#012: When It Stops Being Something You Do and Becomes Who They Are

In the first 12 months of owning our first laundromat, we had 4 attendant positions.

63 people filled them.

Sixty-three.

We couldn't keep a person behind the counter long enough to learn their last name. They'd show up, clock in for a couple shifts, and disappear. We weren't running a laundromat. We were running a revolving door with washing machines.

If you've ever laid in bed at night wondering why nobody wants to work for you, I've been there. I lived there. I paid rent there.

That same store today? Nine team members. One, maybe two leave in a given year. And the ones who stay aren't staying because they don't have options. They're staying because they don't want to leave.

So what changed?

Everything I've been writing about in this series.

The Feature

This series started with a hard truth: your paycheck is not your gratitude. It moved into the mechanics of actually expressing it. Then I told you a story I almost didn't tell, about a late-night grocery run for a sick employee, because I wasn't sure it was mine to share.

But this final issue isn't about what Hannah and I do anymore.

It's about what happened when we stopped being the only ones doing it.

Our Ada location was the hardest store to crack. We treated that team exactly like every other location. Same investment. Same energy. Same handwritten notes from Hannah. Same public recognition. But the culture of that town slowed the adoption down. There were months where it felt like we were pouring into a bucket with no bottom.

That store is now almost six years old. And here's what it looks like today.

Our location lead, Derrek, publicly praises her team on our company communication multiple times a week. Not because we asked her to. Not because it's in a manual somewhere. Because she watched how we led, and she made it her own.

When her team has a great week and steps up, she buys the entire crew their favorite snowcones. Out of her own pocket. She did it just this past week.

On her days off, when the wash and fold queue gets backed up, she drives to the store and helps her teammates dig out. Nobody called her. Nobody guilted her into it. She just shows up.

We didn't hire Derrek as a location lead. We hired her as an attendant because we saw leadership in her and we really liked her as a person. Within a few weeks she had bought into the culture. After about a year, we promoted her, and she exceeded every expectation we had.

Here's the part that matters for you: Derrek didn't just receive gratitude. She became a carrier of it. She brags on her team. She publicly thanks Hannah and me for our support. And now her team operates with the same posture she learned from watching us.

That's not a management strategy. That's a culture that took root.

And it didn't happen fast. It took years. If you're reading this thinking you've tried it and it didn't work, I need you to hear me say: it took our oldest store the longest. Keep going.

From the Floor

Here's something I never expected.

At our other locations, gratitude adopted much faster. But something started happening that we didn't anticipate and certainly didn't engineer.

There's hardly a week that goes by where I don't walk into one of our stores and see a box of donuts sitting on the counter. Or a bag of breakfast biscuits. Or a couple of Jimmy Johns sandwiches.

When I ask about them, the answer is almost always the same. A customer brought them in. The mom whose kids were running everywhere last week. The guy our attendant helped troubleshoot a washer for. Someone who didn't owe us anything, showing up with food because they wanted to say thank you.

Nobody asked those customers to do that.

What happened is this: the gratitude our team carries into the building every day leaked through the walls. Customers felt it. And they responded the only way they knew how.

That's what culture does. It doesn't stay inside your four walls. It changes the way people experience your business, and then it changes the way they respond to it.

I've said for a long time that we are not just your laundromat. We are a cultural center. This is what I meant.

There's one more story I need to tell you. And it's the one I've been saving.

About six months before we opened our Ardmore location, I was in Harbor Freight almost every day buying tools and supplies for the buildout. There was a manager there named Judy. She greeted every customer who walked in, but after about two weeks, she asked my name.

And she never forgot it.

Every single time I walked through those doors: "Well hi, Josh!"

After we opened, I only went in every couple of weeks. But I got to know Judy as well as you can know a cashier at a tool store. And I started planting a seed. I told her I'd love to have her on our team at Wash Bar.

She always politely told me she had a good thing going and wasn't looking to make a change.

I never pushed. I just kept showing up and being myself.

About a year after we opened, I was in Harbor Freight and Judy casually asked if we were hiring. I told her, "Not currently... unless it's for you. Then I'll make a position for you."

