He Tripled His Laundromat Income with Brian Lecca

Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
Hey. Hey. What’s up, guys? It’s Jordan with the Laudermatter Resource Podcast. Today is show 170, and I’m pumped you’re here today because today, we’re coming to you from Italy. Well, I’m not in Italy, sadly, right now. But Brian is Brian Leca joins us on the podcast, talks about owning a laundromat in Italy and some of the differences between owning there and laundromats here, where he grew up in America. And, man, really interesting stuff. And he talks about how he’s grown his business.

Jordan Berry [00:00:32]:
We talk a lot about marketing and operations and all. There’s so much good stuff in this. Plus, Italy is one of the coolest places on the planet. So already leg up there. So super excited for you to join Brian and I in our conversation today. But real quick, today’s Fastlane tip is this. If you’re listening to this when this is coming out, October 1, 2024, we’ve got a live Q and a for the pro community. And, normally I don’t advertise those, but it happens to be back to back with October 2nd, which normally does happen.

Jordan Berry [00:01:06]:
However, on October 2nd, we have our next mastermind induction night. So if you have been chomping at the bit to get into a mastermind group, this is your opportunity. And just a quick recap in case you don’t know what that is, Mastermind group is a group of like minded people that we try to pair you up with to help you go farther, faster. So you’re meeting together on a regular cadence. You are encouraging each other. You are holding each other accountable to taking the actions that we need to take to be successful. We’re problem solving together, and, man, it’s just been incredible ride for so many people joining Mastermind groups. So whether you’re getting started buying your first laundromat or if you are already an owner and you’d like to get in a group, with other owners, dude, this is an incredible opportunity.

Jordan Berry [00:02:00]:
So check out laundromatresource.com/pro. That’s included in the pro community. Get everything else in the pro community and mastermind groups, which is pretty awesome, awesome to have there. So check that out, and those things are happening back to back. So October 1st, we got a pro q and a, and October second, we’re launching our new mastermind groups. So 2 for 1 deal all in 1 week right there if that’s something you’re interested in. Okay. That’s all I got for you for today’s Fastlane tip.

Jordan Berry [00:02:30]:
Let’s jump over to Italy with Brian and talk laundromats. Brian, what is going on, man? Thanks for coming on the show. How are you doing?

Brian Lecca [00:02:39]:
What’s up, Jordan? I’m doing great, man. How are you doing?

Jordan Berry [00:02:42]:
I well, dude, I I am, like, double, triple super excited right now because, you know, listen, we I mean, we’ve kinda connected, but we just sort of connected about this podcast yesterday. And you said, yeah, I’d be down to come on, and then you scheduled it. And here we are a day later, and I’m super excited about it. So thanks for making the time to come on. Appreciate that.

Brian Lecca [00:03:05]:
Yeah, man. It’s beautiful. Glad to be here.

Jordan Berry [00:03:07]:
Yeah. I know. Well and I’m I’m, like, double or triple or whatever excited because you are you’re you’re in Italy. You’re on the other side of the globe from me. And I’m excited to hear about what you got going on over there, how things work, over there. And we were talking before we hit record. I was in Italy for a couple months last summer and, enjoyed my time there. First of all, Italy is beautiful.

Jordan Berry [00:03:32]:
But also, you know, like a classic laundromat owner, when you go on vacation, you’re scouting out other laundromats and stuff. So I enjoyed checking that out over there too. So first of all, why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are?

Brian Lecca [00:03:47]:
I’m Brian. I was born in Bologna, which is a city in Northern Italy. At a young age, I moved to the States. This is why, you know, I don’t have an Italian accent. I moved back here about 15 years ago. I started working for my uncle. He owned a couple of laundromats. So that’s how I got into this business with the laundry.

Brian Lecca [00:04:14]:
You know, He started teaching me how to fix the machines and, and whatnot. The thing I was teaching him was how to market. So, you know, anyways, I just started working with the this, you know, this industry. I opened up my own laundromat back in 2017. Yeah. It was the 1st January 2017 I opened up my own laundromat. So, I’ve just been working with this business for the last, yeah, 10, 12, 13 years.

Jordan Berry [00:04:51]:
Yeah. Awesome. So well, first of all, when you moved to the states, where did you move? Where were you living?

Brian Lecca [00:04:58]:
I moved to Tampa, Florida.

Jordan Berry [00:05:01]:
Awesome. Cool. Tampa

Brian Lecca [00:05:02]:
At a young age. So I was I was probably, like, 5 years old. I stayed there for till I was about 21, then I moved back to Italy.

Jordan Berry [00:05:11]:
Yeah. How was that move going back to Italy?

Brian Lecca [00:05:14]:
Crazy. Complete, it was a culture shock.

Jordan Berry [00:05:18]:
Yeah. Yeah. It is very

Brian Lecca [00:05:20]:
Culture shock.

Jordan Berry [00:05:21]:
Yeah. It’s very different there. We’re talking a little bit like it’s just, I think, a little more laid back and kind of a yeah. I don’t what are the differences? Yeah.

Brian Lecca [00:05:32]:
Tell me. The differences are in terms of culture. I would say a little bit more laid back. Yeah. In terms of, America is very fast paced in terms of working. Here, it’s very relaxed when you work, you know. So I don’t I I put a lot of pressure on myself when I work, but most Italians, I mean, don’t expect them to be, you know, very business savvy or, you know, it’s just that’s just not the mentality. You know, it’s a lot more laid back.

Brian Lecca [00:06:05]:
You eat very good food. You, you know, you take it easy. The states is more money driven, you know, more like motivation. Here, it’s a lot more chilled out. Yeah. In that in that regard. Yeah. They’re they’re they’re pros and their cons.

Brian Lecca [00:06:22]:
I mean, it depends what lifestyle you wanna weigh. If you wanna open up a business, I do not recommend you come to Italy and open a business. That’s just not a good idea at all.

Jordan Berry [00:06:33]:
Just because of that relaxed

Brian Lecca [00:06:36]:
No. It’s or what? Yeah. I mean, that’s it’s not a, a business sort of country. You know? It’s not business oriented.

Jordan Berry [00:06:47]:
Yeah.

Brian Lecca [00:06:47]:
Unless you unless you own, like, a company like Lamborghini, like, you’re making Ducatis, you’re making, you know, like, you’re making something beautiful made in Italy, then at that point sorry. There’s my cat again. Sorry about that. Then at that point, it’s like I could, I can understand you have a big business. You can employ a bunch of people. Small business owners, like, you gotta hustle if you wanna, you know, stay afloat.

Jordan Berry [00:07:12]:
Yeah. I’m

Brian Lecca [00:07:12]:
not I’m not gonna I’m not gonna lie about that. It’s tough. It’s tough.

Jordan Berry [00:07:17]:
Yeah. Well, and it’s I mean, running business in general is tough. Right? And everybody has their kinda unique unique struggles depending on where you’re doing the business. But, yeah, that one it I could see where that would be That would be tough in finding people who are gonna do the work you need them to do and to do it in the timeline you need them to do it in when they’re not really, you know Yeah. Getting after it.

Brian Lecca [00:07:42]:
It really, it really depends on you, I think. You know, like, what what is it? What are you trying to accomplish? You know? What are your actual goals? What do you you know what I mean? That’s really a lot of people, they wanna just have a little business and, you know, their goal is just to get by and that’s fine. You know what I mean? If that’s if that’s what they want, they wanna take it easy. That’s okay. They have a family, they have kids, they wanna be able to take care of their family. That’s fine. If you wanna make it really big, you wanna have a lot of, you know, sources of income, I would suggest and you have the option of, you know, going to the United States or, you know, you have the option of going to other places in the world. Italy is not really that pleasant.

Brian Lecca [00:08:22]:
You’re gonna be paying a lot of taxes. I would think it’s probably worse than California, but I don’t know. I’m not a business accountant.

Jordan Berry [00:08:29]:
Yeah. I I yeah. Maybe. And but I do also feel like maybe you get more for those taxes than we get over here. Sometimes it feels like where’s all our tax money going over here?

