129. The ONLY 2 Ingredients You Need to Succeed

Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:

Hey, what’s up, guys? It’s Jordan with the Laundromat Resource podcast. This is show 129, and I’m pumped you’re here today because today I’m kind of keeping the mic for myself because just as I’ve been thinking through, you know, business for myself and how I can help other people, some stuff really just kind of hit me. And I just want to share it with you and contextualize it for our industry. So I want to go over the only two ingredients you need to succeed in this or any business. I want to tell you what those two are, and then I want to give you just a light, loose framework to help you figure out how to implement these two ingredients. Now, today we’re talking mostly on higher level, more mindset stuff, and the tactics might vary. But if you have these two ingredients, you’re guaranteed to succeed. And I’m excited to share my thoughts on this with you.

Jordan Berry [00:01:02]:

I’m excited to hear your thoughts about this also and see what you think. If you agree or disagree, I’d be curious to know. So let me know. Okay, real quick, a couple of quick things before we jump into these two ingredients. Number one is on October 11, we have our Mastermind Induction. We do these every six weeks or so. And that is where members of the Laundromat Resource Pro Community who want to join a Mastermind Group, which is just a small group of people who have the same interests, the same goals, can get together on a regular basis and help each other succeed. I’ve been saying it since day one.

Jordan Berry [00:01:42]:

We’re all better when we work together. The Mastermind groups are the epitome of this, and I’ve shared this before. I pay five figures every single year to be part of Mastermind groups. This is just included in the pro community there, along with a whole bunch of other stuff, which, by the way, just want to throw this little teaser out. This week we’re beta testing a brand new tool over on the Laundromat Resource Pro Community they haven’t even found out yet about, but they will probably the day this comes out. So very exciting. We’re always trying to implement new tools and resources to help you succeed in your business. This one I’m very excited about and can’t wait to get some feedback on so we can continue to improve that.

Jordan Berry [00:02:29]:

But going back to the Mastermind Induction group. Induction Night. This is where the pro community members who want to join a mastermind group, who want to meet on a regular basis with other Laundromat owners or if you’re not yet a Laundromat owner and you want to meet with other people who are trying to buy their first laundromat so that you guys can share the tactics, the techniques that you’re trying out, what the results of those are, that you can encourage each other, keep each other accountable to taking the actions you need to take in order to succeed in this business, which we’re going to talk about today. And these mastermind groups are seriously, they’re a game changer when it comes to your business, which means ultimately that they’re a life changer for so many people in these mastermind groups. I think we’ve got about 15 of them going right now and looking to add some more on October 11. So if that’s something you’re interested in, check out lawnmatresource. Compro. Not only do you get access to the mastermind groups, which in and of themselves are far more valuable than the investment of joining the pro community, but you get access to all the other tools and resource, including this brand new one that we’re beta testing starting this week.

Jordan Berry [00:03:40]:

So check out Lanametresource.com Pro. All the perks and resources, including all the industry discounts that you get. You can find all that out at that link lawnmetresource.com probe. Okay, enough of that. I want to get into the only two ingredients you need to succeed in this business. And I’m going to go out on a limb and say if you follow these two steps, these two ingredients, you mix them up and bake something with them, I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’re guaranteed to succeed in business and therefore probably in life. So I don’t know, does that pique your interest? Again, I’d be interested to hear if you believe me or not or if you think this is correct or not, but I’m going to tell you right up front what the two ingredients are. Well, I guess we’re slightly in the middle now, but right up front, here what the two ingredients are.

Jordan Berry [00:04:37]:

And then I’m going to talk about a little bit of a loose framework that you can utilize to help you implement these two ingredients in your business. And then I want to talk to you about how does this work in our specific industry, what does this look like and what’s the opportunity here for you? Because again, I think this episode has the potential to be a mind shift for some people. And I think this mind shift can be a life transforming mind shift. It was for me. I’ll just say that. It was for me, and it still is. It’s a continual mind shift that I continue to make and evolve and grow. So you may hear future iterations of this, but without further ado, let’s get into what are the two ingredients and then let’s get to work contextualizing this in our business, because that’s what we’re all about, right? We’re trying to get into this business the right way, and we’re trying to find success, whatever that means for you.

