22. Laundromat Marketing Masterclass with Curbside Laundries’ Matthew Simmons

Matthew Simmons from Curbside Laundries flexes his MBA in marketing in today’s show! An obviously brilliant marketer, Matt gives tip after practical tip on how to market your laundromat, wash and fold services, and pickup and delivery services.

If you own a laundromat, take out a pencil and paper and takes furious notes as Matt covers everything from laundromat websites to digital marketing, business operations to intentional mentorship. Plus he simplifies the pickup and delivery process and describes each step, step by step. Matt truly has a gem for you around every corner in this episode!

Throughout this show he gives hard numbers and practical tips. He explains why 2 is a magic number in the laundry business. He discloses what it costs him per click to advertise his pickup and delivery business on Google. He talks about how many new customers he gets just by having a free Yelp account. He recommends an ideal starting pickup and delivery radius. He gives you a bullet-proof tip on getting free PR. And on and on.

If you don’t yet own a laundromat, you need to be taking furious notes. This episode alone will help you jump to the front of the line and make you a top performer in the laundromat industry if you follow Matt’s advice!

This episode is truly a must-listen, beginning to end!

Be sure to reach out to Matt and ask about Curbside Laundries and their pickup and delivery POS system! The link is below.

Watch The Podcast Here

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Episode Transcript

Read the Transcript Here

hey hey what’s up everybody it’s jordan

with the laundromat

resource podcast this is show number 22

and you are in for a treat today i’m

super excited for you

because today we’re getting a marketing

master class with curbside laundry’s

matt simmons it’s killer

literally every ounce of this

every second of this podcast is just

jam-packed with

useful things for laundry bed owners and

those of you who are looking to buy your

first laundromat

make sure you get out a notepad and a

pencil

or your notes on your phone or whatever

you use to take notes

because you’re going to need to take

notes in this one he just brings the

heat today

it’s i was taking notes throughout the

whole thing so it’s an incredible

episode you’re gonna really love it

we’re gonna jump into it in just a

second uh but first

uh i wanted to highlight a couple of

questions on the forum because i know

uh a lot of you guys are heading over

there you’re asking questions you’re

answering questions you should be doing

that every week

answer a question ask a question over on

the forum laundromat resource.com

forums the link is in the description

uh or in the show notes you can find

those at laudermattenresource.comshow22

all the links from today will be in

on that page a lot of my resource.com

show22

make sure you check it out because again

this one is jam-packed

full of stuff so you’re going to want to

go check that out but

real quick on the forums i wanted to

highlight a couple of uh just things

that came up

dan commented on the forums and he

was talking about how to determine the

true value of a laundromat

but the thing that really struck me that

i thought was a really interesting

question that i think a lot of you guys

could

help dan out with and each other out

with is how to structure your

offer and he was wondering what’s the

best way to structure an offer is it

okay

to give multiple offers with different

structure options for the seller

i thought that was a really great

question i think a lot of you guys have

something to say about that so head over

to laundromat resource.com

forums and go help dan out with that one

also ron uh had a question about

partnerships and your opinions on

partnerships uh and man there’s got to

lots of opinions and a lot of people

have strong opinions on partnerships

so go over there and talk to ron about

how to do a partnership or if you even

should do a partnership uh because

that’s just a hot question and i think

that uh everybody’s input

would be useful to run and to everyone

else over there and real quick while

we’re talking about forums

i know i’m just going to come out and

say it because you know they did it so

i know i’ve seen the coin laundry

association

has decided to charge for their forum

over there

and i don’t have anything against

a company or organization trying to make

money

what i don’t like about this move is

that

they are essentially charging for

you guys to you know help each other

they’re not providing anything but the

space for that forum and so

i don’t love that move by them and i

just wanted to point out i’m not trying

to make a play for their

traffic or anything like that but i just

want to point out that our forum will

always be free

uh because you know w we’re laundry

owner

first and i think that it’s i say this

all the time like it’s so important that

we are helping each other out because

we’re all better together

and uh i don’t think you should have to

charge for that so

anyways i just wanted to present that as

another option i know some of you guys

are still there some of you guys are

on different facebook groups which is

all

very cool and you know whatever you do

make sure you’re communicating with each

other because you are all better

together

but i just wanted to point out uh that

you know our forum is free and will

always

be free uh you can you know hold me

accountable to that if i try to charge

for it someday down the line say hey you

said

in show 22 it will always be free and it

will be

so just wanted to say that um and real

quick while we’re on the forums i just

wanted to say a huge welcome

to joe toner uh who’s up there by the

way joe if you’re listening to this

you uh man you’re like one of my faves

right now if you go over there

he’s raving about the podcast and you

know maybe blush a little bit

actually so head over to the uh

introductions form london resource dot

com forums

click on the introductions forum go say

hi to joe and then maybe bring me down a

notch because you know i’m just dwelling

with pride right now thanks joe

and welcome to the community i also

wanted to say

welcome to jahara cabral welcome welcome

he went over there and said what’s up to

everybody

so go welcome somebody in the new

introductions forum

and uh go introduce yourself if you

haven’t done that yet because it’s

again a great place to meet each other

and to do start doing some networking uh

find deals together partner together

if you think that’s a good idea go tell

ron um

if you think that’s a good idea um and

i mean that’s all i wanted to say on the

on the podcast but welcome to everybody

who’s new we’re growing like

insane right now like

a lot of people every day are just

coming and joining our free membership

so if you’re interested in doing that

you haven’t done it yet lot of

myresource.com

join join our growing community it’s

pretty cool to see

that happening uh over there and i just

i feel very humbled

by it um with that i

i just wanted to say hey there’s

something really cool coming up

that that’s gonna be new like you know

we’re still

nailing down some of the details but

there’s a interesting partnership that

uh kind of forming out of a lot of your

guys’s questions and out of a lot of

uh just feedback that we’ve gotten and

so there’s something coming up in the

next few weeks

uh so look forward to that um i’ll

be telling you more about it over the

next couple of episodes so make sure if

you haven’t yet subscribe

um wherever you’re listening to this on

a podcast player we’re on pretty much

all of them

if you’re on youtube make sure you

subscribe you’re not going to want to

miss

this upcoming announcement but also

every episode is jam-packed full of

useful uh helpful stuff and cool stories

make sure you’re subscribing and then um

you know what i’m i’m so pumped about

matt

um today and everything that he’s

bringing we’re not gonna run

our normal uh ad on building websites

and in fact

we’re busy building you guys websites

right now we’ve got a few on the docket

if you’re interested in getting a

website for your

laundromat or updating your website uh

lottermanresource.com

get online we’ve been doing websites

john

who is building all these websites is uh

happily busy working away on on websites

for you guys so

uh we’re not going to run that ad we’re

going to jump right into it with matt

simmons from curbside laundry who’s

giving you a marketing master class

today welcome matt thanks for coming on

the show

yeah yeah thank you for for having me so

man thank you for coming on the show i’m

super glad that you’re here

great thank you yeah yeah i’m looking

forward to this because i know that you

guys have a killer

uh operation going on uh here in socal

you’re local next to me so i

i’m looking forward to that but before

we get into your

uh what you’re doing right now and what

life looks like for you tell us a little

bit about you

about who you are and about your

background a little bit

yeah so let’s let’s see i’m

helping out with super suds um with with

the marketing with the

uh pickup and delivery and and then now

moved into yeah i’ll get into a little

bit later but as far as

on the softer side just that’s turned

into its full-time thing um

that helps on the pickup and delivery

and then

yes so i earned my mba from usc

in in marketing and and entrepreneurship

and then and i was right out out of

there

so i was also working for a a startup

company

or to doing helping out with staffing

agencies and

in a way it’s kind of a similar

we’re providing software as a service to

staffing agencies with and it just

revolutionized them so basically

if they’re looking for 10 pick up 10

pick and packers or

forklift drivers or warehouse workers

they can make 100 phone calls at once

if the person was interested they press

one

and and now that a recruiter had a list

of all the people

interested in the job and before that

would take the whole day to

fill those positions because you have to

call it make it you have to make a whole

bunch of phone calls just to get in

touch with somebody

so that’s kind of what got me into

thinking about automation and software

and

kind of gave me experience on that side

of the coin

and meanwhile my brother was working at

super subs so it’s my it’s a family

laundromat

and the business was on autopilot so my

parents were running it

and it it was doing well they were doing

between like six and eight thousand

dollars of wash and fold per month

and and then and now it’s just on

autopilot

and then my parents so my brother got

involved around 2008 2010

and since then the revenue just went

bananas

so he just brought more of the digital

and tech into the laundromat and

especially back then

most people didn’t even have websites

for their laundromat back in 2010

yeah and and so

the our first website for super subs was

a single page

and i’ll have to send over a photo of it

i mean it’s humbling

it’s just it just said super sets across

the top of the big

you know promotion to like print out and

cut out

and that simple website especially

because nobody else had one back then

it was it just transformed our business

people

found us online they found us on google

they found us on all these different