Brian Lecca [00:08:40]:
That’s true. You know what? I am gonna say that’s, you know, when you I mean, free health care and me. Yes and no. You know, it’s me means yes and no in Italian. Yeah. We get good health care, but at the same time, it depends where you are in Italy. If you’re in Rome or Naples, I wouldn’t say you have good health care. But, I mean, here in Bologna, it’s great.

Brian Lecca [00:09:02]:
You know, we pay high taxes, but everything’s free. You know, all that stuff is free and whatnot. So depends, Like I said, it really depends on what your point of view is, where you stand politically, etcetera etcetera. You know?

Jordan Berry [00:09:17]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. So let’s go back. So you came back to Bologna and started working with your uncle. I mean, how did he get in the business? Do you have any idea how he got got started with Laundromats?

Brian Lecca [00:09:29]:
I tried to interview him about it, you know, just like a 1 on 1. Like, how did he get it? And he just he had a friend of his, who was already sort of in this he was in the the slot machine business. So his friend was doing slot machines and laundry, stuff like that. Like, sort of that was sort of what was going on back in the eighties, back in Italy. Mhmm. A lot of slot machines were coming around. A lot of stuff which had to do with putting coins in and making money that way, you know. So he got into the business like that.

Brian Lecca [00:10:03]:
They opened up a few of them in Bologna, these laundromats, and, you know, he’s just been doing that ever since.

Jordan Berry [00:10:10]:
Is that his main thing, or does he work a job and then he’s got these on the side?

Brian Lecca [00:10:16]:
Yeah. That’s he it’s side businesses. His main thing, he does, he’s kinda like a dentist. He makes fake teeth for old people. I don’t know how you call that. Dentures?

Jordan Berry [00:10:27]:
Yeah. Dentures. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Lecca [00:10:29]:
He’s been doing that. So he’s making good money on that and then his side businesses, laundromats and things like that. He’s had a whole bunch of different ones. You know? My friends in the States, when I tell them about my uncle, they’re like, oh, your uncle’s laundry business, you know. But, like, he’s got, like, you know, money that he has to launder. It’s like, right now. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Lecca [00:10:52]:
He’s just doing his thing.

Jordan Berry [00:10:53]:
Yeah. And we all we all get those money laundering jokes,

Brian Lecca [00:10:58]:
all

Jordan Berry [00:10:58]:
the time in the business. Yeah.

Brian Lecca [00:11:01]:
All right.

Jordan Berry [00:11:01]:
So you started, you started working with him. He was kind of showing you the ropes and laundry. I mean, you said he’s been in a bunch of different businesses. Why did you end up with the laundry stuff with him as opposed to any other things he had going on?

Brian Lecca [00:11:15]:
He had a he has, like, the main laundromat in downtown, and I was just working there because he needed somebody to stay there to clean it, to help people out. It was a busy laundromat. So the amount of people that I met in that laundromat was just mind blowing. Tourists, I met actors, famous actors. I met people that worked on the movie Fight Club, you know. Like, so many people passed through laundromats. It’s it was quite incredible. So I met all kinds I mean, I’m not even gonna lie.

Brian Lecca [00:11:52]:
I met, like, mafia gangsters in the laundromats. I’ve met, you know, incredible artists. So I was just working there with him and just learning that there’s so much, like, a lot of the marketing that goes behind a good laundromat is you being there and just being friendly, you know, getting to know the people, getting to know your clients. Yeah. Keeping it clean and, you know, smiling, being friendly And, you know, these were just some of the things that I’ve learned throughout the years. You know?

Jordan Berry [00:12:28]:
Yeah. Well, one of

Brian Lecca [00:12:29]:
the things goes a long way. It does go a long way.

Jordan Berry [00:12:32]:
Yeah. One of the beautiful things about Laundromats is that you do meet a lot of people, and a lot of very interesting people do come through Loner Match no matter where you are. I mean, if you’re in like an iconic city like you are, you’re probably gonna see, you know, more interesting people than somebody in the middle of nowhere, but kind of doesn’t matter like that. It’s one of the cool things about laundromat is that it’s a people business. Right. And those relationships can develop and, and you can cross paths with a lot of different kinds of people, that are coming through your business. So I think that’s, that’s pretty cool. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:13:06]:
And especially coming from, you know, living the majority of your life in America and you get plopped in a laundromat where you’re meeting a whole lot of people. Did you speak fluent Italian when you came back?

Brian Lecca [00:13:18]:
No. No. I found I sounded retarded.

Jordan Berry [00:13:22]:
Yeah.

Brian Lecca [00:13:24]:
I sounded retarded speaking Italian, and so they were making fun of me. I would say words wrong, you know. Yeah. So instead of being the Italian in America that they make fun of, I was the American, you know, in Italy, and they were all making fun of me.

Jordan Berry [00:13:38]:
There’s no winning for you, man. No winning.

Brian Lecca [00:13:40]:
Yeah. I just couldn’t win. Right? Yeah. When when they came to the language, slowed the barrier. Anyways, yeah. So I was I’ve been it was full of American tourists. I mean, that’s I mean, even in my own laundromat, I have so many American tourists that pass through. So Yeah.

Brian Lecca [00:13:58]:
An advantage. You know?

Jordan Berry [00:14:00]:
Yeah. No. That’s huge. That’s huge. Okay. So you were working with your uncle for a couple years. It sounds like at least. Yep.

Jordan Berry [00:14:08]:
And then you ended up getting your getting your own. How did that come about? How did you get your own?

Brian Lecca [00:14:15]:
I got a well, I was like, I got a loan and I was like, what am I gonna do with this money? And so I made I had some options. I was like, I could start, you know, graphic designing. I could start a whole new skill, you know, and just go from 0 and make my way up with a new skill. But I was like, I’ve been in this business for, like, say it was, like, 10 years already at that point. I already know how to fix the machines. I had all the connections I needed to open up a laundromat. So I was, like, you know what? I’m just gonna stick with that. And, yeah, I just went all in.

Brian Lecca [00:14:51]:
I found a place to put the laundromat. I had all the connections to buy really good machines. I had my uncle. I had his I had his business partner who knew how to build laundromats perfectly. So I was like, screw it. I found a place quite ironically. It’s, like, my it was my old my uncle’s old laundromat. He hadn’t opened that up in back in the early nineties.

Brian Lecca [00:15:17]:
Then he had sold it. Somebody bought it. They sold it again, and then it just closed down.

Jordan Berry [00:15:25]:
Mhmm.

Brian Lecca [00:15:26]:
But, like, the whole format of that locale was the same laundromat that he had opened back in the nineties. So it was the same one that’s in downtown, like, the same format, but it was my own. It was just weird. It was almost like a full circle. You know? So I opened it up there, and I made it look exactly the same as it did back in the nineties. And, yeah, man, it’s just been going beautifully since then. I took the Facebook page and the Instagram page that I had made for my uncle’s business and I just I moved all of those contacts over to me. So I was like, I’m stealing everybody.

Brian Lecca [00:16:02]:
He was like, I don’t care because he doesn’t do social media. And it’s funny because now, after all these years, he’s starting to realize how important social media is and how much it does influence your business. Because I show him the statistics. I’m, like, I did this ad this month and I spent this much money on this ad, and when I don’t do ads, this is how much money I make. And when I do do ad, this is how much I make. And so he’s like, wow. But he’s just an ancient kinda dude. You know, he’s Yeah.

Brian Lecca [00:16:36]:
He’s an ancient man. So he doesn’t, you know, he doesn’t understand.

Jordan Berry [00:16:39]:
Well, I mean and and that’s pretty fairly common I think in our, in our business where, cause you didn’t need to do a whole lot of marketing and definitely not social media for, for a long time. Right. And I mean, social media has kind of changed the game everywhere for every industry pretty much. And I think our industry was a little slow to adapt, but kinda like you, you know, people like you who are bringing this into our industry and showing like demonstrating like how important it is, to, to get involved. I mean, while you were running your to go back a little bit, sorry, but to go back to when you were helping your uncle and stuff, you mentioned in the very beginning you were kind of helping him with the marketing side of things. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, do Laundromats do a lot of marketing there? And what kind of marketing were you doing? What were you what were you helping him out with?

