107. Go BIGGER This Year With the Top Lessons From 2022!

00;00;00;01 – 00;00;25;28
Speaker 1
Hey. Hey. What’s up, guys? Is Jordan with a lot of that resource? Podcast is a show 107 and I happened to be here today not only because I’m always pumped that you’re here today, but also because this episode kicks off 2023 and I’m super pumped about that. And I know that actually, if you’ve been for a while, we’ve been on a little bit of a hiatus over here for a little while, and I’ve gotten a lot of messages about that.

00;00;25;28 – 00;00;51;05
Speaker 1
When are you coming back? When are you coming back? Well, guess what? We’re back and we’re coming back strong. So acknowledge that hiatus. But man, one of the beauties of the laundromat industry and I guess kind of this too, is I, I want it to be something that helps us achieve what we want out of life. Right? The freedom of these businesses is something that is a huge draw for most of us.

00;00;51;05 – 00;01;11;23
Speaker 1
Right. And so, you know, over the holidays and all that time, we’re traveling and doing stuff with the family. I was just kind of enjoying life and trying to practice what I preach over here in terms of, you know, embracing that freedom that it can give us. But I’m back and I’m ready to go. We’ve got an awesome lineup already this year, already done some of the interviews.

00;01;11;23 – 00;01;37;18
Speaker 1
I’ve got a bunch more lined up. I’m really excited to access more owners and industry professionals, so get excited about it. Buckle in because we’re we’re going to hit 2023 hard. All right. So super excited about that. And man, we’re coming off of an unprecedented year in 2022. And if you remember, way back in the beginning, I had a podcast interview with Mark Stern from Eastern Funding.

00;01;37;19 – 00;02;03;12
Speaker 1
We just talked about what’s 2022 going to hold? What’s it going to be like? What are some of the struggles that we saw in 2021 and what are coming at before or later in the year and looking forward? And so now we can look back on that and see how right Mark was in a lot of these things and how so many things happened that we couldn’t have predicted, including inflation.

00;02;03;12 – 00;02;32;08
Speaker 1
We expected inflation to go up, but it went up a lot. A lot. We did have some, you know, manufacturing delays. We did. I mean, interest rates rose. I mean, we had some obstacles. But I think the level and the degree of some of these obstacles we didn’t really anticipate. So it was just a very interesting year, a very dynamic year and tough to navigate for a lot of business owners, not just in our industry, but but all over the place.

00;02;32;08 – 00;03;00;19
Speaker 1
Right. Rising utility costs, rising interest rates, rising inflation. It’s it’s affecting everybody. And so, you know, now in 2023, we got to figure out how to navigate all this, let alone try to figure out what’s going to happen this year. Right. So I just wanted to start off by kind of acknowledging all of that and re-emphasize something that I say on here all the time.

00;03;00;19 – 00;03;18;03
Speaker 1
And I say it because I believe it. And it’s that as we try to figure out how to navigate this stuff, we can try to figure out how to navigate it on our own. That’s kind of the laundromat owner way old school way of thinking. But a lot of our resources, I mean, we’re really trying to push our industry forward.

00;03;18;03 – 00;03;42;08
Speaker 1
We’re trying to move us in a better direction. And I really, really think the mindset of we are all better when we work together is the way forward. You can shortcut our learning curves. It can help us, you know, hear about what’s working. It’s the whole premise behind this podcast and why interview Laundromat owners so that we can share what’s working, what’s now working, what have we learned?

00;03;42;08 – 00;04;07;14
Speaker 1
What lessons have we learned? And now we have this big library of knowledge that can help us better our businesses or get into the industry in a better way or, you know, wherever you’re at on that journey. So that is something that I’ve said many, many times. We’re all better together. And, you know, I in 2023, I’ve been I mean, I’d been thinking about this for a little while.

00;04;07;14 – 00;04;41;03
Speaker 1
How do we all navigate? How can I help us all navigate 2023 better? And so one of the ways that I am doing that is through actually the pro community that we have at Laundromat Resource. And I don’t want to turn this into a sales pitch at all. It’s not a sales pitch at all because all the information you need and all the interaction that that you want can be had for free on the podcast, on the YouTube channel, on the blog, on the forums, a lot of my resource that comes to our forums, all free, all for you.

00;04;41;03 – 00;05;13;03
Speaker 1
You can have all that stuff. However, if you are looking for a quicker path, if you are looking for a tighter knit community, if you are looking for just more targeted information network, all that stuff, the pro community is the way to go in my opinion, and it’s already a pretty robust community. However, taking it up not just a notch but a few notches in 2023.

00;05;13;03 – 00;05;35;18
Speaker 1
So real quick, I just want to give you a highlights of some of the things we’re implementing in in 2023 in the pro community. So number one is one of the one of the things that so I do a survey with every pro member who who joins and says, hey, you know, how’s your experience so far? What can you you know, what can you what feedback can you give us to help us make it better?