places

because we had a website and our

business just started growing every

single month

and and that was

and and so within about a certain number

of time

period of time between i’d say between

2010

2020 you know one from about it started

going up like a hockey

stick you know in terms of revenue and

so we’re now we’re doing like about like

60 you know close to about 70

000 per month just in washing fold and

at the time most laundromats

i’d say we’re doing wash and folders a

different mindset

because if you didn’t have a website who

were you marketing to

you know you’re marketing to the people

who

go into the laundromat and that’s

actually a different market yeah because

the guys putting in quarters or you know

just paying

you know like about nine cents a pound

they’re probably not going to be paying

a buck 50 per pound

so it’s a different market you have to

reach them and they’re not necessarily

going into the laundromat they’re

finding you online

right and what i found is most

laundromats if they don’t have a strong

website

presence they’re doing between 500 to

2500

in wash and fold and they probably have

zero to two commercial accounts

so one thing i just wanted to kind of

let everybody know

is probably one of the most important

things is

work on your web presence you know take

a look at do searches for yourself do

searches see how easy or hard it is to

find you

what competition is coming up because

it’s kind of like you’ve got your

laundromat and i also come from a real

estate background as well

and my least favorite one was the open

house

because you’re just waiting for somebody

to come in the door

and and i’d much prefer knocking on

doors because then you could get to the

next door

and and you don’t have to wait and but

in a way

you want to be as busy as possible

because you’re paying the mortgage

you’re paying the lease you’re paying on

the machines and

and so in a way i see your online

presence is sort of like a mousetrap in

a sense where

the more you know uh

ways people can find you the better and

then because you’re open anyways you got

your open house you want people coming

and and especially now one of my

favorite parts about

pickup and delivery is

it’s you’ve got somebody 24 7 to take

orders

where you’ve got your website so i think

the part i didn’t like about the open

house was i had to sit there

and wait for the person to come in but

if you could have a robot

you know like you know where people

could schedule their own online pickups

from home from their cell phone and you

don’t have to pay somebody to sit and

wait for the phone to ring that’s pretty

cool

so that’s one of my favorite parts about

the business is there’s just a lot of

automation and a lot of behind the

scenes stuff you can do to help drive

traffic yeah it’s kind of the difference

between do sitting at it open

i mean i do real estate too i’ve come

from that background

okay you know difference between sitting

at an open house and now that

you know that huge trend of doing the

virtual

tours online now where anybody can go

basically

tour a house online uh any time

of the day and get a good feel in fact

we bought our

uh our most recent house based off a

virtual tour wow that’s amazing

see it yeah so it’s totally that so i

can tell this is gonna be

uh you know not only super beneficial a

lot of otherwise this is going to be a

marketing master class and i’m looking

forward to that

but let me back you up for just one

second sure okay so

your parents bought uh bought the

business right the laundromat is is that

right they bought it

yeah interesting story on on that okay

the

the and kind of going back one step and

i’ll get to that in just a sec

okay but the just that story you’re

telling about that open house and how

you found your house

yeah that really illustrates how

important it is

that you set up a good web presence or a

good online presence

because that was your interaction with

the home right and so if people are

scheduling to pick up and do

so a lot of people spend tens of

thousands of dollars or hundreds of

thousands of dollars in their stores

appearance to have

nice curb appeal or nice view inside but

then they’re like

they got kind of go a little chipsy on

their online presents yeah

so so i just want to let you know or not

you but like

the audience for a lot of people their

only experience with your laundromat

is your website and the ordering process

so you want to

pay attention to that you know that’s

super important yeah

and we definitely got to get more into

that yeah for sure i want to hear a

little bit more about that and

what you guys did because i know that

your business exploded

and it’s still exploding you guys are

still growing it’s still growing fast

yeah just scratching the surface yeah so

we definitely have

got to get into that and uh looking

forward to that but i want to hear the

story how did

you get how did your parents get into

the industry and then

and your brother and then how did you

get sucked in with them

yeah that’s pretty much what happened

so my parents were heavily invested in

real estate

okay and and so they actually got like

single family homes before they counted

the woman’s income for

mortgages you know things were a little

bit different back then yeah and so they

buy a single family house they’d move

into it then they’d rent out their old

one and you know

and the values didn’t really go up too

much but then they changed the law they

said hey that’s a little bit sexist you

know of course

and so what happened almost overnight as

the result of that policy change was

home prices doubled and so my parents

were thinking wow

people are willing to pay this for the

home that we paid that for

and so they just unloaded everything

because and then they bought

investment properties you know because

they’re quote cheaper by the dozen

and you’re able to get better return on

investment with multi-units

so they got into that then in the early

90s the real estate crash because just

like everything things

go in cycles and so that was

a tough time a lot of vacancies and

things like that

and so my dad was driving around and

saying how do we get

how do we do we protect ourselves you

know from these

you know cycles and he drove past the

laundromat

and he goes you know that’s something

that everybody will always need

and and so he specifically bought or

actually

they already had the property and they

got really lucky or fortunate that

it was already a laundromat a hundred

years ago

and so they’re able to get a

grandfathered in without paying

ridiculous

views yeah because that can be you know

bank breaking to do that around here

yeah

yeah the city is oftentimes because

we’re not paying sales tax

on wash and fall not washing yeah that

too or

laundry so the cities really get you on

the when you build your

place out yeah for all those fees so

they’re able to avoid that

but is driving past the laundromat and

saying that’s something that people will

always need

and how it’s just the foresight on that

i mean nobody could predict it but i

mean look what happened you know with

with just terrible you know with culvert

and all that and

and we were one of the essential

businesses along with banks

i mean and you know medicine and

so it really was we

were just i’m very thankful because i

also know a lot of business owners and

other industries that

man it’s just brutal like if you have a

restaurant or a hotel

so yeah it’s been rough for sure so it’s

so that’s kind of how we got into the

laundry business then because

my dad’s really good at setting things

up on autopilot

so that’s and and so he’s very good at

delegating his good he likes the type of

businesses that kind of run themselves

and that’s

and and so one way of doing that was

they outsourced the wash and fold to

husband and wife

and they basically got free rent and my

parents were happy because they just fed

the machines

and then one day my mom was emptying out

the quarters

and now we have tokens but

so she’s emptying out the quarters and

she sees that the couple is doing wash

and fold

just throw a load in the dryer so she

goes to empty that out again because

just so that way it’s at reset at zero

right there’s no money in there and

she’s like hey there there’s no money in

there you know what happened

and it turned out and they you know

initially denied it she goes no i’m

really sure i

emptied out that machine so it turns out

they figured out how to start the

machines for free

and here they’re getting free rent and

all they had to do was feed the machines

that was their form of paying rent

so they so it turned out to be the best

thing ever because

if we didn’t take over wash and fold it

just we wouldn’t be here today

you know yeah makes more than the

laundromat itself

yeah yeah okay so but tell me how you

got sucked in because i mean you’re

coming from a software

you know sales and your software is a

service and

you know you i mean there can’t

possibly be two industries that are

typically further apart

you know software as a service and like

the dinosaur

laundromat industry so how did how did

you come into play

and you know because you talked about

your dad having you know

foresight and and getting that

laundromat and you know

proved to be true but i think you know

kind of merging

software you know with laundromats also

incredible you know foresight too so how

did

how did that happen how did you get how

did that black hole the laundry match

so that was actually my brother aaron

and

what had so he started growing the

business a lot and at first so

the washington fold was making between

six and eight thousand bucks a month

and it was just flat for about ten years

and that’s just what it made so we’re

a real good location with you know

different apartments nearby

without longer without laundry rooms and

and then he started doing tons of

advertising because

you know if you got all this revenue

coming in you feel like you got to you

know pay the piper you know or do

something right so

so he started doing door knockers or you

know the door hangers

no response any saver ads no response

yellow pages no response

we even he even did direct mail

through the so we paid a lot of money

because we got these high-rise apartment

buildings

and then we found out that the instead

of putting inside the mailboxes the post

office for well

maybe i shouldn’t be saying this but the

stack got put on top of the mailbox

didn’t even get put inside

and nobody’s gonna grab junk mail and

say oh let me add that to my

yeah today’s uh delivery yeah you know

what you call the post office out come

on post office

so that’s so we we tried a whole bunch

of stuff

nothing worked it and the reason being

yeah and promoting your self-serve is

different but wash and fold is there

that was what we’re trying to promote

and and it’s just they’re fewer and far

farther between you know the it’s not

necessarily the people

it’s like it’s just very difficult to

find those people so our first positive

response was yelp

and and but we found even greater

response when you just do google adwords

and we’ll get into that a little bit

later but

yelp kind of tipped us off that hey

people are looking online for this

and keep in mind the mindset back then

