Should You Hire a Carwash Consultant?

Are you considering getting some outside help for your carwash company? Do you need some support on special projects or advice and recommendations on issues you face? There are carwash consulting companies that can help. Typically you would want to hire a carwash consultant if they can offer services and benefits to your organization that you either don't have time to provide or cannot provide. Training, project management, process documentation, help with hiring, or just getting feedback on how you can improve are all areas in which it would be beneficial to hire a carwash consultant. But is it right for you?

To be fair, there isn't a good answer to that question. It depends on what you need help with and how much money you are willing to spend to fix your issues with some expediency. Consultants can be expensive, but they can be worth the money. Consultants are experts in their industry and have the experience you may not have. They also know the industry best practices for the business processes that cause you pain or aggravation. Here I want to discuss two benefits you receive when hiring a consultant. These should help you decide if outsourcing work to a consultant is right for you.

Consultants Can Save You Money

Depending on your goal, hiring a carwash consultant to help you with special projects will cost you a short-term investment, but it can save you money. This short-term investment may cost you more than hiring someone to do the job. However, they don't come with the long-term costs of actually hiring an employee to fill that role. One of the best things about hiring a consultant is that you don't have to keep paying them when the work is done.

Consider the salary requirements that an individual will have long-term if you hire someone to handle the work instead of hiring a consultant. Employees come with upfront costs such as recruiting, onboarding, training, and uniforms. They also come with the long-term cost of an ongoing salary and benefits package. Not to mention, what if you hire the wrong person and they can't deliver on what you need? Then you have to start the process all over.

Let's say you find the right person for the job. That's great, but you are still getting started. Even if you can find an employee to fill that role, how long will it take them to get up to speed and implement what they create? Three months? Six months? A year? How long are you willing to wait for the results of the project? Do you need help today? This is where hiring a consultant may be best.

On the other hand, maybe you have someone in the organization that can help with your special needs. You still have to think about the costs associated with the project and how much time your current employee will take to complete the project. Let's discuss a hypothetical situation to get you thinking about the process.

For example, say you want to implement a new safety training system for your carwash. You believe that there is a person who already works for you capable of creating the content and implementing the system. That's awesome! But there is a but. How long will it take the employee, and how much of their time are you willing to dedicate to this project instead of what they already do?

Let's assume you want a comprehensive and detailed safety program with videos and other content. You want this for your growing carwash company, and you also need it to make sure your employees stay safe and you are compliant with government regulatory agencies. This program needs to be detailed and focus on specific carwash safety concerns. You have an employee who is capable of creating the content, and that employee makes $75,000 per year. That program will probably take an experienced, capable, and knowledgeable person over 200 hours to create, and you still need someone to help create the videos. So, you still have to outsource some of the work.

According to Town Videos, "The average minimum cost of a 3-minute video that requires original footage will cost at least $3000." So, if you want ten videos, it may cost up to $30,000. Plus the cost of the employee who coordinated and checked the safety videos, created training aids, a safety guidebook, forms, and other content. Then they rolled the program out to the team and trained everyone. If that takes them 200+ hours, you just paid that person around $7500. So, you may have to spend around $37,500 to create and roll out your safety program. Worst of all, in my opinion, that employee didn't do their actual job for about five to six weeks. If you had them doing their regular job while creating the safety system, they were doing two jobs at once, so it took much longer, and you may not have been getting their best work.

Indeed, while your current employee works on this project, they can't give their full time or attention to the actual job you hired them to do. This means that you are reclassifying or redistributing your human resource capacity. You changed someone's job role and dedicated them to a different type of role, but only in the short term. Also, you don't always know if the redistribution of that resource will pay off. You have to ask yourself, "Do they really have the knowledge and skills to handle this project?" and "Do I really want them working on this instead of what they normally focus on?"

You could use this example with just about anything you need to create for your growing carwash company, such as a policy manual, training program, or equipment program. Think about the time, effort, money, and redistribution of resources it will take to accomplish a project before you decide if hiring a consultant to handle that work is right for you.

Consultants Can Save You Time

You could say, "I will just do this project myself, so I don't have to redistribute any of my other human resource capacity to it." That's probably a better idea, especially if you are capable. However, think about how much your time is worth. How much time will you put into the project if you don't hire a consultant? How much money do you make an hour or a year doing what you should be doing for your company? Also, think about how long the project will take you and if you even have the time. Sometimes, especially when you are an executive leader in your company, your company is not best served by spending your time on a unique project.

Your time is valuable! Time is the only resource we have that we can never earn back! Once you spend your time on something, it's gone. You have to think about the return on time invested, or ROTI. I'm sure you know about return on investment, or ROI. However, have you thought about ROTI? When you spend time doing something for work, you need to consider the return you will receive for the time you invested into that work.

You probably have tasks that are higher on the priority list than a project you can outsource to a consultant. Indeed, if you decide that hiring a consultant isn't right for you because you will spend your time doing the special project, you may actually lose money. Why? Because your time may have been better utilized developing your organization to make you more money. Money that you would make if you used that time elsewhere. The old saying, "Time is Money," applies here. A blog I read on Vista Travel put it best, "Executives and CEO's must organize their time amongst matters of importance, to ensure nothing crucial slides through the cracks." For specific issues, projects, and outputs, it may be best for you to hire a consultant to do the work, so you can prioritize the return you will receive on the time you invest into your job.

Conclusion

As an owner, operator, managing partner, or executive leader, you will spend significant time and money getting the systems you need to run a successful carwash organization. The question is, do you have the personnel, time, and money it takes to do it? If you do, and you can, then we applaud you. However, many do not, and we want to help them save money and time with less stress for themselves and their carwash team. Let's face it, your carwash teams should concentrate on providing the best service they can for their customers and not on building programs or special projects that divert their attention and redistribute your human resource capacity.

CarwashOS is a carwash consulting organization that helps carwash owners and operators find success while reducing their mistakes and frustrations. CarwashOS developed a complete and comprehensive carwash operating system that includes the programs you need for your teams and company to run at a high level. If you are interested in how CarwashOS can help you improve your business, schedule a free 30-minute consultation. Thanks for reading!