We caught up with the brilliant and insightful R&D Deluxe a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi R&D, thanks for joining us today. Any advice for creating a more inclusive workplace?

Put your people first.

Here at R&D Deluxe we value people: Clients & Team Members. We don’t believe in bosses and employees we call everyone team members. We’re still a small company but we try to go above and beyond when it comes to creating a workplace that’s inclusive and engaging.

Little things like buying lunch, providing snacks, on the job management training, company outings, bring your playlist to work, and more are helping for making the workplace somewhere they want to come to not have to come to. We built an environment where every team member feels like owners of the company and they go above and beyond in building our business.

One of our team members said “I’ve worked in many places before and this is the only place I look forward to coming to everyday because it doesn’t feel like a job”, that was the greatest compliment a business owner can hear from a team member!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

R&D Deluxe stands for Rosario & Denilson Deluxe Hand Car Wash. Rosario has a sales and insurance background and Denilson has a an HR background, we both have entrepreneurial spirits and always knew that we would go into business for ourselves one day, and knew that eventually our paths would cross because we wanted the same things, to be financially free, to help our community, and to be able to have something we could call our own.

Rosario is the mastermind behind the Idea for the Car wash and Denilson is the enforcer, we got into this business because Rosario used to frequent car washes and he saw opportunity. He frequented gas station car washes and felt that it’s a lucrative business to get into. He called Denilson since he has a cleaning business of his own and the rest was history.

Many people make the mistake of thinking the sole purpose of business is to make money, they couldn’t be more wrong. The purpose of business is to provide a service that people love and the result of that is making money. We take cleaning cars SERIOUSLY, obsessive even (Denilson is very OCD when it comes to cleaning cars), we take that obsession and we training it to our team members, we hire based off personality and ability to adapt as opposed to skills.

We believe that every car has to be cleaned THE RIGHT WAY, can’t skip steps regardless of how long the line is or how long it’s taking. What we’ve learned is that clients will forgive wait time if the quality is extravagant. We’ve built a system that provides not only quality but speed so now our clients can spend less time at the car wash and keep high end quality at reasonable prices.

Our reviews tell our story, customers come back because of our quality and our commitment to customer service, we try to treat EVERYONE like family even the rude ones because we all have rude family members.

If we’re considered successful we owe it all to our people!

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

Rosario & Denilson have known each other for years, Rosario is the Godfather to Denilson’s son. But in the world of business they’ve begun discussions in 2021.

Rosario has a business mind, he built out his wife’s hair salon and provided consultation for multiple other businesses for friends and family to help them grow. Rosarios strengths are his ability to sell and his vision to make the ordinary look extraordinarily attractive. Rosario is the ultimate dreamer and showman, he wants the our shop to look as amazing as possible to bring in clients and make them comfortable while they are getting their car washed.

Denilson also has a mind for business, he graduated in Management with a minor in Business at Georgia Southern University so he always had goals of being an entrepreneur. Life took him to the world of corporate Human Resources where he learned how to create processes and build engaging work environments. He opened up a family cleaning business and the rest was history.

Rosario came to Denilson with the idea of opening a car wash, with Rosario’s ability to see an abandoned building and visualize it’s potential and Denilson’s ability to take an idea and turn it into a step by step process and system of efficiency, it was a match made it heaven. Rosario’s sales background and Denilson’s Human Resources background turned out to be exactly what the business needed, what one lacks in the other excels in and vice versa.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

“If you build it they will NOT come, it requires work!”

The hardest part of starting a business is…. starting a business. Many people get stuck at the idea stage and don’t move forward because they don’t know what steps to implement. In our case we have Rosario the man with a million ideas and Denilson the man with a million ways to make the ideas happen. But there are always obstacles in the way.

We had to unlearn the idea that “if we do this then that will happen.” Business is not cause and effect, in fact business is absolute chaos, followed by extremely hard work and luck. When we first started the building wasn’t the most attractive building especially for the area we were in, we assumed “ok if we paint the building the customers will come tenfold, they have to we wash cars really well, also we’re missing is a nice building.” Once we painted the building, the customers did NOT come in tenfold, nothing change other then the occasional compliment here and there.

It was a humbling experience, but it proved to me a revealing experience. We realized that the only thing that can save us is our grind and ability to attract customers. Word of Mouth and Google reviews are our #1 source of generating customers. We do this by overemphasizing quality and customer service, treat EVERY customer like a family member no matter what type of car they drive.

This lesson plus many others are reasons that we were able to grow so fast in 1 year. We’re grateful for all the lessons.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.rddeluxe.com/
• Instagram: r_ddeluxe
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100092162049105&mibextid=ZbWKwL
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/r-and-d-deluxe-hand-car-wash-roswell-2