00;05;35;18 – 00;05;59;24
Speaker 1
And one of the ones, the pieces of feedback that we get all the time is that people are looking for more direct access to me, to other industry professionals. And so in order to kind of help that because I think that’s great or the kind of help that we’re going to implement a once a week call for the pro community, we’re going to do Q&A, we’re going to do live deal analysis.

00;05;59;24 – 00;06;32;27
Speaker 1
This analysis analysis is we’re going to we’re going to analyze deals live together online. We’re going to be, you know, talking with real laundromat owners who are trying to diagnose a problem or take their business to the next level. And we’re going to do that live together. So we’re going to be doing all that stuff not just with me, but also with my friends in the community, other industry professionals, other of our consultants like Andrew Cunningham, Lauren Borkowski, and other industry professionals who just have a deep knowledge in this business.

00;06;32;27 – 00;06;53;17
Speaker 1
So we’re going to be doing more of that. Weekly pro member calls super excited about that. That’s one thing that we’re adding. Another thing is we’re adding three tiers of community. So the pro community is great, got a lot of great tools, got a lot of great resources. But I think the community aspect of the pro community has been lacking and we’ve gotten that feedback, we’ve heard that feedback.

00;06;53;17 – 00;07;13;24
Speaker 1
And so we’re implementing a three tiered kind of community and I’m actually very excited about that. And if you want to see a sneak peek of kind of peek behind the curtain, there’ll be a link. If you’re on YouTube down below, if you are listening to the podcast, it’ll be on the show notes, which is that a of my resources dot com slash 107.

00;07;13;24 – 00;07;39;14
Speaker 1
You can get a I’ll do a quick little screen capture tour of the behind the scenes community so that you can see it and and go check that out if you’re interested. But the three tier community is pretty awesome. So tier number one is the big tier that’s everybody in the pro community will have a space and an opportunity to be interacting with everybody all together, asking questions, answering questions, encouraging each other.

00;07;40;05 – 00;07;54;15
Speaker 1
I’m really excited. We’re going to implement some some polls so that we can get hard data and turn that into useful information for the entire community. So I’m excited about that. So that’s tier one is the whole community. Tier two is.

00;07;55;27 – 00;07;56;18
Speaker 2
Where we’re going.

00;07;56;18 – 00;08;23;02
Speaker 1
To have spaces for SUBTOPIC communities. So if you’re if you want to have a conversation about what’s drive forward, if you want to have a conversation about pickup and delivery, if you’re brand new trying to buy your first laundromat, if your goal is to scale and build a Laundromat empire, if you are a a woman business owner and you want to talk with other women business owners, that’s one thing that we’re implementing.

00;08;23;02 – 00;08;43;01
Speaker 1
Lauren Borkowski is is on board to help with that. So I’m super excited about that. So women get excited. You’re about to get represented hard in this industry. I’m excited about that. But those subtopic communities are a little more niche and they’re a little more smaller. You can join any if you want to. You can not join any of them you don’t want to.

00;08;43;21 – 00;09;15;08
Speaker 1
And so super excited about that. And in the third tier of the community, which I’m very, very excited about, if you guys take advantage of it because I think that this could be worth its weight in gold and super, super powerful to help you get into the business, to help you, you know, to use the that the term going around to help you elevate your business, to help you accomplish your goals, to help you set goals, to keep you accountable to goals.

00;09;15;13 – 00;09;54;04
Speaker 1
The third tier of the community is you as a pro community member, have the opportunity to opt in to joining a mastermind group. And if you’re not familiar with the mastermind group, that’s a group of, you know, maybe 3 to 6 owners that or future owners, the laundromat owners who want to commit to meeting together on a regular basis, weekly biweekly, monthly, whatever, meeting together on a regular basis to share what your goals are and to keep each other accountable and to diagnose problems and to be friends and all of the above.

00;09;54;04 – 00;10;16;14
Speaker 1
And so I am so, so, so excited about the opportunity to introduce mastermind communities that’s going to be included in the pro membership. No extra charge or anything like that. People charge huge bucks for mastermind groups. In fact, I’m in one and I spent five figures on being in a mastermind groups. If you join the pro community, you don’t have to be in a mastermind.

00;10;16;19 – 00;10;34;13
Speaker 1
But that opportunity is there for anybody who wants to. So anyways, super excited about that. And then of course all the other tools, resources, everything else still available to the pro community and everything else that we’re developing now, which I’m excited about too, to start revealing some of those things will continue to be available to the whole pro community.

00;10;34;13 – 00;11;03;01
Speaker 1
Okay, That was way, way, way more than I wanted it to be. I apologize and I will probably leave a link if you’re on YouTube so you can skip down to the the me to this thing in case you want to skip all that. But I appreciate that. Come check out the pro community a lot of our resource exercise pro if you’re interested in joining and again there’ll be a link in the show notes or in the description down below on YouTube if you want to get a peek behind the curtains of what the actual pro community will look like.

