we get to see in our world. To me it really is, whether it's called like social entrepreneurship or just being a good person. It's seeing the great strengths in people and then how to bring it out in them. It's being, as you mentioned in the book, being developmentally focused, be deliberately developmental. I want that, I want that for me, I want people to give me that opportunity to get better and grow, have that mindset. I want to focus on this and hear from you, just your mindset two-fold, one, if you're 80% of your workforce is generally in autistic and then there's 20% not, how have they responded? What have they done? How have they transformed either because they've joined the company or they didn't, just that transformation process that they've gone through. [TOM D'ERI] Yeah, that's a great question. So most of our neurotypical staff also has had something in their life that has drawn them to wanting to work with people who are different. So whether that be they're either, they have a loved one with autism, they themselves identify as as different in some sort of what way, maybe they're LGBTQ or maybe they're a highly sensitive person or they're dyslexic or have ADHD, another neurodivergency or maybe they just didn't fit in and they were looking for a place to fit in. When they come here, everyone, whether you're autistic or or not, can feel that this is a place that welcomes you no matter what. As long as you try hard and give your best effort and you're honest and you want to grow, which are all things that we look for in the interviews, so we're looking for people like that, that you can grow here and that this can be a place for you to evolve your career, whether you stay with us or not. A lot of the time our team members move on to other jobs, and that's totally okay, that's part of the model. But there's this feeling that we're here to do better and to grow, and that we're doing it together and that we care about each other. Honestly, most of that is not from me. Most of that is from the team and the way they relate to each other and that's because we've done the organizational work or bring in people who want that, whether they be neurotypical or neuro divergent and then building all these systems that breathe that on a daily basis. I really believe that culture is the outcropping, the visual thing that you can see from all the interactions with the systems of an organization on a daily basis. We want to talk a lot about psychological safety and accountability and all these great things that are so important, but how do you operationalize those things? Are these systems that you put into practice? If you design those actually around your people, a lot of those things just happen. You need to always reinforce them, but the foundation gets laid in the systems that your business runs through. [TYLER] Yeah, I think that that last little piece, the expectation of psychological safety, the expectation of clarity, the expectation of efficiency undermines everything because without great intention, and if you're forced into, it's like, oh, if I have a, as you described, a neurological divergent person who, safety is the first and foremost thing I need to focus on, you're going to focus on that. But guess what? I believe every human needs that. The more that they have that, the more they're going to excel and it shouldn't just be, oh, I need to do this now. It's like, no, it just should be done. [TOM D'ERI] For sure. I mean, accountability's another one where it's, it's such a great example because when most of us hear accountability, we're like, oh, I'm going to get in trouble. That's just like the way that most people have experienced it in their lives, that when they say, oh, I need to hold people accountable, it's like, I need to yell at people or it feels really unfair and unethical. Those are like the first things that come to mind. But when you have that right intention and you build strong expectations, you give people the tools that they need to be successful, you're deliberately developmental. So you're constantly coaching people so they know what they need to do. Accountability no longer becomes the stick. It becomes a really great lever to help people grow because people also need, regardless of how well-intentioned high standards and challenging standards and being pushed to do their best, very few people consistently and regularly self-motivate that way. We need people to push us, we need goals to push us, and accountability can be that thick, but it's not normally. So how do we fix that? It's the intention, like you're talking about. [TYLER] So somebody's listening in and they work in an industry that's maybe not trying to bring in the diversity in workforce and their ability, what would you do to encourage them either to go search that or even take this as an opportunity to look at the people they work with and say, how can I better utilize and serve the people that I lead or I work with? [TOM D'ERI] Yeah, so there's a couple things to that. First I would say, is there somewhere in your business where you're really struggling to find good employees? Either there's a lot of turnover or you've got open rules that you just can't fill. Those are generally your best opportunities to look at this and say, do we have an actual talent problem or is the way that we're evaluating talent, where we're looking for talent, is that flawed? I would say that nine times out of 10, it's that the system you've created is ineffective. You're either just looking for the same things on resumes as everybody else, or you haven't put together a really objective way to identify if someone is good or not so they're coming in and then they're failing right away. that right there, building an objective hiring process that's really built around what do we actually need from someone in this role? A lot of times that's not a specific degree because you're going to teach them a lot of what they need to know. A lot of times that's these character strengths that are hard to identify, especially when we haven't rigorously thought about them. So what we do is like beyond the job auditions that we talk in about in the book, which is bringing someone in and them showing us that they can do the physical work or the functional work of a job, if you're in software that's probably a work sample project, if it's in sales, it's a trial period, for us, it's a training program where we're going to train someone on how to do our specific tasks. That's easy to identify the functional skills but then we're also going to do a structured interview, which is where we're going to ask a series of questions that are rated on a one to five scale, in a really clear scoring rubric, asked by multiple people