was you know our customers aren’t using

the internet

you know so but how wrong is that you

know

um so he was growing my brother was

growing the business to

a ridiculous amount and we were bursting

at the seams

customers had to find their own clothes

in the back room

and because we couldn’t find it we had

no way of organizing it

you know the point of sales is we’re

using paper tickets the triplicates

if a customer came in and had an issue

good luck finding that old ticket of

theirs

so we started so we went to the coin

laundry forum to find

um recommendations because certainly we

can’t be the only laundromat with this

issue

and almost all the point of sales were

made for other industries

and just yeah and and our

sys you know our industry is just

different you know a regular point of

sale

you’re buying like a hamburger and the

transaction is done

you pay for it you get the service with

wash and fold people can

pay a pickup they can pay when they drop

it off they could they have special

preferences you actually need a rolodex

with their info

everybody wants it done different and

then you need to track who’s washing it

where the order is at every time

there’s just a lot of moving parts and a

regular point of sale just doesn’t do

that and that’s what we needed

is actually when we first launched

curbside laundry software

we actually held off on using the term

pos because

we saw that as almost like degrading

yeah yeah

we were looking at like a business

process management solution but

it turns out nobody on google was

looking for a business solution

so so we finally caved and called it a

pos but

it’s it really manages the washing fold

orders from beginning to end and that’s

what we were looking for and we tried

different systems

returned them it didn’t work for us and

and

and then at about the same time we

realized pickup and delivery was

becoming a thing and that you definitely

do need software

because you have a lot more moving parts

yeah right you’re adding people

and processes and volume all at the same

time yeah yeah we were using a white

board and then the drivers were going

out

miss pickups driver gets back and and

then the customer’s upset we didn’t pick

it up

and and then it turns out they left a

memo the closer by the chimney

and and the attendant answering the

phone didn’t write that on the note

and so imagine the cost of that you know

your driver’s

your most expensive employee and they

drive all the way out there and they

can’t find the clothes because

it’s so big and then people reschedule

and good luck communicating

i mean even today kind of fast forward a

little bit

we’re doing about like 60 pickup and

deliveries a day

and there’s one order and i didn’t run

it through the software because we’re in

the middle of a software update and all

and i just wanted to just hand it over

i’m like make sure the driver gets this

it has to get delivered

and okay no problem i figured we’re

doing 60 70 orders a day

and it didn’t happen and i could have

babysitted it the whole way

but it’s just you know it just kind of

shows you you need

you know that type of automation yeah so

so my brother was looking for

for so he so he realized the software

wasn’t out there

and he he i remember him telling me like

if we don’t figure out a way of doing

this we’re going to start losing more

customers than we’re gaining

and our reputation is going to go so far

down where we’re going gonna have to

spend a zillion dollars to

overcome the low yelp review so we’re

gonna

we just have to if we want to continue

growing we need a way to manage it

and at the same time pickup and delivery

was starting to grow

um at the time there’s just one company

doing it

and they wanted five percent of her

gross and

we said no you know we’re already

established it’s gonna cost us like over

a thousand fifteen hundred bucks a month

and so so we started developing our own

software

and it took about two years

and my brother’s like matt you gotta

join you gotta join you know this is

gonna be big

because like everybody’s gonna be having

the same problem we’re having especially

on the pickup and delivery side

and and so it was like this race and it

took like two years and we couldn’t see

anything getting done

because it took a long time to get the

foundation now we do updates and we see

the results pretty quick

right yeah so that that was kind of how

i got involved was he go

you know my brother’s like keeps telling

me about this opportunity

and you know he’s on the laundry forums

and all this stuff everybody’s talking

about the same problems

and he just he wanted to post about what

we’re working on but you know just kept

his mouth

you know shut because we didn’t have it

yet yeah and and then at the clean show

2017 in las vegas that’s the first time

you know showed revealed it and you know

start offering it to other people

yeah man crazy uh you know it’s just

it’s funny how

it’s just i always say this man it’s

funny how life takes you like you’re in

one

industry and you get pulled into a

completely different industry but

somehow it you know it’s still related

and you

and you create something that you know

there isn’t really a whole lot of

out there and it’s something that’s

super valuable not only for your own

personal business but for

tons of other people around the country

so it’s a very cool uh

you know just a very cool story about

how you kind of you know took a windy

path

into the laundromat industry and now

here you are man

pretty good yeah yeah so it’s a lot of

fun and

probably the thing that’s happening now

is just talking to a lot of different

laundry owners and it just learned so

much

you know where i see what you’re doing

is the future because

this is like the long-form joe rogan

type show you know where it’s

you’re able to kind of dive deeper into

stuff and i think especially in this

industry

you know there’s people are looking for

information

and and so and i’ve learned so much

from our clients because it’s put me in

a position where i’m talking to

different people who like how do you

price commercial accounts how do you do

this how do you

what do you recommend for that and i cut

you know a lot of

what i do is basically propagate stuff

that other people have told me and then

you know just i’m just in a situation

where i’m talking to a lot of laundry

owners and that’s been

super super valuable yeah you have this

cool unique perspective where you guys

own a laundromat you’re owning and

operating a laundromat

and not only that you’re doing you know

this pickup and delivery that’s

high volume pickup and delivery you guys

are doing a ton of

you know business every single day and

but at the same time you know i think a

lot of

myself included like we get you know

obviously i mean we’re stuck on our own

businesses and what we’re doing and what

you know what’s working for us what’s

not working for us we’re trying to

figure out our own

you know stuff we’re trying to set up

our own you know automated systems and

stuff like that

but you’re also talking to all these

other owners and able to kind of compile

all of this you know information best

practices stuff that’s working

all that and we’re going to get to that

because i want to hear i definitely want

to pick your brain

from your perspective on what you see is

kind of working in the industry right

now

and i’m sure we’ll talk a ton about that

but very cool uh

perspective can you tell us i mean

obviously we’re gonna focus on

pick up and delivery because that’s what

you guys are really excelling at

you know in your own business and you’re

helping a ton of other people excel in

that

but real quick before we get a little

bit more into that can you tell us a

little bit more about just your

laundromat general like how big is it

what’s

you know what what do you guys what does

it look like

yeah so it’s about seven or eight

thousand square feet

um it’s 200 machines 100 washers 100

dryers

and it’s yeah pretty big um

we some of our machines are older we’re

replacing you know a bunch as well

one upgrade we recently did was we went

with uh article and ozone system

um to for sanitation and

and we got a whole bunch of like

basically pr

got write-ups in the local papers and

stuff like that

um and it just basically for people who

don’t know sanitize this gets rid of

viruses and bacteria

and what nice part about that is it

upgraded our whole laundromat

where you know so we have some older

machines because we you know we’ve been

open for since the 1990s and and this

way

people come in and then they say and it

says you know ozone enhanced on each

machine and

and that matters a lot to the customers

because you know they really value that

um we did our

our drop-off counter for the until last

year

was very very very modest i mean it was

one of the double doors you know where

just the top opens up and

and you would never believe that that

little doorway

makes more than the laundromat you know

and the longer it does all right

and and and you had to go in from the

front door and kind of find it in the

back corner

so one advice i have you know if you’re

looking at

locations for your drop off counter you

want it very visible right from the

right from the front people shouldn’t

have to search for it and

and so the now we have it in the center

it’s yeah really nice um

and and it’s basically at the center of

the laundromat so anybody and that also

helps employers because now they could

kind of oversee what’s going on versus

being tucked away in the corner

yeah yeah that’s killer because

you’re right i mean it’s it’s funny that

you know because when you started it

it was sort of a smaller part of the

business doing six or eight thousand

dollars a month which is

you know great that’s awesome but as it

kind of i mean i would

say your pickup delivery is like the

focal point of your business obviously

there’s other aspects to

it but you know that’s the bulk of your

business right there so

having it this little you know half door

double door

you know it made sense back then but it

just didn’t make sense anymore so that’s

pretty funny

uh yeah and it’s yeah the pickup and

delivery

um yeah if you don’t mind i’d like to

show a slide just kind of showing the

the growth of that

yeah definitely and for those of you

guys listening on the podcast uh matt’s

gonna send over the slide and i’ll

i’ll put a link in the show notes uh so

that you can check

out this slide too because it’s pretty

cool yeah so what

we’re showing right now is the total

number of orders and so

it’s just it just did a search within

the software

and it shows you month over month year

over year

and i’m kind of looking at august so

this is

let’s take it so in august we did 50

pickup and deliveries

okay so that’s a hundred rounds or

basically a hundred trips about 50 round

trips

the following year it went up to about

200. that was in 2016 right

yeah 2016. exactly so august 2016

okay four years ago and then the

following year it jumped up to about

200 then it jumped up again at 250

and and then in 2019 it went to 500

a 500 pickup and delivery assignment

this is just like just shooting like a

shooting star

yeah and then just last month um

it went up to 700 pickup deliveries wow

and the goal of this and it doesn’t

matter whether it’s 700 or 70.