00;11;03;12 – 00;11;28;19
Speaker 1
All right, that was a lot. Let’s jump into the seven key takeaways from 2022 that is going to help us dominate 2023. All right. Let’s dig into the seven key takeaways from 2022 that’s going to propel us forward in 2023. And all of these are taken from common themes that I saw throughout the year from different podcast guests and different conversations I’ve been having around the industry.

00;11;28;26 – 00;11;47;12
Speaker 1
You’ll be hearing from some of the former podcast guests, short quotes and clips from them to help just demonstrate and drive home some of these points. So let’s start with number one. The number one, they’re not really in any order, so it’s not the number one. It’s just happens to be number one. Never want to take away from 2022.

00;11;47;14 – 00;12;15;23
Speaker 1
Maybe this is actually the number one take away and it’s this one. Imagine becoming more and more of a service based business. And yes, that means adding actual services to the laundromat, like wash drive for drop off laundry pickup and delivery services. But even the self-serve laundromats service is becoming more and more important that we think through how we’re going to serve our customers best going forward.

00;12;15;26 – 00;12;46;26
Speaker 1
Take a quick listen to this clip from episode 100. And by the way, all of the links to these podcast episodes will be in the show notes that a lot of my resource dcoms are show 107 or if you’re on YouTube, they’ll be down below. So in case you want to go listen to the full episodes of any of these podcast episodes, you can book this clip from episode 100 with Luke, and Lee will offer the will of four Brothers talking about what service with excellence means in the Laundromat business.

00;12;46;26 – 00;12;53;12
Speaker 1
What does sir, with excellence mean for you guys? What does that look like? Practically tangibly.

00;12;54;00 – 00;13;16;08
Speaker 2
He says these three words and every meeting, every Monday and multiple down to bed, you know, our mission is excellent customer experience for everybody who walks through our doors. That’s the reason that the technician has to be prompt on the tickets that are put out for malfunctions. That’s the reason that we make sure the A-Spec system is clean and maintained.

00;13;16;08 – 00;13;49;07
Speaker 2
You know, everything that we do is to create an excellent customer experience or what we call Angela, our primary customer. She’s a single mother of bulk with molar steering and we had to cut out or she’s right every year we have some of them do, but we base all of our decisions from where are we going to put the car in space is to, you know, everything to make it as convenient as possible for her to come in, get her laundry done, get on the wife, watch atmosphere, TV, even Michaela and I should call.

00;13;50;28 – 00;13;52;26
Speaker 1
And link down in the description.

00;13;53;10 – 00;14;12;04
Speaker 2
It. Yes, but yet I bet everything that we did it, you would think about it. That’s why the attendant has to be there to help existing three day one go. Excellent customer experience is one of the best ever told. It has to be set. It’s why it has to be unlocked. Even though people come in and use it.

00;14;12;04 – 00;14;18;02
Speaker 2
Every Now that you do this, just part of it. Excellent customer service.

00;14;18;04 – 00;14;37;23
Speaker 1
Incredible advice from the Wolfer brothers who own like 1,000,004 laundromats or something like that. Great. I mean, if you’re going to take advice from anybody and you’re looking to scale your laundromat business, those guys are top of the list. So awesome advice there. Let’s let’s listen in to what Brian Rice Allen has to say about serving customers.

00;14;37;29 – 00;15;04;21
Speaker 3
Just focus on the customer experience. So make your decisions based on what the customer experience is. And that’s what the root of everything at least. I mean, I do consider it. I think, you know, you could argue, you know, just look at everything you do and decide if that’s the customer experience that you want. Doesn’t often cost that much, But just to focus on the customer experience, usually good things.

00;15;04;21 – 00;15;05;19
Speaker 3
We’re going to follow.

00;15;05;24 – 00;15;17;13
Speaker 1
Peter Sterne had a great little piece of wisdom on how difficult it is to acquire customers and why it’s so important that we serve our current customers well. Take a quick listen.

00;15;17;13 – 00;15;38;21
Speaker 2
It’s really it’s really hard to acquire customers in this business and they’ve struggled. I believe, because they didn’t control the quality and retention has been a huge issue. So if you got to fight really hard to get a customer, then don’t lose them. Yeah, I think, you know.

00;15;38;28 – 00;15;40;08
Speaker 1
And it’s more exciting.

00;15;40;13 – 00;15;54;22
Speaker 2
To get a new business. Everyone everyone loves like Dish. They love the marketing side, they love it’s more glamorous, it’s more fun. But if you get keep your customers, then you can’t win in this business.

00;15;54;22 – 00;16;06;28
Speaker 1
And finally, take a listen to what Jason Foster has to say about customer service. And just I love the extremes he goes to with his customer service to take a quick listen to this.

00;16;06;29 – 00;16;29;06
Speaker 2
Be completely service oriented by and vigilantly service oriented. Go above and beyond. If someone’s about to buy detergent and you know, you’ve got a bunch sitting in the back, even some for free, it may keep it as a loyalty marketing program because they appreciate it. They may even give you a great review, and that makes it, you know, even more worth it.

