Monday May 05, 2025

18: The Scott Brothers Episode

In this episode, host Sid Graef welcomes the Scott brothers—Derek Scott and Colton Scott—of Scott’s Mobile Wash. They share their journey of moving from a scrappy, one-man weekend operation to a growing fleet-washing business employing multiple team members. The brothers talk candidly about restructuring their company twice, learning how to implement core values (“hungry, humble, professionalism”), and realizing that building a solid foundation of systems and culture is crucial for long-term success.

They also dig into the family element—Derek left Arkansas to start a power-washing venture in Tennessee, and soon convinced Colton to join him after high school. While it wasn’t always smooth sailing, the brothers emphasize how vital it is to build the business the right way from the start, rather than hustling forever without clear leadership or processes. Their motivation to succeed is further fueled by personal responsibilities—Colton was recently married, and Derek has a growing family on the way. Anyone at the earlier stages of business-building (or going through a rocky period of “people problems”) will resonate with their honest, boots-on-the-ground perspective.

Show Notes

Guests:
- Derek Scott & Colton Scott, co-owners of Scott’s Mobile Wash (Fleet-washing & Power-washing, Nashville area)
Key Discussion Points:
1. Origins of Scott’s Mobile Wash – Derek’s leap of faith moving to Tennessee and spotting opportunities in the fleet-washing market.
2. Working as Brothers – The eight-year age gap, living together, and evolving from “just employees” to true business owners.
3. Scaling Up – Growth from a weekend hustle to a recurring-revenue model with multiple employees.
4. Facing Restructures – Outgrowing informal setups, implementing structured systems, and adding core values that weed out the wrong hires.
5. Core Behaviors – “Hungry, Humble, Professional,” and how this new clarity affects hiring, team alignment, and day-to-day operations.
6. Advice for Newer Entrepreneurs – Start strong with systems and vision to avoid costly do-overs later.
Resources

Sid: Welcome back to the Huge Transformations podcast. This is Sid; I’m your host today, and I get to introduce you to the Scott brothers, Derek Scott and Colton Scott. They are the owners of Scott’s Mobile Wash—a fleet-washing, power-washing company just outside of Nashville, Tennessee. They’ve been at it for about seven years.

I really wanted to have them on the show, and I hope you enjoy this interview. Here’s why: because these guys are in the trenches, they’re in the fight, and they have rebooted and rebuilt their company. In their words, they have transformed it twice. They realized at one point they were making good money just through hustle and grit, but they didn’t have the systems they needed to reach their bigger goals. So they found a place where they could learn from business builders who were further down the road. They changed how they structured the company. Then two years later, they did it again, refining their processes and emphasizing core values—core behaviors.

We dig into that for a while, but the thing you’ll appreciate most—what I appreciated most—is that it reminded me of my own early bootstrap days, trying to figure it all out. Maybe you’re in that stage, too. Derek and Colton share how they grew from one guy with a truck to multiple employees and rapid growth, but they’re still in that build-it mode. You get to see how the sausage is made rather than only seeing someone’s polished results after a decade of hard work.

We’ll follow up with them in a year to see how far they’ve come, which I’m really excited about. So, without further ado, you’ve got to meet Derek and Colton Scott. Our audio quality isn’t amazing, but the content is rich. Stick with us. Thanks for joining—meet Derek and Colton.

Sid: Welcome back, everyone. It’s Sid with the Huge Transformations podcast. And today is a two-for-one, like we have never done this. We’ve got Colton Scott and Derek Scott, brothers from the— you’re in the Nashville area, correct?
Derek Scott: Yes, sir. Yes, Nashville area.
Sid: They’ve got a power-washing company that focuses on fleet washing, and we’re going to talk all about their journey and see what we can learn. Good afternoon, gentlemen—how are you?
Colton Scott: Good to see you, we’re doing good.

Sid: So Derek and Colton I know from The Huge Convention, but primarily Derek and Colton are part of The Huge Mastermind—that’s where I’ve gotten to know them better. We see each other every quarter in Nashville, doing something cool and learning ways to expand your business. Let’s start off by talking about your company: the name of it, approximate size—whatever metric you want, whether employees, revenue, or the number of trucks you wash—just to give us a framework of where you are now. Then we’ll go back in time and pick up on your journey.

Colton: Yeah, so our company name is Scott’s Mobile Wash. We wash roughly 400 trucks a week, is where we’re at. Size-wise, we have about six employees.