the main thing about pickup and delivery

you keep the customers you got and you

add new ones to it

so you gotta just always be adding new

customers to it but unlike a gym

membership

this actually has a high customer

retention this business i mean

and one yeah and one thing just on a

separate note

the magic number in our industry is two

for pickup and delivery

meaning if somebody orders a second time

they almost always become a regular

customer

so as you’re bringing new people on you

want to think about what’s the next step

like if you’re playing pool how do i get

the next shot in

you want to be thinking like okay they

place an order how am i going to get

them to place a second one

and so maybe you put like a card inside

their wash and fold bag that says hey

you saved

percent or five bucks or ten bucks on

your next order and because their second

time placing your

order it’s gonna be so much easier

because they don’t have to put in their

address

they don’t have to create an account you

don’t have to put in their credit card

information it’s like tap tap tap

yeah so that that’s one of the keys

that’s killer uh i i mean i knew this is

going to be a

marketing master class but that’s i mean

that’s genius just having the

uh having that magic number and it makes

a lot of sense right because once you’ve

done the initial work of putting all the

information in it’s already there

well i mean it’s already an easy process

to to

you know sign up and and create your

first order but man it’s so much

you know you’re taking away all that

friction to just

tap tap tap like you said and order and

i’ll send your laundry is done and

folded and ready

you know for you to put it away and

that’s that’s yeah and

one of the reasons why you know i want

to show that graph as well

is i think a lot of people know since

covet and the stay at home economy

that everything pickup and delivery or

especially delivery

is just growing whether it’s food or

you know groceries or amazon and laundry

it’s your clothes i mean people are

looking at ways of just getting

everything

delivered and picked up and so there’s

there there’s a number of people out

there

saying well this is just a fad the the

whole pickup and delivery thing

and so just and maybe it’s just a recent

trend since

you know march but this is this trend

has been going on for

quite some time and the people who are

doing it know it

and you know if they’re doing it well um

and so it’s kind of like i just want to

be like

preach the gospel about pickup and

delivery because you know it’s been good

good for us yeah i mean and that chart

is so telling again if you’re listening

to this on the podcast

you know click on the show notes or go

to alignmentresource.com

show 22 and i’ll have a link to that

graph because

you’ve got to see uh just the the growth

and

visually even you know it’s just

stunning he has uh every

he has every month of business from 2016

up through august of 2020 when we’re uh

you know just we’re recording this

september 2020 so

uh you can just see the growth and it

looks like growth pretty much

every month and every year is

significantly larger than the year

before

and i do think that you’re right i think

it’s only going to continue to grow

further as uh i don’t think that this is

a fad because i’m seeing it in all kinds

of industries all over the place like

you mentioned

and i think it’s only going to get more

and more prevalent so

now is the time to get in to pick up a

delivery if you

are at all interested and you have not

yet started to do so

yeah yeah and you know i kind of look at

you know who was way ahead of their time

was the pizza places

right yes they were delivering for a

long time and they’re the first

ones you know had apps where you could

schedule you know deliveries and

customize your order and so they

and if you’re opening up a pizza shop

today

why not do delivery you know if they

like pizza they’re not going to complain

if you deliver it to their home

right yeah absolutely especially yeah

especially now

you know they can’t even eat it at the

store hardly so depending on where

you’re at

well okay well let’s talk about this i

mean

this is taking a little bit of a

different format uh

but let’s talk about this because you

know let’s

like we’re just saying like now is a

good time to jump in if you haven’t yet

or maybe

you know if somebody is already doing

pickup and delivery now is a good time

to start

trying to level up your pickup and

delivery service and expand it

so maybe we can talk to uh talk to the

person who

is looking to get into the industry how

what’s a good way of going about

doing that getting into pickup and

delivery um

you know i’ve got so we started yeah

curbside laundry is it kind of going

back

a little bit one that one of the issues

we had was both in store and pickup and

delivery

and so that’s what led us to develop our

own software and

one thing is in terms of ways of getting

i’ve got a webinar that you can find on

youtube you can just do a search

for curbside laundry’s webinar and i’ve

got one about

how to get started and pick up and

delivery and and

you know what’s and that kind of goes

into what i think

this is really the future of how to

communicate with people

or i guess the future’s already here

because you know we’ve got like three

four thousand people watch that online

and i gotta say like you know the clean

show is awesome

you know i mean it it’s just there’s no

replacement to seeing everybody in

person things like that

but you you know wind up spending a

whole week spend tens of thousands of

dollars to get over there you get all

this equipment you get all those

marketing materials you got a booth

design

you gotta pay somebody to lug it from

the parking lot to there because you

can’t do it yourself

and then you walk out with like 300

leads you know

so in a way this online format is just

and in a way like and then there’s like

five minute conversations

you know i i should probably stop

talking right now but

what this going in depth talking about

marketing talk about all these things

there’s no way you could have that on a

one-on-one thing

with you know hundreds and hundreds of

people like this way

you are talking to hundreds of people

and they’re able to learn

a whole bunch and i just i’m passionate

about teaching people about like

how to do it right because you know we

want people to be successful

you know even you know one thing with

our clients

is a lot of times we’re saying okay here

are the different ways to make your

website more prominent

and here for example again you need to

be on those referral websites

whether it’s yelp and google my business

and bing and there’s probably like 75

other ones

and so we give our client that list of

those and you could

find them on your own as well with the

hyperlinks and it does take a chunk of

time

because you got to prove to each one

that you own the business right

yeah or you could you know pay us you

know like 500 bucks and

we’ll do it for you and we don’t care

whether you pay us or

you do it on your own we just want you

to do it because

the more prominent your website is our

number one source of leads

is our website yeah okay so that’s the

number one source and so

everybody’s listing do a search for your

own laundromat find

how easy or hard it is to find you know

use terms like laundry service wash and

fold

you know pick up and delivery laundry

pickup you know because we think of it

in terms of delivery

customer thinks of it in terms of i want

my laundry picked up that’s a problem

they have they have all this dirty

laundry

so you want to see how your laundry mat

is ranking

not just by your laundry map but in

different areas

and and if you tap in

to getting on top first second or third

search result you’re going to be getting

new customers for free basically every

month the second way of getting

customers is google adwords um that we

wind up paying between like three and

four bucks

per click so basically what that means

for people not familiar with google

adwords is

you can actually bid for different

keywords so if somebody goes to google

and they type in i’m looking for wash

and fold

you could bid three bucks or whatever it

is in your area

and you’ll be listed number one it’ll

say add next to it

but the b you only get charged if they

click on it so if you know that that

customer is looking for wash and fold

it kind of is worth three bucks to

all days every day i will pay

three million dollars if it’s gonna cost

me three dollars a click

because yeah your your returns are going

to be so much higher than that

it’s right so so that’s so that’s that

customer if they become a customer

they’re going to be spending hundreds of

dollars every year

so it’s a good three dollars um when

you’re first starting off though

it could you know ten three you could in

three clicks your daily budget could go

like you know there goes ten bucks right

and then you have to wait till the next

day

and so in the beginning it is sometimes

cost prohibitive

to get all of your customers by google

adwords um

we get about 25 of our business from

google adwords 75 through the website um

but it’s in the in the other

referral website that’s really big that

i see people overlooking all the time

is yelp so we get 75 people per month

from yelp who go directly to your

website supersubs.com

and you know and i’ve talked to a lot of

owners who say oh i already did yelp

but they did yelp like 10 years ago and

there’s no mention of wash and fall and

there’s no mention of pickup and

delivery and there’s no service area you

know you want a service area like a blue

shaded area on the map of where you

serve not just a little dot on the map

you know where your laundry mat is

so you’re in the delivery business you

got to let yelp know that you

you know service this entire swath of

area so it does take some work

but you do it once and then it works for

you in perpetuity

so that’s you know even if you feel

you’ve already done all these things

do it again take a look at it with fresh

eyes and is it promoting

what you want to promote yeah i love

that because you know when i was

when i first started in with my

laundromat i was doing

yelp ads and they’re not super cheap but

i was just doing it for my

laundromat and i had no real way of

tracking to see

how much business was coming from yelp

uh but i did know that it wasn’t as much

as i was spending

on my yelp ads and so i ended up

stopping but

i love what you’re saying because it’s a

different business and

there are ways to track it when you’re

doing a pickup delivery service and

they’re registering through your website

and

all of a sudden it’s a whole different

ball game so if you’re looking to start

pick up and delivery and maybe you’ve

tried yelp in the past

well this is a different business it

uses the same assets

as your maybe your self-service laundry

map but it’s really a different business

and so it does make a lot more sense

there i think i love that yeah and a lot

of people have a misconception that yelp

costs money

because you can pay the money and

but it’s you could also just have a

business listing there

so we’re not paying anything um granted

they’ll favor you and give you more

exposure if you do pay them but

you know if you are going to spend money

you’re best off

the google adwords that you’ll just get

a better return on investment

love it love it that’s i mean dude

already you’re bringing

crazy solid i mean you’re bringing hard

numbers you’re bringing

you know very practical tactics again

marketing

master class i love this and i think our

industry needs

that because you know most of us are

just

mom and pops we don’t have you know an

nba marketing from usc

uh you know over here so you know just

thank you for bringing bringing that

that’s awesome uh well

let’s talk to um

you know let’s let’s talk a little bit

about

let’s say we have a pickup and delivery

service and

we we want to expand it um and obviously

we’re going to be doing some of these

marketing things that you’re talking

about

in terms of organizing

your business are there are there any

particular things that we could be doing

just kind of make things a little bit

more efficient and i know you know maybe

talk to that but i also know that you

got some

stuff coming up with your software

that’s going to help with that a lot too

so maybe you can touch on that

also at the same time oh yeah yeah so

real soon i’m going to be putting

together a

webinar just on how to create routes and

how to be efficient as possible

because if you do it right you could

cover a bigger area

and yeah you could basically cover a

bigger area with the same amount of

resources

meaning like same number of vehicles and

that’s

one of the tip-offs that i needed to do

a webinar about this

