Building a Laundromat From Scratch While on Chemo with Sharon Brinks

Jordan Berry [00:00:02]:
Hey. Hey. What’s up, guys? It’s Jordan with the Laundromat Resource Podcast. This is show 171, and I’m pumped you’re here today. Today, we have back on the show, Sharon Brinks, who comes to tell us all about her brand new build, but she also is, is coming to tell us a little bit of a personal update and how that has influenced her, her her business and building out this laundromat and all of that, along with a little public service announcement. So super good episode, today. You may have seen Sharon Brink’s around at different events. Her and her husband, Steve, are at usually at all the events, and she’s been on the podcast and, you know, she’s around.

Jordan Berry [00:00:47]:
She’s on the Facebook groups and all that stuff. So super good to have her back on. Lots of really good stuff. A lot of stuff that they learned from building out this, the second build out of a laundromat and, shares a lot of good details there. And, also, just, like I said, that personal update. So we’re gonna jump into it with Sharon right now. I know you’re gonna love this episode. And real quick, today’s Fastlane tip is well, we’ve got a live q and a, October 1st, which is the day this thing is coming out.

Jordan Berry [00:01:15]:
So if you’re listening to it right when it’s coming out and you wanna join the pro q and a, go to laundrometresource.com/pro. And tomorrow, October 2nd, is our mastermind induction group. So about every 4 to 6 weeks, we do a new mastermind induction group where we launch new mastermind groups. These things have been trans transformative for so many people. It’s an opportunity to get into a small group of people at whatever phase in the process you’re at, whether you own 1 laundromat, multiple laundromats, or trying to buy your first. You can get in with some like minded people that can help support you, that can help keep you accountable to take any actions you need to take to hit your goals. Like I said, all the time, actions, what leads to our success and us achieving our goals, whether that’s problem solving different things, and just, you know, encouraging. This can be a difficult and lonely journey when you’re a business owner.

Jordan Berry [00:02:12]:
So having a small group of people that you meet with on a regular cadence can be life changing. I’ve said this before. I pay tons of money every single year so that I have that personally. And listen, this is all included in the pro community. So check out lawnmowerresource.com/pro. If you wanna jump in. And this round of mastermind induction groups, we’ll be launching another one in no time if you didn’t make it for this one. Let’s jump into it with Sharon Brink’s today right after this.

John [00:02:40]:
What’s up, laundromat owners? This is John here with Business Marketing Resource. Are you looking to keep your machines humming and your business thriving? Well, I’ve got a quick marketing tip that can make a real difference. Focus on your Google business profile. And here’s why that matters. When a potential customer searches for a laundromat, your Google business profile is often the first thing they see. So keep it up to date, make sure your hours are accurate, your contact info is correct, and upload some fresh photos of your facility. Also need to encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews. The more active and appealing your profile, the more likely you are to attract new business.

John [00:03:13]:
Now if that sounds like something you’d rather have handled by professionals, that’s where we come in. At Business Marketing Resource, we specialize in helping laundromats like yours shine online. From enhancing your Google presence to building a professional website, we’ve got the tools to help you stand out in your community. Are you ready to take your laundromat to the next level? Well, visit build with bmr.com today and let’s get started.

Jordan Berry [00:03:35]:
Today is a great day, of course. How are you doing, Sharon?

Sharon Brinks [00:03:40]:
I am doing awesome. Thank you, Jordan, for having me on again. This is a second time.

Jordan Berry [00:03:46]:
Yeah. Well,

Sharon Brinks [00:03:47]:
I mean,

Jordan Berry [00:03:47]:
a lot’s been going on on your end of things all over the place. And I you know, we’ve sort of been talking about it for a little while. And I was like, it’s we gotta let people know what you guys got going on over there, it on your in your neck of the woods over there. So thank you for taking the time to come back on and share what you’re gonna share today.

Sharon Brinks [00:04:06]:
No problem. Yeah. We just we opened our 2nd store a month ago. So with each store opening, hopefully, I can be on one more often than that. But with each store opening, I get to come on again. So second store, second appearance.

Jordan Berry [00:04:19]:
And that’s that’s one that you guys built out. Right?

Sharon Brinks [00:04:22]:
We did. We did. This one was, we bought the property November of 22 and it had been a veterinary clinic. And then we finally got it open the end of August of 24. So Right. It’s been a long ugly process, but we should have bulldozed the whole building. Not that there’s anything wrong with the building so much. It’s just putting a square peg in a round hole.