Jordan Berry [00:05:38]:

Financial freedom, leave your nine to five job side income, build a huge empire, whatever that means for you. I’m going to tell you the two things you need and then let’s get going. Contextualizing it. Okay, so here’s the transforming one. Okay, here’s the thing that if you do this and then pair it with number two, everything will be different. It’s this tie your success to the success of your customers. Tie your success to the success of your customers. What does that mean? It means you can only succeed when your customers succeed.

Jordan Berry [00:06:22]:

And again, this applies in our industry. This applies in all industries, right? And we’re going to talk about what that means in our industry here in a little bit. But if you can set it up to where the only possible way for you to succeed as a laundromat owner is for your customers to succeed, then all you need is one other ingredient and you’re guaranteed success, as far as I can tell. All right? That second ingredient is this persistently pursue ways to help your customers succeed. Just don’t give up figuring out how to help your customers succeed a little bit more every day. If you commit to helping your customers succeed and you never stop doing that, I guarantee you, you will succeed. And I think, Man, I’m going to butcher the quote I’m going to butcher who I think I want to say is Jim Rome, who said something to the effect of, you can have anything you want if you help enough people get what they want in life. You can have anything you want in life if you help enough people get what they want in life.

Jordan Berry [00:07:38]:

And that goes right in line, hand in hand with if you tie your success to the success of your customers. Meaning if there’s no way for you to succeed unless your customers succeed, and you never stop trying to help your customers succeed, you will be guaranteed to succeed, whatever that looks like for you. And to me, that was a life transforming perspective. So I do a lot of consulting calls. I talk to a lot of people trying to get in this business. I talk to a lot of people who are already in this business. And I hear a lot this mindset, which is not necessarily a bad mindset, but I don’t think it’s the best mindset. And I hear this mindset that’s like, okay, I am looking for X amount of dollars per month to help me leave my nine to five.

Jordan Berry [00:08:30]:

Or I’m looking for this kind of return on my investment, or I’m looking for something that’s super passive where I’m just making money and I’m not doing anything. Again, nothing wrong with any of those mindsets. However, you’re not guaranteed to succeed when you enter any business with that mindset. And I think if I was to just be brutally harsh and honest with myself, and I look back to when I bought my first laundromat, I made a ton of mistakes. I made so many mistakes. But I think the biggest mistake I made was that I was sold on the fact that I’d have to come collect quarters once a week and do nothing else and I was going to make a ton of money. And I think it was just the wrong mindset. I think if my mindset was shifted the other way to say, how do I help this community and these customers succeed? And as a byproduct of that, I will succeed as opposed to the other way around, I think that even if I had made all the same mistakes, my experience of those mistakes would have been dramatically different.

Jordan Berry [00:09:38]:

Now I want to kind of frame this up a little bit for us here because what does that mean to help our customers succeed specifically in our industry? Right? Well, real quick, I’m going to give a little bit of framework. I’m going to give you five sort of things that you could be thinking through when it comes to customer success in laundromat business, right? Whether that’s self serve or wash, dry fold or pickup and delivery, any of these, I think it’ll apply to, right? So number one, these are like five different categories that you can be thinking of specific tactics within. And my goal is to continually look at each of these and look for areas of improvement. You don’t have to do everything all at once, but just step by step, continually making small incremental improvements in each and every one of these over time, you’re guaranteed success. Guaranteed. Okay, so number one category when it comes to what does customer success look like in our industry? So number one, and this is not necessarily an exhaustive list, these are the five things that I came up with. There’s probably more actually. If you know more.