00;16;29;14 – 00;16;48;16
Speaker 2
So just be vigilant about your service. And if you have employees, make sure that they are just as vigilant as you. The owner, you know, you want you want to make sure that everybody has a great experience. And if they don’t turn it into a good experience, I mean, we can call a secret source it. To me, it’s just common sense.

00;16;49;00 – 00;17;23;19
Speaker 1
There were so many clips that we could have gotten to talking about customer service, how to serve your customers well, and what that could look like for your laundromat. So, I mean, go back and just listen to every single upset a couple of times that’ll help you. That’ll help the podcast. Now just getting but there are so many more and it’s becoming more and more important that we serve our customers well that we think through and are thoughtfully implementing ways to serve our customers well and those who do are really going to benefit from that.

00;17;23;20 – 00;17;51;15
Speaker 1
Okay. So that’s number one takeaway from 2022. Number two has more to do with marketing and acquiring customers. And one of the themes that I have seen both on the podcasts and also just in the industry lately is talk about marketing and how important it is to professionalize our marketing. Now doesn’t necessarily mean hire that out your marketing out to a professional agency or bring somebody on staff.

00;17;51;15 – 00;18;19;05
Speaker 1
It might, but it also could mean adding, you know, adding that skill set to your own skills so that you can market your business. Well. That is a relatively new concept, I think, for our industry, but it’s going to become more and more important, especially in the bigger metro areas. So take a listen to Cameron Clark in how he implemented his launched his marketing for his laundromats and his distributorship.

00;18;19;25 – 00;18;35;08
Speaker 1
Cameron has that episode as killer. Go take a listen. If you didn’t catch that one yet again, link down below or in the show notes lawnmower resource that comes I show in a seven that is a killer episode. But take a listen to what Cameron has to say about his marketing.

00;18;35;09 – 00;19;04;29
Speaker 4
In general, marketing is a drastically forgotten about unused area of our industry when it comes to the store level, I mean across the board. But when it comes to the store, you know, and a first time store owner opens their store, they may they may hit the ground running hard for, you know, the first 30, 60, 90 days or whatever, you know, having mailers or and whatever the case may be on a website, they may, you know, do a couple of things on social media.

00;19;04;29 – 00;19;24;29
Speaker 4
But then just like, you know, brushing your teeth or on a diet or whatever the case is, you have to continually stick to it and then it’s quick. Like a die in is quick for people to fall off of it. And then when you do, then you come back a year or two and, hey, well, what happened? You know, my my level of growth has has plateaued out.

00;19;25;12 – 00;19;54;17
Speaker 4
So, you know, you mentioned before about like, you know, scaling and adding different layers within a business. You know, it was you know, I’ve had I outsource my marketing at the beginning, you know, for the first few stores, I outsource my marketing. Then I brought in basically in-house part time marketing, you know, for say, store, you know, for 3 to 6.

00;19;54;17 – 00;20;09;06
Speaker 4
And then therefore and then after that, I brought in full time marketing all day, every day, full time, nonstop marketing for all my stores, because every store, every area requires something different. You know, awesome stuff.

00;20;09;06 – 00;20;14;09
Speaker 1
Daniel Logan talks about what kinds of things you need to be doing for marketing. Take a quick listen.

00;20;14;09 – 00;20;35;16
Speaker 2
The digital marketing piece, you know, I really kind of dive it in there and, you know, figure it out, you know, those ads and kind of how all these things kind of are interrelated, you know, whether it’s that your website ads, it’s your writing, you know, maybe even like some social media stuff type of deal, but the digital marketing and really understanding that and implementing that properly.

00;20;35;16 – 00;21;00;18
Speaker 1
Sharing brings talks about what marketing she does for her laundromat. And coincidentally, she mentions that she built her website herself. Just want to throw a quick shout out. There’s a free course in a lot of my resource circumcised courses on how to build your own SEO, optimize a website so if you don’t have one or you’re ready for an upgrade and you don’t want to hire that out and you want to do it yourself, go take a listen to that.

00;21;00;29 – 00;21;09;21
Speaker 1
A lot of my resource dot com slash courses on how to build your Laundromat website. But take a listen to what Sharon has to say about what she’s doing with her Laundromat marketing.

00;21;09;29 – 00;21;22;18
Speaker 2
Facebook and Google ads. And I also have to mention also they have a website. You know, I developed a website myself, do a lot of, you know, a lot of SEO and stuff like that. So so I’m searching for laundry service stuff lately.

00;21;22;18 – 00;21;41;23
Speaker 1
Gunnar Lloyd Silver talks about why having a good quality website is important. Take a quick listen to this, because I think a lot a lot of my donors have thought traditionally I’m just a lawyer, that I don’t need a website. Take a listen to what Lloyd has to say about having a website as a self-serve even laundromat.

