For more than 20 years, Drive and Shine Car Wash has been adapting and evolving to create an amazing experience for customers.

But the dream that started Drive and Shine wasn’t always that straightforward. “My dream when I graduated from college and interviewed at General Electric was to be CEO of GE,” said Drive and Shine President and CEO Haji Tehrani. “Somewhere along the way I realized corporate life wasn’t where I wanted to be when I really grew up.”

Once he had that realization, it was time to look at options. Tehrani went to The Car Wash Show in Orlando in the early 1990s and was inspired by what he found. “The camaraderie and closeness of the people and the willingness to help and share information was just so different from what I had seen,” he said. “It was amazing that people in the same industry would share like that. I came home and told my better half we were going to wash cars.”

For Sherry Tehrani, once she knew that Haji was serious, she was all in. “I was excited about the car wash and we needed a good wash in the area,” she said “I wasn’t afraid. I’ve always worked hard and worked long hours – and it takes hard work, dedication and focus, and those are things I knew Haji had.”

And at that point, the family business was born. Sherry ran her own RadioShack franchise for 20 years before taking on the role of Vice President of Marketing for Drive and Shine. Sherry and Haji’s son, Matt, is the Director of Equipment and Chemistry.

“Being able to work next to my mom and my dad is really nice,” Matt said. “My dad has been a father and a boss-like figure to me and I’ve learned a lot from him. I’m fortunate to be steps away where he can be a mentor to me.”

As anyone in the industry knows, getting started in car washing is not a simple task. For the first location, it took years to zone the land while Haji worked to change the perception of car washes in his area. “There was a stigma around car washes that it wasn’t a nice place, a fancy place. That it was a chore that needed to be done,” he said. “That was a challenge for me to see the industry I had fallen in love with being viewed that way.”

For Drive and Shine, that effort to overcome the stigma and create something customers would be excited about shows up every day. The company’s core model is Full Service with a Lube Center. That means customers can get all of their automotive needs taken care of at one place: oil change, wash, interior clean.

More than having the opportunity to get everything taken care of at one place is the ability to produce a “wow” factor. “We’ve developed a strong reputation for our brand in the community,” Matt said. “Customers love the quality of our wash, our people, how fast and convenient we are, and all those things add up. Every day I see smiles from our customers, I’m really happy to be a part of that.”

The quality of the wash is one aspect that keeps customers coming back. But, according to Drive and Shine employees and owners, it’s really all about the people.

“Our people are our most important aspect of what we do,” said Joe Carbone, Leadership Coach for Drive and Shine. “We work tirelessly to locate, to identify, to interview and recruit the best of the best. When we find those people, we pair them up with what we offer at Drive and Shine and what comes out of that is a great sense of self-worth and high job performance.”

Carbone should know. He started with the company when he was 17 and has been there ever since. He knew that car washing was a career after a conversation with Haji at a local coffee shop. “We didn’t talk a lot about washing cars or the business, but a lot about me and him,” Carbone said. “From that moment I knew that this was going to be my career.”

One of the other key components for the people side of the business is the creation of an environment full of growth mindset.

For Drive and Shine District Manager Jeff Guess, he felt like he was still getting in at the ground level, even though when he joined the company five years ago the business had been around for 20 years. “It’s so important. The business health, the longevity,” he said. “We set goals to have the standards for other car washes to follow. When you do that, you draw customers in that love that experience.”

Joe Luchene, Regional Manager of Lube Centers for Drive and Shine, loves the constant evolution and the feeling of empowerment. “It’s one of the things we love about the company,” he said. “We know we always want to stay cutting edge. Our image as employees, staff members, we’re always looking for better uniforms, updating our buildings – nothing’s concrete if you will.”

Nothing’s concrete indeed. According to Haji, the Mishawaka, Ind., location has been completely remodeled five or six times since its inception. The latest innovation was to install an interior cleaning belt, enabling efficient and effective interior cleans.

Drive and Shine currently has seven locations in Indiana and one in Michigan. Up next, the company plans to expand to five additional sites in the next three years.