Brian Lecca [00:17:33]:
Okay. So at the beginning beginning, I’m talking about 2,009, 2010, I started doing flyers. So what I would do is I would get I would take a I took a picture of the laundromat. I put our prices down and I just made a little flyer like a little template. I I I gave it to, this printing company and I just said print me out, like, 10,000 of these. And they were like, okay. So I just I got a whole bunch of them. I showed my uncle.

Brian Lecca [00:18:02]:
I was like, while I’m not in the laundromat, I’m gonna do the flyers. And he was, like, okay. Whatever. He wasn’t really convinced that I was gonna do very much. He was just, like, fine. Go for it. You know? So I began flyering all over downtown, all over, like, the main, neighborhoods in the area, and I just kept doing that. Flyers.

Brian Lecca [00:18:30]:
I think he saw a little bit of a difference. You know? He didn’t wanna tell me anything because he didn’t wanna be, like, oh, you’re right. You know? But I know that a lot more people showed up because I even had people show up with flyers in their hands, and they were, like, I just got this fire and, you know, I was interested in washing my blanket and whatnot. Another thing I did, which was hilarious, so in Italy, we have these immigrants, you know, from Africa, and they just they they don’t really panhandle, but they’ll sell you, like, socks or lighters, you know, things you might need. Mhmm. So they’re always walking back and forth with their backpacks full of, like, you know, little things to sell. So I got to know some of these guys and they’re they were funny. You know, we just we would joke around and whatnot.

Brian Lecca [00:19:20]:
But I just I had this crazy idea. Seeing that these guys walk around all day, why don’t I give them a shirt to wear and have, like, the laundromat name on the shirt and our pricing? So they’re gonna be like yeah. They’re gonna be like walking billboards. You know? And, I mean, even on my Facebook page, I even took pictures of them and put them on my Facebook page. That’s what I’m talking, like, 2012, 2011, 2013, like, 10 years ago. This is so long ago. This is, like, before social media was really a big thing. So these guys would walk around all downtown and people are, like, taking photos of them.

Brian Lecca [00:19:55]:
It was just hilarious. So they’re, like, you’re a walking billboard. And I would pay them, like, I would pay them, like, $50 a month, you know, just to wear my shirt, just to promote, you know, the business. And nobody was doing that. So, little marketing strategies like that, I think, kind of brought the business a long ways. I was doing a little bit of Facebook stuff back then. I I joke around. When I when it comes to social media, it’s all jokes, it’s all fun and games.

Brian Lecca [00:20:27]:
I’ll do a little bit of serious things where I’ll promote maybe a new product or, you know but when it comes to laundry and whatnot, I like to play around. I like to joke, you know. Keep it.

Jordan Berry [00:20:39]:
Well and I I love that. I mean, one, one common thread I’ve seen with a lot of people I’ve had in this podcast that are successful is trying out of the box things like throwing t shirts on these guys who were cruising the cruising, the city selling stuff already. And you know, now you’re, you know, you’re ending up in a bunch of pictures cause they’re taking pictures with, you know, your shirt on and people are seeing it all over the place. Right. Just trying a whole bunch of different stuff. And the other thing that I see that I love that you’re doing, and I think we all could probably do better at this is, is having fun on on social media. Like social media, you know, yes, there’s a time and a place to be serious on social media and, you know, you should probably drop in some stuff every now and then that you know is businessy or serious or whatever. But also like, man, we’re just talking about laundry here, so we don’t have to always take ourselves so seriously and can have some fun with it.

Jordan Berry [00:21:39]:
And guess what? People like that. People enjoy that. I have a buddy who, he has a, I’ll I’ll link it in case he wants to check it out. But he has a a restaurant, it’s like a Hawaiian grill restaurant, and he told his, like, I think 3 of his employees, 3 of the girls that works that work there that if they could grow the Instagram account from they had, like, 2,000 people. If they could get it to 30,000 in 10 days, that he would take them on a trip to Disneyland. Well, they did it in 6. And so somebody had suggested, you know, if if they got to a 100,000 in the 10 days that they should go to Hawaii cause it’s a Hawaiian grill place. And they did that in 8 days.

Jordan Berry [00:22:26]:
They got from 2,000 to a 100,000. And the way they did it was being super engaging. They just had a lot of like fun little video skits and and stuff like that. And guess what? They’re getting a trip to Hawaii, but my buddy who owns a restaurant is the big winner here because he’s getting all these eyeballs on his business and his businesses thriving and growing. So having fun on social media can be super, and they’re right now they’re, they’re way over 200,000 followers now.

Brian Lecca [00:22:55]:
Wow. Okay. So they just blew up. Okay. They

Jordan Berry [00:22:58]:
blew it up and they did it by doing just, you know, silly little memes that have to do with the restaurant to showcase the food and, you know, all that stuff. But, and just having fun with it, kinda like what you’re saying.

Brian Lecca [00:23:11]:
They just have fun with it. Yeah. You gotta have fun with it. Absolutely.

Jordan Berry [00:23:14]:
It’s effective. I think we all could kinda learn a lesson from that. I think that’s awesome.

Brian Lecca [00:23:20]:
Mhmm. It’s one of, it’s one of life’s, you know, little secrets is have fun, man. There’s so much negativity. There’s so much crap. You know, there’s so much nasty stuff going on in this in this world. It’s like, let’s bring a little bit more, you know, excitement, you know, because there are good things going on and we gotta we gotta show that too, you know. The news the the news is that they like to sell a bunch of chaotic negative stuff. Yeah.

Brian Lecca [00:23:52]:
And we gotta be sort of that opposite side. It’s like, you know, there’s also a lot of cool positive things going on. We’re having fun, you know. We don’t have to go into this, know, introverted sort of negativity. Let’s get out there and, you know, have a little fun. Have a good time. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:24:10]:
Yeah. I I agree, man. I agree. Listen up. So yes. Yes. So let’s fast forward back to you. You you got this Laundromat location.

Jordan Berry [00:24:22]:
Can you tell us a little bit about it? So like one thing when I was in, you know, in Italy and in Europe in general that I noticed was a lot of laundromats are a lot smaller. It turns out that when these guys built these ancient cities, they didn’t anticipate large laundromats, happen in, in these cities. So, but can you tell us a little bit about like, you know, the the laundromat that you you put together?

Brian Lecca [00:24:48]:
Yeah. I actually wrote a blog about it about 3 years ago. I don’t know where the blog went. I think it was on WordPress or something like that. I wrote a blog on how a laundromat should be set up, the placements of the machines, and, like, there’s a flow line. Like, I call it a flow line where it’s like you come in and the first thing that should be there are the, the big washers. Mhmm. Okay.

Brian Lecca [00:25:17]:
That’s the first thing you should do. Because people are coming to wash usually here in Italy, they’re coming to wash blankets because they all have washers in their houses and whatnot. So you have the big machines, they’re coming to wash a blanket. They’re coming straight in to do that. And what I mean by a flow line is, like, people wash and then they go and dry. So the dryers need to be in the back of the store, not at the front or or near the front area, you know. They should be towards the back. So, you know, people wash and then after they wash, they dry.

Brian Lecca [00:25:52]:
So people are not, like, running into each other because when it gets when the laundromat gets busy, believe me, it can be kind of frustrating. You’re holding huge piles of wet clothing and you have people in the way. It’s it can be kind of annoying, you know. So the waiting area, I keep off to the side. So my front entrance on the right is all the washers. On the left, I have the soap machines and the couches and the tables where you can sit down and fold your clothes and whatnot. In the back, I have all the dryer. So I that’s how I kind of set up mine.

Brian Lecca [00:26:26]:
I kind of have that, you know, that sort of thought process of, like, somebody comes in and it’s, you know, a smooth sort of, you know, transition from one thing to the next. It sounds really stupid and simple, but, you know, it it works. The winter times here, people usually come just to dry. So we have a problem with that where, like, we have a crowded laundromat And people are coming in with a bunch of wet clothes and they have to, you know, go all the way to the back of the store. Whatever. It happens, you know, a couple months out of the year. So but that’s how I set it up.

