Latest / The Failure Gap / A Conversation With Justin Salisbury, President/COO, Breeze Thru Car Wash

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A Conversation With Justin Salisbury, President/COO, Breeze Thru Car Wash · The Failure Gap

• speaker-0 (00:00.238) Hello and welcome to the Failure Gap where we talk with leaders about closing the space between agreement and alignment. We love talking with interesting people and today we're joined by Justin Salisbury. Justin is the president and COO of Breeze Thru Car Wash. Justin, welcome to the Failure Gap. Thank you. I appreciate you having me, Julie. Thank you. Yeah, I'm looking forward to this conversation because personally I love a clean car. But before we dive into agreement to alignment, I'd love for you just to give our listeners a little bit about your background and how you came to be the president and COO of Breeze Thru Car Wash. Sure. well, like so many others in our industry, stumbled into it. My, my background, is a mixture of 10 years of college education, degrees and trade school. And when you kind of take business education and trades and put it all together, and at some point show up at the doorstep of a car wash, you go, Hey, this, this could all have a home here. I didn't know that at the time, but that was about 14 plus years ago and Breeze Thru Car Wash was physically two locations at the time of me joining. In fact, their second location was less than a year old. There ended up being a great alignment between the three founding owners and myself. We had mutual experience as business owners, myself and a different industry before this. And I had an interest in growing into the ownership circle with Breeze Thru. Now that wasn't a guaranteed thing. And I appreciated that about the owners. speaker-1 (01:36.514) That was, I guess in a way that was an element of my own leadership is like nothing comes easy. Really when you earn things, the real value is in the process of getting to the thing you want anyway. So, join them. And it was about three years in that I got into the ownership circle. We realized my strengths were really around the operations, the systemic work, getting people to grow through processes, finding self belief, expanding, you know, belief boundaries even in working with people from the inside out. And there was great alignment in the interest in doing that, but that happened to be something I was particularly talented at and loved doing it. So modern day, 14 years later, we're actually into a succession plan where I lead the group of new owners as the original owners step away and sell their interests. The whole reason behind that has to do with this leadership piece. We're really passionate about developing people. And I hope we get a moment to talk a little bit about what that means to us. But that's the gist of it. It's 14 years of turning a car wash into this people development machine. I love that. And how many sites do you have today after 14 years ago you started, you had just opened the second location? Yeah, that's been an interesting journey. So I've had the chance to scale this business 100 % three times. So we're now at 16 locations and a headquarters building as well. So Northern Colorado and Southeast Wyoming is geographically where we're located. speaker-0 (03:08.568) Yeah, what an incredible growth journey to be on. You know, it is. We often think in life, know, each individual, man, I didn't have that on my bingo card for wherever we're at today. Good, bad, or indifferent. This definitely was not the bingo card. And I don't just mean the car wash industry. I mean, scaling a business the way it happened. I love the idea of being in business. I wasn't sure what that would mean, but the journey I've taken has been very fulfilling. you know, I owe that to the people that we've been around and I've been able to... lead and develop myself. That's really the meat of this. Yeah, you I think so often I talk with young leaders and you probably have this experience too in your industry who feel anxiety because they don't have it all figured out. And I think what you're demonstrating and what I've heard from other leaders as well is, you 14 years ago, you didn't have this all figured out, but it came through hard work and a willingness to continue to learn and to step into those leadership roles and take opportunities as they came along. rather than at 25, knowing what those opportunities would be and knowing what the destination would look like. Is that fair to say that this has been an adventure for you more than a sort well-thought out bingo card? speaker-1 (04:28.366) More than fair. and it's your timing is kind of impeccable. We're on the heels. we just wrapped up our annual employee appreciation dinner where there's 450 people in this room. and it's amazing event and why that's important to what you just explained is because at my moment, which was, you know, a small portion of the entire event, I was giving clarity to what's ahead for everybody and tying in my experience to what it looked like when I began. And really what, what energized me, what fueled me throughout the process. and by the way, I don't have it all figured out, but you know what I am. I'm the guy to figure it out. I'm going to lead each and every one of us through whatever comes our way. And that tied back into a mindset of like this, there, there is anxiety and fear, particularly around failure. Now I attribute that to an educational system that says you either pass or fail. Now that's a lot of pressure when it's just black and white and binary. So how do we embrace the great? How do we get to a point where we can say, what is failure really in order to prop up success? The acronym, I'm sure all of us have heard first attempt and learning. Yeah, it's a great one. It's a good reminder. It really is. I don't think you can succeed without failing. I think failing is necessary. So I spun this moment into kind of addressing what it is you asked about. And that is people that have this anxious mindset or fear of proceeding. or if they really just learned that failure is not what ends your time with our organization, I can only speak to us in this case. Instead, it's the thing that shows us what are you going to do with what happened? In other words, if you did fail, how