The Car Wash Show 2024 in Nashville was a huge success! With record-breaking attendance and a sold-out exhibition floor, the event exceeded expectations. This year’s show featured engaging events including live presentations at the Pitch theater, the Hall of Fame celebration, The Big Bash, Innovation Alley, and much more. 

With all these amazing things happening throughout the show, it’s sometimes easy to overlook some of the small and wonderful stories happening at the same time. 

In this episode, Mark Bell, producer for CAR WASH the Podcast, takes a mic onto the show floor to hear a few stories from people who have been coming to the show for a very long time. He also catches up with show first-timers to hear about their experiences. Additionally, we’ll share two stories focused on the ways in which the show and the car washing industry have changed lives. 

For a full recap of the Car Wash Show 2024, visit: thecarwashshow.com.

The Car Wash Show 2024 in Nashville is just ten days away! It will feature the most exhibitors we've ever had, the largest square footage, and it is sold out! 

Claire Moore, ICA's chief learning officer, is here this week to reveal some of the opportunities you may not know about along with a few tips and tricks to stay organized and get the most out of the show. 

This year we are also excited to have a podcast studio built into the LEAD booth on the show floor. We are inviting you, our listeners, to come and share your stories. Our theme is “Stories of Impact,” so we are gathering stories about how organizations have made an impact on you or your community or what has made an impact on your organization. Come visit us in booth #823!

We are going behind the brand with Qual Chem. Joseph Moldovan, founder and managing director, and Ryan Molinelli, VP of Sales, join us to pull back the curtain on the company's history and to discuss their new graphene product: NanoHex. 

We discuss the story of Qual Chem's founding, how they maintain company culture now, and the reasons for adding this new offering to their lineup. NanoHex also represents a new approach to research and development. We explore the unique methods they employed to hone NanoHex and how it will affect their product development moving forward. 

"The most important thing on a remodel is that you go big .... it's really important that you don't just put lipstick on the pig."

If you are considering remodelling your wash, there are many questions you need to answer before you begin. What amenities do you want to add? What is your budget? Is a remodel going to be less expensive than starting over?

John Roush, CEO of Express Wash Concepts, has remodelled countless washes since the ’90s. He joins us to talk about the do's and don'ts of revitalizing your wash.

When it comes to investing in your people, staff training is where it’s at. It even took the top spot in the Q1 ICA Pulse survey. In fact, 49% of those surveyed shared that they are planning on spending more on training in 2024 and 50% about the same as last year – leaving only 1% that were planning on decreasing their spending in this category.

While we've seen an influx of learning and development professionals in this industry, there are a few companies that have made training a priority for many years. 

Hoffman Car Wash in New York is a great example. Today we are talking with Walt Hartl, Vice President of Learning, about Hoffman's training history, their culture of learning, and advice for bolstering new training programs. 

Could understanding the trends of the U.S. economy make you a better car washer? It might.

In this episode, Eric Wulf, CEO of International Carwash Association, and Alex Chausovsky check in on the current state of the U.S. economy and how to understand, define and interpret it to make more strategic business decisions. Chausovsky delves into three metrics — the health of the consumer, the cost of inputs and the cost of capital — and gives his advice on economic indicators we should be watching in the short term and free resources to do so.

Chausovsky is an economist by trade and for several years he has spoken at The Car Wash Show on topics ranging from economic cycles to workforce development. He is also a contributor to the International Carwash Association's quarterly research paper, The Pulse Report.

To hear more from Alex Chausovsky, join us at The Car Wash Show 2024 in Nashville, on May 13-15: ⁠https://thecarwashshow.com/

Membership models and unlimited clubs have become the norm in the car wash industry, but the methods by which we convert visitors to members are mostly restricted to face-to-face in-person sales. This week on the show we explore the question: Could customers join our membership programs online... and could they even do it without even having visited our wash?

Marcus Sheridan is a New York Times Official Web Guru, owner of a successful digital marketing agency and author of the book "They Ask, You Answer." Sheridan joins us to discuss what digital campaigns and strategies could lead to online conversions. Along with those campaigns, he explains the kind of information we need to be ready to provide on our sites and platforms and what steps you can take to improve your digital presence today. Armed with these tools, your wash can be a digital David in an industry of Goliaths. 

 Hear more from Marcus Sheridan at The Car Wash Show in Nashville, May 13-15: www.thecarwashshow.com.

The future of work is not only difficult to predict, it is the wrong question to ask. The question we should be asking instead is: How do we build an incredible team that can help us get to whatever the future of work looks like?

Eric Termuende, author of "Rethink Work" joins us with a bold suggestion. He shares that the best solution to talent acquisition and preparing for the ever-changing work landscape is investing in the quality of your work environment for your current employees.

Termuende says the keys are to build trust, remove friction, and create a culture of experimentation, and he provides some practical tips for each.

Hear more from Eric Termuende at The Car Wash Show in Nashville, May 13-15: www.thecarwashshow.com.

Continuing our content theme from last week, we have another conversation around artificial intelligence. Brian Sathianathan, co-founder of Iterate.AI, joins us to talk specifically about AI in the car wash space. 

Iterate.AI works with companies across many industries including several big car wash and convenience store brands. Sathianathan offers unique ways AI can be used in your wash like pay stations, maintenance and managing inventory. He also addresses the security risks around customer data and the best ways to start implementing AI in your wash. 

You can read more about Iterate.AI in the Q1 issue of CAR WASH Magazine, which ships on March 28 to ICA members.

Our guest is Terry Brock, who just celebrated his 40th year as a Marketing Advisor. He joins us to talk tech trends which, let's face it, are mostly AI these days. 

Brock shares with us some thrilling use cases for AI in the carwash space as well as some input on common concerns.

Every new technology has brought with it some fear. Brock reminds us that from discovering fire to inventing airplanes each advancement in technology has introduced danger that we have mitigated with regulation. 

Will you lose your job to AI? Probably not but as Brock says: you might lose it to a human that understands and deploys AI better than you.

This episode will get you closer to implementing AI solutions in your wash and staying ahead of the technological curve. 

More information on Terry Brock can be found at:  https://terrybrock.com/