Jordan Berry [00:27:04]:
Yeah. Well, and the first of all, if you end up finding that blog, shoot it over to me or a link or whatever, and we’ll

Brian Lecca [00:27:12]:
put

Jordan Berry [00:27:12]:
it on the show notes. And also you sent me over some, some pictures of your laundromat that you got going on too.

Brian Lecca [00:27:18]:
So we’ll

Jordan Berry [00:27:19]:
put those on the show notes in case anybody wants to check them out. But I like, I mean, I think the, the flow idea is the flow line ideas. I mean, I think it’s important. I think it’s under, underappreciated, you know, in, you know, I’ve, I’ve heard it. Throughput is similar kind of concept here, right? Is if you don’t think through sort of that literal physical customer journey about how they’re going to flow through your. Laundromat. It’s easy to get congestion. It’s easy to make the experience not as ideal or not as optimal for your customer.

Jordan Berry [00:27:56]:
But when you do think through the flow line, when you do think through the layout and how you want people moving through your laundromat, man, it can really smooth out that experience for the customer and make it a much more enjoyable experience too.

Brian Lecca [00:28:11]:
It does. Yeah. It does. Like, for example, my uncle’s laundromat, it he has machines on both sides. So he sacrificed comfort for a couple of extra machines. That’s his, you know, that’s his business model. That’s fine. I’m not, I could add more machines, you know, but I just I wanna have a couple of couches, people can chill out, you know, they can play cards.

Brian Lecca [00:28:33]:
I have Wi Fi. I kinda I wanna put up a television so they can, you know, they can have a little something to watch. I don’t know. I mean, I’m more of, you know, comfort, you know, like, let somebody chill out there while they’re waiting for their laundry. There’s not many bars. In downtown, there’s a lot of bars. So, technically, you can wash and then go to the bar while you’re waiting because you have to think about what are the what’s the customer gonna do in that waiting period? You know, he’s gonna have to wait an hour. Are you gonna make him leave or are you gonna give him phone somewhere to sit and chill out? You know? I don’t know if the New York laundromats are like that because everything’s kind of, like, close by.

Brian Lecca [00:29:15]:
You know? And Italy is the same way, but I don’t know. I just I wanted to keep it more friendly, more warm, and chill out there. People get to know each other in the laundromat, you know. And so it’s I like it that way. People can have it other ways. That’s that’s just how I figured.

Jordan Berry [00:29:37]:
Yeah. And I think I I think probably New York is a pretty good parallel to what you guys are because New York also very congested, also a lot of smaller laundromats, also a lot of stuff right around the general area. And so, you know, thinking through layouts of like in New York lawn. Whereas if you’re like in the Midwest, it’s like land is basically free and you can have

Brian Lecca [00:30:03]:
There you go. There you go. I was in a long term out of Montana, and there’s so much space. You know, there’s places to put you can sit down. You can chill. There you go. Perfect example. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:30:12]:
Yeah. I’ve got buddies who might as well have drive through laundromats. Cause I’m pretty sure you could drive your car through the middle of the aisles. Right? Like, not quite like that here in LA, but we are a little more spread out than like New York. Right. And so New York has a lot of space issues, like, like a lot of

Brian Lecca [00:30:31]:
It’s congested. They’re big, but they’re still congested. I’ve seen I’ve seen, a lot of different laundromats and but they have that they have that problem where it’s like people are running into each other. Like, there’s somebody pulling out clothes from the machine. You can’t pass through. It was too, you know, it’s too tight. I put all of that into my thought process. It’s to making, like I wanna make it a comfortable place even for me because I gotta be there all day.

Brian Lecca [00:30:59]:
So it’s fine. You know, I gotta think about, like, I’m gonna be moving. I gotta clean this place and, you know, make it spacious, you know, basic nice.

Jordan Berry [00:31:09]:
Yeah. When when customers are coming to your place, are is are they typically walking or are they driving, taking a bus? How are they getting to your laundromat typically?

Brian Lecca [00:31:19]:
Walking. Most of them are walking. There is a little, like, parking space. I’m lucky to have, like, a little parking space on the other side of the street where there used to be a bank and they had a parking spot there. So some of them are coming through and they know there’s that parking space and so they take advantage of it. Mhmm. They’ll park there and they’ll kind of piss off the neighbors. Because they’ll park and then they’ll put, you know, their emergency lights on.

Brian Lecca [00:31:47]:
That’s the very Italian thing to do. It’s like, you can park anywhere as long as you got your emergency lights on. That’s right. You know? It’s like it’s very classical Italian.

Jordan Berry [00:31:56]:
Yeah.

Brian Lecca [00:31:57]:
So they’ll just block the roadway and whatnot. But they’ll they’ll take, like, 2 minutes. They’ll put their clothing in the dryer, and then they’ll take off. You know? So it’s like a temporary parking spot. Most of people are coming on foot, and that’s gonna be everywhere.

Jordan Berry [00:32:12]:
You, are you competing directly with your uncle? Like, are you,

Brian Lecca [00:32:17]:
is you Not really. I threatened him one time. I said I was gonna open up one right across the street from you. He was 11.5.11. He got pissed, but I was joking when he got mad at me. No. It’s always like you gotta you gotta change up your machines. Some of the machines were out of order.

Brian Lecca [00:32:35]:
I was like, start investing in your laundromat. You have a beautiful place. You gotta, you know, put some money down on it. And I think eventually like, he has a change machine in his laundromat. We were I was just talking to him today about it. I joke with him. I’m, like, don’t ever change that machine, you know, because God forbid you get a new change machine. That thing’s been there since 1989.

Brian Lecca [00:32:58]:
And he just keeps fixing it. I’ll send you a photo of it. It’s just it’s so damaged up and I had to paint it a couple of times just because he wouldn’t paint it. It just looked like crap and it’s like he’s gotta take care of his place, you know, and I got sometimes I would get very when I worked for him, I got very upset with him sometimes. So I was like, you have machines that are out of order. You need to start investing some of your money that you make here into your machines. And she was like, no. I don’t have enough money.

Brian Lecca [00:33:27]:
And it’s just like, I’ve had I’ve opened my shop for, what, 7 years now. I bought 2 big machines and 2 double stack dryers. So I’ve invested, like, I must say about $30 over the last 7 years. If I can do it in 70 and he can’t do it in 30, like, come on, bro. Like, really?

Jordan Berry [00:33:52]:
Yeah.

Brian Lecca [00:33:53]:
I’m gonna open up a shop right in front of you, bro. I’m gonna make you and what happened, actually, I’m not gonna lie, somebody opened up a laundromat just down the street, like, 500 feet away from his. And when that happened, he got he just he lost his mind. Like, how could he do that? I was like, I’m not surprised.

Jordan Berry [00:34:13]:
Yeah. You

Brian Lecca [00:34:14]:
gotta you gotta you gotta you gotta yeah. You gotta take care of it. You gotta stay in your game. If he’s gonna do a bunch of side business that you find also is like, at least take care of them.

Jordan Berry [00:34:23]:
Yeah.

Brian Lecca [00:34:24]:
You gotta really take care of them, and I’ve been trying to get that into you know? But I let him do what he wants to do. I don’t I don’t force nothing onto him anymore. I’d I’ll give him advice. I’ll tell him, you know, like, do this, do that. It’s unwise to give an elderly man advice, especially in Italy. They don’t it just it doesn’t they don’t wanna get it. And if there’s somebody that’s younger than me and he’s giving me business advice, I’ll listen because whether you age is not relative to, you know, your intelligence. You know? You can be super young and super smart and super old and really dumb.

Brian Lecca [00:35:04]:
I’m not saying that my uncle is stupid. I’m just saying that he’s just stuck in a very ancient sort of, retro way of doing business. And if he wants to do his business that way, that’s fine. You know, that’s on him.