will you respond? And we constantly measure effort as opposed to the moment that either was pinnacle or perhaps less than stellar. So you take that. And I would say it takes For somebody who comes in that's a little nervous about that, maybe they don't trust the entirety of that understanding, which is totally and absolutely normal. It takes 12 to 18 months for somebody to get really comfortable with like, hey, I failed the other day. It was miserable. I really screwed up. Look at what I learned. Look at what I took from that. Look how I grew from that. A year and a half to break that. And I don't want to go down a rabbit hole, but this is obviously you can see the passion come to the surface here. speaker-1 (06:52.512) I love the idea of people failing. Well, you we hear a lot of people agree that it's great to fail and then not get aligned to actually creating the environment where it can happen. And so I appreciate that. That's something you focused on as you've grown this business, because it is easy to say, well, we should celebrate failure. I actually don't like the idea of celebrating failure. I think it's okay that it makes you miserable because then you grow from it. Right. Like that's, you know, kind of sparks sometimes that, that desire to grow and to be better. and to get better in that space. It's okay to be a little upset sometimes, right? Like that's life. But if you can move forward from it, then I think that's a great opportunity. it's really interesting to hear that that's something that you have focused on getting your whole organization aligned around. That it's not just lip service, we're actually going to embrace this construct that to grow our leaders, we have to give them the space to fail. I'm wondering, Justin, as you think about growing this business from two car washes to 16 and beyond, and now you had 400 plus employees at your employee appreciation dinner the other night, that opens up tremendous opportunities for leadership roles to be created in your organization that then have to be filled by people. And I feel like that must have been also over the last 14 years or so a real journey for you and your team. to figure out how do we grow leaders in this organization so that we have things like an environment where people can fail and other cultural commitments that you want people to experience when they're an employee at Breeze Thru. Tell me a little bit about that growth and not just the business, but the leadership model for the company. speaker-1 (08:39.448) Well, it begins with something very simple, a mantra of sorts that I've shared since day one. And that is business is a concept. People are the business. Entities and structure, it's abstract. So how do you make that come to life? Well, first you need bones. You need to be able to put something together so that you can replicate and the brand can carry similarly from one location to the next. To me, that's just necessary. I don't think it's obvious. I almost said it's obvious. I don't believe it is. And that's great. That's a huge hurdle. But that's not the real work. The real work is in now how to find all of the alignment. We've agreed that this is how we're going to operate as people. We're going to look this way, walk this way, talk this way. We know what to do. How are we going to make that come to life? Well, we are. probably about 12 or 13 years into 12 or 13. Yeah, my gosh, I can't believe it's happened that long. Where we did some really, just flies by. We did some really deep work on trying to determine who we were as an organization. And so where does that come from? Back to that people are the business comment. Well, it came from at the time, four key people, the three founding owners and myself. And we said, all right, let's find some help. Well, we contracted a group that was phenomenal leading us through what was a seven month journey, one to two meetings a week, four to eight hours per meeting. And what we were there to discover was, all right, we're going to frame up who we are so that we have agreement. And then we're going to talk about what to do with that. So in other words, things people have heard before, hey, what are values? What is our mission? What is our vision? We said, that's going to kind of be the focus. Values are who we are. Mission is how we're going to get things done. Vision is what we aspire to achieve. From there, we're going to set out some goals that'll be kind of worked through as we achieve them. We're going to identify who our customer is. We're going to identify what our product is. And we're going to bring that together so that we have agreeable clarity. And we're going to talk about how to make that come to life as soon as we agree to that. Well, after that seven month mark, another big high five in the room. And now what? speaker-1 (11:00.864) And that's where I really had the light bulb go off. go, okay, now that we can all see this is who we are and why we do things and what we're aiming for, let me go to work on integrating this into everything that we've built through the structure of meetings, opening and closing a site, daily managers checklist, maintenance tasks, everything started to come to life. And it was this really, it was pretty much a I would say about a three year strategy from that moment. And the strategy was, how do you build in the understanding of these values, which have characteristics that prop up the values themselves? And how do you tie that to the work that's being done through the mission? How do get people to understand that this is going to be in the gray because it's supposed to be able to fit anything we do. And by the way, if it doesn't seem to fit, maybe you're out of bounds in terms of how we want to approach things. Are we achieving the vision. Well, I don't even understand how to see where do I fit into that? not me per se, but the employees, each individual. And so you've to start creating line of sight to outcomes and how every nuance detail works. Now, three years into this, was awesome. We were a Katana in terms of business. I mean, just an unstoppable force. Then we continued to grow and at a faster pace. That's disruptive. The beauty of this is at the end, we've gotten to 16 locations. I have a strong desire to really build the business again. And where this alignment