00;21;41;23 – 00;22;06;20
Speaker 2
But even starting from a just a self-serve operation, do you need a website? And the answer is, yeah, you really, really do. And and here’s why. You may not have people that are flocking to your website to actually learn about what a laundromat is. They know they can get a lot of ads for years. They just want to buy one that’s highly rated and as close by at the end of the day as all they want.

00;22;07;08 – 00;22;18;14
Speaker 2
But there are so many things now that look to your website in order to learn from. It’s that if you don’t have one, you’re putting yourself in a really bad position.

00;22;18;14 – 00;22;32;04
Speaker 1
And DOE Santa maria, also an agency, a marketing agency owner, shares about what’s important in marketing as the basics for your Laundromat business. Take a quick listen to this one.

00;22;32;19 – 00;23;00;22
Speaker 2
It’s definitely just make sure you’re doing your digital marketing basics. And digital marketing basics are essentially having a website that is performing well. Low Typically that is really clear and talks about the service you provide and gives all the customer information now the new customer would want, and it’s also making sure that your business will.

00;23;00;22 – 00;23;02;23
Speaker 4
Be more business personality wise profile.

00;23;02;25 – 00;23;09;08
Speaker 2
Whatever the that you said is is complete and up to date so that they can find it.

00;23;09;08 – 00;23;35;12
Speaker 1
Himself. Okay. So going forward in 2023, be intentional about your marketing. So whether that’s your organic marketing through your website or your Google business profile, some of the other things that that were mentioned in these clips or if it’s through paid advertising methods, whatever the case may be, let’s be intentional about how we get our business, our brands, our message out there and draw in new customers.

00;23;35;23 – 00;24;10;21
Speaker 1
Okay, So that’s number two. Number three takeaway from 2022 is all about the date. We’ve got to start utilizing data to help us make better business decisions. And I say this not only because that’s the way the world is going, but I say this because that is the way the whole industry is going. Whether you jump on board or not, the data is being gathered and collected, whether that’s through manufacturers, whether that’s through owners with their software systems.

00;24;12;07 – 00;24;35;23
Speaker 1
Data is being collected, decisions are being made. You will get left behind. Maybe not this year, maybe not next year, but you will get left behind if you don’t start paying attention to the data that is coming into your business. Now, How do you do that? Well, Daniel Logan has a great little snippet here that he shares. How he does that in his laundromat.

00;24;36;00 – 00;24;52;25
Speaker 2
Thinking about like the data, just like breaking things down to like a most simple component, you know what I mean? Like, like on a self-service. I like all of these other figures and numbers and, you know, turning against servers is a good. But, you know, I’ll, I broke it out even further. Like, what’s the most simple thing that I can do?

00;24;52;25 – 00;25;02;21
Speaker 2
I could sit here and count people. Sure. You know, so anyway, we’re less then that data side is like it’s like use.

00;25;02;21 – 00;25;34;23
Speaker 1
I love that. Breaking it down to its simplest form because it makes it easy for people like me to understand it, right? I’m in laundromats not because I’m a genius. I’m in a lot of risk because I’m simple. So I love that. Great advice from Daniel. Let’s talk a little bit. I love so Bride Rising and I had a great conversation about data and this clip he’s talking about kind of shifting our perspective on data and how we are utilizing it.

00;25;34;23 – 00;25;48;10
Speaker 1
So we have traditionally talked about terms per day. He gives a different perspective and a different way to look at the data that’s now becoming available to us, thanks to some of the new technology coming in. Take a listen.

00;25;49;10 – 00;26;23;16
Speaker 3
My frustration coming from tech is a lot of the tech in this industry is like ten years behind. I woke and it is still like it’s so useful, but so I am. I end up hand coding a fair amount of data from laundry works reports into my massive Excel spreadsheet that that just gives me like to be able to religiously track like what my most best hours in and stuff like that are.

00;26;24;07 – 00;26;53;07
Speaker 3
But because the industry was built on turns, right looking at data by customer is super duper hard. And I just think it’s because nobody is asking for things like that. So for me, like the other side, other company I’m doing consulting for right now, we run our business software, Shopify and there is a whole cottage industry of plug ins and stuff for Shopify.

00;26;53;07 – 00;27;19;17
Speaker 3
And like one that we’ve used is a data connector. It just literally connects right into all that data. Don’t care about the records or whatnot, and then I can suck it out into a powered by. And I think that like right now I have to do brute force to look at like I can I have to go customer by customer to figure out how frequently they are they are coming in.

00;27;19;17 – 00;27;21;14
Speaker 3
So I sample all that stuff.

00;27;21;23 – 00;27;51;21
Speaker 1
That was great advice from Brian or Iceland. Man, I love the way that he thinks. I think he’s got more to say about this. So we got to, I don’t know, get him back on or something because he’s coming with a unique perspective that is not common in our industry. So with that said, he he mentions this one more little thing that I wanted to share with you, because I think it’s very, very intriguing and very important going forward.