Jordan Berry [00:35:16]:
Yeah. But there’s something to be said for keeping that, like, hey, I can learn from anybody. There’s nobody, you know, I like, I genuinely think like if you have that mindset, like, okay, young, old, whatever, like I can learn something from you and from this experience. I think it’s just gonna take you so much farther. Right. But there is something to the can’t teach you an old dog new tricks kind of thing. If somebody kind of gets stuck in their ways, it just is what it is.

Brian Lecca [00:35:48]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:35:48]:
You can’t, you can’t force somebody to change or, or do things differently. So you

Brian Lecca [00:35:53]:
can try. You can try, but

Jordan Berry [00:35:54]:
You can try. That’s right. Yeah. That’s right. But it’s up to them, ultimately.

Brian Lecca [00:35:58]:
Exactly. It’s their choice. It’s their

Jordan Berry [00:36:00]:
So it sounds like you’ve even just kind of expanded your lawn rest by adding new equipment from from day 1 when you started to to now, it sounds like you’ve added stuff. What does that process been like adding equipment? How did you know that you should be adding equipment?

Brian Lecca [00:36:22]:
Good question. I mean, I had 3 10 kilo machines. We have kilos over here.

Jordan Berry [00:36:29]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Lecca [00:36:30]:
Which are like the the the standard size washers. And then I had one big machine. What ended up happening is when I opened up my laundromat, it wasn’t working that much. Because when you open up a business, it’s gonna take a couple of months for people to get to know it, for the marketing to start kicking in, all of that. And I was doing a lot of marketing, but it was still taking a bit. And my mom because my mom is also kind of business savvy. She was in the States for a bit. She was like she got really pissed at me.

Brian Lecca [00:37:03]:
She was like, we need to make that business start producing. We need to be productive. So I was just kind of thinking, like, how can I get more business here? And Italy is just packed with bed and breakfast. You know, all the Airbnbs that are everywhere, bookings just packed with all kinds of people that are, you know and these people need their laundry done. So I thought, well, why don’t I do a delivery service for these people, you know? I can go get their laundry. I’ll wash it. I’ll dry it. I’ll fold it up.

Brian Lecca [00:37:38]:
I won’t iron it because I don’t have any, you know, means of ironing quickly. So I was like, I’ll just wash, dry, fold, and then, you know, just do a delivery service along that line. And I tripled my income that way. I read a little, booklet by Grant Cardone. I don’t know if you know Grant Cardone.

Jordan Berry [00:37:58]:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Brian Lecca [00:37:59]:
He’s a he’s a business guy. I knew him back in Florida back, like, 2,005. So I was working in a hotel and he was at that hotel very often. And he wrote this little brochure free. It was a free little booklet that I ordered and it was called The Millionaire Booklet. And very quick, it’s like 50 pages, tiny little thing. I read it and I just started following the advice that Cardone was giving in that book and I just, like, tripled my income, like, within a month after reading that. So I just thought I started finding, people that needed my services.

Brian Lecca [00:38:39]:
You know? So and there was people that they were desperate. They were like, I have so much laundry to do and I can’t take it anymore. So it’s like, I need someone to come pick this crap up. Why should they were just going crazy. You know? The the problem is it’s not like, like, you know, a hotel, maybe somebody will stay a couple of days and they already have a whole laundry industry that does all of that, you know, for them. The b and b’s, like, they have people that stay 2 days, a day or 2, and they gotta wash all those sheets all over again and it and towels. That’s a lot of work. Like, it’s not fun.

Brian Lecca [00:39:17]:
So I just started doing that business just for b and b’s, and they were just calling me up incessantly. You know? And, yeah, man. I just tripled my income, and I just I just went on from there. I started adding more oh, yeah. The the subject of adding more machines was because of that. I was occupying the machines that were already available, and so I was, like I had customers showing up and I kept, you know, filling up all the machines and they were getting upset. And I was like, damn. That’s not good.

Brian Lecca [00:39:53]:
I’m like, and I realized I could move some machines around and I could add some more. So I started adding more of these machines, you know, until I have what I have today. I just over the years, I just kept adding another dryer, another washer, etcetera, etcetera.

Jordan Berry [00:40:09]:
When you started getting I mean, first of all, that’s awesome. I’m gonna I’m gonna see if I can hunt down that little booklet if it still exists, and I’ll link to it in the show notes if it’s, if it’s still there.

Brian Lecca [00:40:19]:
But I think I saw I have it somewhere. I’ll probably send it to you. All right.

Jordan Berry [00:40:23]:
Yeah. Shoot it over. If you got it, you can find it.

Brian Lecca [00:40:25]:
It’s called the millionaire booklet. Super, super easy to read. Super quick, highly advised.

Jordan Berry [00:40:32]:
Yeah. Well, there’s probably more than a few people listening right now that are like triple my income. Yeah. Please give me the, give me the booklet.

Brian Lecca [00:40:38]:
So depends on the business. You could probably even 10 x her income, like, you know, what, what, how Cardone says 10 x, you know? So,

Jordan Berry [00:40:44]:
yep. Yep. Which also is a great book. I’ll link that one to, 10 x rule.

Brian Lecca [00:40:51]:
There you go.

Jordan Berry [00:40:52]:
Great one.

Brian Lecca [00:40:54]:
Seller be sold.

Jordan Berry [00:40:56]:
That’s right. Yeah. We’ll just, we’ll just list them all, man. Just go for the books. I mean, he’s got a lot of really great stuff, right? Like, I think the criticism of him is the hustle culture and that’s the pendulum is starting to swing. It was all like, go, go, go, go, go. And you know, some people are like, well, you know, you gotta also have a life, you know. But for Grant Cardone specifically, it is his life.

Jordan Berry [00:41:19]:
Like, that’s what he loves to do. Right? So

Brian Lecca [00:41:21]:
But he balances everything, though. He’s got a big family. He’s got a bunch of friends. He goes on trips. It depend like I said, it really depends on your lifestyle, what you wanna do. If you’re business oriented, go for it. If you’re more relaxed, you wanna take it easy, really it really depends on this this is yeah. I mean, this is what I’ve noticed, you know, over the years.

Brian Lecca [00:41:44]:
I can’t force somebody to work harder or, you know, like, you gotta find people of your caliber if you want you know? If they don’t want to I have a friend of mine who’s like, I wanna chill out. I was like, fine. Go for it. But don’t expect me to be calling you up all the time because I’m busy. You know? Like, I’m, like, I’m trying to grow my business. I got things to do. You know? So it depends on your lifestyle anyways.

Jordan Berry [00:42:09]:
When you started doing the, the calling up these bed and breakfasts and Airbnbs and stuff, like, how did you, how did you land those clients? Did you physically call them and just say, Hey, we offer this service or like, well, how did you actually get? Cause I think there’s a lot of people that would love to get more of those. So how did you how did you land those deals?

Brian Lecca [00:42:29]:
Oh, you’re gonna get a lot of clients. So I did a very tricky little thing. It wasn’t really that tricky, but, seeing that booking doesn’t give you the contacts of these BNBs. I had to go on to Google and what I did was I just wrote BNB Bologna, which is my city, and I just got a huge list of BNBs, and I would go on to each and every website and get their email. I wouldn’t get their number. I would just get their email, and I just made a huge list of emails. I think I still have all my list. Like, I have an email list of, like, couple 100 VMBs, and I just kept stacking them on my notes in my iPhone.

Brian Lecca [00:43:18]:
It was super easy. And I would just go on to Google, grab it, copy and paste it back onto my list. You know? And then I just cop I did a email listing, ccbcc, which is, like, you block the carbon copy of you know, you don’t so each and every person doesn’t see that they’re part of, like, a huge list. You know?

Jordan Berry [00:43:42]:
Right. Yeah.

Brian Lecca [00:43:44]:
I sent that out, and I just kept doing that over and over again for a couple of weeks. I was just getting emails, calls. People were, like, crying, like, need to come to my laundry. Like, there’s so many clients out there. And I was, like, oh my god. I had so much work to do. At the beginning, I was working literally from, like, 6 in the morning until, like, 8 or 9 at night. Like, it was just all day going to get laundry.