really starts to come to life all over again is when people are lost as you scale the business and you're starting to strain and stretch and all of this. Well, this is the nucleus. This is what brings it back. And so we just began to have the same types of conversations, the same type of work. And it's really fascinating to see things start to spin around this really strong nucleus of understanding. And people go, I get it now. I understand. And it's always been there. It's just, it's tough to deploy well when you're scaling and adding team members and so on and so forth. So we have this organizational identities of FISA to state, and it's really clear and it's built into literally everything we do. Every decision hinges on this. speaker-1 (13:25.952) Every meeting is built back into this. And if we're off track, this is what gets us back there. And it works through all departments of the organization. So we do quite a bit to make sure we know who we are as organizations so that each individual can see how they can fit into the effort by way of values, mission, vision, and beyond. You know, you've said a few things in there that I want to really highlight for our listeners because I think it's so important. And one of them is that it took you three years in the beginning, right, to really get the work done and that you spent time in conversation with each other about what it really means. And I think that there is sometimes this agreement that we should have a mission, vision, values, purpose, like all that stuff. We should have it so we can check the box. but there's not that commitment at a leadership level to spend time in conversation about it so that you can make sense of it. And that does take time. It doesn't happen in a weekend retreat or in a moment in time. It happens through consistent dialogue. And I really am so intrigued with how you did that with your team and that you were willing to take the time to bring it to life because it's not a flip of a switch, right? It's not just some pretty words on a page and then we all are happy with that, right? It's about how do we shift our behaviors around to that? I think that journey is so interesting. I have a question for you about it, but before we get there, the other thing that really stood out to me is your idea now that you're coming back to it and you're saying we've grown and we've changed and the shape of the organization has changed. So we need to do the alignment work again. And I think that's another. key takeaway for people who are listening here is that alignment is not one and done. You have to revisit, you have to come back, and sometimes you have to really take a big step back and say, let's recommit to having those conversations about what this really means, because there's new people involved and the organization is a different shape. People who weren't in those conversations 10 years ago, right? Like, what does that look like in today's context? Those two things really stood out to me. speaker-1 (15:36.748) Yeah. I appreciate that. It excites me that those things stand out to you because I think those are myths. I also just generally help and work with a lot of other people in business. And this is the area that they're often excited about creating and have no understanding of what it really takes to get it to come to life after there's an alignment. It's easy to box up and put in manuals and on a wall and all that. It's really hard to deploy. really hard to deploy. And what makes it difficult is you're literally working with every individual mind in order to get them to be part of your organization and the way you need them to be. You have to begin that at the advertisement for recruiting. If you miss that, you screwed up. You've got to begin at the very first point of interaction. From there, the entire journey the employee journey, applicant journey at this point, has to build in not only an awareness, but a filtering of the alignment in the most natural sense for that person to then understand that they're a good fit for us, we're a good fit for them, and they're coming into something that they can really relate to. So what is that clarity to any organization? They need to be able to speak to it and then integrate it. Because if the people are going to have You're going to have to work with anybody to some degree to get them to understand how to apply and deploy these values and the mission and everything get to work with the systems that exist. But if you're really far apart in terms of mindset, then it's going to be an uphill battle to to 10 X the energy, and it's just not worth it. So if you don't begin there, you've got to get there. Now, fortunately, we've been doing that for a long time. I was our first recruiter, so that's that's been really well dialed in for years and years and years. So now as we come back to kind of this re-engage the who we are moment with not necessarily new people, but people that are new to how to work this way. We've got plenty of competent, capable people on our team. When you get into decision-making and you hear things like, I'm going to approach it this way. To me, hear yellow or I hear, I see yellow or red flags. I go, okay. speaker-1 (18:01.432) All right, do we have a national alignment or do they really just not understand why or how Breeze Thru wants to approach this scenario? And so my job in these moments is to ask questions. For example, I want to give them another chance at being able to get their metrics to be to our standard for another 30 days. Okay, I might ask something like, what's the responsible approach for this? Well, they're expected to do X, Y, and Z. So the responsible thing is to make sure they do that. Okay, let's think about the time you dedicated to that person's development to achieve our company outcomes, KPIs, critical success factors, and so on. Tell me about that. Well, I met with them. What does that mean? And then you just you get to this real clarifying moment where you might hear something like, told them three weeks ago to do this thing. It's really empty. Yeah, that should be enough, right? So, I try to get to that, right? Get all the layers off the onion, what's at the center. And we see this moment and I go, you know, we're aspiring to be an excellently run car wash company. In order