was we’re signing up a new car a

customer was about to launch with a

pickup and delivery using our

curbside software and i said oh what

days are you doing pick up and

deliveries

and what are your time slots you know

meaning like what time could customers

schedule the pickup at

and so this is a customer is just

boarding and he said well i don’t know

and i realized oh my gosh you know i

didn’t do my job because

you know there’s a whole bunch of stuff

i need to communicate to him you know

about

because there’s a lot of ways of doing

it and i wanted to find out what works

best for him like whether he’s starting

off three days a week or four days

whether he’s doing a milk run between 8

a.m to 5 p.m or whether he’s doing it on

demand

and you know where it’s smaller time

slots more common in like new york

you where some places actually do

one-hour time slots

and of course you’ll make more money

from 8 am to 5 p.m

because you could be a lot more

efficient in your route you’re not

hitting up the north side of town

five times in the same day and you know

you can make like a beautiful route and

lower your cost and maybe pass that on a

customer

or so there’s different things and

different ways of

of doing the routes and that’s one of

the number and whatever you choose

you want to be consistent so it’s just

like with your laundromat

you’re not going to be open at 8 a.m one

day and 10

a.m the next day so with the pickup and

delivery i’d say the

most important part is consistency

so whatever days you offer it you want

to stick with it

and i’d say so that’s something it’s a

new feature in our software

that allows people to service different

areas on different days of the week

meaning so you could do the east side of

town because there’s some places in

texas where they’re in the middle of

nowhere but they got a big town to the

left and a big town to the right

and there’s no way they’re going left

and right on the same day so

and so one of the things that the places

like that need and even for us

you know like we don’t want to we’re

seven days a week pickup and delivery

but and we’re expanding our reach but we

don’t want to go to those new places

seven days a week until there’s more

money being made you know you want to

grow

organically or you’re making money along

the way and if you just start offering

seven days a week to some place that’s

far away

it’s not gonna be profitable and you

know we’re all here to make some money

so now with the software we’re able to

say okay we’re going to go

service those areas on these three days

monday wednesday and friday

and as it gets busier well that’s

saturday as it gets busier we’ll add a

second shift

so that’s kind of our approach and i

think that really helps

you got to figure out and a very common

mistake people make

is they make their surface area too

small so

it’s because they’re looking at it from

the prism of their laundromat

they’re saying well the only people come

to my laundromat are within two miles

so i’m just gonna service to pick up a

delivery within like two or

five miles you know you could go we’re

doing like 10 15 mile radius

granted we have the ocean on one side

but

you know you got wheels use them you

know it’s less

customer per square mile but

there’s a lot more square miles you

could service right yeah

yeah that i mean it’s definitely one of

the big differences

and what makes it a different business

than the self-service you’re

you’re obviously your range can be a lot

bigger

um and you’re right that it’s less

customers per square mile

but you have so much more area that you

can service that

you know it more than makes up for it so

i i mean

i i love that are you are you seeing

uh i mean i’m sure you’re seeing all

over the board but

is there like a and i’m sure it depends

on population density and all that stuff

but is there like a minimum radius that

you kind of recommend

people start with so the best place in

my opinion to start with is nearby your

laundromat

and the reason for that is you’re going

to rank better on google

because you have a bricks and mortar

location the

other thing i’m very passionate about

you know it’s not a requirement there

are

people successful doing it both ways but

if you operate under the same brand name

as your laundromat

you’re going to start making money

faster and and it’ll actually lower your

advertising expenses as well

because going back to google adwords if

you’re promoting your self-serve

as one brand say like it’s super suds

and we were like super you know totally

different brand

for pickup and delivery you miss out on

the opportunity to

upsell the people at your laundromat to

pick up and delivery

because they’re looking for washable and

they don’t even know you do pick up and

delivery

and then you’re also missing out on the

opportunity to

um now if you’re doing google adwords

you know now you’re promoting two

different businesses and google adwords

works like a bidding system

so you’re actually driving the minimum

cost per click up

in your your own worst competition so

so as far as where to best start

i would brand them the same so that way

you get google gives you

bonus google points or google juice

for having a bricks and mortar location

so and so naturally you’re going to rank

better so

so in essence they’re having to

create a virtual company out of thin air

and meanwhile if you’re a laundry owner

you probably spend a few bucks on that

laundromat and it gives you a huge

amount of assets so my recommendation is

use that asset

um you know because if you start up a

virtual company with a different brand

name

you’re not leveraging that um so

so so that’s and i find places that have

laundromats just do

way way better than people who don’t

there are a lot of people who don’t have

a laundromat who are successful

because they have a business plan and

they know they’re focused on how to get

customers they’re not just waiting for

people to place orders

but by and large if they don’t have a

laundromat and they’re just looking to

pick up and delivery

the good news for laundry owners is most

of them i mean this is not

great news but most of them actually

don’t succeed because they put up the

website they’re not getting business

they don’t really have a business plan

so um

and the other thing is you want software

that tells you where your customers

are because we there’s no way of

really knowing there’s certain zip codes

we found that no matter how much we pump

into there like from

google advertising we weren’t getting a

return so you want to look at your

spend where you’re spending money and

look at your google adwords as part of

your

your utility bill it’s just the cost of

business and we keep it about the same

even though our business is way way up

because there’s only so many people

looking for pickup and delivery each

month and you either get them or you

don’t

you can’t just make that market bigger

so we’re so you want to review your data

see where you’re advertising seeing what

works and then decide do i want to up

the spend over there or

decrease it and reallocate that

yeah killer killer stuff and

you know i think uh i mean you touched

on a lot of

things there and you know you know i

i get asked the question a lot can you

start a pickup and delivery

business before you own a laundromat and

like you said the answer that is

yes in fact we had um someone on the

podcast recently who started that way

and is actually

going backwards now and as now trying to

get locations just because

you know the margins are much better

when you have a location let alone you

know your marketing advantages and all

that stuff

you know just your efficiency and your

margin

everything just is more favorable when

you own your own

store your own equipment and all that

stuff so

you can do it but you’re right it’s very

tough to do it you have to be very

intentional about the way that you’re

doing you have to have a solid business

plan you have to be able to execute that

business plan

if you’ll stay organized you have to be

able to you know all this stuff

in order to make that work so if you’re

an existing laundromat owner

you’ve got a leg up right now uh to be

able to

jump into the business do well succeed

and

and to really you know own your area

yeah one of my

favorite parts about pickup and delivery

is it is a separate business

it is using your laundry mat so now it’s

transforming your laundry mat to three

different revenue

sources you got your self-serve you have

your wash and fold

inner pickup and delivery and you know

one of them takes a hit

because you know there’s a coin shortage

or there’s this or that or anything

you’ve got something else and so

diversification i think is probably your

best protection

and it just happens to be that

diversifying into pickup and delivery

now you’re tapping into the fastest

growing segment of the market

um i will say you still need to analyze

your market

because every market is different so

we’ve got

you know a client in nashville who’s

just going bananas like their business

is going

going so great i mean he was yeah i

can’t get into details but

um he’s doing very well and

he’s growing at a fast clip and every

month it’s getting bigger

i think he’s okay with me saying that um

the

then somebody outside of nashville about

an hour out

great operators but they have a

different issue

people aren’t looking for wash and pull

or pickup and delivery because they

don’t know it’s a thing

and so you do need to be aware of your

market like

is it already mature is it already are

people looking for it because

when we started pickup and delivery the

google adwords only did so much because

there are only so many people looking

for it

so we had to invest more in awareness

campaigns you know the banner ads where

you pay like 50 bucks for

2000 impressions and you’re just hoping

you find somebody

but just increasing awareness so

um another source with brand new

i know i’m kind of jumping all over the

place but

another great source of customers are

your customers

so if you’re doing in-store wash and

fold

um at the bottom of our tickets that we

print out you can customize the bottom

and it says schedule your next laundry

pickup at

supersubs.com here’s five bucks off

and use use this promo code so

we love so a lot of laundry owners say

why would you want to cannibalize your

business

if they’re dropping off at the

laundromat i’m going to be i’m going to

be making more money than if i have to

go pick it up

but what winds up happening in reality

and this is where having the experience

like helps is we know when they do a

pickup and delivery they’re going to

give us about 40 some pounds of clothes

versus 20. so when they bring in laundry

to your laundry mat they’re not carrying

in i mean you go to the gym that 25

pound weight you know that’s something

imagine carrying two of those like you

know it it

it it and your kid on your hip and

throwing another toddler behind you

yeah yeah i mean that now you’re lugging

stuff around and

it’s a lot easier to take those two 25

pound weights and put them in front of

your house

than it is to take them all the way to

the laundromat and stuff your trunk with

smelly laundry for half the day until

you get there

so yes so the pickup and delivery

they’re going to spend more and it’s

such a difference

that once a day at our laundromat

somebody drops off their laundry

in person and this is also and it turns

out

that we we offer and we deliver it home

to them we keep it at the same price

and generally we do it on the bigger

orders hey if you want we could drop

that off at your house like oh really

you do that that’s great

and once they get hooked on that they’re

hooked yeah and

and and so that’s you know great source

another reason

our software does both the in-store

point of sale and pickup and delivery

so it’s one system one database you

don’t have to train your employees

on two different systems and that also

makes it really easy when

they drop off their laundry in person

that you could deliver at home to them

let me ask you this question i mean this

might be actually i have a few dumb

questions to ask you

uh those are my favorite if you could

just humor me um but

this one i just had a curiosity just

popped in my head

is it possible to uh

to run a pickup and delivery

out of your laundromat without doing a

like a drop-off service and just say hey

we only do

that that was a really good question

i know it’s possible right i’m

i’m thinking if we i’m wondering if we

have any clients who are doing that so

we have about 200 some

people customers you know they’re

let me tell you why i asked this

question is because i think

that you know there’s a little still a

lot of laundromat owners out there who

run

unattended laundromats but if they want

[Music]