Brian Lecca [00:44:14]:
It it it was it was wild. But, yeah, that’s how I got all those clients. I went on to Facebook and I just searched face BNB, you know, in my area, boom, and just grabbed all their emails. I didn’t wanna do their number. I didn’t wanna call them because they’re already stressed out with a bunch of calls. So I think an email is it’s per you can make a professional email, you know, tailored to them. You give them your prices. You’d be very I was very, concise.

Brian Lecca [00:44:45]:
In Italy, you gotta be concise. You let them know what the prices are, etcetera. Like, first, I was first, I would do, like, a introductory email, like, hello, this is what I do. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll send you my prices. But I was getting so many replies and some people I had to actually ignore because I was just getting I was overworked. I didn’t have enough machines. I didn’t have enough space. So that was my solution at the beginning because I really wasn’t, making much money in the beginning.

Jordan Berry [00:45:26]:
Yeah. Well, that’s that’s huge, man. And, you know, to be able to generate enough leads to have to ignore, like turn people away and ignore. Like that’s, that’s a problem. A lot of people I think would like to have, doing that. So thank you for sharing how you did that. Have you, I mean, you’ve, you’ve had this for what, like 7 ish years now. Have you thought about getting more or building more?

Brian Lecca [00:45:52]:
It crossed my mind. It crossed my mind. Last year, I was in a sort of a condition of doubt. I was doubting what I wanted to do. So was I going to expand this operation of working with bigger BNBs? Was I gonna work with hotels now? I’m having a little bit of a blockage there. Like, I was like, I could either do that or I could open up another laundromat. And so I’m actually trying to convince my uncle to sell me one of his, so we’ll see. Because his are alright.

Brian Lecca [00:46:27]:
He has the machines I use. He’s part of my social media sort of conglomerate of different laundromats that I, you know, look after. So I would love to, maybe buy one of his one day. That would be cool. I wanted to expand my own. The problem I’m having is I need an ironing machine. And the industrial ironing machines, 1, are super expensive, and, 2, you need a lot of space because they’re huge They’re

Jordan Berry [00:47:00]:
big. Yeah.

Brian Lecca [00:47:01]:
They’re huge machines. They iron everything. They fold everything, etcetera. Right now, I hired a lady who’s an excellent iron lady. She irons quickly. She loves doing it. And so right now, I’m expanding in that direction. So I’m getting some more clients.

Brian Lecca [00:47:26]:
I’m trying to unlock sort of how I can expand my business. So for now, I’m just having her doing that and or I open up a little warehouse where I can put one of those ironing things because I need that For me to really become professional and to really expand, I need a big ironing machine that irons quickly and that folds, you know, because it irons and it’ll fold it for you as well. You know? Mhmm. That’s level that’s the level of, like, industrial laundry. So I’m leaving the laundromat business doing that. So which direction am I gonna go? Am I gonna continue doing laundromats or am I gonna you know, I’m being pulled in 2 directions, and I can probably do both. Why not? If my uncle wants to sell me one of his, I’ll buy one of his. But to start from scratch and buy a whole new place, it’s not a saturated market in the city.

Brian Lecca [00:48:24]:
It’s just a lot of extra work, a lot more work. And when right now, I’m kind of doing my fixing up my house so I can start Airbnb ing my own house. You know? So you can see I’m just gonna show you real quick. You know? It’s a construction site. You know? I got drywall that I’m putting up. I just made a new bathroom. I’m making a new bathroom right now. It’s you know? I’m I also wanna go go into this business a little bit.

Brian Lecca [00:48:50]:
So, you know, I wanna have another I wanna have a different side hustle and just keep the laundry business, try and see if I can expand it. Yeah. You know, it’s a lot of lot of different things that can be done, but for now, that’s that’s what it is. I might open up another laundromat. You never know.

Jordan Berry [00:49:06]:
Yeah. Well, it sounds like I mean, you’re kinda at a crossroads, right, of, like, figuring out the path forward. And, you know, on the one hand, it’s a super exciting time. But on the other hand, it’s, I can imagine it’s probably pretty stressful cause it’s hard to, it’s hard to figure that out. Like what path do you go forward and

Brian Lecca [00:49:23]:
how do I want

Jordan Berry [00:49:24]:
to be spending my time and what’s going to be worth my time and what do I feel like I can grow and you know, on and on. So it’s, yeah, it it’s an exciting time to to

Brian Lecca [00:49:35]:
Well, I mean, like, to be honest, like, what happened was in COVID all, you know, we all know what happened. A lot of places shut down. Things really slowed down. All the B and B shut down. So I was, like, making, you know, back to what I was making back in the beginning. And so even then, I was like, damn, should I sell? Should I go back to the United States? I have a lot of friends in the States. You know? Naturally, I grew up there. So I kinda had my doubts there.

Brian Lecca [00:50:01]:
I was like, so do I sell. And then I I saw that things were picking back up again, so I was like, you know what? Screw it. Let’s go all the way, you know, let’s go on, Invest some more and just see what where we can bring this, you know. That’s what we we entrepreneurs, that’s what they do. They they take a bunch of risk. Sometimes you’re just kind of jumping off a cliff and say, no. They don’t know what’s gonna happen. Let’s let’s see what happens.

Brian Lecca [00:50:26]:
You know, I just I picked it back up again. It went, and yeah, man. Here we are.

Jordan Berry [00:50:32]:
Yeah. Dude, well, I mean, I think that’s I think it’s exciting, man. I I mean, obviously, like okay. You know, using your imagery. Right. You’re jumping off a cliff and you can’t see the bottom. You don’t know. So obviously there’s a fear there and like it, it’s scary because you don’t know if you’re gonna hit concrete at the bottom or you’re gonna end up in a pool or something.

Jordan Berry [00:50:52]:
Right? Like, I don’t know. But on the other hand, it’s, it’s also like you’re jumping off a cliff, but you’ve got, you’ve got some wings too. Right? You can sort of direct the path a little bit. You don’t know where exactly you’re gonna land, but you can kind of influence the the path you’re gonna take. Right? If you’re, you know, you end up grabbing another location or 2 or 10 or what, that’s awesome. And if you, you know, you end up kind of going more down this, you know, this other path that you’re heading down, potentially also awesome. Right? And you can kind

Brian Lecca [00:51:27]:
of

Jordan Berry [00:51:27]:
shape that, how, you know, how you want to to some extent, or you know, you just scrap it all and move back to the, you know, the promised land over here on this side of the pond. And, I’m just kidding.

Brian Lecca [00:51:43]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:51:44]:
There’s excitement there, fear there, and it’s all kind of mixed in. But like you said, that’s part of the entrepreneur journey. Right?

Brian Lecca [00:51:51]:
It’s part of the journey. Absolutely.

Jordan Berry [00:51:54]:
What what gives you I’m just curious because I talked to a lot of people who that terrifies them. Right? Like that terrifies them. And you said, hey, you know, let’s let’s go all in. Let’s go for it. Like, what gives you the the courage to to do that? Right? You don’t know where the bottom is. You don’t know where it’s heading. You don’t know the end. Why did you or, like, how did you have the courage to to do that anyways?

Brian Lecca [00:52:22]:
I don’t know. I think it’s like you put, I would put myself in a position where I didn’t really have a choice. And so that fear of losing or that fear of something bad happening just keeps you on your toes. Not that you have to be paranoid, but I did the same thing with my house. Like, I’m living in a construction site. It’s terrible. I didn’t really I don’t really have a choice. Like, I got up to a certain point where I was like, I can’t turn back.

Brian Lecca [00:52:51]:
If I turn back, I lose a shit ton of money. And I’m I’m gonna be worse off turning back than I am just not knowing what what I’m gonna run into. You know? So I could open up this Airbnb. It could not work at all. I don’t know. I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s gonna work really well. This is just an example. I bought a whole new machine.

Brian Lecca [00:53:17]:
Like, last year, I bought a huge washer, which was, like, 9 k, and I hired this lady to iron. I was really scared. I was like, I don’t know what’s gonna happen. It turned out okay. There were a lot of bumps because I’m I’m already prepared for that, you know. Like, I’m gonna run into so many obstacles. I’m already prepared for those obstacles, you know. And when you already know you’re gonna run across them, they don’t surprise you anymore.