00;27;51;21 – 00;28;03;12
Speaker 1
And you’ll see how how we’re just starting to try to do this together here at a lot of my resource to take a quick listen to this clip by Brian Roslyn. Also.

00;28;03;28 – 00;28;21;02
Speaker 3
How can we get data out of whatever systems we have as individual operators to to help make our businesses better? But then there’s like, are there ways that we can we can cool the data for each other’s benefit to do commerce and things like that?

00;28;21;02 – 00;28;46;16
Speaker 1
Are I mentioned probably too long with when didley in the beginning and the intro to this episode that we’re all better when we’re working together and Brian is talking about utilizing macro data and not just micro data from our individual laundromats but together industry wide data to help us make better decisions. You better believe that manufacturers are doing that with the data they’re collecting from our machines.

00;28;47;11 – 00;29;27;00
Speaker 1
And, you know, some of them even are putting using that data to put laundromats in our our neighborhoods. So we need to be very wise, number one, about what we do with the data, who we give it to and how we use it. So but one of the things that I am excited about is, you know, on a smaller scale, these for right now we’re going to be compiling some data with each other anonymously and some maybe not, and ask me, I don’t know, But on the lot of my resource pro membership over there to help us make better decisions through polls and surveys and things like that.

00;29;27;00 – 00;29;59;06
Speaker 1
So super excited about that. I think it’s super important that we figure out ways as individual owners and operators to share data with each other to help us make bigger decisions better. All right, number what do we on number four take away? Number four from 2022 is we need to be reinvesting in our businesses. Now, we look around, we have this reputation in a lot of that industry of having all these zombie mats.

00;29;59;06 – 00;30;28;23
Speaker 1
They’re dirty, they’re dark, they’re dingy, have the machines don’t work. We have that reputation starting to shift, I think, but it’s not quite there yet. But the way that those laundromats got to be in those conditions is because the owners did not reinvest in their business. Now, it’s not always easy to do and it’s not always easy to know how to do it, but it’s going to be more and more important that we are making sure that we are reinvesting in our businesses.

00;30;28;23 – 00;30;35;26
Speaker 1
Then Jason Foster described some of the ways that he sees the industry involve in. Check out this little clip.

00;30;36;05 – 00;30;56;02
Speaker 2
We’re going through a transition now where these older just relying on, you know, doing nothing in another gendered laundromat. I think they’re beginning to turn over to newer owners that are looking to invest a little more and to upgrade the facilities, whether that’s through technology like I have or through machines or going bigger with Cameron.

00;30;56;02 – 00;31;06;29
Speaker 1
Clark has an awesome, awesome little clip here where he talks about, Hey, do you have a business or do you have an expensive hobby? Take a quick listen to this from Cameron Clark.

00;31;07;00 – 00;31;24;23
Speaker 4
My recommendation is it is in any business but in this business, especially for the level of investment that you’re putting in, you know, a quarter, you know, $1,000,000 into this investment, that’s a lot of money to do a hobby, you know, I mean, I’m in my free time. I own a farm and my wife takes on me all the time.

00;31;24;23 – 00;31;39;12
Speaker 4
That’s a very expensive hobby and there’s not a lot to return with. And so I can compare that to laundromats that, you know, you put that kind of money into equipment and build out. I recommend, you know, this this is a business. You need to put time and energy into it.

00;31;39;24 – 00;32;09;19
Speaker 1
While we naturally, after reinvesting in our business, take away number five from 2022, that’s going to propel us forward in 2023 is looking for leverage via technology and automation. Now we know well, maybe you don’t know, I don’t know, but in the last couple of years, technology has really accelerated in our industry. So now we have more, more technology available to us than we’ve had in ever in our in our industry.

00;32;09;19 – 00;32;36;04
Speaker 1
And so whether that’s through, you know, software systems, touch screen washers and dryers, I mean, that technology is obvious. But I thought this little snippet that Jason Foster shared about how he’s using technology and automation in his business was pretty cool. A little insight into how we can afford to get a little more creative in how we utilize technology in our businesses.

00;32;36;14 – 00;32;38;14
Speaker 1
Take a listen to Jason Foster in this clip.

00;32;38;19 – 00;32;54;24
Speaker 2
Of besides the security cameras, which of course, are two way that I can speak, which eliminates, it’s just so great to be able to communicate people, even if it’s to say, hey, please call this cell phone number, and then they call and you can have a regular conversation. My doors and my fans and my lights are all on.

00;32;54;24 – 00;33;03;29
Speaker 2
Smart plugs. And the crazy thing is a smart plug. You can get a smart plug for ten bucks on Amazon and the smart plugs run off of wi fi, which of.

00;33;03;29 – 00;33;04;28
Speaker 4
Course my laundromat is.

00;33;04;28 – 00;33;06;13
Speaker 2
Free Wi-Fi for my customers.

00;33;06;19 – 00;33;34;24
Speaker 1
Obviously, there’s plenty more to be discussed when it comes to technology and automation in our industry, but I have a I have a good feeling that we’re going to be hitting this topic a lot in 2023. So something to look forward to there. All that to say, hey, keep looking for new ways to utilize technology and automation in your business, to use it as leverage to help you serve your customers better and to profit more.