Sharon Brinks [00:04:47]:
Yeah. It was a former veterinary clinic, and we turned it into a laundromat and then a, pickup and delivery processing facility in the back. So Yeah. You know, it yeah. We should have described it and built what we wanted.

Jordan Berry [00:05:01]:
Some of you said we’ll start from scratch sometimes. Yeah. So we’re gonna have to dig into that for sure and talk about that whole process because, you know, if something’s taken you, like, a year and a half plus, you know, you know, there’s a saga behind it. So we’re gonna have to get into the saga. Yeah. And how it’s been. But before we jump into it, how like, give us a little update or, actually, maybe let’s start here. Do

Sharon Brinks [00:05:24]:
do a

Jordan Berry [00:05:25]:
quick little, overview of who you and Steve, you know, Steve, your husband too, who you guys are just in case, people haven’t heard your first episode, and then we’ll jump into what’s been new.

Sharon Brinks [00:05:37]:
Yeah. So, Steve and Sharon Branks, we live in, Wichita, Kansas. I bought my first laundromat in January of 14, so a little over 10 years ago going on living. I was a single mom with 2 kids. Even I were just dating. Despite the fact I had bought a laundromat, he still asked me to marry him, so that was kudos to him. Yay. Even though I was clearly, I demonstrated my crazy level, bought a laundromat.

Jordan Berry [00:06:06]:
You have to be a little weird to be in this industry, I think. I think that’s, like, a prerequisite. If you’re not a little weird, you should be able

Sharon Brinks [00:06:12]:
to go somewhere else. It does help. You know? You don’t have to be crazy to work here. We’ll train you. It’s kinda kinda like that. If you weren’t crazy to start with, you will be at the end. Yeah. So Bob will run down Matt, in a town outside of Wichita.

Sharon Brinks [00:06:30]:
That was a great training ground. I learned a ton from it. It needed new some new equipment, some upgrades, some paint, cleaning, TLC, and, learned so much from that. And then we did get married. We moved into Wichita, built our flagship flagship store, lumber station, Kellogg and Oliver, right in the middle of town, middle middle of Wichita. And then, decided we didn’t want the distraction of the other small ones. So we, and we wanted to focus on Wichita. So we sold the equipment there, sold the building, and then focused entirely on Wichita.

Sharon Brinks [00:07:06]:
Four and a half years ago, April of 2020, we started pickup delivery service, as a separate company. I mean, on the on the Lander Express. Well, it it sound like it was on purpose, but in 2019, the end of it, we were thinking about delving into that. Yeah. And then the, we knew at the end of the year, we’d make a go no go decision. And we said, okay. We’re gonna go for it. And then pandemic, you know, hit full force.

Sharon Brinks [00:07:30]:
And so, the timing just happened to be that way. So four and a half years later, we’re still doing pickup and delivery as a separate company. And then, and we operated out of that one, large laundromat in Millatown. It was nice and centralized. Then we bought this other property, November 22, developed it out, and we just, about 3 weeks ago, moved our pickup and delivery processing down to that store. We only had a small corner in the existing store that we operated out of, and we were out of room. So now we’ve got, like, 3,000 square feet in the back of the building to operate out of. So we spread out and do whatever do whatever we want down there.

Sharon Brinks [00:08:14]:
So Yeah. And then we also nice. And then we also do drop off at both of the stores too. So self-service drop off and pickup and delivery. So

Jordan Berry [00:08:22]:
How far from each other?

Sharon Brinks [00:08:25]:
About, driving wise or is it 5 miles. I can’t remember if that’s as a profile or driving wise, but but it’s amazing how many people we’re finding at the at the new store. It’s on South Seneca, south part of Wichita, south central part, who have been driving all the way to our other store just to come, you know, do their laundry. They drive past at least 3 other laundromats to get to our store, and that’s been amazing. So we expected those stores sales to go down a smidge, and they had just a smidge, but that opens it up for more people to to come in and fill in. So, that’s actually been really nice, and people have, you know, thanked us for for opening down there. That part of Wichita rarely gets anything new, at lee especially with this much, money invested into it. You know, not just a pop up little vape shop or, you know, some a a little retail store that goes in that really hasn’t put anything into it except for maybe some fixtures.

Jordan Berry [00:09:26]:
Right.

Sharon Brinks [00:09:27]:
So yeah. So, so here we are. We’re Cool. We’re laundry. Steve’s a structural engineer. He actually just spoke at the laundry CEO conference on water. That’s

Jordan Berry [00:09:39]:
right. That’s awesome too.