Brian Lecca [00:53:50]:
Yeah. So when you get complacent, like, ah, everything’s gonna go smooth, that’s when you kinda get upset when things don’t work out. You know? Because you get a little bit too complacent and you’re like, oh, it’s like I don’t I, like, I always like to stay on my toes but not be paranoid. I don’t know if that makes sense. Like Yeah. I’m always aware. Like, when everything like, I’m gonna get a call in 5 minutes from now, somebody says, look, your laundromat’s flooded, you know, because a a pipe got busted. You know, I’m all out prepared for that.

Brian Lecca [00:54:23]:
That’s fine. I’m gonna go over this. It’s gonna it’s gonna happen at midnight. That’s fine. I remember, like, when I first opened up, the lady that lived above my laundromat, she called me up. She was like, bro, somebody’s trying to break into your laundromat. And it was, like, 3 or 4 in the morning. I got up, hopped on my scooter, ran rode over there, you know, saw that it was okay.

Brian Lecca [00:54:43]:
There was a busted window. I took it like nothing. And I was like, I’m prepared for things like that. You know? You gotta be prepared for the worst. I don’t know. There’s, like, a saying, but it’s like, when you’re when you’re prepared for the worst to happen, it’s like, you know, you don’t really surprise. You’re like, okay. Like, just that’s part of it.

Jordan Berry [00:54:59]:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think I mean, the way that I like to look at it is, like, when when frustration happens, a lot of times even when anger happens, overwhelm happens. A lot of times, it’s because our expectations are mismatched with reality. Right? And if you expect nothing to ever go wrong, when something goes wrong, it’s gonna frustrate you and overwhelm you. But when you’re you’ve got an expectation like, hey, I own a business. Hey. This business works with a lot of people.

Jordan Berry [00:55:29]:
Hey. There’s a lot of machines involved in this business. There’s gonna be problems. You expect that when they happen, like you said, you can, you know, easier said than done for many of us, but it makes it easier to handle at 3 in the morning when you’re like, okay, somebody busted a window. Okay. I just, I gotta get the window replaced. Right? And make sure nothing else is wrong. Like, you just do what you gotta do because you expect it.

Brian Lecca [00:55:52]:
Well, I mean, like, yeah. You’re gonna get it’s gonna you’re gonna get moments where, I mean, I’ve gotten really angry with things that, you know, that happened. I just use that anger as, you know, transforming into some energy. It shows that you are gonna fix it rather than becoming sad about something. You’re coming anger is a little bit higher than sadness, you know, because you can use that for some good energy and be like, okay. Well, let’s fix it now. You know? It shows that you wanna get things done. So

Jordan Berry [00:56:20]:
Yeah. I love that. I love that.

Brian Lecca [00:56:23]:
You know what I mean? So

Jordan Berry [00:56:25]:
Yeah. Yeah. I do. I mean, I think that that that

Brian Lecca [00:56:28]:
makes sense. Some people can look scary. They get angry. It’s like, no. It just shows that they’re determined. They gotta get some stuff done, and it’s it’s gotta go through the way they want it to, you know. So there’s nothing wrong with getting angry. I’ve had, like, you know, very bad situations happen in laundromats and I would get angry.

Brian Lecca [00:56:47]:
I would have drug dealers come through. I would have people shoot up heroin in my laundromats. I would have gypsies come through eating and they weren’t even washing their clothes, they would just stay there eating their food. I would get angry. You guys gotta go, you know, you can’t be in there. So you it’s good. Things like that are gonna happen. It’d be unexpected unexpected.

Brian Lecca [00:57:10]:
You know?

Jordan Berry [00:57:11]:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s business, man. It’s all it’s all part of

Brian Lecca [00:57:15]:
the game. There you go. It’s all part of the game, bro. That’s the exactly what it is. It’s all part of the game.

Jordan Berry [00:57:21]:
Yeah. Yeah. And in the moment, you know, I get you. Like, it it can be frustrating, make you angry and all that. But in the big picture, like it is, it’s just part of the game and you do need to expect some level. Now you don’t always know specifically what to expect. I’ve definitely been surprised on many of occasions in my laundromats about things that people do. And just when I think I could no longer ever be surprised, sometimes that gets me.

Brian Lecca [00:57:47]:
Especially in the states. I can totally imagine. I’ve I’ve heard some wild stories. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:57:53]:
There’s yeah. There’s some wild stories out there for sure. Yeah. Okay. So listen to I mean, I love what you got going on. Are you still doing a bunch of, like, social media stuff, marketing, all that stuff for your laundromat as well?

Brian Lecca [00:58:07]:
Yeah. I have my Insta page which is just laundry in general. I joke around. I do memes. I will put some stuff up from my own laundromat. I usually reserve that for Facebook. I keep serious stuff on Facebook, you know. I’ll put some jokes on there too, but it’s, probably, like, a new special deal or I’m doing a new, you know, offer for laundry delivery, etcetera.

Brian Lecca [00:58:33]:
I’ll do that on Facebook, and I’ll promote it through Facebook. So I’ll do a couple of bucks a day, and I’ll just promote that. Social media, that’s or sorry. Face Instagram, I just play. I just play it. Yeah. That’s fine.

Jordan Berry [00:58:48]:
I like that.

Brian Lecca [00:58:49]:
I just have fun. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:58:52]:
Just for just for context, what what I mean, you mentioned one size earlier. What size machines do you have? And do you mind sharing, like, how much it costs to do each size of machine, in in Bologna?

Brian Lecca [00:59:05]:
No. I don’t mind. No. The 10 kilo machines are standard size. That’s €6.

Jordan Berry [00:59:10]:
Okay.

Brian Lecca [00:59:10]:
I’m the most expensive in my city, by the way. Other people keep it at 5, 4, €5. I’m the highest, and I’ll explain why later. And then my bigger machines are about €8. Those wash, like, the, I guess, like, the double blankets. We call them wedding blankets in Italy on the like, the bigger blankets, you know.

Jordan Berry [00:59:31]:
Mhmm.

Brian Lecca [00:59:33]:
Thick, you know, the ones with the, the feathers.

Jordan Berry [00:59:37]:
A comforter that we have?

Brian Lecca [00:59:38]:
Yeah. Yeah. Like a comforter, like a double comforter. So we have machines for that, and that’s €8. And then we have our dryers, which is for for 7 minutes, it’s €1. But to dry, you need, like, I would say, 3, €4, about a half an hour.

Jordan Berry [00:59:58]:
Yeah.

Brian Lecca [00:59:59]:
So, I mean, you’re looking when you’re coming in to wash us some 10 kilos from 10 to 15 kilos, you’re looking to drop 10 to €15. About €1 a kilo.

Jordan Berry [01:00:12]:
Yeah. That’s not too bad. Yeah.

Brian Lecca [01:00:14]:
It’s not too bad.

Jordan Berry [01:00:15]:
Well okay. Now Others others others got

Brian Lecca [01:00:17]:
it others got it a little bit cheaper.

Jordan Berry [01:00:19]:
Yeah. So spill the beans. Why are you why are you the most expensive?

Brian Lecca [01:00:24]:
I’m in a very, degraded neighborhood. One of the most dangerous in my city. So in order to keep out, you know, people like, I don’t wanna say that to say, like, oh, they’re, like, the unwanted, you know, dirty. I just don’t want dirty people in my laundromat. You know? I want families. I want tourists. I want good standing, hardworking immigrants. I want good people in my laundromat.

Brian Lecca [01:00:54]:
In my uncle’s laundromat, he kept being very cheap and it was just full of drug dealers, you know, very dirty people. And seeing that I was there, I could put some control on there. I could, you know, make sure the rules were enforced. You know, don’t wash your shoes, clean up after them and, you know, a lot of they’ll they’ll bring clothing and it’s it’s really stinky and I have to, you know I don’t like that. You know? I wanna I wanna I want good standing people to come in my business, and so I just keep the prices a little bit higher for that reason. And it people love my laundromat. I mean, they come all the time. It’s clean.