you know get into the pickup delivery

game i mean it’s

it seems like pretty daunting to have to

hire employees to be there all day

before you have the business and you

know and maybe they don’t want to hang

out there all day so maybe they want to

try to start off with

doing pick up and delivery either

themselves or they can hire somebody as

as needed basis uh and run it but

not have somebody at the store all the

time to

be available for pickup and delivery

yeah

my recommendation on that is maybe have

limited i mean it’s not ideal but maybe

limited drop-off hours

so by and large almost everybody doing

pickup and delivery

is doing in-store wash and fold because

it’s and i would master the wash and

fold in store first

and then tack on pickup and delivery

after that

just because you have more moving pieces

and you’ve got

you don’t want to inundate your

employers too quickly

you know granted you know because if

you’re you want to do one thing at a

time

and if you’re just throwing all the

stuff at them that’s that’s a lot of

moving parts

um so i think it would be easier to do

wash and fold

and then add pickup and delivery my one

thing if you do follow that advice is

we also have clients who got complacent

you know where their

in-store wash and fall started going off

the hook

because then now they got the website

and they got all the stuff and they’re

doing everything right

and then they’re like why should i do

pick up a delivery that seems like a

pain

so because it is extra work you know

yeah

because it is a pain right you got it

the driver is the hardest person to hire

you gotta make you know insurance

i mean everything’s solvable but yeah it

is extra work

and my advice is to stay hungry

don’t leave all this money on the table

because that’ll increase the resale

value of your laundromat

and you’re gonna make more so it kind of

comes from a family of maximizers where

we got this laundromat

and one of the visions we had was

keeping the machines running at night

time

always spinning and the way we

accomplished that is

pickup and delivery and we’re just

bringing in you know

close to a thousand pound i forget

exactly how many pounds a day but

um just sometimes like 1400 pounds a day

and and it’s and so

we’ve got a night crew that comes in

sometimes between like five and six

people

to do laundry um just throughout the

night

while the laundry mat is closed and then

we open our doors at seven a.m

and you know sometimes we’ll still have

like two or three hundred pounds left

over

so you know we’re rushing to get that

done before so we can load them all in

the truck and

get them out delivered yeah yeah

uh can you talk to me just a little bit

about how just

maybe like nuts and bolts i don’t know

if we’ve ever talked about it here so

maybe somebody’s totally unfamiliar with

you know pickup delivery and how it

would even work

uh how do you how are you keeping

track of like the actual clothes i’m

assuming you’re not mixing clothes

in the washers and can you tell me just

a little bit like nuts and bolts how

does that process work in terms of

how do you know what laundry’s wear at

various points in the process

yeah great question and that’s all stuff

we incorporated

into the software so and we basically

copied our

pen and paper system but now it’s

reliable and automated

so so step number one

before the driver it actually starts

before the driver leaves to pick up the

clothes

so he goes into the software hits print

all and it prints all the tickets

of all the different pickups he’s going

to be picking up so nice ticket where

you can label the orders

and and that way you know who belong

which belongs to

each person then when he gets back

or she gets back from being on the road

then we unload each order and so you

simply tap

well when he’s going to pick up the

order

one one quick thing a very important

piece is you need to communicate with

the customer

the most expensive thing is driving out

there and there’s no laundry

so which comes that’s communication

issue so the day before the software

automatically emails people i mean this

stuff would take forever to do by hand

and then and then you’ve got when the

driver is in route he taps in route on

his tablet

and then the customer gets a text

message saying you know super suds will

be there in

15 minutes if there’s a problem please

call

so then he picks up the laundry after he

finishes his route

goes back to the laundry sometimes he

needs to go back first because it’s

overflowing and then he taps unload and

he unloads each order one at a time

we weigh the clothes both when we unload

and then after the clothes are laundered

and that’s very important and most

people don’t do it because it’d be just

more tracking but it’s so easy with the

software because

it grabs the weight automatically from

the scale you just tap add weight

so so that information is super handy

because in case an order gets

it helps prevent orders from getting

mixed up

because then you could see you know

bob’s order you know gain five pounds

and sally’s order lost five pounds

and and then you’re able to know exactly

which attendant worked on that order

because when you’re hiring somebody new

you you know you train them as good as

you can

and you know exactly who to talk to if

there’s an issue so you can fix that

um so the second thing is more common

is somebody says hey you lost my jacket

you know i and i’m guilty of

blaming stuff on the cleaning person um

so because they think you’re the last

person to touch their clothes and i’m

missing my jacket

and they left it in their cart or

something right and and

so now we have the initial weight we

have the final weight it’s

displayed beautifully on the screen and

we show it to them and then they say oh

my mistake i probably have misplaced it

and and so that helps protect us

then we put the orders in a bin so

because

everybody gives you their clothes in

different bags and the socks just love

to jump out of those bags

and and if and that might not seem like

a big problem somebody lives as a sock

but

it’s a huge problem because those socks

are going to go in somebody else’s order

and when somebody else gets somebody

else’s sock or undergarment in their

clothes

you just lost a customer yeah it’s weird

it’s just weird

you have a bigger chance of losing the

customer got somebody else’s clothes and

the guy who’s like missing clothes he

doesn’t realize

so so it is such a costly

and if you lose one customer that’s

hundreds that could be like 500 bucks a

year

you know or thousands so

so we put each order inside a bin

then we we track each order from

you know through the software as well

the the attendants use tablets

and you could use the main kiosk if you

want and then you tap wash

and you could even choose which machine

you’re using and how much you’re putting

in the machine

so you could track all that information

and a lot of laundromats are using

spiral notebooks and they’re having

their manager look over all the reports

and there’s and with ours it’s just

doing it automatically it knows that

machine is two and a half bucks or three

bucks a start

and then you got a report that you could

access the softwares in the cloud so you

could access it from anywhere from your

phone or at home

and you could see hey why did you know

johnny spend over 40 percent

of the order total on machines

you know so you could just go right down

the column and just look at the

percentage of how much money they spent

if that number is over 40 percent or you

know your numbers may be different

but if it goes over a certain percentage

you know that they

are either using the wrong machines or

they’re giving themselves a raise

you know either way so um so that’s

really important to know who’s tracking

to track who’s working on which order

and

and we even track where where each bin

is located

so this order when the driver unloads it

he says i’m putting on shelf number

three

and and the other really important thing

whether using software or pen and paper

the most important thing is to write

down the number of packages

and and basically because the most

common

mistake is a customer comes into the

store

and the tenant is kind of you know

adrenaline’s going they’re trying to

find the order really quick they find

the first bag they see they hand it back

to the customer

customer gets home and they realize hey

i’m missing all these clothes

the tenant goes looks on the shelf and

they go oh you still have two bags left

over here

and now that and so you think problem

solved but from the customer’s point of

view they paid for convenience

now they’re driving back to the laundry

yeah

um so that’s and on pickup and delivery

that still happens

if you don’t write down the number of

packages one you might not load the

vehicle with all those clothes

two when you get to their house you

might not give them all their clothes

so and then you have to drive back so

there’s a lot of little

there’s not like any one major mistake

in wash and fold

there’s a whole bunch there’s no silver

bullet it’s creating good

software or processes it’s really a

whole bunch of little mistakes that over

time you say oh i’m not going to make

that mistake again

and we basically bake that into the

software to help prevent those mistakes

from

ever happening real quick i got this

i was talking to somebody who’s looking

at different software

and he goes man let me explain the

situation i’m having

and then tell me if your software would

help and he explained the situation

i’m like well there’s about nine

different reasons that could never

happen

using our software so you know just

a lot of we all kind of know what the

mistakes are it’s just

handwriting is a big mistake you know

the not putting in the decimal

we had somebody manually using

in the weight instead of using in the

scale and they didn’t put in a zero

or or they did it they didn’t put in the

decimal point

you know so it’s a big difference big

difference

and and so that turns into a big issue

where if you just tap add weight

um it’s that’s that scale saves a huge

number of mistakes

um so as much stuff as you could

automate every time there’s handwriting

there’s potential mistakes so that’s

probably the best advice is you want to

just

get away from pen and paper yeah and i

would say

even even beyond that i mean you’re

equally likely to make a mistake when

you’re manually adding

weight into the software and so you know

anything you can automate is going to be

way

better so finding a good software that

is automating as much as possible and

eliminating that human error

because that’s really the most costly

thing in pretty much

any business is the human error

and every human error you can eliminate

through using an

automated feature in a software is gonna

really benefit

your business but also your sanity as

you’re trying to

you know undo all of the damage that

you’ve done

through a small it could be a really

small error in an innocent error but

you know again yeah you lose one

customer that could be

500 plus dollars a year yeah and then it

makes hiring

easier when you have an automated system

because then you’re looking for

just these the skill set over here where

there’s a lot of laundry owners who they

say

i’ve got this manager who basically

there could be problems with that

manager but they would never do anything

because

the whole business is in that custom

that manager’s head

and there’s all these nuances and

details all in their head

so by automating it by having a system

that’s designed for laundry

it gets the business out of people’s

heads and makes it approachable so any

of your attendance they just do tap tap

tap

they create the order and they don’t

even realize they avoided all these

potential

landmines and pitfalls they it just

works yeah

yeah exactly i love that and i love uh

that your software is building in all of

these things

and is learning i love that you guys are

you’re learning from all your customers

and your own experience and building

those lessons

into your software because you know then

you know owners and operators who are

using your software aren’t having to

learn those lessons

because they’ve already been learned and

they’ve already been dealt with and

they’re not

issues any longer you know there’ll be

new issues there’s always new issues but

you know you can as you’re eliminating

with your software and you’re rolling

out these big software updates and

everything

i mean killer killer thing and i love

that you guys are just kind of on this

mission to make things more efficient

optimize your family of maximizers and

optimizers i love that

and uh and kind of passing that on to

your customers

killer killer killer yeah it’s a lot of

fun and i

one you know one thing when you’re

looking at software solutions for your

laundromat

you know because you’re it’s a big

decision it’s the platform your pickup

and delivery is on

one thing and there’s a lot of stuff you

would never even know to ask about

that’s one of the challenges too so i

recommend talking to a bunch of people

i’ll give you an example we have this

client who’s

using something else in the past and one

question is how does the software

charge the credit card and when okay so

our software is automatic

you know the tenant weighs it for the

final time after the close are clean

and they say two comforters you know 30

pounds whatever it is

and then unbeknownst to the attendant

the software automatically charges the

customer’s credit card

you don’t have to do a thing you know

and and then if the credit card doesn’t

go through the software automatically

emails the customer

and says hey it turns out your credit

card didn’t go through click here to

update your

credit card information so it’s all

automatic that used to be a job

and that’s not in everybody’s skill set

to call up and say hey

deadbeat your credit card didn’t go

through you know like you know

or leave that on the voicemail and you

know it’s just not

you know that could cause issues right

there you could lose somebody good you

know it could just be

expiration date so so this

is so we basically took a whole bunch of

jobs but

going back to that story about

in in the software he was using he had

to go in

every single day and manually charge

everybody’s credit cards

and if he didn’t do that the order would

not appear

in the next day’s driver list so he

would wake up with panic attacks whether

he’s on vacation or not

because he’s only one who could do it

and he had to log in and charge charge

charge one at a time

and and he’s just tired of that because

now he’s like living

you know instead of the software doing

the job it’s like he’s doing it

yeah yeah and how would you even know to

ask that question

you know so probably one of the most

important things when you are looking at

software is how often do they update the

software

and we are investing five figures every

month

making the software better and better

and better all the time and there’s no

end in sight

and i actually see that as a good thing

because

over time the barrier of entry for you

know

people getting into this business

whether it’s you know on the software

side

they’re gonna see what we’ve done and

say okay let me go over there instead of

over here because this is already taken

care of

and so we just see it as we want to make

that barrier of entry for other

you know and and look everybody’s making

the software choices are way better than

they were like five years ago it’s

almost like non-existent

um that being said you want to make sure

they’re constantly updating

because the needs of tomorrow are going

to be different than the needs of today

yeah that’s i mean that’s why i mean we

see we see that

not just in our industry but you know

everywhere the world’s just changing so

fast i mean look at this

2020 and how much has changed this year

alone and you know we’re i don’t even

think we’re like three quarters of the

way through it yet i’m a little

nervous about what’s happening the rest

of this year but i think only good

things it’s going up

yeah and speaking of good things pickup

and delivery is growing

you know if we were looking at just our

in-store wash and fold

it’s down like a hundred orders compared

to it was like a year or two ago

our in-store and maybe it’s because

we’re converting them to pickup and

delivery

but our commercial right after kovit had

dropped 75

i mean that was devastating it is coming

back

um so it is coming back but

if we’re our self-serve got hit about 25

percent

and and so we were just like holding

tight you know

if you’re just hugging that tree and you

don’t want to let go and like i just

gotta hug it harder

you know you’re gonna be just holding on

to a

something that may be depreciating in a

sense

um versus what’s fun and what energizes

you and what gets people

up in the morning is like when your

business is growing and to me that’s the

fun part about pickup delivery this is a

growing segment

you know this is a huge opportunity um

it is getting more competitive so you

can’t just throw up a website and just

say okay

everything’s done you know you need to

pay attention to it and um

constantly evaluate what your online

presence looks like

you know that there’s it does take you

know you gotta attend the garden

yeah absolutely absolutely let me ask

you this what

what does it cost to do i mean i know

the answer to this actually but

what does it cost to do uh pick up into

or you know have a pickup and delivery

order

in you know southern california because

i’ve been asking

various people around the country and

the numbers are

like surprisingly dramatically different

depending on where you’re at so what

can you give us a ballpark yeah so we’re

a dollar seventy

so it’s it’s accurate yeah yeah so we’re

dollar 75

we just changed our pricing because with

the new software we got the ability

for customers to schedule recurring

pickup and deliveries

so that way they could say i want a

weekly pickup

and so we wanted to nudge people in that

direction because you nudge them in that

direction

they’re going to instead of spending

like 500 some dollars a year

if they’re every other week they’re

gonna be spending about seventeen

hundred dollars a year

if they’re weekly it’s gonna be thirty

four hundred dollars a year add a dollar

seventy

so we’re a dollar seventy five if they

schedule it one time

and we’re a dollar 65 that they schedule

weekly

we are about to release a new feature

where it’s going to be a same-day pickup

and from the customer’s point of view

it’s going to be like magic because

they’re going to be on their phone

and keep in mind maybe they’re running

low on some type of

garment and they they need the clothes

done i mean from our point of view

waiting until monday if it’s tuesday for

a pickup is forever

they can’t do it they’re going to go to

another website so

if you could do a same day pick up which

we will soon and our clients will too

how much extra do you charge for that

you know i’m thinking

not 25 or 30 premium like we do in store

for same day

service thinking like a whole extra

dollar because

we’re going to weed out the people who

are just going to choose if we go 30

cents

you know we don’t need the 30 cents that

bad but if it’s a whole dollar

then it’s the people who like i know and

their message even pops up

same day pickup is 270 per pound

so and they have to hit okay that way

they don’t think you’re always 270.