Jordan Berry [00:10:58]:

If you’re on YouTube, leave them in the comments down below because I’d love to hear more ways that we can do this. If you’re listening on the know, shoot me an email [email protected], and let me know and I’ll share it with everybody else. Okay? So number one category is easier if you can make the experience easier for your customers. Streamlining things, thinking through all the little details. And easier can go from, hey, make it easier to actually get the laundry into the laundromat from the car. Right? Make it easier to navigate the options for the wash cycle, make it easier to get from the washer to the dryer, make it easier to fold. I mean, there’s all of these little incremental things. You could break all these down into even smaller ones, right? So making things easier for the customer.

Jordan Berry [00:11:50]:

Listen, don’t you appreciate when people make your life easier? I know I do, and I think pretty much everybody does, right? So making life easier can help your customers succeed in our business. Okay? So that’s number one, make it easier. Number two, make it faster. Right. Time is a valuable commodity for everyone. Everyone, right? And drop off laundry, pickup and delivery laundry, both of those are ways to make it faster for customers, right? But not everybody is going to utilize those some people are still going to utilize self serve. So looking for ways in all aspects of our business to make things faster for our customers. And that can be anywhere from having faster wash cycles on certain machines or on all of our machines.

Jordan Berry [00:12:42]:

I know a lot of people who will put the soft mount washers in their machines because they like that they spend at a higher g and extract more water in the wash cycle. So the dries are really short. So there’s lots of different things in that that you can do to make it faster experience for your customer on the self serve side. And you can optimize your systems and processes in terms of your operations for laundry processing, for wash dry fold, for pickup and delivery, all of those things, right? So figuring out ways to make it faster for your customers. And again, you can get really granular here, and I encourage you to do that. Start with the big stuff, the easy stuff, and then work your way down as you start checking those boxes off. Then get more and more streamlined in making things faster and easier for your customers. Okay? So those are the first two.

Jordan Berry [00:13:35]:

Easier, faster. Number three, better make it better than everybody else. And just to kind of zoom out for a second, you’ll hear a lot on this podcast from me, but from a lot of the guests that we’ve had on here, too. And it’s kind of a buzzword around the industry, right? Value. Lead with value. These five things and possibly more are what we mean by value, right? Make it easier, make it faster, make it better. Now, better can mean a whole lot of different things, right? Better in your market might just mean keeping the place spick and span and keeping all the machines running, right? Some places the bar is pretty low for better. Keep all the lights on, keep the change machines full, keep the machines running, and keep the place clean.

Jordan Berry [00:14:24]:

Right? In other markets, that’s a baseline. And you’ve got to find other ways to make it better, right? And that can be anywhere from having a better focus on customer experience so that your employees are trained to greet everybody with a smile, sort of the chickfila my pleasure mentality, right, to having more comfortable seating, whatever better might look like in your market. Better is another way to help your customers succeed in what they’re doing right. And then on the service side, there’s a lot of things we can do better from being the presentation, for example, of what the laundry actually looks like when we deliver it back to so, you know, we could throw it in a clear plastic bag and deliver it back. It’s all folded, it’s clean. It’s the same as anybody else. Or Walid shared some touches, personal touches that he’s done in his delivery service for his clients and just take it up a notch and make it better than everybody else. Handwritten card or leaving a little thank you note.

Jordan Berry [00:15:39]:

