The Strategy Every Car Wash Owner Should Know | Car Wash Exchange Podcast

The three years following me implementing this within our tax firm, we increased our our profitability by 492 percent by giving them breaks on the clock, intentionally saying, "I actually do not want you to think about work during this time period," because if you do that, I know that when you come back, you're actually going to give me more focus time. With the line workers, it's going to be similar. I'm suggesting you actually pay them. They shouldn't necessarily suffer because the science says they can be as productive. Again, when I think about the car wash owners I've spoken to, one of their biggest headaches seems to be keeping that position employed. Uh, and it's a transient type of position, usually high schoolers, younger people. It's not a career move for people. But, you know, if you get a teenager who's like, wow, this guy really takes care of me, I get these additional breaks, they stay longer.

Welcome to Car Wash Exchange, everyone, International Car Wash Association's podcast. I'm your host, Rich DePaolo, and joining me today is John Briggs, author of Take Breaks, Today's topic is understanding the difference between busy and productive. John joins us to make the case that rest isn't a weakness, it's a strategy. And he's got the science and the metrics to prove it. John, great to have you on the program and thanks for taking some time today.

Yeah, Rich, thanks for having me.

Could you give us a little background on the book and where folks could pick it up? I know it's on Amazon, but what inspired you to write the book? And where can folks get it?

Yeah. Well, so I wrote the book for business owners who want success without burnout. And, uh, my own career path is kind of what inspired the book. Uh, I'm in the tax field as my primary business. Um, and we're notorious for 70, 80-hour weeks, uh, which I think is causing a problem, not just in the industry, but worldwide, because I You know, I'm biased, but I think business owners still need accountants. And if we continue down this path, there won't be enough accountants for business owners who, like, bear the weight of the entire economy on their shoulders. All the Fortune 100 companies get all this credit, but it's the small business owners. You know, we need to protect each other. So, um, I kind of— there was a moment when, after writing a couple books, We were just talking about, well, I'm doing things a little bit differently. I'm like, yeah, you know, like, well, maybe worth writing about. And so, I felt inspired. All right, let's get this out. Let's see how much people want to make fun of me for the way we run my firm.

Sounds good. And it's a noble cause. And I know it's on Amazon. So, the book again is Take Breaks, Work Better. And it's available on Amazon for sure. So, obviously, no small— no shortage of small business owners here in the field that I work in, the professional car wash industry, Jon. So, what's the biggest myth about productivity that you see in service-intensive businesses, specifically car washes, that owners tend to buy into that's actually maybe working against them?

Yeah. Um, hustle culture is so ingrained everywhere in our life. The influencers, and they weren't always called influencers, but those types of people have always existed. The ones that have the things that we all want and they're out there, we're seeing it's like, oh, I want those things. And what's their message? Well, you get these things by working hard. Don't be lazy. If you're not putting in the time and effort, Then you don't deserve it. Um, you're lazy if you need to take a break, like you can always rest when you're dead. And that's just ingrained everywhere. And unfortunately the science doesn't support that at all. And so, uh, we can get into a couple of those pieces. Um, maybe cause I'm sure some are like, yeah, you know, I get it. But if I don't stop working hard and putting in the long hours, they don't see the other alternatives. So some might be already listening like, oh, okay, well that's. That's crap. I'm not gonna be able to stop working those many hours.

Yeah. As you might know, John, car washing is when it's open during operating hours on especially a busy day, it doesn't slow down, right? So, the approach you advocate for is built across different business types. But like I mentioned, a wash tunnel doesn't stop for anybody's rest schedule. So, how does knowing when Uh, when to not work, uh, translate when you're running a business that operates on a consistent flow of traffic, like, like car washing, as I just explained.