so yeah yeah and i see that as a huge

opportunity then it’ll just pop up on

the driver’s list it’ll say hey new

order just got added

and we make sure there’s still time to

do that route you know with that new

pickup but from the customer’s point of

view it’s gonna be magic that

it could be ten o’clock and they could

schedule a pickup for eleven to two

like one hour from now and and then

superset shows up

and then we’re making a lot per pound so

you know for a lot of people it’s not so

much about the money it’s they just need

it done

so that’s yeah but the prices do range

across the country

new york is like 90 cents a dollar per

pound yeah

nuts no it’s crazy it’s crazy

but it’s just interesting to hear like

what different people are charging and

how

kind of that all plays uh you know and

and some of it’s not super intuitive but

you know if you had asked me before

about new york i would have assumed it

was a lot higher me too

right and a lot of people in like the

midwest um

are very surprised even just at like our

vend prices

you know here on the west coast or

because they’re charging like

double what we charge right competition

is just so much lower there i guess i

don’t know

but it’s just yeah and then one thing i

get

a lot of questions on is commercial

people are wondering how to bid them

how to how to price it yeah i mean i

could probably do like an hour thing on

just that but the you know my big

picture recommendation

is we are in the low volume high margin

business

and that’s important to remember you’re

never going to be able to compete

against centes

they’re in the high volume low margin

nor do you want to be in that business

and and so you know we just do like 10

or 20 cents lower per pound for some of

these commercial accounts and because

we’re in a labor intensive business and

you know you don’t want to be working

for peanuts so so i think it is

another way for the commercial accounts

negotiate a better price is let them

know we’re going to be doing a

price increase pretty soon so we’re

going to grandfather you in for

we’re going to skip the next price

increase basically so everybody else

will be paying this

and we’ll keep you at buck 60. so not

only are you paying 10 cents less but

you’re not going to get the

you know bumped up so they feel like

they’re saving more as well

but the big pictures i i

just would hesitate on doing some huge

discount for some of these places that

promise huge volumes and sometimes the

volume is there and sometimes it isn’t

so you’re best off just protecting

yourself

yeah i love that well

uh i want to ask uh i mean you’ve been

giving like

crazy uh crazy good

information crazy good tips this whole

like this is

jam packed i can’t even believe it i’m

like blown away i’m taking

notes over here furiously and there’ll

be a ton of these notes in the show

notes so make sure you go check these

out

uh they’ll be extensive show notes for

this episode because you’re

bringing it today i love it thank you

very much um

tell me before we get into uh just a

little bit more

you know as we as we finish up uh

what are your guys’s plans for the

future i mean obviously you’re trying to

expand your pickup and delivery

do you have any other uh kind of goals

that you guys are working towards or is

that your main

your focus laser focused on that you

know

it’s such a good question when after

covert

hit in my immediate response was to

just cl you know turtle up because you

know it it’s just like shocking i mean

the mindset back then is different than

it is now

you know and and at the same time my dad

is like

you went out and bought another vehicle

and another delivery vehicle

and i’m like and this would be and

because he did see the numbers were

going up but still

i was like you know you’re spending

money now like we didn’t know what was

going to happen

and he goes look it’s about 700 bucks

you know for it’s a zero percent

interest loan

and for seven hundred dollars we’re able

to per month

we’re now able you know one person pays

rent that’s like 1800 bucks so like half

of one person person’s rent

you’re able to expand into this huge

another area and i personally

you know this is the other thing i

should probably lay off but i think

pickup and delivery was being kept a

secret for a long long time in our

industry because

the model before was oh you’ve got a

successful laundromat go buy another one

and go buy a whole bunch more machines

and if you’re doing that go buy another

one and it took a long time to groom

these owners to teach them how to do it

and go buy a whole bunch

and i got somebody with seven laundry

mats who says he’s never gonna buy

another laundromat

it’s just gonna go by another vehicle

for 700 bucks a month

so for 700 bucks a month we’re now we

increased our reach we’re servicing a

huge other area

i’m full time on curbside and then also

helping with the marketing at

supersets to help just keep the business

growing

but if i wasn’t doing curbside full-time

i i there’s there’s this

person who’s gonna be switching over to

our software real soon and

she had something real interesting to

say like why aren’t and she’s doing this

huge huge area

and and she’s like why don’t more people

do that

and she’s doing banging business and

it’s all pick up and delivery

and she has one laundromat and making

more than most

like she could have a ton of like a

dozen laundry mats and she’s still

making more

she’s got like five drivers on the road

all the time

non-stop so it’s

you know there’s a huge opportunity

granted you can’t start off that way you

got to just grow organically

be whatever you could commit from a

marketing point of view you got to be

able to stick to it

and and and be consistent

so that’s that’s something to to focus

on as well is um

you don’t want it’s not the super bowl

where you just put down all the spend

all at once and try and get as many

customers as you want

you’re best off sticking to it whatever

your monthly budget is

on marketing and you know being in it

for the long haul

yeah well i appreciate you sharing that

not only because i think it’s super

valuable information but i do think that

there

uh has been a lack of you know

you say maybe you should stay away from

it maybe i should stay away from it but

but i do think that there has been a

uh a lack of focus on the laundromat

owner

and an emphasis on helping them succeed

uh by the industry

uh you know plug in your your player in

the industry but

but the money is made through focusing

on those distributors on the vendors

and and and sometimes at the cost and at

the detriment of the laundromat owner so

i mean it’s a big part of the reason why

i’m doing what i’m doing and why i know

that you decided to come on

and talk about you know what you guys

are doing uh

because you know i

the laundromat owner needs to be first i

mean the customer needs to be first

that’s who the industry is all about

and so i i just appreciate you saying

that and you know hopefully it doesn’t

get you into any trouble but

all right yeah and for new laundromat

owners

if you’re looking for different

opportunities something that’s

very often overlooked is storage

see nobody makes money selling you an

empty room okay they make money when

they fill it up with machines

so but storage is like hard drive space

on your computer you can never have

enough

okay so so you want to have storage

there are ways we’ve got clients who are

like 1 600 square feet who are doing

great great great

business you know they got airbnb

accounts that have 100 customers and

that’s all

i don’t know where they’re storing their

clothes but they made it work that being

said

the more storage the better because

ultimately and it adds and flows you

know at the end of the day our driver

unloads or we’ve got four vehicles they

unload a ton of clothes

and and then just at night time our

shelves fill up and in the morning they

empty out as their

hit the road so you have to have enough

storage for your peak

time and um so that’s something that’s

easily overlooked people like oh i never

thought about

having storage space it wasn’t in their

mindset so that’s something

you do need to keep a look at yeah

yeah yeah and i that’s that’s always

true and i think it’s especially true if

you’re thinking about going in the

pickup and delivery and or even just

drop off service

because you gotta have the places to put

stuff

while you’re waiting right i’d say

probably even more so if you’re just

doing the

um you know the the drop off because

sometimes those customers don’t come

back for

weeks on end and you’re all right a lot

of their stuff i don’t know

that’s another thing like in our

software that we added that we’re so

happy

about um so laundromats could easily

turn into a storage facility

and and so one thing we do is is we

automatically text them that their

clothes are ready for pickup

then after seven days and 14 they also

get more

that the texts or emails are

automatically sent out or you can just

tap

to remind them the other way of

preventing from becoming a storage

facility is

pay at pickup i’m sorry pay when you

drop it off

so so all of our customers they pay when

they drop it off

or they keep a credit card on file and

then they’re automatically charged

on the dry weight after clothes are

clean and laundered but we have the

credit card on file so it’s paid for

if you let customers pay at pickup a lot

of times they’ll

decide they’d rather have their 40 bucks

than their clothes you just stick

clothes for free

[Music]

so that’s and they’re going to take a

lot longer they have to wait till payday

and and you’re just holding onto their

clothes and you’re like why is this

happening it’s because you’re doing

payout pickup

um that’s something in our software

initially when we hit the road in 2017

we did not have that because we’re like

you should not do a pi pickup

and and so but then there’s so many

laundry owners where it’s like it’s

too hard to switch you know if your

customers are used to it

so i i would consider grandfathering

those customers in but for new people

i would get rid of payout pickup so we

did add that functionality just because

we needed

it for our curbside clients but for us

and i’d say for most laundry mats you’re

much better off having them pay

when they drop it off yeah especially if

you haven’t started that yet

exactly yeah hey uh i mean i know uh

you’ve given so much this episode but we

have a little section we like to call

secret sauce listen up it’s the secret

sauce

[Music]