She smiled and said she'd like to talk later in the week.

Long story short, I hired her. She came to Wash Bar Ardmore.

On her first day of training, Hannah gave Judy our Welcome Gift. Every new team member gets one. A stainless steel tumbler that says "Wash Bar" and a handwritten letter from Hannah welcoming them to the Wash Bar Family.

Judy read the letter and cried.

She told Hannah that in her 50-plus years of working, no one had ever written her a note to welcome her to a team. No one had ever expressed gratitude for her joining. Not once. In over five decades.

Think about that the next time you hand a new hire a uniform and point them to the time clock.

Judy brings that tumbler to work every single day. It's one of her most valued possessions. Not because of what it is. Because of what it meant.

Fast forward to the week of her one-year workaversary with us. We do workaversaries big at Wash Bar. Favorite dessert. A personal gift from Hannah and me. When I walked into the store, I said, "Judy! I can't believe it's already been a year since you joined the team."

She smiled and said she couldn't believe it either.

And then I watched her go somewhere else in her mind.

I went about my routine, collecting quarters around the store. When I came back to the counter, Judy was quiet. She thanked me for hiring her. She said she had started reflecting on who she was before Wash Bar, and that her life had not been good. She said that since joining our team, her entire life had turned around. She had joy. She had hope. She was excited about the future.

She said she didn't realize it when she was at her previous job, but she didn't have any of that before.

She thanked Hannah and me for everything we had done for her and the support we had given her over the past year.

In the one year Judy has been with us, she has lost a little over 50 pounds. She upgraded to a new home. And she's dating a great guy who she met at the laundromat while he was doing his laundry.

Read that again.

She didn't just get a new job. She got a new life. And it started with a stainless steel tumbler and a handwritten note from a woman who meant every word she wrote.

What Judy didn't know at the time was that I was about to offer her the store lead position at our flagship location. Because I think the world of her, and I want her with us as long as she wants to be here.

As I write this, she is only a couple of weeks away from taking over leadership of our biggest store.

The woman I met behind a register at Harbor Freight is about to run our most important operation.

That didn't happen because of a paycheck. It happened because two people saw her, valued her, and never stopped showing her that she mattered.

Steal This

You've read four issues now. If you take one thing from this entire series, take this:

You are building something whether you realize it or not. Every interaction with your team is either a deposit or a withdrawal. There is no neutral.

Start this week. Not with a program. Not with a policy. Just look at the person folding clothes in your store and make sure they know you're glad they showed up today. That's it. Everything else grows from there.

And when it feels exhausting, and it will, here's what I come back to every time:

I would rather err on the side of treating people the way I want to be treated and get nothing back than be a normal business that isn't grateful for anything.

Hannah and I have had that conversation dozens of times over the years. There were seasons where we thought we were fighting a losing battle by leading this way. But no matter how people respond to us, we're called to be the example setters. So we keep choosing it. Over and over again.

The results didn't come first. The commitment came first. The 63-person revolving door didn't fix itself because we found better applicants. It fixed itself because we became better leaders.

Every operator I talk to says they "can't find good people." I stopped trying to find good people and started trying to become the kind of leader good people don't want to leave. And it started with something small. Looking at the person folding clothes in my store and making sure they knew I was glad they showed up today.

The Gap

This series has been free. All four issues. No paywall. No catch.

But I'll be honest with you. The operators inside Laundry Advisors are building this stuff into their businesses in real time. They're not just reading about Derrek and Judy. They're creating their own versions of these stories. And they're doing it alongside other owners who are committed to running their stores the same way.

Laundry Advisors is application-only with a waitlist. If you're a Max Capacity subscriber, you move to the front of the application line. And if a direct competitor of a current member applies, they don't get in. That's by design. The people inside are protected.

If this series made you feel something, the door is open. For now.

LEARN MORE OR APPLY TO LAUNDRY ADVISORS GROWTH MASTERMIND GROUP

Thanks for reading The Currency of the Heart. This one was personal. If it hit home, forward it to an friend who needs it.

See you next Tuesday.

Josh