Yeah. So there's, there's 2 hats we have to think about, right? Like as the owner of a car wash, you're not just watching cars get it like onto the conveyor belt, right? Uh, you have other stuff you're doing. So the first element We want to talk about that, and then we can talk about what I would call the line workers. And whether you're the owner and you're doing both, it's still different hats. Um, so there was a study done by VoucherCloud and RescueTime and a few others, and all of them eerily came to the same results. Independent researches showed the average worker is productive For 2 hours and 50 minutes a day. And that's in an 8-hour shift, 2 hours and 50 minutes. Okay, well, if I'm the owner, what that means is that I'm paying someone to be unproductive for 5 hours a day. Well, why, why is the average worker that unproductive? People don't wake up wanting to suck. They're not coming to work thinking like, how do I screw my employer today? They actually— most people want to do a good job. So what is— what's going on there? The Princeton Neurological Institute did a study and they found that our brain has 2 natural states, a state of focus and a state of distraction. And it naturally cycles between focus, distractibility, focus, distractibility. So what happens when a worker's only productive for 2 hours and 50 minutes a day is because they've been asked to work the full 8 hours with, you know, most states demand 2 15-minute breaks and an hour lunch type of thing if they're working the full 8 hours. Um, so assuming those are in place, the average worker still is only productive 2 hours and 15 minutes a day. It's because their brain reaches that natural cycle of distractibility, and all of a sudden it's really hard for them to get the work done. So instead of Pushing through a natural cycle. I mean, I tell people like, look, think about a natural cycle. What happens when you eat and drink? The natural cycle is that needs to move through your body and it needs to exit. No one would ever try to push their way through having to go to the bathroom because if they do, they realize something else is pushing its way through. The challenge is, so we have a physical sensation for that. We have been so ingrained with hustle culture that we don't feel the physical sensation that our brain is done being focused and it needs a break. And so with the Princeton Neurological Studies, we can look at it and say like, you know what, let's give people intentional breaks so that they're not fighting through that period, and then they can come back to a state of more focus. So. That's like, if I'm a business owner and all the hats I have to wear for my car wash, that's super important. On the other hand, we have the line workers. Um, and this question has come up not just from car wash owners. I have a dear friend who's, uh, the president of Frazzle. It's a frozen beverage company, very delicious drink. He, um, he's like, look, I get how this makes sense for me and kind of the corporate people and like what we have to do. It's like, I got guys that are watching a conveyor belt and basically putting sugar and flavor into sugar and like watching the packets go. I just don't see how they need that break. I go, fair. Okay. Almost same scenario of like, I'm a worker. Hey car, can you get onto this belt the right way? Um, I mean, I get my car washed. I have a subscription and there's the worker, you know, looking like he hates his life. Like. You know, come on, come on. Okay, stop. And then he points to the sign, like, take your foot off the brake, moron. Put it in neutral. You know, those types of things. And then he gives me a little splash of water. Like, okay, does that really do anything? I don't think so. Um, but the car wash, it does itself. So, uh, there's a couple interesting studies here that apply to this because I understand the hesitation of like, do those guys actually need brakes? World War II actually is when they started this research. They noticed that radar attendants were missing very critical signals, and their job was to spot submarines or planes on this radar. And if they missed it, people's lives were in danger. But even with the risk of lives being in danger, Their efficiency and like quality of work suffered over the longer period of time they're asked to watch this radar. Because what we have going on is, as a business owner, you have a lot of stuff is going to be active, like you're actively using your brain. The line worker is more of a passive type of pace, right? Um, I don't have to do a lot of thinking. I just Wave my hand, point at the sign. Cool. You're on. Go to the next guy. Maybe I'm handing out, uh, dash wipes and things like that. The challenge is, is that passive focus like that still drains our brain. So they started seeing that. They did some tests, uh, that those tests were picked up by other people. They did truck driver simulations. And then with all that study, there was a meatpacking plant that specifically ran a test with their line workers. They broke it out into 3 groups. One's the control group, the guys that are just, you're right. Uh, if you guys are familiar with studies, there's always the control group. What's the normal way we're doing things? Let's compare that now to 2 different groups. One group was given 12 3-minute breaks, and another group was given 4 9-minute breaks, but the breaks both equaled an additional 36 minutes. This is on top of the normal stuff that everybody— the normal break time that everybody gets. So they added 36 additional minutes, and what they found was zero decrease in productivity, but They gave them an additional 36 minutes. Now they did find the workers preferred the 4 9-minute breaks because a 9-minute break gave them a better sense of feeling than like 12 really, really, really short breaks. Um, and so I would say that same science can apply here. Now my 3.3 rule for like, again, the business owner who's doing all the different things and I'm focusing on marketing and I got to pay bills, those types of things. The most productive workday consists of working up to 3 hours at a time, followed by a 30% recovery break. For your line worker, they may not need the full 30% break, but those 4 additional 9-minute breaks, you may look at improving your retention on probably that position that might be the hardest one to keep filled. And you should see no decline, no decline in their productivity.