Sharon Brinks [00:09:40]:
Adequate, water supply to your laundromat is kind of an important thing and something that you’re.

Jordan Berry [00:09:47]:
One of the variables that you probably should have in your laundromat.

Sharon Brinks [00:09:50]:
Yeah. Kinda important. If you have too small a line, you’ll find out really quick. So, so, anyway, that was a he he just loves to nerd out on that that kind of stuff. So Yeah. Yeah. So that was fun. So that’s how we we got how I got in the laundromat business and how we got where we are today.

Sharon Brinks [00:10:08]:
And so second store has been well received and doing doing okay. So Yeah. We’ll we’ll go through all those everything I went through with that here shortly. So

Jordan Berry [00:10:17]:
Yeah. I was just saying, like I said, we’re gonna dig into that one

Sharon Brinks [00:10:19]:
a lot.

Jordan Berry [00:10:20]:
In just in case anybody has listened to this and has not heard the first interview, with Sharon, it is it’s a fan favorite. Episode 101, laundromatresource.com/show101, which I didn’t realize it was I mean, that was a lot of episodes ago now.

Sharon Brinks [00:10:36]:
It was. You’re busy. You’re a busy guy.

Jordan Berry [00:10:38]:
It was a long time ago. But I was just looking through, while you’re chatting, I was looking through the highlights, and I was like, man, we talked about using SBA loan to buy a laundromat, retooling, building from scratch, selling versus shutting down a laundromat because you didn’t sell your laundromat. You sold the building, not the laundromat. You shut it down. Talked about factors to consider when building from scratch, customers when you open a new build, which we should talk about again because I’d be interested to see how that went or is going for you now. Running a great like, building a team, promoting wash, dry like, we talk about a lot of stuff, which is why I think it’s one of the fan favorites and another great reason to have you back on.

Sharon Brinks [00:11:17]:
I think, Jordan, when you get either of us talking about laundry, it’s hard to shut us up, isn’t it?

Jordan Berry [00:11:22]:
I know.

Sharon Brinks [00:11:23]:
I’ll just keep going.

Jordan Berry [00:11:25]:
At least your spouse likes, you know, talking laundry and stuff.

Sharon Brinks [00:11:29]:
He tolerates it well. He seems to. So

Jordan Berry [00:11:32]:
He’s like on stage. Like, my wife is like, don’t I don’t even want you. Like, she hears my voice in the background. Like, what’s up, guys? It’s Jordan. And she’s like, oh my gosh.

Sharon Brinks [00:11:41]:
Oh, not again. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:11:44]:
Real quick. Kudos to Steve, for his seminar. And and kudos to Waleed too for putting on an incredible long

Sharon Brinks [00:11:51]:
term conference. It was It was amazing. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:11:53]:
Yeah. Next level conference over there.

Sharon Brinks [00:11:55]:
That was great. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:11:56]:
Way to go, Waleed. Okay. Before we jump into the new build stuff, personally, what’s,

Sharon Brinks [00:12:04]:
I

Jordan Berry [00:12:04]:
mean, I know some stuff’s been going on with you personally and and health wise and stuff. I thought I’d just give you a chance to, you know, fill us all in on how you, you know so many people in this industry, and so catch us up on on how you’re doing personally.

Sharon Brinks [00:12:21]:
Well, I need to mention it. So I told, like, a very tiny, tiny handful about what’s going on. So this year’s been kinda interesting. So this I wanted to start out this with my public service announcement, for for ladies, especially. Guys, if you know a lady, chances are you do. You have a wife, a sibling, mom, daughter, grandma, whatever. Ladies, get your mammograms every single freaking year when you’re supposed to. I’ll be 61 next month.

Sharon Brinks [00:12:56]:
This is where we at. This is September of 2024. I’ll be 61. Have my mammograms every single year. Always clean. And you’re like, you know, you’re just tempted to skip them. Right? Well, surprise. This year in April, had a suspicious area.

Sharon Brinks [00:13:17]:
They called me to, come back and have some more pictures taken in a sonogram. So went back in, and and they’re like, yep. We don’t like what we see. Come back in and have a biopsy. Okay. Fine. So we have the biopsy. Yep.

Sharon Brinks [00:13:32]:
Came back malignant. I found out the day after mother’s day, May of this year. One tumor, one one breast, one spot. It’s just one spot. My oncologist says there’s less than a 1% chance that it’ll spread any place else, so we caught it early. But it’s it was 25 millimeters in size, so 2 and a half centimeters. Pretty good size one. There was nothing there last year.