00;33;34;24 – 00;34;02;09
Speaker 1
Take away number six is we as laundromat owners need to be investing in ourselves. Yes, we’ve already talked about investing in our businesses and investing in our customers through serving them better in our communities. However, we need to be investing in ourselves. We are only going to be able to build a business as good as we are because of where the owners were.

00;34;02;09 – 00;34;27;28
Speaker 1
The managers were the ones running it and making the decisions for it. So we need to keep leveling ourselves up. And that’s why in the recommended resources section of the podcast, I always say, Hey, what’s a resource you can recommend to help us build our businesses or ourselves because it’s so important to be investing in yourself. And that is something that I never, ever hear talked about in our industry.

00;34;27;28 – 00;35;01;21
Speaker 1
So be reinvesting in yourself, in your own learning and knowledge and growth in your own skill set. So whether that’s taking online courses on how to build a website or how to do some marketing, or if you’re trying to get into this business taking a course on how to buy or analyze a laundromat, there’s a lot of different ways that you can invest in yourself both from directly within this industry and just in general to become a more skilled, more complete, more rounded person.

00;35;01;21 – 00;35;28;27
Speaker 1
So one of the big takeaways. Take a listen to Jason Drees, who’s a performance coach who came on the podcast and talked about how to overcome fear and invest in yourself in order to take whatever the next step is for you. Whether that’s taken the step to make your first offer on a laundromat or, you know, maybe it’s scaling, you know, taking the step to scale up or whatever the case may be for you.

00;35;29;07 – 00;35;32;05
Speaker 1
Here’s what Jason has to say about overcoming that fear.

00;35;32;05 – 00;35;48;15
Speaker 2
A lot of times I’ll talk to people who are concerned about getting in the game. They know they’re possible for more. They know they can make more money. They want to make more money. But historically, they made money from a job. They never owned a business before. And you’re like, well, what am I going to do? Am I going to go?

00;35;48;15 – 00;36;17;14
Speaker 2
Am I going to get in the game or not in the game? And the one thing I can say to everybody there is like if you come from a family that wasn’t entrepreneurs, like my family was an entrepreneur and the first entrepreneur in my family was like, Nothing is going to happen until you get in the game. So if you if you’re well, if you want to play basketball and you’re on the court, on the sideline and you’re watching the game and you want and you can watch and watch someone just get elbowed in the face under the basket, bam, get their nose broken so you can sit there on the side of the court

00;36;17;14 – 00;36;35;05
Speaker 2
worrying about getting your nose broken, play basketball, or you can decide to get in the gap. Yeah, the thing that I did a long time ago was I decided that I’m not going to stop until I create success. I’m not going to stop. So I made the decision to get in the game. So but until you make that decision, nothing happens.

00;36;35;05 – 00;37;01;01
Speaker 1
Awesome stuff from Jay’s injuries. Now take a listen to Brian Lubin, who literally wrote the book on how to leave your W-2 job. And I think that there’s not too many ways that you can leave your W-2 job as quickly as you potentially could through laundromat ownership, which is really interesting. But Brian Lubin talks about, hey, sometimes we fear, you know, failure or getting punched in the face, as he puts it in this little clip.

00;37;01;21 – 00;37;20;14
Speaker 1
And he talks about what’s the difference between somebody who gets punched in the face? Not literally or maybe literally a little bit of rocky there, I don’t know, but figuratively gets punched in the face and quits or stays down. And what’s the difference between them and the person who gets punched in the face and gets back up And he talks about this here.

00;37;20;14 – 00;37;48;06
Speaker 1
And this is I mean, for me, this was a transformative point for me when I first realized what he’s going to say here. And it just for me, it illustrates the just the power of investing in yourself and in your mindset and becoming the person who can live the life that you want to live. Take a listen to Brian Lubin on getting punched in the face.

00;37;48;07 – 00;38;15;26
Speaker 2
And for people listening, the key action that you can take to be part of that demographic, which is Jordan and I are in the minority here by most people get punched in the face. And what did they do? They back off. They back out of the fight. So all that didn’t feel good. I’m out. But all of us here are investors like, you’re here listening to this podcast because you want to invest in something that’s going to provide you passive income or to the degree that Jordan and I were talking about so that you can earn your friggin freedom.

00;38;16;10 – 00;38;27;12
Speaker 2
So the difference between the people that get punched in the face and keep going and the people that get punched in the face of back off is having a powerful. Why, Mike, what is the reason that you’re doing all of this?