Yeah, that's what I was going to ask, John, is, you know, it's getting the corporate team to embrace rest is one thing, but those frontline workers who see breaks as maybe fewer hours and less pay, obviously, there's tips involved in this market here. So, missing out on that potential, Get those frontline workers to buy in. That's another thing. So, how do you sell this approach to someone who's paid by the shift and not the outcome?

Yeah, this one's an easier answer to a question to answer because I'm going back to the study. Like, you have team members who are working 8-hour shifts and not productive for 5 hours. You're already paying someone 5 hours a day to not be productive. We pay for the breaks. They're on the clock. So my team here, um, I have this— so for people who don't know, my tax firm, I have 290 team members. We're a decent-sized firm, multiple 8 figures, uh, in revenue here. And, uh, the 3 years following me implementing this within our tax firm, we increased our pro— our profitability By 492%, by giving them breaks on the clock, intentionally saying, "I actually do not want you to think about work during this time period, because if you do that, I know that when you come back, you're actually going to give me more focus time." With the line workers, it's going to be similar. I'm suggesting you actually pay them. They shouldn't necessarily suffer. Because the science says they can be as productive. Again, when I think about the car wash owners I've spoken to, one of their biggest headaches seems to be keeping that position employed. Uh, it's just transient type of position, usually high schoolers, younger people. It's not a career move for people. But you know, if you get a teenager's like, wow, this guy really takes care of me, I get these additional breaks, they stay longer.

So, obviously, this industry has no shortage of entrepreneurs, Jon, and small business owners that come in, mom-and-pop. And as you know, the trap that they all, you know, a lot of them fall into as a new business owner is they want to do everything, every job themselves, and some never fully let go, right? So, what is the first break that you encourage them to take? And, and what usually stops them from, from wanting to take a break?

Yeah. I mean, a lot of times what stops all of us from wanting to take a break is the never-ending to-do list that we see translates directly to money in the bank account. And we want the money in the bank account because we have those bills that happen to be coming about every month, rent, payroll. Uh, those are usually the 2 biggest ones, right? Um, I mean, the first break I would say people should take is literally the first break, like actually set a block on your calendar and take the time off in the middle of the day. So if I, so again, if you do the math up to 3 hours followed by 30%. So if I worked an hour, I would follow that with a 20% break. If I worked 2 hours, you know, it'd be like a 40-minute break. If I worked a 3-hour block, I'm going to take a full hour off. Which works out nicely if you think about the morning shift, a lunch break, a proper lunch break, and then you have the afternoon to follow. So my first suggestion would be that break itself, but then like, if you really want to get nuanced, here's a little activity that we've done. And I learned this from Mike Michalowicz. Uh, and it's funny. I give him credit for it and I talked to him about it. He's like, huh, I don't remember that. Like, I swear I learned this when I read your book Clockwork. Um, so I still give credit to him in Clockwork because at least that's where the idea came from for me. Uh, do a task audit. So what that looks like is whether you want to take a week or 2 weeks, honestly, the more data you have, the better, but literally just track painstakingly on a sticky note if you want. It doesn't have to be fancy. What are you spending? What the task you're doing and how many hours you're spending on it. Then we we look at that list, and we can determine you know what there are probably some lower level tasks on that list that you could find someone to do for you at fifteen bucks an hour or twenty bucks an hour something pretty inexpensive. And now we start. Taking our time back on those little tasks and start dedicating them more to the tasks we know we always want to get to, but we never feel like we do get to it because we're so busy doing the little tasks. Now all of a sudden my ROI increases. We did this with our accountants years ago, and we found that 30% of their time was spent on things that effectively an administration position could be handling. And I mean, that for us, because tax people are expensive. I mean, they go to school, they get degrees, master's degrees, they get licenses. Um, to free up 30% of someone who's making $70,000 a year so that they could take on more clients and just do client-facing work was, was a pretty big boost for us. Uh, and I'm imagining your car wash owners are going to find the similar boost by taking off those lower Those little lower tasks. And I say it that way because everybody's a little bit different. Some of us hold on to things. I have a friend, the second he hired an assistant, he gave up his email and he's like, life is free. I've been trying for 10 years to get myself out of email. I just, I don't know what it is. I just can't do it. So like all of us are a little bit different as far as what those lower level skill tasks are. But if you do that audit, you will find what those are.

So let's talk about, you know, measuring all this, right? And specifically in the car wash industry, you talk about tracking metrics and keeping people accountable without falling back into that, you know, busyness as productivity here. So what does that look like for a car wash? What would you measure instead of just volume, cars per hour, and/or, you know, a labor cost percentage or something like that?