Sid: Perfect. And which of you guys is primarily in charge of sales?
Colton: That’s me, Colton.
Sid: So when you walk into a place and say, “I’m from Scott’s Mobile Wash,” do they go, “Oh, are you Scott?”
Colton: Yeah, they do. And I just say, “Yeah, that’s my name.” [laughs]

Sid: Exactly! So you guys are in the Nashville area. Let’s talk about family for a second. Derek, have you and Colton always worked together, or is this your first venture together as brothers?

Derek: Definitely our first. There’s an eight-year difference between us, so I’m eight years older. He was still in high school when I moved to Tennessee. I started the business in 2018, was doing it on the weekends, and had an opportunity to buy another company. Doing so gave me a chance to see if he wanted to come down and work full-time in the fleet-washing business. That happened in June of 2018.

There was some stuff we had to work through—not only as family, but also because of the age gap. He’d have been 18, I’d have been 26-ish. When there’s that age gap, you’re in different stages of life. But we worked through it. I’ll let him share his perspective on coming down at that young age.

Colton: Yeah, I definitely had to work through my immaturity from 18 to 24. At that time, I was just an employee; I had more of an employee perspective than an owner’s perspective. It’s definitely different now, that’s for sure.

Sid: So Colton, you’re 24 now and about to be 25?
Colton: Yeah, in a couple of weeks.
Sid: Best part about turning 25 is lower car-rental rates, right?
Colton: Yeah, finally! [laughs]

Sid: Derek, you guys have been at it for about seven years. You built from a one-man operation to two, and now six employees. What were some of the biggest challenges early on? Actually, let me back up further: Derek, why did you pick mobile wash? Why was that your path?

Derek: Prior to owning my own business, I was a mechanic in Little Rock, Arkansas, and I was in charge of taking equipment to get washed. I saw how much money was spent on that, and I thought, “I could do this!” On a whim, literally, I said, “I’m moving to Tennessee and starting a power-washing business. I don’t know if it’ll be fleet or houses.” I bought a trailer in Arkansas that I knew I could run my systems off of, loaded it all up, and moved to Tennessee.

I had a job lined up but wanted ultimately to be my own boss. I’d work weekends and after hours to grow the business. Then I found someone looking to get out of the fleet-washing industry, so I bought his business. I had been doing more houses; I switched over to more fleet after the purchase. Then Colton graduated high school, came down, and the rest is history.

Sid: Wow, so when you told friends and family that you were going to move to Tennessee and start a power-washing business, who said you were crazy, and who said, “That’s awesome, go for it”?

Derek: [Laughs] You know, your parents try to be supportive, but also question if you’re sure. Because our parents live in Illinois, so we had no family down in Tennessee, no friends. It wasn’t like I could rely on local family, you know, “Hey, can I wash your car or something?” So that made it difficult and forced me to hustle. Social media was my advertising—just Facebook.

Sid: Colton, when you moved down, how gritty was it? Were you sleeping on couches, or in storage units? [laughs]

Colton: So when I moved, I lived in Derek’s apartment in Murfreesboro for a week, sleeping on his sofa, then he bought a house. I had no money—I was 18—so I lived with him for the first couple of years. We rode to work together every day. It was pretty vanilla in those first couple of years.

Derek: Yeah, basically my last day at my mechanic job was a Friday, I closed on a house on Monday, and we started full-time Tuesday.

Sid: No way, that’s wild. The bank underwriter was probably like, “Don’t say a word about quitting your job!”
Derek: Exactly! [laughs]

Sid: Let’s talk about responsibilities now. Colton, you said you do sales, but are you also on the operations side? Derek, how do you divide everything?

Derek: You’d think with Colton being the “sales guy,” that’s how it goes. But we get a lot of word-of-mouth leads, so we haven’t had to do heavy prospecting. I do more of the mechanical side, behind-the-scenes stuff, and finances. Colton definitely has landed some big contracts that are our bread and butter, but we’ve been pretty fortunate with word-of-mouth.

Sid: So let’s talk about word-of-mouth. Do you encourage your clients to refer you? Or is it purely “do a great job and hope they spread the word”?

Colton: We don’t have a super-formal system. We show up consistently (because everything we do is recurring), do good work, and build trust. I’m checking in on our customers to make sure things are good, and that’s usually when I’ll ask, “Do you know any other companies?” But we don’t have a set referral program or anything.

Derek: The guys will also approach folks at gas stations. If they see a dirty company truck, they’ll ask, “Hey, do you have someone washing your stuff?” We also sometimes do a little incentive for them if they bring in new leads.

Sid: Awesome. So you’ve established a business, providing jobs for others, which is fantastic. Where do you see yourselves in three to five years?