to do that, I have to be able to trust you. You can see it right here in the mission. We also develop people, first two words. My commitment to you is to develop you so that my trust for you could be much higher than it is at this moment. Whoa. speaker-1 (19:37.142) And that's like, light bulbs are going off. I see those words now. I feel them differently. So just to kind of an off the wall example, but no moment goes unchecked when it doesn't sound a line. Hmm. Yeah. And I love that you dig in with questions because we talk a lot about curious questions and leaders asking really questions that help them to understand where misalignment is happening rather than the kind of interrogation questions that might feel good, but they put people on the spot and they don't really help you to understand the mindsets or the thinking processes that got somebody to where they are. And it seems like you're really leaning into powerful questions as a way to build alignment, not to shame somebody or to put them in a box or to sort of show them the error of their ways, which frankly is something that I think a lot of leaders actually struggle with breaking that habit. You know, the advice that I give myself and others all the time, and I got this from a good friend of mine, Dr. Matt Park. He's a, he was a, a scientist, psychologist for NASA for like seven years. And he's just a soft spoken guy, but he, left me with get curious, not furious. And this had to do with asking questions and really simply put, when you get curious, literally your brain, the entire chemistry changes and your amygdala tame for your emotions are largely processed through. and your prefrontal cortex lights up and it goes, okay, what's logical? What are the facts? What do I not know about this? And so we take that mantra and debris through all the time because, hey, when you're passionate about what you do, there's bound to be emotions and that's okay. But to get somewhere productive, we need to be curious and not furious. So let disappointment fade to black. Let's get real curious about what we don't understand. What is it we don't know and how can we learn about that? speaker-1 (21:40.002) And as soon as we start going down this, see this with so many people all the time. All I have to do is get curious, get curious, and you'll see somebody. I am 100 % stealing that. Well, pass it along, that's an amazing guy. But we talk about steel with pride, right? will credit Matt, but that is a great expression. And I think it's exactly right. It gets your executive functioning going in your brain and keeps you in a productive space instead of a destructive space. When we think about alignment, it really is about holding the space for dialogue with people and creating conversations that help you. move forward together as a leadership team. And I'm curious because conversational skills actually are something that particularly with newer people into the workforce can be have historically been challenging. And in today's world might be even more so when you think about some of your young leaders who are coming into this space and coming into a company where dialogue is really important. speaker-0 (22:50.35) and where you're setting a standard for how we have real time conversations with people. What are some of the things that you're observing with your, I'll use the word younger, but less tenured people in leadership roles? Anything interesting that you're seeing that you're having to deal with today that might be different from when you started 14 years ago? The thing that jumps out at me is definitely around communication. And it has to do when we look to at any of our location, there is a site manager and they are expected to manage a location which involves people. Now, without going down too much of a rabbit hole, there's a necessity to be at least become a prolific leader. OK, so you've got to learn management skills and leadership skills. Now, what we really need out of the gate because we're operating a business is you've got to teach, got to teach you how to be a great manager. Where we begin to enter, I would say the leadership skills to make sure that we're thoughtful about the development track is largely around crucial conversations. There's, I'm sure a lot of folks are familiar with that. There's a book, there's training, et cetera. We actually have people in house now that are trained to train. It is so important and to me this is probably the big difference I see in a 14 year time span, maybe longer than 14 years. Now they say here and think about it. Tough conversations. They don't come naturally to people. Mostly because there's a fear of what's on the other side of the outcome. That moment is it's you know paralysis by analysis and then nothing gets done and it's. You get to scratch the surface of what you really intended to accomplish with talking to somebody about the thing that, you know, felt tough to talk about. When somebody realizes we're just focusing on, you know, in this case, the facts and that you can care for somebody and be assertive. You can develop somebody through failure. You can be disappointed and do the right thing. You know, these things that almost seem like paradoxes in our mind. speaker-1 (25:05.89) When we get somebody to see and understand all of that, it's amazing how much more starts to make sense down the line. It's almost like this is the gatekeeper to excellence and all the other facets of our business. And it sort of makes a lot of sense. I mean, if you think about the world's problems and 80 % of them rooted in communication issues, okay, well, I'm trapped. Miscommunication issues. It's amazing to me in terms of the development of somebody going from nervous to I have the tools to do this. And as soon as they apply them, that's the key. They've got to go do something with it, right? Like any of us. It's I understand that. Yeah. Are you able to apply what you understand? Because knowledge is not power application of knowledge is I don't care what you know. I care what you do with what you know. And so we take these moments and I'm not kidding. When somebody goes from, uh, let's say they had to address a problem, a customer problem and with a direct report and, they were nervous, but they went by the book and they just executed what they were