Yeah, the first thing that comes to mind, especially as someone who holds a car wash membership, There are some months I don't go at all. And there's other months I might go every week. Uh, I'm sure everyone's busy, right? The day after it rains here in Utah. Uh, I don't know what it is, but, uh, I mean, I know what it is. There's like dirt constantly in the air. So when it rains, it's actually the worst, which was so weird for me because when we grew up in Missouri, my dad would park the cars outside because the rain would wash the cars off. Uh, so depending on where you live, but I'm guessing most places, especially snow weather, you know, you're busy those days afterwards. But yeah, to your point, volume of cars, not as important if you're going the membership route, which I don't know why people wouldn't all be trying to have people on memberships. So to me, I'd be tracking, um, number of memberships, but also potentially that, that line worker who's maybe putting the cars on. Maybe there's another worker who's getting the cars into the line and they're the ones trying to upsell people right into getting the membership. Because that's what I would probably just switch those people as that other person needs a 9-minute break type of thing. What's their like close rate on a shift? How many new memberships did they add per shift? I would, I would track those things because steady cashflow is more important than Number of cars coming through, especially at the way those work. There's a reason these larger companies have moved to that model because it's very lucrative compared to just someone having to pay per thing. Now, I know that there's some car washes that are, you know, the coin-based things, and that is what it is. I don't know if those operations have moved to a membership model as well. Certainly worth considering. And then another thing I'd check is just like error incidents, you know, how many are happening per shift or per day, and let's track those types of things.

And the intangibles really of, you mentioned it before, employee retention, right? Are these employees happy in the job? Has the culture improved after all these changes? I would imagine that's other ways to To track the effectiveness of your break program. But, uh, yeah, totally.

Like, think about like high school workers, right? Like, if you get them in and they love working for you, you at least get them for, you know, 2 to 3 years before they jump ship and go to college and move off. Like, training, retraining people, there's a real cost there. And, uh, the, the less you have to do with that, the better. So yeah. Yeah, to your point, tracking employee retention is good too.

So, if I'm a car wash owner or a manager and I've made it this far into the interview and I hear what you have to say and I'm, that's not for me, I don't see that working for my operation, what's one piece of advice or a story that gets through to an owner or manager who might traditionally measure productivity as just being busy all the time?

I mean, look, we have 290 team members. We've dealt with a lot of how do I motivate people? Um, I am not convinced any sort of external motivation works. I believe it has to come from inside. We've tried all sorts of incentive experiences like programs, and ultimately someone has to be driven to want to improve. Um, to me, when someone's like, yeah, that's not for me, great. There's nothing I'm going to be able to say that's going to convince them other than my own challenge. Look, I think I'm right. And if you don't buy into it, that means I think you're wrong. And most people don't want to be wrong. So prove me wrong. That's what I— that's my challenge. Prove me wrong. The only way to prove me wrong is for you to actually take a break, especially as the manager. Like, I can totally understand. You're like, you know what? I'm not going to give my line workers an extra 36 minutes of break time, uh, based on the meatpacking plant. But you, you can schedule, right? As the owner, you can schedule your own breaks. It definitely applies. The science 100% applies to you as the owner. Take that break and tell me that when you came back after that break, that you weren't more focused and got more done. There's, 'cause there's a couple elements there. Our to-do list doesn't get shorter. And there's a saying I learned from a company called Griffin Hill, a performance company. All human performance happens to a deadline. And I live this every year with April 15th deadlines and extension deadlines in October. Dude, I'm telling you, it's crazy. We can send out 20 notifications and we do. But then April 1st, now that there's 2 weeks left, it is a truckload of documents that are coming in every day. Why? Because there's a deadline. So by giving yourself the break, you have shortened what you are perceiving as your working hours during the day. And if you keep a list of, I need to get these things done today, you have an additional boost of like focus just on the fact that you've purposely giving yourself a little bit less time to get it done. But also the science supports you've let your brain go into that state of being distracted so that you can push it back into the state of being focused. So the only story I have is give me your own story, prove me wrong, do it and email me at john@33rule.com and say, I took a break. You're a farce. This didn't work for me. And I will, I don't know, I'll send you $10. If you bought my book, I'll reimburse you. Uh, but I haven't had anyone take me up on that because the science is a little too strong. If you take that break and allow yourself to be completely distracted, or to let yourself be completely distracted from work, you come back, you're, you just are more productive.