and scored by multiple people blindly to say, okay, does somebody have a growth mindset? How do they answer these questions? Does somebody take personal responsibility for their actions? How do they answer these questions? It's the same questions every time. If we have a failed hire, we can go back and say, hmm, we didn't really ask good questions here, let's change these questions and try to fix it. We iterate and we iterate and we do better and we do better and we better. Eventually you come up with something that is pretty clear when someone's going to be a good hire. That also gives you a lot more confidence to be a little bit more creative with the background. You can say, okay, well I don't really care. They can be coming from literally anywhere, but if they can answer these questions well and do these tests well, I have really good confidence going to be a good employee. That's when you can really broaden your talent pool and you'll be more diverse that way. You will just simply be more diverse. Then in the operational side, again, it's finding those employees who struggle and working with them to improve the experience for them, which then translates to the rest of the team. [TYLER] What is something operationally that someone struggled with that you're like, man, this was an absolute efficiency game changer, this like, changed our business? [TOM D'ERI] Yeah, I have a good example here. So we do, so we have some cash in our business that we collect from our customers and we were having about, we were having errors in our nightly closeout 31% of the time. That doesn't mean that people were stealing, it just means we were either over or under and it wasn't what the POS system was saying we should have at the end of the night. This forced us to look at the system and we observed and really clearly, pretty quickly it seemed that we had an organization issue. Our closures were coming in, jumbling up the money from each of the different cashiers and then when there was an issue, it was really difficult to find it. So we started to build a prototype and we found our employee who was pretty much having an error every night. Overall we were 31% error rate. This particular employee was way more than that so we're like, "Okay, dude, I want to work with you. Help us build something that's going to make this process simple for you." We gave him a prototype and he ripped it apart, hated it. He nitpicked about the different dimensions, but he also were like, I need a formula here. Like every night when I do the formula, I get confused here. Beautiful, we can build a formula. Or like, oh, I didn't realize I needed to go through these steps on the POS system to verify the bank. Okay, well write those out on this tool. What it ended up being was this monopoly board for counting cash, it's say like color coded adhesive that's made of whiteboard material that we stuck onto the desk, put each different denomination to the bills, which came out of each different machine, they write it down, it creates a formula and it's really easy to determine if the cash is right or not. Then it's also really easy to retrace your steps to see where the problem is coming from. What that did is that took our error rate from 31% to 4%. What was even more striking about that was that it took it from being like a two-week training process for someone to be able to close our cash, which at night nobody wants to teach people how to do things right. People just want to go home. So it was immediately dramatically easier to teach people how to close. It would take one or two training sessions and then we built a video-based training in our learning management system, which made it even easier because so they could practice during the day and it didn't have to be an at night task. So now we can rapidly train people up, we have way lower errors and when this team member got a hold of this new system, he really felt like, wow, they did this for me. That wasn't necessarily, it didn't feel good for him right away, but eventually he really started to take pride in it and he transferred to another one of our locations and the first thing he said to the manager is, "We got to get the money, Matt, here. It makes it so much easier, you got to go get one." That right there is a little nugget that we uncovered because one, we were able to measure a problem, but then we were able to find the user to design it around, which really had important business results for us. [TYLER] The biggest thing that I gathered from that, and it's, you want this for everyone, buy-in. Like, no, they did this for me, I matter. It's not like, oh, we have to do this for you. It's like, no, we want to do this for you. We want to see you excel and really be a benefit to the organization. I believe if you do that enough times, people are then going to come to you with solutions to problems you didn't even realize were problems when you empower that through that entire chain, that circulation. [TOM D'ERI] It's safe to bring the problems. The whole organization wants you to bring us these problems so we can get better as a company. It also becomes almost addictive because it's this wonderful feeling when you come out on the other side. It's this opportunity to design something cool. It's this opportunity to work with your team and collaborate, which generally feels good, and then when it's done well, you come out with a solution that made the organization better. Then we reinforced that by highlighting those people, by bringing it to the other stores and crediting the people who worked on that first one and it's this feeling of pride. But like you said, now people bring us little problems, the little problems that you would never know about. They bring them to us and we get the opportunity to fix them. [TYLER] Two last questions, not because the limitation time, but just two last thoughts. What has this process done for you personally as a person? [TOM D'ERI] If you would've told me that I was going to be running car washes when I got out of school, I would've said you were nuts. That was not something on my radar. But every day I get to go to work and I really like the systems. I really like building stuff. That's what gets me up in the morning. So getting to do that and then getting to see the appreciation from my team, I walk out onto the floor and people are genuinely happy to see me, want to talk to me, want to tell me about their day, want to tell me about the problems that they're having, I mean, I like going to work every day. I work generally 12 hours a day because I want to, not because I have to. I like doing this. There's nowhere else I'd rather be. Yeah, we get asked a lot, would we want to sell the business. Car washes right now are