trained on. Like clockwork. come out of it and go, Hey, that was not bad. Get one. I survived. I survived. speaker-0 (26:25.74) Yeah. It's a muscle, right? Yeah, and truly it's a gatekeeper to confidence and all these other realms. It's like now I believe in myself that I'm capable of having these hard conversations. What more can I do? So I love that and that seems to be a big a big change and probably more than 14 years, but I do see it increasingly becoming difficult to get somebody naturally ready to go for those types of conversations. Yeah, I think there's just a little bit more of a hill to climb is something that we're noticing. And it is just a skill. It's a skill gap more than anything. It's not not a competency gap. It's a skill gap. So I was curious what you were seeing in that space, too. And I really appreciate the investment and the focus that you're putting on these communication skills, because I actually think a lot of times people get thrown into leadership roles without any support for communication. hard skills in communication, and then they struggle to have these important conversations. They struggle with being kind and holding people accountable, right? That paradox and what that feels like to tell people when they haven't accomplished something that they need to accomplish. Holding that space is such a crucial leadership skill, and it seems like it is part of alignment to your core values and your mission and your purpose. So the fact that you're investing in it, I think goes a long way. We actually see, by the way, lack of investment being one of the reasons why alignment doesn't happen. People agree it would be a great idea if our leaders were better at communicating, but they don't invest in communication. yeah, where there's a mindset that people should just either be naturally good at it, or they're never gonna be good at it. And it is actually something that can be trained. speaker-1 (28:14.687) May I touch on an alignment aspect that you made me think about? Of course, yeah. So one of the things that seems to be a common thread, and I would say this is through people. People generally care about other people. What I mean is they know somebody that's going through a hardship and they feel it with them, right? There's an emotional, empathetic moment where it's like they feel it. Now, our culture lends itself to those feelings being worn on a sleeve, a lot. And there's a place for that. When it comes to how to be effective in these moments, when we prop up one of our values, which is professional, there's four characteristics, hard work, honesty, respect, responsibility. When it comes to hard work, we go farther with describing each of these characteristics. And in this example, we'll speak to 80 % of the hard work here. It's all up here. It's all mental. 20 % is physical. And in these moments where somebody is struggling and a supervisor is a little lost or, or like paralyzed because it's so much attention is given to somebody's hardship. Maybe it's something personal. Maybe it happened to them recently or extended family. They're bringing it to work, whatever it is. The supervisor is really, it's really important for them to recognize hard work in this moment and that hard work. When you see somebody struggling. speaker-1 (29:46.996) isn't helping them up. It's being near them so they learn how to get up on their own. That is very hard work because you're going to innately want to go, come on up here, metaphorically speaking, right? I got you. Show them you're there and let them determine how to best get up on their own. That is incredibly hard to do, to give people the space to grow for themselves and just know they're not alone. That's a hard ask. And so I think about, I think about the alignment piece. That's a big one because of how much people care in our organization. It's very tough for people to navigate, but once they see it, it takes some time, depending on the circumstance for the kind of the feedback loop to come all the way back and the person to say, I'm glad you were there for me. And that person go, I was, I was just, I was just kind of present. That matters. That matters. If you really want to help somebody, you know, find strength. allow them to be and just be with them. Let them know they're not alone. That's been a game changer. That's so interesting because I think that often, again, easy to agree that we should let people find their way, very hard to align to it. And I feel like you have found some very specific ways to help people see the difference between being present and supporting somebody versus doing the work for them. And that is, I think, a really interesting way to move to alignment as an organization. that mindset of this is the mindset that you need to bring to life. Be present for people, let them know they're supported and let them find their own way. That articulation, I think is, that takes work to get to, by the way. So I just wanna say good work on that. Like you've done the work to get to that ability to articulate that very clearly for people, create clarity around it so that people can then work on bringing it to life and enacting it. speaker-0 (31:52.18) I think that a lot of what keeps people in agreement but not alignment around nuanced leadership aspects like this is a lack of clarity. What do we really mean when we say support people? What does that look like? I think this level of clarity is going to be really helpful for some of our listeners who might want that in their organizations, but they don't know how to coach to it. And I think that's where doing the work to get to clarity around that expectation. really helps move you from agreement that something sounds like a good idea if we did that to getting aligned and actually being able to bring it to life in your culture. You know, I think about, I love the idea of agreement and alignment and the failure gap. I use the vernacular more than ever. I use different vernacular before and it's almost, can't even remember how I would explain this, but I was, I was essentially doing so much of what this book and the literature that you provided is really about. And it just, clicked with me in a way that was like, yeah, we've got a lot of people in the failure gap. That's a great way to talk to this. And if I were