and that is for laundromat owners

current laundromat owners what’s one

thing that’s working well

so i mean you’ve given so many like

crazy good

tips but maybe if you had to pick one

one thing

that’s working well in your business

that you could recommend other owners

kind of implement

to their business to help their

businesses grow you got

you got one thing you could point to the

secret sauce

is the website that is the number one

marketing tool

and you want your website to be the

centerpiece

of all of your marketing so so for

example

and to make your website work better you

want

more other websites different websites

pointing to it such as yelp and google

my business

another little secret sauce is get pr

get there’s free pr out there for you to

take you know whether you’re doing

pickup and delivery like how you’re

responding to you know current

conditions you know how

and you could call up that local

newspaper and

said write a press release and tell them

what you’re doing whether you’re adding

pickup and delivery whether you’re doing

ozone whether you’re

whatever it is you’re doing something

special let that

the pr the local newspapers do it then

when you’re getting interviewed by the

reporter and they’re always looking for

good news

you want to ask hey can you help me out

could you mention

ww could you mention supersuds.com in

your article

and the reason for that is not for all

the people reading it

the paper and then they’re gonna go type

into your website

the reason for that is you want them to

mention supersets.com in their online

edition

because now when you get that local

paper that local paper has crazy domain

authority

because they’ve been writing they’ve

been publishing a lot of stuff for a lot

of years

and they’re like you know the got crazy

domain

authority for your location for your

neighborhood so if you get that local

paper to mention the name of your url

your website that’s golden

so that’ll just make your website that

much more effective so people can find

you

but i i would definitely and if you

don’t have that skill set for all the

website stuff

talk to somebody who does because it’s

the centerpiece i mean imagine if you

had a store

and it had wooden windows you know like

it was just blocked out and you had no

sign and nobody even knew you’re there

you’re losing so much business

that’s your website either people can

see you or they don’t

and it doesn’t matter how beautiful the

website is it matters

how well designed the seo is because

that’s

affects whether they even find you or

not yeah yeah

killer killer secret sauce is way to

bring it again

over delivering once again pro

tips well hey this question’s for the

the newbie the person who may be trying

to buy their first laundromat

and or get into pickup and delivery uh

your choice kind of which way you want

to go with that

um but what’s one piece of advice you’d

give to somebody

either trying to buy their first

laundromat or trying to start up a

uh pick up and delivery like your number

one tip

okay number one tip for somebody buying

the laundromat is do your own due

diligence

and don’t believe anything okay so man

that’s so good

i mean i wish somebody would have told

me that when i was buying the first

laundromat

yeah i’ve see i’ve you know i i’ve

talked to some great great owners who

who are really good operators and it’s

usually the good people who fall for it

because they

assume that everybody else is good just

like they are and

and there’s some not so good or

scrupulous people out there

who and there’s every single trick in

the trade and i

hesitate to even mention um what people

do because i don’t want bad people

saying oh that’s a good idea

um so but i will say

don’t you know if if you’re looking at a

water bill

that shows the certain water you’re

trying to calculate it well if that’s

just last month

is that a pattern or just last month

they had a spike and that’s the one that

they’re showing you

you know if there’s non-resettable coin

counters

you how much does that really mean you

know so you need to do spot checks you

need to know how many people are coming

in and do the numbers add up

you’re a lot of times when you find a

location you’re going to want it to work

and that greed factor of like wanting

ignoring what’s in your face of like

the stuff you actually see with your own

eyes that might be turned off because

you really want this opportunity to work

and you make your money on the buy so if

you get a good deal on it

you know or if there’s something you

know there’s a lease agreement that’s

ending in a couple years and it’s up in

the air

you better get that solved before you go

and you know so

you really want you’ll save a lot of

money if you wait for the right

opportunity

you know be hungry look for the right

opportunity but don’t force it so that

that’s my

number one advice for new owners please

listen to this advice i mean that’s

really really great great advice and you

know just that feeling of wanting to

make

a deal work and wanting to kind of force

a deal to work i see that all the time

in coaching where

you know clients will bring a laundromat

deal

and it’s just not a good

deal and they’re being deceived and it’s

obvious to somebody who knows and it’s

not obvious to someone who doesn’t know

so do your own due diligence and also

i always tell people bring in somebody

else who knows the internet

important does not depend on you buying

that laundromat you know pay him if you

have to

yeah if you know somebody in the

industry that’s willing to help you out

get that

it doesn’t matter just get somebody else

in there that knows

what to look for these little tricks of

the trade that you’re not going to know

are happening to you because that’s what

happened to me

so yeah so that yeah i mean you could

always

recover you could always do different

things to to boost things up

but it just makes things easier when

that monthly nugget is

you know more manageable and and that’s

great advice like if

there’s a lot of ways to get blindsided

and but if you have

a advisor that you trust that knows the

business

has helped other people buy stuff and is

more relationship based

not transactional based that’s really

the key

yeah before we wrap things up is do you

have any resources that you would

recommend

to somebody maybe in particular you know

for pickup and delivery

but you know also generally speaking uh

you know to help them

just improve their knowledge i mean you

got the mba maybe business knowledge

and or personal growth knowledge

yeah i’d say the um

so you know one thing is so we’ve got

the curbside

laundry youtube page um and and so

we’ve got different webinars about how

to get into pickup and delivery

how to get commercial accounts um it

talks a lot about seo

so there’s a and there’s probably about

like 10 some hours of

content on there and probably more and

it’s you know there’s a lot of

information out there

and so i’d and i’d also go

with people in the business just because

there’s no way like an engineer

architect you know who doesn’t know the

laundry business intimately

is going to be able to solve i mean we

get

um just yeah i’d say like

we get phone calls from you know from

people you know

from our clients you know asking about

this or that and there’s gonna be stuff

you haven’t even thought about but

these situations come up and you want to

have a resource like whether it’s

through your software

and still like for free we’re just

helping people out you know it’s part of

because we want them to be successful so

i i’d say

even creating a relation you know that’s

another thing

the software is the software all right

and some you know

there’s sort of like an ebb and flow

like oh these guys just came out that

feature these guys came out that or

but i’d say the the relationship is

probably the most important because

situations come up like hey what do i do

in this situation uh

like i give somebody some advice that

helped him get a commercial account

that he might not have otherwise you

know he didn’t even know how to approach

um and now he’s got a solid account

that’s weekly

um so i’d say networking is really

important

um i’d say the facebook groups

you know or you know laundry resources

you know just you want to surround

yourself with like-minded owners

because situations are going to come up

and just like you need a good support

system for your family

you also want a good support system for

your laundromat so i’d say the number

one advice i have is create that support

system because otherwise you’re going to

have to learn everything on your own

you know we learned a ton from the coin

laundry association from their forum

you know when we’re first getting

started up and we’re very thankful for

all the

advice we got and now i see things

transitioning to new mediums just like

what we’re doing right here

yeah solid advice and i’ll i’ll put a

link to your guys’s youtube channel

uh in the show notes again that’s at

laundromat resource.com show22

if you want to go check that out um or

if you’re on our youtube it’ll be down

below in the description

um so my last question for you before we

uh wrap this thing up is

if people want to uh contact you to talk

more about pickup delivery or to hear

more about your software

what’s the best way they can get in

contact with you so probably the best

way is just

call is either they could go to

curbsidelaundries.com

or curbsidelotteries.com forward slash

demo and you can just put in your info

and just

tap um you know request demo

and whether you’re looking for a demo of

the software you just want to talk

laundry you know

it’s fine either way and then you know

the other way that

people could also call the phone number

it’s 562-533-0053

and and you know we answer our phones

and you know we’re

you know happy to help out awesome yeah

and again i’ll have that

in the show notes or in the description

down below

matt thank you so much for coming on and

just packing this thing

full of just valuable valuable

information

and i just think that people are going

to walk away

from this inspired and excited about

uh just their laundromats and the

potential that they have in them

and man i appreciate you coming on

thanks so much

absolutely yeah thank you for having me

and it’s yeah i’ve been great talking

with you and thank you for what you do

i mean i see this podcast and just

creating a network

as i mean that’s really the future it’s

using technology bringing us together

yeah yeah i appreciate that and love to

have you back on

maybe we can do a special episode on

commercial accounts because you kind of

touched on it but i’d love to hear more

about how you guys are doing that so

it’d be cool

nice all right man appreciate it and

we’ll talk to you soon

all right talk to you later man how cool

was that episode i told you a marketing

master class matt brought so many

tips and tricks and just solid

information that’s really going to help

you run your laundromat

better again i love to end every single

episode with

reminding you reminding me let’s take

something away

from this uh this episode i think a

great thing

to take away from this episode is number

one if you don’t have one yet

go get a website for your laundromat you

know whether you’re doing

these pick up and delivery or fluff and

fold any of that stuff or not

you’re maybe you’re just a self-turf

laundry you gotta have a website

to direct people to um and getting on

some of those third party you know your

yelps your google my business

all those things that matt talked about

make sure you’re getting on those and

pointing people to your website

uh it’s just so so so important these

days so number one if you don’t have one

yet get one

number two just a suggestion take

whatever you want and run with it from

this episode but just a suggestion

if you do have a website it might be a

great time to go back through it and

and do what he said go search for all

these different terms that he

uh suggested in this show and go look up

your laundry mat see where you show up

see if you can improve

your ranking on the google serp search

engine results page

and see if you can uh you know get your

ranking up higher because the higher up

you get

the more free business that you’re gonna

get so

man go optimize that website if you need

help building one if you need help

uh you know improving yours uh man i

know matt’s company

uh helps with that so check them out at

curbsidelaundries.com

and i also know that we do that so a lot

of myresource.com

get online we know laundromats we know

websites we know both and how they work

together so

use us use curbside use somebody do it

yourself whatever you do you gotta have

a laundry

laundromat website and you gotta have uh

a website that performs well so make

sure that you’re improving it

and getting better with your website

alright guys i love today’s show i hope

you loved it as much as me

i cannot wait until next week we will

see you

then and until then go out there and

kill it with your laundromats or go find

that first deal

take some practical steps today

to go find it if that’s what you’re

doing all right guys we’ll talk to you

next week

[Music]

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