a very hot business for private equity. We could sell tomorrow and make a really great amount of money and there's no amount of money that would make me sell this business because what else would I do? I wouldn't want to do anything else. [TYLER] The next one is, what has it done for your brother? [TOM D'ERI] Andrew has a group of people that is his community. He, not only with our team, he likes working with a lot of the team members at our company parties, he's like the Mare D. He's in making sure everybody's having a good time. He's welcoming everybody. He feels a lot of pride in that, but he also gets that feeling all around the community and all of our team members do, because they wear their shirts. It's a business that a lot of our community members frequent, so they know what our mission is. So when they go into the local Deli or the local Pizzeria or the local gas station, everybody knows who they are and they like them. There's like this feeling of like, oh, you work at Rising Tide? That's so cool. That integration into our just local community is something that he never would've experienced and he's become so much more confident because of that. He has trouble at work sometimes, like everybody, but he learns that he gets, he can work through it. He may have a difficult interaction with a team member, with a customer, but he knows that there's going to be support that we're going to help him through it. Because of that, he's willing to take more risks, even in his own personal life. He's willing to talk to people, put himself out there a little bit more and want to engage, which is not something that he wanted to do before this. [TYLER] How much does your customer base respond to all of that, seeing that too? [TOM D'ERI] Yeah, I think it is the number one reason why we do the volume that we do and have the loyalty that we have as a business. We definitely put out a good car wash, but we have a world-class experience from a mission perspective. It's so readily apparent when you come on to site that people want to be here, that they care, and then you learn about the mission and you understand why. It creates customers for life, customers that want to talk about a carwash. When was the last time you talked about a carwash in any other way than screw that place? That's how it is. So what's really interesting, like when we do our A-B testing for our ads and we talk about the mission, we're five times more efficient on our cost-per-clicks when we're talking about the mission than when we're trying to give away a car washer or do a discount. It's such a more effective marketing tool. Then when people come and see it and they realize it's authentic, we really have to mess up to lose customers. It's not like they're going to go somewhere if it's a dollar cheaper. They're going to keep coming to us because they're part of it. They care about it. [TYLER] Man, I think that last piece is, it doesn't matter what industry you're in. I believe that is absolutely true. If you have a reason behind what you're doing and you share that with people, they are going to be more bought in, they're going to be more loyal, they're going to be more willing to say, yeah, Tom had a bad day. Guess what? I have a bad day too and you know what let's all work through it together. Man, again, I think it, and I don't say this lightly, it should be the gold standard because why shouldn't it? [TOM D'ERI] It's a better way to be. It's more rewarding and it makes businesses systems more efficient, makes customer experiences better. It's easier to find people to work for you. It's just a better way to do business. [TYLER] Tom, thanks so much, man. I'm glad I learned about the book Power of Potential coming out January 24th. If you're in South Florida, go to Rising Tide. Can't wait to see more Rising Tide locations around the the nation. Shouldn't be limited to Florida. Come on man. [TOM D'ERI] I agree with that. We're working on it. Thank you, Tyler. This was a really awesome experience. I appreciate it so much. [TYLER] Appreciate it, man. [TYLER] After Tom and I got done with our conversation, we were just chatting a little bit. We just got to know each other a couple days ago, and I'm so fortunate for that. I asked him who were the inspirations, and it actually made a lot of sense because of the things that he shared, the ideology, the mindset, the growth mindset, the compassion, the empathy, the, hey, let's work in developmental. And I share a lot of that with them and excited to build a relationship to learn, to learn what Tom's going through. Because this system, man, if you can simplify a system, it helps your most talented whatever that may look like. See, we often think in business, if we have to create systems, it's because people aren't skilled or talented enough. Tom talked about several individuals, extremely talented and gifted, spectacular what they do, but they needed a system to help them through the process. We shouldn't think of systems and organization as a, oh, this is what we need to do for people that have challenges. In reality, we should think about it. It's our duty to help them perform and bring out the extreme talent that they have. I mentioned Bill Belichick. I admire a lot of his view, vantage point on working with people, identifying their strengths in saying, what can I do? How can I maximize their strength? How can I identify what they are and maximize it and bring out the best and look at whatever their limitations are. That's fine. He talked about the people that struggle and instead of discounting the people that struggle, look at why they struggle and say, how can I make this better for you because if I make it better for you, one, you're going to be a more valuable team member. Two, it's going to make it easier for everyone else. Thank you for tuning in to listening to this podcast. Go out, buy the book, Power of Potential. Great book to read here the start of 2023, to look at one, social entrepreneurship. What an amazing cause, but also the challenge for you to say how in your business can you find a unique job that's always been like a revolving door and say, ha, I need to look differently at staffing this. How can I do better to staff this? Answer all those questions, but also maybe look at a different pool of people that are going to be dedicated, have a certain skillset that are going to make this position now a strength of our organization rather than a limitation. That's there, that's available and I challenge you to do that. Again, thanks for being here. Appreciate it. Share this with other people that might get value out of Tom's message, what they're doing as a family community in South Florida. Thanks for being here. Till next time, have a good one.