to give you a little understanding in our mission, we develop, empower and trust the right people to be successful in their role to wash a lot of cars. Well, those are some pretty powerful particular words. And when we get down to some power of a path, that seems to be the one everybody goes, I, I empowered them. That's okay. I empowered. It's like an easy button, right? How'd they do with that? You know, they didn't do very well. How did that impact trust? well, tell me, go ahead, speak to it. So I realized that this moment of how that impact trust, it was very natural for people not to want to say, I don't trust them as much with this thing anymore. So we now, I say now it's been a few years. we have this tool and I took it from a former Navy seal and it's basically, a simple chart, XY graph of how to look at trust across four pillars. And so when we have clarity of what trust means, it goes back to like, speaker-1 (33:57.496) We have a communication problem. We'll give them clarity how to communicate. We have a trust problem. Let's give them clarity of how to look at trust. And now we're working on alignment. Now we all agree that trust is important and we're aligned on how to evaluate what trust is. So I just thought I'd share that for the moment because we all feel trust. I don't trust him, I trust him. What the hell does that mean? Yeah, and you know, one of the things that I talk with people a lot about when it comes to trust, because trust is a big word, right? You don't want to say you don't trust somebody because it feels like a character assassination, right? Like there's something wrong with your character if I don't trust you. And I think there's space between trust and confidence. And so do I have confidence in you to be able to do your job? Maybe not. But I trust you. I mean, I think you're a nice person, right? Like there's that. So trust leans up against integrity and confidence. can be about can you do the job or not? And sometimes I think we get confused between those two things. And that feeds into that idea of empowerment. By the way, empowerment is in so many values or mission statements or otherwise without really clear definition around what does empowerment look and feel like. Empowerment can feel scary for the person who is empowering somebody else, right? Because you're literally giving them power. to make mistakes, to do things that might damage your reputation, right? Like you're conceding that to other people. And what that looks like requires a high degree of trust, but also confidence. And when somebody makes a mistake, it can shake your confidence in them. I think that that idea of how do we get aligned around empowering people does require a lot of conversation. We'll go back to what we talked about in the beginning, right? Like you have to spend time as leaders talking about What do we really mean when we say empower people? What does that look like? What's our mindset shifts as senior leaders that will be required? What do we need to change so that we can be successful at empowering people? And one of the mindset shifts might be, I've got to be willing to stand by somebody when they make a mistake because I empowered them to be in that space and they didn't have all of the tools and resources they needed to get it 100%. speaker-1 (36:15.308) You know, when we you're spot on, I love this. This is incredible. When we talk about empowerment and I already mentioned one of the big challenges was this anxiousness and fear of failing, which doesn't shouldn't take anybody by surprise. But it's like, what do you, do you overcome that? Well, we took the word empower and said, what does that mean to us? you know what it really means? It means you get the opportunity to fail. And so in our organization, you hear these things being talked about. Well, empowerment is really just the opportunity to fail. We want you to try. It's more important for us to see effort. really? Yeah, that's why it's defined right here. It's documented that way. OK. So they get the opportunity to fail as long as you understand how it impacts trust. You can't leave it there. Right. And I think it's so interesting the opportunity to fail because I think often we think empowering people means giving them the opportunity to only succeed. But I I worked for a guy a long time ago who used to say, do you say? We succeed together and I fail alone. And that's the job of a leader. And I was always just like, that just I did not appreciate that one little bit. I was like, I am a fully articulated adult. I am capable of failing and taking responsibility for that and growing through it, it felt really disempowering to me. And I know he had, like his heart was in the right place, right? Like he was basically a very sort of patriarchal leader in that space. But I think that it is about giving people the space to fail and to be able to grow through that experience and not denying them the experience of having to pick themselves up. and having to make something right that they got wrong and having to move forward despite not having the success that they'd hoped for. That's when you grow, right? That's when you learn, that's when you grow, that's when you become better. And so to give people that space and that opportunity I think is a powerful leadership mindset to bring to life in your organization. speaker-1 (38:25.72) You know, as kind of probably safe to say that the pinnacle leader of our organization, I get asked a lot, particularly site level employees. There's this moment of, I would describe it as they're impressed with something that I'm talking to them about. And you'll see this awestruck moment. this isn't to pat my back or anything. just, trying to understand, trying to help the audience understand something. How did you get to be this way, Justin? You talk so well, you think so differently, and there's always this smile that comes over your face. go, I have failed faster, harder, and stronger than you have ever dreamt of. I am fearless at failing because it's how I get to learning quicker. Now, do I intentionally try to figure out how to fail? No, but I'm trying a lot of things with all my life experiences and just am fearless about failing. I don't get paralyzed by that. Nothing slows me down. It's not a roadblock. I can't feel a speed bump. I