Sharon Brinks [00:14:00]:
It is, what’s called HER2 positive. So I’m I’m just gonna go into this a little bit just to tell you it’s it’s not

Jordan Berry [00:14:08]:
Oh, please do.

Sharon Brinks [00:14:09]:
It’s yeah. The c word is scary.

Jordan Berry [00:14:11]:
Yeah.

Sharon Brinks [00:14:12]:
But my first my first thought when I got the diagnosis was, well, number 1, I cussed too much as it is, but was, I don’t have time for this. I’m trying to open a new laundromat. I do not have time for this. And then my second thought was, okay. You’ve picked on the wrong person. This cancer just no. So and I think I think we’re proving that now. So, so is HER2 positive? There’s the dreaded triple negative.

Sharon Brinks [00:14:37]:
This is not triple negative. Triple negative is the, ER, and I think the other one’s PR, and then HER 2 are all negative, and that’s really hard to treat. Minus HER 2 positive, it is treatable. Very treatable. However, HER 2 positive is very aggressive and very fast growing. So it’s very important that we just jump on it as fast as we could, as fast as insurance would let us, you know, jump on it. So, end of June, I started chemo for that. I have chemo.

Sharon Brinks [00:15:07]:
I have 6 treatments. I have chemo every 3 weeks on a Monday. The 4 laundry conferences that were scheduled for this summer. One of them was before I started chemo and the other 3 are on the weeks that I had chemo. How does that even happen? So the very first

Jordan Berry [00:15:26]:
together and and pick up dates.

Sharon Brinks [00:15:28]:
I know these have been planned forever in advance and Monday, I’m okay. They give you some really good antinausea drugs and stuff that makes you feel good in the first, the first two IV bags. I have 4 IV drip bags. First, you are just steroids and stuff to make the medicines work okay, and then the next 2, one’s docetaxel, which is the one that makes your hair fall out, and more on that later. And then carboplatin, which is another chemo drug. Then I get a fezco shot in my leg and a, steroid shot in my belly, and I look like a pincushion when I leave. So Monday’s okay. Tuesday, I feel good.

Sharon Brinks [00:16:09]:
Wednesday, okay. Thursday, I start to fall off a cliff. And by Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I just wanna sit and stare at the wall, which, that’s not me. I’m I am go, go, go, a 100 miles an hour. I can’t and with this, I can’t think. I have no energy. It’s just lay there and watch TV, which is weird for me. If it’s daylight hours, I gotta be productive.

Sharon Brinks [00:16:30]:
So so, the Simmonses, we went to the curbside laundry events. Bless your heart, guys. That was an amazing event, and I did miss the first day of it. I was stuck I was in my hotel room just pretty much bedridden. I was not kidding. I really did have a UTI from the worst one I’ve ever had. And it really was because my doctor had started me on new medications that Monday. I just neglected to tell you the fact that that was chemo.

Sharon Brinks [00:16:57]:
So, chemo is Monday. Thursday was just hideous. And then Friday, I felt good enough. I could, I had us on antibiotics by then. I could attend it. But the lender CEO conference, I was prepared. I had medications. I had antibiotics.

Sharon Brinks [00:17:12]:
I had everything. I was good to go. A lot of exhaustion, but I still still made it. And then this last week was the, CLA’s WASH Rifle Conference, and we had just opened the store 3 weeks prior. And I knew I was gonna be falling off the cliff and having no energy by the end of the the week, so we decided in advance just to skip that one. So nothing against it had nothing to do with, not wanting to go to it, but we love visiting with everybody. The timing was bad just because of the store opening, and, yeah, I had chemo that Monday. So glad we missed it because I was just I was wiped.

Sharon Brinks [00:17:46]:
Everyone ends a little worse. The recovery is a little worse than the one before. So, so where we at now? So I’ve now had 5 chemos. I’ve got one more to go. Today, actually, we’re recording this on September 26 of 2024. My last chemo will be October 7th. I will I’m scheduled for a lumpectomy, no mastectomy involved, on November 7th. So it would just be a little lump when they put a titanium marker in when they did the biopsy so I can tell where it is, if there’s anything left of the lump.

Sharon Brinks [00:18:23]:
So go in and take out some tissue. They’ll take out tissue from the sentinel node, lymph node, and my armpit. Take that off the pathology, see what we got. Is there anything left of the lump? There could be some of the lump there, but the tissue could all be dead. All the all the cells dead. Not tissue dead, but all the cancer cells could be dead, which we my oncologist really expects nothing to even be there anymore. So I did have a mid chemosonogram, right in the middle there, like, 2 days after my 4th one. The 25 millimeter tumor was already down to 8.

