#007: What It Looks Like When You Live It

He was carrying a small laundry hamper and staring at the buttons on my washer like they were written in a foreign language.

I could tell he needed more than directions.

I had no idea what I was actually walking into.

THE FEATURE

The first two issues of this series asked a question and showed you the cost of never answering it.

This week I want to show you what the answer actually looks like. Noot as a philosophy, not as a mission statement on a wall, but as a moment that happens inside your store on an ordinary Tuesday morning when you least expect it.

Simon Sinek writes that knowing your why changes how you show up. It changes what you notice. It changes what you are willing to do when nobody is watching and there is no financial return attached to the decision.

I believe that. But I do not believe it because I read it in a book.

I believe it because of a cattle rancher in a white straw cowboy hat.

FROM THE FLOOR

It was the first year I owned my first store. I was at the counter helping process a wash and fold order when I noticed him come in.

Late seventies, maybe early eighties. White straw cowboy hat, wrangler jeans, pearl snap work shirt, cowboy boots. He was carrying a small laundry hamper and he walked straight to washer number one, our sixty pound machine. He stared at the screen and the buttons for a long moment.

I could tell he was lost.

I walked out and introduced myself and asked if I could help. He looked down and did not make eye contact. Something told me he needed more than help starting a washer. I gently guided him over to a smaller machine, helped him load his clothes and made a quiet decision to pay for his washer myself.

I can't explain that kind of instinct, but its a spiritual prompting. But when you know in your knower that you are supposed to do something, you do it.

When I started the machine and told him to let me know if he needed anything, he looked up at me for the first time. His eyes were full of tears. He thanked me, then apologized for his behavior. And then he told me that his wife had died the day before, and that he had not done his own laundry in sixty years.

In that moment, the load I had just started flashed through my mind.

I had noticed when I loaded the machine that there was one men's dress shirt and the rest were cotton dresses.

I asked him if the dresses were hers.

He said yes. He had to decide which one to bury her in.

I put my arms around that man - this tough cattle rancher I had never met in my life - and he collapsed into the hug and we both cried. I held him and I did not let go until he was ready. He told me her name was Marjorie. That they had been married for sixty years. He spoke about her the way you speak about someone who is waiting for you at home, and that made it almost impossible for me to hold myself together.

When we both composed ourselves, I told him I would personally make sure her dresses were perfect. That I would call him when they were done. He tried to pay. I told him it would be my honor to prepare Marjorie's dresses.

For the next hour, I washed, dried, ironed and steamed every one of those dresses. I did not know much about Marjorie. But I knew enough to know she would not have wanted to be seen in a wrinkled dress.

He picked them up on hangers, shook my hand, and smiled through the tears.

He never told me his name.

I thought about him for months. I prayed for him... for strength, for courage and most of all for peace.

Almost a year later I was back at the laundromat filling the vending machine one morning when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and it was him. Same hat, same boots, same wranglers. But this time there was a smile on his face.

He stuck out his hand for a handshake. I pushed it away and hugged him instead.

He told me he had thought about me often over the past year. He said he believed God had put me in that laundromat that day specifically for him. He told me he had thought about me at the graveside service when he saw how lovely Marjorie looked.

Then he told me he had met a woman. That he had sold everything and was moving two hours away to be with her. That no one would ever replace his Marjorie, but at least he would have someone beside him until the day he got to see her again.

He said I was the last person he wanted to see before he left town. That he had stopped by the store several times the previous week looking for me and had not found me. So he kept coming back.

His last few minutes in Ada were spent in my laundromat, talking about Marjorie.

I watched his old pickup pull west out of town and realized I still did not know his name.

I never will. But I know he is out there living his best life, waiting on the day he gets to see her again.

"There was no other place on earth I would have rather been that day than with him, in that laundromat. Not because it was my job. Because it was exactly what I was built to do."

That is what a why looks like when you live it.

It does not announce itself. It does not show up on a profit and loss statement. It walks through your front door in a white straw cowboy hat carrying a small laundry hamper, and it asks you quietly whether you are paying attention.

STEAL THIS

The rancher did not need a perfect machine or a loyalty program. He needed a human being who was present enough to notice him.

That presence is not an accident. It is a direct result of knowing why you are there.

This week, spend time in your store not as an operator, but as a participant. Put down the clipboard. Stop counting quarters. Watch your customers the way I was watching that morning. Not for operational data, but for the human being behind the laundry.

You will see something you have been walking past... GUARANTEED!

THE GAP

The operators inside Laundry Advisors are not just building more profitable stores. They are building stores worth walking into. Stores that become the kind of place a grieving rancher trusts on the worst day of his life.

That does not happen by accident. It is built on purpose... deliberately, week by week.

If your market is open and you are ready to be in that room, the application is waiting.

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