just go. They're like, what else? I go, that's it. That's the secret. Be fearless about failing. But also it sounds to me like you have the mindset that part of your job as a leader is not to, in your fearlessness, not to protect other people from that experience, but to give people the runway for that same experience. That's exactly it. think that's a really powerful mindset shift for a lot of people. Yeah, it's a gift to be able to be inside of an organization where you're safe to explore this kind of thing. And by the way, I would say that's one of the most difficult things to value in our organization until somebody leaves. speaker-0 (40:09.678) Interesting. Tell me more about that. Well, um, we've got an abnormally high return rate of employees and it's grass is greener thing, right? It's something gets tough. Maybe they get looked over, you know, there, there could be 12 people that apply for an open position and they're frustrated because it's the third time they've been overlooked. And by the way, there's always a development component for internal applications after they miss an opportunity. Something gives right. And there's that, that grass is greener. And sometimes it works out. Sometimes it's absolutely spot on. However, there were, I think there were like 30 to 35 employees in 2025 that left us and had come back. Great. Thankfully they left us on the right terms or maybe more than that, because there's kind of a gatekeeper there. But what they don't, they don't know what they have in this opportunity to go try to learn, to be exposed to different different trades within our own company, different aspects to professional careers that are just kind of bundled inside of our own organization, the training pathways, career pathways, all of these things, it's taken for granted until they go somewhere and go, hey, tell me about the development pathway you have for whatever role they're applying for. go, yeah, what? And then the light bulb goes off. no, what did I do? Yeah. I always remember early in my career, I was in a tech company and we had really great project managers and inevitably the developers would sort of chafe against the project managers who were trying to keep things organized and moving forward. And then they would go to another company that didn't have project managers and they would be like, where's the task plan? Where's the project plan? This is so hard to do. speaker-0 (42:02.595) without those people that I griped about for years. Sometimes we don't know how good we have it. You don't know what you've got till it's gone, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, I think that revolving door actually is so powerful because I always say I want people to be at Carrick and Scroop because they want to be here, not because they feel like they have to be here, like they don't have a choice. And so you should know what your choices are. And then you should choose hopefully to be here or be at Breeze Thru car wash, right? Like, what does that choice look like? Don't be here because you feel like you don't have options. I'm curious, Justin, as we sort of wrap this up, there's a couple of things that have really stood out to me in this conversation that I want to make sure our listeners walk away with in terms of alignment and how you've invested in it. We go all the way back to the beginning, the idea about taking time and knowing that you have to spend hours in dialogue with each other about what does this really mean and how do we create common meaning and understanding out of things. It's not something that you can shortcut. It's not something you can put into AI and say, what's the right answer? You've got to spend time as humans in that dialogue to really make sense of it. You also pointed out this idea that you have to revisit it periodically. have to come, for one thing, it has to be a consistent practice to keep people in alignment and to check on it. But sometimes you do have to take a step back and redefine things for the new generation or for the new group of leaders or for the organization as a whole. speaker-0 (43:30.306) just because things have changed and over time alignment does start to slip as people get different understandings of what something means. So being willing to come back into those dialogues and back into those conversations is really important. You've also talked about setting the standard for yourself and knowing for yourself how do you bring that energy to your employees and let them hear from you about how you've experienced alignment to some of these big ideas. and being willing to be fearless in that space of failure, for example. It's easy to say we should look for failure as we should be okay with people failing. It's a whole nother ball game to be aligned to that and to be able to have clarity and to demonstrate how as a leader, you're modeling the way for that. I think this investment in crucial conversations that you're making is another way that we get people aligned to having the leadership skills that they need to help people. to continue to grow into their roles and to feel like there's a path forward for them. And again, that's something where we hear a lot about leaders need to have great communication skills. We don't see necessarily the alignment around investment and intention around giving them the opportunity to develop those skills, just kind of hope for the best that they'll grow them. So I appreciate the commitment that you've made there too. When I think about some of the things that you've shared, And wondering, Justin, are there two or three things that you would really encourage people to lean into as leaders if they're trying to build alignment, particularly around things like their values or the culture that they want to develop? How can they as leaders move from agreement that something's a good idea and get their teams aligned to working in the way that they think will best help support and grow their organizations? Are there two or three hot tips that you have for people or things that you would say, Don't leave this discussion without knowing you need to do these things. speaker-1 (45:25.9) Yes, thank you for all that you just said. So when you are heading into business, or perhaps you've been in business and you haven't really figured out