Sharon Brinks [00:19:00]:
It shrunk by 2 thirds already. So the treatment’s working. So yay. This is not all for nothing. So I haven’t had any nausea, no vomiting, stuff like that. Mild I mean, all things considered, mild side effects. I’m kicking its butt. It’s not kicking me.

Sharon Brinks [00:19:21]:
So, you know, I’ve been pretty pleased that the treatments are really good. Really happy we have good insurance because those the EOBs are enough to make you wanna faint, but we really haven’t had to pay a whole lot on it, thankfully. But, yeah, the it it just the some of the usual side effects, but fairly mild. And I I know by now okay. So many days afterwards, I’m gonna have this, then I’m gonna recover, and then I’ll have this, and then I’ll recover. And it’s like the side effect de jure of what what we’re having now. You know? Today, it zits on my face. You know? Today, I’m I can’t move.

Sharon Brinks [00:19:57]:
My legs feel like they’re about £100 a piece. And, you know, everything tastes gross, which has been really good for the scale because I can’t eat a whole lot right now. But when I, I get my taste back, I’ll probably gain about £20, £30 because I’ll eat everything in sight. But right now, we’re okay with that. So once the results from the lumpectomy come back, then I will have, we thoroughly expect to still have radiation. I’ll have radiation Monday through Friday for 3 weeks, just very targeted in that one spot where it used to be. And, then after that, I’ll have, fesco shots, which fesco is the drug that’s targeted to HER2 positive, tumors and for that particular cancer. And I’ll have just one shot every 3 weeks, and I’ll have 11 of those.

Sharon Brinks [00:20:51]:
So I have several months of that. The important thing with that is, when we have cruises, I have to plan the cruises around the fesco shots. So it’ll probably only be a 2 week cruise instead of 3 week cruises. So and if you know me, you know, Steve and I like to go on cruises. So, we’ll we’ll manage somehow. It’s a first world problem, but we’ll figure out how to fit those cruises in there between the shots. But, so, yeah, I’m on the the downhill side of treatment. We’re getting there.

Sharon Brinks [00:21:20]:
So but, one, one the most distasteful of me if you I’ve had so many compliments on, oh, your new hairstyle. It’s so cute. Thank you. And it’s like, yo. Yeah. It’s so much easier to manage. And whenever I responded, I’ve been totally honest. Yes.

Sharon Brinks [00:21:37]:
It is much easier to manage because, okay, here’s here’s what Sharon looks like, completely bald. Yeah. It’s it’s ugly. You have

Jordan Berry [00:21:44]:
You have a great shaped head. You’re like,

Sharon Brinks [00:21:46]:
I feel like you’re That’s what my the my hairstylist said. I’m great. I’m like, really? Okay.

Jordan Berry [00:21:52]:
Yeah.

Sharon Brinks [00:21:53]:
But, hey, look. I’m Jo Dan Reed. I’m rocking the Jo Dan Reed and Randy and Randy Roberts. How close it

Jordan Berry [00:22:02]:
how close it is

Sharon Brinks [00:22:03]:
Yeah. You

Jordan Berry [00:22:04]:
and Joe. You guys need to get Yeah. In the same room together and get a picture together

Sharon Brinks [00:22:08]:
before When when we were at the curbside conference, they they don’t know this, but Joe Dan and Randy, I have my picture with both of you guys because I just had, you know, chemo a few days before and I knew I’d lose my hair. That was because I knew I’d look like you very soon. That was on purpose, but you didn’t know that. So here you go. Great. This is for you guys. So That

Jordan Berry [00:22:28]:
is great.

Sharon Brinks [00:22:29]:
So this is Sharon. Bald as a baby’s butt. Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s weird. Summer I mean, summers in Kansas are hot and brutal. It’s been kinda nice. Winter coming up, not gonna be so nice.

Sharon Brinks [00:22:41]:
I’m gonna have to wear a stocking cap. But 3 months after my last treatment, which will put it in the 1st part of January, it should start growing back in. So by April or May or so, I should have little short short hair, and my, hairstyle still fix it, something short. It’ll be probably gray and curly, so it’ll look weird. But, hey, at least it’ll be oh, and this is my own hair. I have a receipt. Yes. I have a receipt.