00;38;28;01 – 00;39;04;03
Speaker 1
All right. So I was listening to an Alex Formosa or watching the Alex Olmos video, and he said in one of his videos, I think a lot of people were like kind of shocked by and I can really see the value in this this idea if I, you know, had it to do over and I was in my twenties and I made, you know, whatever, $60,000 a year at my job or whatever he made, he’s like, I would live as cheaply as possible and utilize every cent of extra money that I could muster to invest in myself to start stacking skills and skill sets to become again the kind of person who could live the

00;39;04;03 – 00;39;28;18
Speaker 1
life that he wanted to live. So I love that. And shout out to Jason Dreams and Brian Lubin for just bringing that to our industry. I love that. And I think that that’s going to be crucial going forward because of the seventh and final main takeaway that I took away from 2022, which is Laundromats. The Laundromat business is more scalable now than it’s ever been before.

00;39;28;19 – 00;39;55;07
Speaker 1
It’s sort of this convergence of interest of investors and the technology and automation to be able to scale out more than has ever been really possible before. And I think there’s some implications to that. But let’s take a listen to Cameron Clark one more time about that increasing interest in our industry right now.

00;39;55;16 – 00;40;13;26
Speaker 4
There’s more what I would call there’s more white collar investors coming and looking to build a business, as you said, and own multiple stores and make the investment. I mean, because there’s still plenty I’d like you like you said, they will they will come in. They will want to build it, you know, as an asset, heavy investment.

00;40;13;26 – 00;40;39;12
Speaker 1
But more and more investors, savvy business owners are coming into our industry and to kind of tie that together with investing in ourselves, we have this clip from Ross Dodds, who talked about sort of his evolution of being an owner and how he has had to basically remove himself as the bottleneck from a lot of his business in order to be able to grow and scale.

00;40;39;12 – 00;41;02;12
Speaker 1
So this is kind of a combination of investing in yourself and also laundromats being more scalable than ever. Take a listen to what Ross has to say, because this is crucial. In fact, I did a poll, you know, a few months ago and polled like 100 and actually 250 or so people in the in the industry or who wanted to get in the industry.

00;41;02;18 – 00;41;24;25
Speaker 1
And over 65% of them said that their goal is to have ten or more laundromats. Right. Well, number one, you need to be the kind of person who can own and manage ten or more laundromat. So investing in yourself. And number two, the skill sets that help you manage one and two laundromats are different than the skill sets that are going to help you manage ten plus.

00;41;24;25 – 00;41;34;02
Speaker 1
So here’s Ross talking about that Ross Dodds genius in operations and just in Laundromat ownership, love everything he’s doing. Check this out.

00;41;34;15 – 00;42;14;14
Speaker 4
When I started, I started as an employee and and I realized pretty early on and had had somebody on the clay board with me at the time, actually, when we started Clay or in four or different regions, and she said, You’ve got to stop being an employee and get out of business and be the owner. And that was kind of my first wakeup call and first big move away from actually working hours in any of the laundries without somebody else there being the only employee there.

00;42;14;21 – 00;42;22;04
Speaker 4
Instead, I started being at the laundries as the owner and it has the business drastically ban.

00;42;23;03 – 00;42;41;28
Speaker 1
Such good stuff from Ross there. And finally to just wrap this out, I asked luckily will offer the will for brothers if owning tons and tons and tons of laundromats their own more than 30 if that is even worth it. And here’s what Luke and Lee had to say about that.

00;42;41;28 – 00;43;09;14
Speaker 2
Absolutely worth Yes, without a doubt. What a blessing to be able to serve as many people as we do serve with the 33 laundromats that we currently on. And we have been fantastic team. We tre by tainly because they are family. Our families are blessed by it. We’re creating a legacy for them and they start with one and just go from there.

00;43;09;14 – 00;43;22;23
Speaker 2
Served those customers very well. Treat your staff like gold and if there’s an opportunity for number two or number 20 to it forever, appreciate it. Thank you.

00;43;22;24 – 00;43;53;17
Speaker 1
All right. That wraps up the seven takeaways from 2022 that will propel us in 2023. Look forward to a full lineup this year of podcast. Yes, I’m super excited about this year. And talking to more of you guys about your experience in the laundromat industry, the lessons you’ve learned, and I look forward to doing more together. So just as a quick recap of the seven takeaways, number one, increase your service to your community through your laundromat.

00;43;53;24 – 00;44;24;07
Speaker 1
Number two, professionalize your marketing either through a professional agency or hiring a professional or through upping your skills. Number three, utilize data more and more effectively and more efficiently in 2023. Number four, reinvest in your business. Number five, look for tech and automation. Leverage for your business. Number six, reinvest in yourself. You know what? You are worth it.

00;44;24;14 – 00;44;47;07
Speaker 1
So reinvest in yourself. And finally, number seven. Look out because the laundromat industry is more scalable than ever before. So be looking for ways to scale up your business in 2023 if that’s something that you want to do. All right. Hopefully you enjoy this. Got something out of it. I’ll see some of you in the pro community, which I’m very excited about.

00;44;47;07 – 00;44;56;06
Speaker 1
Again, launch my resource dot com slash pro, if you’re interested in checking that out. Otherwise, we will see you next week on the Laundromat Resource Podcast. These.