what's missing and you can't put your finger on one of those scenarios, it's OK to have your reasoning for being in business, whatever it is that you want it to be. Just don't mask it with something that's not authentic. For example, I see a lot of business owners that are like, well, clearly the purpose of my business is to be profitable. Well, okay. When you breathe, you need oxygen. Is the purpose of being alive to consume oxygen? Like, let's think about that. It just seems like a necessity. Now, if it's important to you and that's why you're in business, surround yourself by people that also find that to be important. Not what it is for me, but it's OK that it could be that for somebody else. The point here is when you come to a real strong alignment on the organizational understanding. Don't miss the opportunity to be authentic. There are plenty of people that will surround your organization with a thing you're both passionate about. However, if you if you mislead them, you'll create chaos and disruption down the road. So one of the things. Then I'll add to that, you mentioned this about the self-development in order to continue to lead with, you know, going from agreement to alignment in an organization. I had to look at myself after we found some really good clarity for Breeze Thru Car Wash. Who am I in this? What is Justin Sellsbury's purpose? And I did 18 months of work with some people and I came up with to serve others and helping them discover how they matter. I've come to appreciate some of Zach McCurio's teachings around mattering. And to sum it up, I really enjoy helping people discover how they matter because it turns out as important as food, shelter, nutrient, water, whatever. It's that critical to each of us. We just don't know what to do with it. So getting somebody like myself in an organization that's very people development centric, I need to have something within myself so that I can effectively lead. speaker-1 (47:51.532) I can't just fit the part. This isn't theater. I have to authentically be aligned. I have to be there. And so I really enjoy the idea of somebody being able to say, add value by blank and I am valued because of blank. Well, there's a sense of significance there. Why that's important is because that grows mindset. You can do a lot with that. The message here is if you're at the pinnacle of your organization, and you yourself aren't aligned with what it is your organization's doing, find somebody that is. It's okay to be a business owner and allowed to operate with the right alignment. Agreement's not enough. You will live in that failure gap for a long time if you don't overcome that. Yeah, you know, Justin, we like to say it's important for leaders to start with self. And it feels like you've really embraced that for yourself and as a leader and taking responsibility for modeling the way for the rest of the organization. So I really appreciate you sharing that because it's so important. We also say if you're not transforming how you lead, you're not transforming your organization. And I think sometimes as leaders, we have to do that gut check to say, what do I need to be doing differently? Thank you. Well, this has been such a great conversation. And I do have one last question for you that we ask everybody just because it's interesting to me. And that is if you could get a group of people, whether it's your leadership team or your company or your family or a community that you're a part of or the world, if you could get people aligned to doing something together, what would that be? What would you like to see people really just put their kind of wait behind to make it happen and make it real, move out of agreement that something's a good idea to get aligned and doing it together. speaker-1 (49:39.188) I would say it has something to do with, if I had a collective group of people, whoever that might be, with doing the work to speak particularly to how they matter. And I know if you're listening to this, it's probably seems like, well, that seems like self-interest based on what you just covered. It's not, it's what I've learned and the value of this and how many people's lives I've transformed by just getting them to see that thing. It is the... opposite of the moment when they go, just don't feel like I matter to go from there to go, I matter and I can tell you why that is transformational for somebody. the question of what is life? You witness what it is when somebody can speak with such gusto and confidence to why they matter. So if I could take a group to do one thing in great alignment, it'd be that it'd be helping people discover. how each individual matters. Committing to as a leader, making sure that people know. that they matter and how they matter and that they can really lean into that and own that. I think would be an amazing thing for the world to get aligned to. So thank you for sharing that call to action. And maybe there'll be a few listeners out there who are inspired to bring that to life for themselves and in their own organizations. So I really appreciate that, Justin. This has been such a great conversation. Thank you for sharing your time and your thinking with us and a bit about what you're doing at Breeze Thru with your leadership development and with your own leadership as well. speaker-0 (51:14.892) I really appreciate the growth that you've been on and I'm excited to see where you guys go next from 16 to who knows, right? And I think it's gonna be a great adventure for you and the whole team as you move forward. So I just wanna say thank you so much for being here. We appreciate it. Pleasure is all mine. Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's been great. And for all of our listeners, just a reminder, check out the show notes. We'll put some of the references out there, including Get Curious Not Furious. We'll give Matt his credit line there. And if you like this episode, be sure to like it, share it, comment on it, reach out if you want to talk more about it. We'd love to hear from you. At Carrickans Group, always like to say to go fast, go alone, to go far, go together, to go far fast, get aligned. So hopefully this will inspire you to. Do a bit of alignment work with your own team and in your own organization and we will see you next time. Thanks so much.