Brian Lecca [01:01:42]:
You know, that’s really important for a good laundromat. It’s keeping it clean 100%.

Jordan Berry [01:01:49]:
Do you get do you get comments from people about being the highest price? Like, do people say or complain about it or say anything about it to you?

Brian Lecca [01:01:58]:
No. One complaint. I mean, I’ll get some Google reviews. It’s gonna be, like, kind of pricey. I think I’ve seen 1, 2 Google reviews that said pricey. But a lot of them, you know, always clean. It’s kept clean, etcetera, etcetera. So Yeah.

Brian Lecca [01:02:15]:
I would rather be pricey than to be cheap and dirty. I don’t know. And I got bills to pay. I got bills to

Jordan Berry [01:02:24]:
That needs to go on a t shirt that you’ve sent people out around on. I’d rather be pricey than cheap and dirty. That’s

Brian Lecca [01:02:32]:
right. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:02:34]:
Yeah. Awesome. What I mean, what else do we need to know about this this operation you got going on over there? Anything anything else that we need to talk about that we didn’t hit yet?

Brian Lecca [01:02:46]:
That’s about it. I mean, those are the fundamentals, man. So marketing, keeping them laundromat cleaning. You can even have some machines that are out of order. As long as that place is clean, you’re gonna be up and running. You know? Yeah. Another thing is flyers. You know, if you just do flyers, there’s people that don’t have social media.

Brian Lecca [01:03:07]:
You gotta do flyers. So stick with that.

Jordan Berry [01:03:10]:
Are you doing repairs yourself, or do you got a repair guy? How does that work?

Brian Lecca [01:03:15]:
On only on the electronical stuff, I have a repair guy Okay. Which is my uncle’s ex associate business associate. Or we say or you say business partner. I think it’s business partner in the United States. He does all the the electronic repairs. I can replace the doors. I can replace the motors and the pumps and the wheels and all of that because Mhmm. These are the the Alliance Laundry Group has some pretty good machines, and so I just I know those machines so well.

Brian Lecca [01:03:47]:
So I just stick with that. You know? Just order them. I’ll even order some pieces from the States because they’re cheaper. So I’ll even go to the United States, pick them up, and bring them back to Italy. Yeah, man. Expense. Business trip. There you go.

Jordan Berry [01:04:00]:
Yeah. Awesome, man. Well, dude, this has been awesome to hear kinda your journey from going from Italy to the States, back to Italy, to getting connected up with your uncle and helping him and learning the business from him. And then seeing even like just hearing your own sort of evolution of observing how your uncle’s doing business and then trying to put your own spin on it, doing it your own kind of way. And then getting your own laundromat and implementing that. Like I, that was just super fascinating for me to hear kind of that whole journey of, you know, how you got to where you’re at now. And I’m like super intrigued to, to hear about the path you end up taking kind of going forward. So I mean, we’re for sure gonna have to do another one of these down.

Jordan Berry [01:04:48]:
Why not? Why not? Yeah, absolutely. Talking about after you kind of figure out where you’re going, if you grab more locations, you just kind of keep rolling how you’re doing or you go a different direction. Like I would love to hear how that’s going. And I think that just hearing the way that you’re thinking about the business and, you know, hearing about the things that you are doing in your business. I just think you’re, you’re just getting started, you know, here, I think, and I think that you’ve got big things kind of down the road there, for you, despite some of the obstacles of doing business in Italy and all that stuff. So excited to hear more about that from you, man. I appreciate you coming on.

Brian Lecca [01:05:31]:
It’s been awesome, man. I love your podcast. It was a great idea. There I don’t think there’s ever been a laundromat podcast. Like, you gotta be the only guy doing it. There’s

Jordan Berry [01:05:44]:
a there’s a couple now that have that have come out. So and there was one before mine. Laundromat how to. You guys can go check that one out. It’s not up and running anymore, but Ken Barrett had that out for a little bit there. He’s the real OG.

Brian Lecca [01:05:58]:
Oh, okay. Not I guess I wasn’t aware. I wasn’t aware. But cool.

Jordan Berry [01:06:03]:
It was very different than this podcast. Very different. So

Brian Lecca [01:06:06]:
You’re also starting out a man. You got you got a whole, you know, thing going on. So it’s like, who knows where you’re gonna end up? You could be like you know, it could even transition from laundry to, you know, something bigger. But

Jordan Berry [01:06:20]:
Yeah. Who knows, man? Like, that’s I always love, like, the one of my favorite things about doing the podcast is, you know, talking to people like you and hearing how the journey weaves for people. Right? Cause it’s, it’s never a straight shot like, Oh, I was born. I wanted to own laundromats. I owned laundromats, and now that’s just all it like. It’s never that. It’s always some sort of like weaving of life that brings you to kind of where you’re at. And I always love to hear that and I’m always open to that for my life too.

Jordan Berry [01:06:53]:
Cause my life has been bobbing and weaving left and right all over the place. So who knows where we end up? Lot of fun though along the way.

Brian Lecca [01:07:01]:
Yeah. It’s it’s one of those businesses where it’s like, it’s a lot it’s a side hustle for a lot of people. So to really become, like, entrenched in the laundromat business, like, it it’s very rare to find somebody like that, like, to be thoroughly, like, in it. There’s a guy that does YouTube videos and he’s pretty thoroughly in it. I think he’s got, like, laundromats in Philadelphia or New York or something that, you know, he is probably, like, the god of laundromats, you know. He’s brilliant. Yeah, man. It depends it depends what lifestyle, like, you know, if you wanna really get into it just like that or, you know, branch off and do other things.

Brian Lecca [01:07:42]:
So

Jordan Berry [01:07:43]:
yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s cool. I mean, having those options is is awesome. And I think laundromats are a really great vehicle to give you that kind of option because you can, this is a business that you can jump into, you know, full full force, full time, and you can build it into a really big empire.

Brian Lecca [01:08:02]:
Absolutely. You can

Jordan Berry [01:08:03]:
do that. There’s lots of people that do that or you can kind of run it on the side and in venture into other things too. And, and so lawn mets are a great vehicle to help you scratch that edge no matter which kind of path you want to take. So that’s part of the reason I really love this asset class here. So

Brian Lecca [01:08:22]:
Yeah, man. Absolutely. I mean, you can definitely you can definitely make it into a passive business if you want to. Just you gotta hire people. You really gotta do that, but depends on you.

Jordan Berry [01:08:33]:
Yeah. It does. It does. I appreciate you taking the time, man, to come on here and, you know, take some time out of your day. I know it’s late over there, so I appreciate you, you know, staying up late, having, having that nightlife with, talking laundry over here. Exciting stuff. And sharing your story, man. I really appreciate you coming on.

Brian Lecca [01:08:55]:
It’s been great, dude. Thanks for having me.

Jordan Berry [01:08:58]:
Oh, anytime. You’re welcome back anytime. And like I said, we’ll have to do a follow-up episode down the line to see where you end up. Cause I know you got some 10 X in to do still, there.

Brian Lecca [01:09:09]:
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. 10 x all day.

Jordan Berry [01:09:13]:
That’s right. That’s right. Alright, man. Well, I appreciate it. And, let’s stay in touch. Alright. I hope you loved that interview with Brian. Such a good, episode.

Jordan Berry [01:09:21]:
So many good things in there. So much good stuff. And, dude, I can’t wait to hear more from Brian about what he’s doing over there in Italy. But listen. All of that is great and all, but none of it means anything unless you take some action. You’ve gotta take that action to achieve your goals. So pick one thing from today’s episode, put it into action. Maybe that one thing is joining the pro community at lawnametresource.com/pro so that you can join the pro q and a and join a mastermind group, October 1st October 2nd.

Jordan Berry [01:09:54]:
But maybe it’s something else from the interview. Whatever it is, pick something, put it into action. I just wanna share my favorite quote from this episode here. I’d rather be pricey than cheap and dirty. Listen. I think that applies to all kinds of things life there. So love that quote. Hey.

Jordan Berry [01:10:12]:
Hope you loved it, and we’ll see you next week on Lorna My Resource Podcast. Peace.