Sounds good. And I can appreciate your, uh, your deadlines. Having been a magazine editor for 25 years now, I know All about deadlines and, and the urgency that they create in the day. But, you know, John, just the last question here. Car washes are, you know, there's no 2 car washes the same is what we like to say in the industry, right? So whether you're just a small car wash just trying to get started, or maybe you're a brand, you know, we've seen explosive growth in our industry. I'm not sure how much you know about the car wash industry as a whole, but we've seen explosive growth in recent years. So a lot of these brands are going fast and maybe stretching staff a little bit too lean and thin these days. So how does your process hold up under that type of growth pressure, or does this really work for a smaller operator who still controls kind of the pace?

I mean, look, we're again, I'll go back. We have 290 team members. We're, we're pretty big. Um, and it works at 290 just like it worked when we had 20 team members. Uh, cause the thing is, as long as there's humans involved in the equation, our brains need a break. Like there's just no way around that. And my whole goal is how do I get more productivity done during the day so that when I leave work, and this relates more to the owners than it does the line workers, but when I leave work, how do I leave work at work so that I can come home and not just be physically present but mentally present with my kids? So I'm not playing through my inbox in my head as I'm pretending to be listening to my spouse tell me about her day in sometimes way too much detail. You know, it's like, how do I appreciate the detail as opposed to like, I really just need to get to those 6 emails before I go to bed? Um, so it works small, big. And I'm also, from an accountant standpoint, I'll just throw this in there, um, because it's similar to the gym space, and we have a lot of gym clients. Sometimes a gym owner will have one location that's super profitable, and because they're not organized in their accounting the right way, they don't realize that that super profitable location is actually paying for some of their other locations that are not profitable whatsoever. So I always do recommend tracking each individual location's profitability. And if you have shared costs, which you likely will, that you prorate those based on, um, you know, maybe size of revenue, maybe number of headcount, depending on what item it is you need to kind of separate out. But just don't let one profitable location fund another location that really maybe isn't going to work out due to its actual location. Maybe there's too much competition in that specific area. Or at a minimum, oh, I can now see that this location is suffering. Let me really dig in. What is going on with that location? But I've seen too many times when people have multiple locations, In their businesses that they kind of ignore individually and they just think, oh, from a silo standpoint, everything's great. Like, ah, but things could be so much better if you realize that thing is getting funded. Like it's negative, massively negative every month. Like, oh, darn it. Okay. Let's fix that.

Well, I love the message, John. It seems like just the workplace culture in general across industry seems to be changing. Call it what you'd like it, you know, new generations coming into, into the workforce, or maybe the COVID impact of everybody getting used to working from home, or maybe the AI increasing productivity, whatever you have it. Are you seeing more business owners open to these type of concepts, or are you just still seeing the majority of business owners being cautious about this approach?

Yeah, honestly, most of the time the message is pretty well received. Um, because every— like, look, you guys listening, you know you're tired, you know you don't want to work the long hours, and I'm trying to give you permission, guilt-free permission, that the science supports you taking breaks during the day. And most people are like, okay, I'm willing to give that a whirl. Like, what's the worst that can happen? Like, I tell people in the book, I even talk about it Like, look, try it out, roll it out as a, uh, just here's an experiment we're going to run with. It's not something we're necessarily going to stick with, but let's try it out and run it as like a pilot program. Um, but yeah, look, you're, you're not wrong, especially with the shift in how, uh, children have been raised these days. Unfortunately, you know, some of us are a little bit more old school and are fine with the, yeah, work hard. Which is, look, I'm not saying don't work hard. When you're working, work hard. Like, there's a pace here at our accounting firm. You have to work if you want to keep your job, because I do still measure results. Um, and that's the same here. But some of these kids, yeah, like, if I have a difficult position to fill and the likely candidate is someone who's under the age of 20, uh, I might have to adjust a little bit. And the thing is, I'm saying here is The science supports that you can adjust in a way that they're going to feel like you're different because some other people aren't adopting as fast enough, but it's not going to affect you because, again, the studies show the breaks did not negatively affect these line workers.

All right, sounds good. Like I said, love the message, John. I appreciate you taking some time here for carwash.org and our Car Wash Exchange podcast. Again, that book is called Take Breaks, Work Better, author John Briggs, and you can find that book on Amazon. And again, John, thanks for taking some time with me today.

Thank you, Rich. It was a pleasure.