Colton: I hope to be less in the field. We were out of the field for a bit, but we had to jump back in recently. So for me, I’d like to be done with being behind the gun in two or three years.

Derek: Yeah, that’s the plan. A little backstory: about three years in, we got comfortable because we were making enough to pay bills and take a vacation. But we realized, “What do we really want?” because there’s still the headache of owning your own business. Then we had an opportunity to buy a truck from Nate in Michigan. He introduced us to what’s now called The Huge Mastermind. We’ve been in it for about two years, and it’s completely changed our business. Before, we only knew how to show up and do the work. But as the business outgrew us, we didn’t know how to manage people or the day-to-day side.

Colton: Exactly, we’ve learned a ton. We’ve sort of restructured twice. Most recently we added real structure to the business, and it shook things up. Some employees didn’t like the new direction. We lost about three employees in three weeks, which was tough. But in the long run, it’s good. We’re focusing on building a stronger foundation now rather than just “go, go, go.”

Sid: That’s often how it goes. If you have people who don’t want structure or accountability, they self-select out. Let’s talk about culture and core values. One thing we discussed in the Mastermind recently was core behaviors. Did you just define your own?

Colton: Yeah, we thought we had core values two years ago, but they weren’t really there. We can’t even remember them. We basically just grabbed random words off the internet. Now we have them drilled down to “humble, hungry, and professionalism.” Our guys hear it all the time, and they’re held accountable to it. Some employees stayed on board; others left. That’s how it went.

Sid: That’s great. Are you finding it easier to recruit the right people now by referencing these core behaviors in the hiring process?

Derek: Yes, in that we’re taking our time to hire and not rushing it. Short-term it’s painful because we’re down employees, but in the long term it’s better. The new hires are coming into an environment where the existing team lives those values—rather than learning bad habits from some old bad apple.

Sid: Exactly. And I can’t wait to see where you’ll be in a year—especially from our quarterly meetups—just to see how the business evolves once you’ve put these fundamental building blocks in place.

Derek: Absolutely. My advice for anybody just starting would be to lay that foundation early so you don’t have to restructure later. That’s what we’re doing now—kind of undoing the old and setting a new structure.

Sid: Couldn’t agree more. I love talking to entrepreneurs who began with hustle and grit. Let’s wrap up on a personal note. Colton, you recently got married, right?

Colton: Yes, last July—coming up on a year.
Sid: And Derek, you’ve got a child on the way?
Derek: Due in May.

Sid: Great motivators to get that business hammered down! [laughs] You’ll have a whole new lack-of-sleep reality, Derek.

Derek: Oh, for sure. We also have a three-year-old, and an 11-month-old right now, so it’s a busy time. My wife’s definitely looking forward to having the business more systemized so I’m not out in the field all night.

Sid: Indeed. Parenting is a big motivator for many entrepreneurs—it pushes them to get serious about building a stable, profitable business.

Well, gentlemen, thanks for sharing your journey. Some of this is in real-time, so I can’t wait to catch up and see how it all plays out. Derek and Colton, thanks for being on the show!

Derek: Thank you for having us, Sid.
Colton: Thanks, Sid.

Sid: Hello, my friend—this is Sid. Thank you again so much for taking your time to listen to today’s episode. I hope you got some value from it. Listen, anything that was covered—any resources, books, tools—anything like that is in the show notes, so it’s easy for you to find and check out.

Also, I want to let you know: the mission for The Huge Convention and for this show is to help blue-collar business owners like you and me gain financial and time freedom through running a better business. We do that in four ways:

The Huge Insider: a free weekly newsletter—most valuable in the home service industry, paid or otherwise, and it’s free.
The Huge Foundations education platform: over 120 hours of industry-specific education. Every month we do a topical webinar and Q&A with seven- and eight-figure business owners. You can try it for 1 for seven days.
The Huge Convention: if you haven’t been, you’ve got to check it out. Every August (this year in Nashville, August 20-22, 2025). It’s the largest, top-rated trade show and convention for home service business builders—huge trade show, world-class speakers, best networking in the industry.
The Huge Mastermind: for those doing over 750,000 in revenue and aiming for 1M, 5M, or 10M in the next five years. It’s a network and mentorship group of peers where we help you implement The Freedom Operating System.

You can find all the info on all these programs at thehugeconvention.com—just scroll down and click on The Freedom Path. You can also find links in the show notes. If you like the show, please take 90 seconds to give us a review on iTunes, subscribe, and share. That helps other people find us and supports our mission.

Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you on the next episode.

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