In the bag or having special bags that you redeliver them in or tying it in a special way or whatever it might look like for you. So easier, faster, better. Number four is sort of along the same lines of all these, but more convenient, right? Convenient sort of implies easier and faster. But I wanted to kind of throw convenient in there because for me at least, it’s a little bit of a different framework from easier and faster, right? So if I’m just trying to think through how do I make things more convenient for my customers, right? And whether that’s adding more carts, laundry carts in there, or taking it to the extreme of it’d be a lot more convenient for the customers who I do the most business with if my biggest machines were closest to the door, right? And so there’s lots of owners who’ve gone through and actually moved machines around in their store to make it more convenient, right? Or if you’re building out a store making wider aisles or I’ve had lots of people who I’ve talked to who have actually removed machines from their store so that there’s more space to make it more convenient for customers, right? And again, talking customer success here, the drop off service and the pickup and delivery, those are convenience services, right? So in and of themselves, they’re an application of this from the traditional self serve laundromat business, right? But there’s probably lots of things that you can go through and figure out ways to make it even more convenient for those customers, right? And if you’re starting to stack all of these things, make it easier, make it faster, make it better, make it more convenient, if you’re starting to stack all these just a little bit more than your competitors, well, guess what? You are going to start picking up business, you’re going to start generating word of mouth and you’re going to start getting reviews and all that’s going to start snowballing. Okay? So again, aligning your success with the customer success. This is what we mean by leading with value, right? And so the number five is one that I think is missed a lot and I think it might be the most important one. And all of these first four sort of play into number five. But number five is one that we don’t traditionally think of, I think, and that’s fostering positive feelings.

Jordan Berry [00:18:27]:

Now, what exactly does that mean? Well, what I mean by that, if you think about sales, which is kind of what we’re doing, we don’t call it that in our industry, really, but what we’re doing is we’re doing sales, whether that’s with the self serve, we got to sell our potential customers to come in and actually utilize our laundromats, right? And wash, dry, fold, pickup and delivery, it’s a little more sales oriented, right. Feels a little more salesy, although many of us don’t run them systematically as sales, which is why we started the Laundry Sales Accelerator Cohort. Which started this week and super excited about, but generating and fostering positive feelings with the customers, that is the key to sales. And more specifically, that’s the key to recurring sales, right? When we can have clients or customers associate our service, our business, with positive feelings, then we’re far more likely, number one, to capture their business in the first place. And number two, we’re far more likely to continue to keep them as our existing clients. Now, what exactly does fostering positive feelings look like? Well, it can look like a lot of things. I mean, it can look like just genuine interactions. Again, training your employees or doing it yourself, if that’s the way you’re running your business.

Jordan Berry [00:19:59]:

To communicate with clients in a very respectful manner, in a way that communicates that you value them as a person and as a customer and a client. That can mean something as easy as having a pleasant scent when they walk into your business, right? I’ve definitely been in Laundromats where it smells like stale water, you know what I mean? Like a sewer smell, right, or whatever, right? That’s not a positive feeling or association, right. Keeping the place spick and span again, a baseline in most markets. But if you look around and everything looks really clean and tidy and nice, that’s just a positive feeling, right? Now, these five sort of categories to think about in terms of helping your customers succeed in your business, making it easier, faster, better, more convenient and fostering these positive feelings. These again can be broken down into a bunch of different categories and subcategories that you can make incremental improvements on that over time add up to massive, massive changes. Massive changes not only in how you run your business, but also about how you feel about your business and about how your customers feel about your business and in the number of customers you have in your business, right? And if you operate your business as if your business’s life depends on you executing in these five categories, maybe more. But at least in these five categories, if you treat your business as if that is the paramount of importance for your business, the lifeline to your business, and you never stop trying to improve on each of those, I guarantee you’re going to succeed, right? When you approach it with this mindset of I only succeed when you succeed, so let’s make sure you succeed. You will not fail.

Jordan Berry [00:22:17]:

Now, there’s lots of tactics and strategies that come into this, right? There’s still a lot of decisions to be made. You’re probably still going to make some mistakes. Actually, hopefully you’re going to make some mistakes because when you make mistakes, you learn and grow, right? So mistakes are still going to happen and it may not always work out exactly how you expect it to. However, if you never stop trying to help your customer succeed, even when you make mistakes, you will not fail. You will not fail. And guess what? Your customers won’t let you fail because they’re going to see and experience and feel that they are of the most importance to you and your business. And when I started kind of implementing this, everything changed for me, right? I get asked all the time, well, what changed when you were losing all this money in your first laundromat? Part of it was time just in learning lessons and making mistakes. But another part of it was like I had gotten so inside myself and thinking about what I wanted and what I needed.

Jordan Berry [00:23:37]:

And again, it’s not necessarily bad to do that. However, one thing I found, not even just in business, just in life, this is just sort of when we get inside our heads, it’s really easy for us to spiral down like this, right? And this is why I think, for example, counseling can be so transformative for so many people. Because when we live in our head and it’s about us and things are about me, me, we can spiral that way, right? But when we are able to, number one, externalize and number two, take it to that next level and figure out, okay, it’s not all about me, it’s about what I can do here in this world, what kind of difference can I make? How can I help other people? We actually find that we have more joy in our lives. And because of that, we actually end up succeeding more. And whatever that looks like, whether that’s in laundromat business or emotionally or relationally, all those things, right? And same is true with marriage. We see this all the time, right, when it’s like, oh, my wife isn’t doing this or my husband is just always doing his own thing or whatever, right? Well, guess what? If I’m focused all the time on how I can help my wife succeed in our marriage and how I can make her feel good and how I can set her up for success and she’s doing that for me, guess what? The number of problems we have dwindles real rapidly down to nothing, right? And the same is true in business when we are focused 100% on how can we make sure our customers succeed, how can we lead with value? That’s what we mean by value, right? How can we make sure our customers succeed? You’re guaranteed success. Guaranteed success. Now, I want to talk about this because I’m sort of framing this as you’re going to succeed, right? And that success is going to look like a few different things.

Jordan Berry [00:25:50]:

I just kind of want to tell you why this is so important to me. Number one is I genuinely want you to achieve your financial goals. Whether that’s having a side income, whether that is leaving your w. Two, whether that’s financial freedom, whether you’re just trying to get a decent return on your investment because you can’t find anywhere else, whatever those goals are financially, I want you to achieve those. This Laundromat resource exists for that. That’s why we’re here, to help you get in this business the right way the first time and then succeed in your operations and your scaling all of that. So that’s number one. Let me tell you where I think the opportunity is here and an opportunity that we have missed in this industry.

Jordan Berry [00:26:34]:

And you may be aware that our industry traditionally does not have the greatest reputation. Our industry has this reputation for basically zombie maps, right? Of being dirty, of being dark, of machines not working, old equipment, right? It doesn’t have the best reputation. Shady people hanging out doesn’t have the best reputation. And I think a big part of that is because the mindset of this industry has been similar to my mindset getting into it, which was, how can I make money with as little effort as possible? And again, nothing necessarily wrong with that. But again, if we approach it from the other way and say, how can I make sure my customers succeed so that I can succeed? My success depends on them succeeding. Things are just totally different. You’re going to operate that business completely different, right? And here’s what I think the opportunity is. Laundromat exist within communities.

Jordan Berry [00:27:45]:

Laundromats exist. And a lot of Laundromats are in lower income communities. And so we as Laundromat owners and future Laundromat owners, have this opportunity to transform communities while achieving financial goals. And that, I think, is what is so compelling about this industry. We have the opportunity to transform communities while achieving our financial goals. There’s not a whole lot of other business, there are other businesses kind of like that. But Laundromats have this unique place in communities, right? It’s one of the few places where communities still gather together in person and do their chores together, right? We have this opportunity to communicate with communities that they are important, that they’re valued, that we want good things for them, and that we are going to help them succeed. Maybe it’s in this just small little area of we want you to have a good experience doing the nation’s most hated chore, right? We want to make it as painless as possible for you to do your least favorite chore that you got to do anyways, right? But when we do that, we are able to communicate, hey, you as a community, you as an individual who utilizes my business, you are valuable, you are important.

Jordan Berry [00:29:28]:

You mean something you’re worth investing in. And when we have these zombie mats around, communicates the exact opposite, right? Communicates, hey, this community is not worth investing in. This community is not worth keeping machines running. This community or you as an individual are not worth keeping this place super clean and it doesn’t communicate a great message, right? And it doesn’t align your success with their success. The message that’s communicated through a zombie mat is you don’t matter. I’m just here to collect some coins and get my side income or replace my income or whatever and you don’t have another choice. You’re coming to my Laundromat versus a message when we’re trying to align our success with our customer success. A message that says you matter.

Jordan Berry [00:30:27]:

I want good things for you. I’m going to try to help you improve life even just a little bit, even if it’s just during the one to 2 hours a week that you have to do this. Chore my goal is to align my success with yours because you matter. And that’s what we have the opportunity to do. And that’s what Laundromat Resource in my mind is evolving into. Yes, I want people to achieve financial freedom, leave their w two jobs, get their side incomes, their side hustles, get a good return on investment. I want all that stuff scale into Laundromat empires, which most of you guys I did a poll one time and it was like 80% of people who responded to the poll were like, my goal is to have ten or more Laundromats. And I’m like, that’s awesome, let’s get you one and go for it, right? And whatever those goals are, I am here for that.

Jordan Berry [00:31:24]:

That is what I’m here for. But even more powerfully, I’m here to try to partner with you. And Laundromat Resource exists to try to partner with you and the rest of our industry, to try to transform communities. And I love that aspect of it and it doesn’t take a whole lot, right? I don’t want this message to be you’ve got to spend all this time and attention and focus on these five categories that we talked about, of making things easier, faster, better, more convenient, fostering these positive feelings and we got to spend all this time on it. No, it just takes little things, bunch of little things. Like when you go to your Laundromat and you notice, man, all the carts are being used, I should get a couple more carts so that the people who don’t have them have carts. It makes it more convenient, faster for them and easier, right? It doesn’t take a lot. And you can still do this on the side.

Jordan Berry [00:32:23]:

You can still do this not passively because it’s a business. It’s not passive, right? But you can still do this in a very small time window and still communicate to a community, hey, you matter, you’re important to me. We want you to succeed even if it’s in this small little corner of your life of laundry, right? We want you to succeed in aligning your success with their success. So I just kind of wanted to frame this up because I’ve been hearing a lot of there’s a lot of people interested in this business, right? Now who have financial goals for buying a Laundromat. And that’s awesome. You should have financial goals for buying a Laundromat. But I also just want to say, look, if you want guaranteed success, all you have to do is say, I’m going to make sure you succeed when you come to my Laundromat. I’m going to make sure you have a good experience when you come to my Laundromat.

Jordan Berry [00:33:12]:

And when you tie your success to them, it’s a guaranteed lock. It’s a lock you’re going to win. And especially when you’re committed to continuing to do that persevering in that pursuit of helping your customers succeed, it’s a lock. You’re guaranteed to succeed. So anyways, that’s all I have for you today. In today’s episode, I pushed all the episodes back. We’ve got like five in the queue, but I pushed them all back because I wanted to share that. For me, it was so life transforming there, and it’s just such a big deal in my mind.

Jordan Berry [00:33:49]:

Hopefully some of you guys can resonate with that. Hopefully it wasn’t just for me. It was also for some of you guys. I’m trying to practice what I preach here. I’m trying to do these things with Laundromat Resource to help you who are in this industry and you who are trying to get into this industry. We’re always looking for ways to make things easier, faster, better, more convenient, and to have positive vibes, positive feelings going through this community as we are in pursuit of our goals through Laundromat ownership. So we’re not always there yet, but we’re investing a lot of time, effort, energy and money into these five things right, right now. And hopefully you’ll start to see that coming up over the next month, two months, three months, and ongoing forever because we don’t plan on stop that pursuit.

Jordan Berry [00:34:46]:

All right, guys. Hope you got something good out of that and we’ll see you next week. We have an awesome guest next week, so we’ll see you next week on the Lawnmower Resource podcast. Peace.