Sharon Brinks [00:23:12]:
So, anyway, if you, ladies, get those mammograms every year, don’t skip it because it’s been okay every year. Yeah. It’s been okay for me for, you know, 15 years too, and now surprise. The older you get, the more at risk you are. I have no idea why. Got it. Don’t know why, but, had I not went ahead and got it this year, it is a rapid, very aggressive, fast growing cancer. Next year, I don’t know what I would have been dealing with.

Sharon Brinks [00:23:42]:
One very comforting thing that I read or explained a lot, I think. And I’m I’m one I have to have all the information. I have to have the details, and I read and I research everything all the time. Nobody ever dies from breast cancer. Okay? You can have a tumor the size of a basketball on your breast, and you’re not gonna die from that. That will not kill you. What kills you is when it gets away from the breast and it spreads through the lymph nodes into vital organs, then you got a problem. Then men you gotta try to nail it down.

Sharon Brinks [00:24:13]:
Now it’s spread now. That’s like you know, we’re in the Midwest. The cows are out of the barn now. Now you gotta okay. Now you gotta get that one and that one and that one. So get that you know, we’re just getting that one spot and, nuking it and, should be fine. So I’m not worried about it. You know, I was perfectly healthy to start with.

Sharon Brinks [00:24:34]:
Just showed up on a mammogram, and that’s the only way I even knew I was there. So have your mammograms, guys. Ask your your significant others. All the ladies, you know, I have to tell them, you know, don’t ignore it because you’ve never had a a bad one. You never know what’s growing. So that’s it. Now if Jordan will pause this, I’ll put my hair back on.

Jordan Berry [00:24:53]:
Well, yeah, while you’re doing that, I’ll I’ll chat. We’ll just cut away from you, or I’ll tell you that, and then, you know, we we

Sharon Brinks [00:25:01]:
That don’t really grace out anybody. So No. No. Oh, I’ve I’ve had a, somebody tell me I look like Heisenberg.

Jordan Berry [00:25:07]:
I think

Sharon Brinks [00:25:08]:
that’s the name. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:25:09]:
That’s right.

Sharon Brinks [00:25:09]:
And Breaking Bad Yeah. I look like Heisenberg.

Jordan Berry [00:25:11]:
So Give us a give us a serious look real quick. Like

Sharon Brinks [00:25:15]:
yeah. It’s my mom look for teenagers.

Jordan Berry [00:25:18]:
It’s it’s uncanny. Glasses on, you’re Joanne Reid. Glasses off of Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad. I

Sharon Brinks [00:25:24]:
don’t know. Yeah. Yeah. We’re not wrong. So okay. I’ll put my hair on.

Jordan Berry [00:25:28]:
Yeah. Well and I appreciate you, I appreciate you bringing that up. You know? First of all, I just wanna say, you know, thank you for sharing that. I know that can be tough to to share. And I wanted to give time for that too because this is we’re we’re community here. You know? Like, this this industry, we are we are a community, and that’s what this is about. Right? Like, we want to talk laundromats. We wanna hear about your new laundromat.

Jordan Berry [00:25:50]:
We’re gonna do that. But this is this is a community, and and we’re people that, you know, care about each other and wanna support each other. And, you know, the whole the whole premise behind these conferences that, you know, we attend, the podcast, like, all this stuff, right, is to help each other build build happy, healthy lives. Right? Like, build the lives that we want and It’s

Sharon Brinks [00:26:15]:
the networking, the the relationships with people that you build. Right?

Jordan Berry [00:26:18]:
Exactly. Exactly. And this we happen to all have the same vehicle of laundromats. Right? Or at least one of the vehicles that we share in common.

Sharon Brinks [00:26:25]:
Mhmm.

Jordan Berry [00:26:26]:
Or trying to share in common for trying to buy your first one. Yeah. But but really, it’s it’s about the people. Right? So I wanted to, you know, emphasize that and take some time to really just this is community here that we’re doing. So I appreciate you sharing that. And I also appreciate the the PSA because, you know, my my my mom had, you know, breast cancer. She went through the chemo. She lost her hair, you know, all similar things.

Jordan Berry [00:26:51]:
Right? And they counted early. She’s around. She’s happy. She’s healthy. She’s, you know, just a few years older than you. And, you know, riding her bike 100 of miles a week and stuff. Like, it’s healthy and happy, you know.

Sharon Brinks [00:27:05]:
But Healthy people. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:27:07]:
But it’s important. Like you said, it’s important, you know, to to do the things we need to do to take care of ourselves even when it’s scary. Like, it can be scary to go do something like that and find out information like that. But if you do, you you have more of an opportunity to do something about it early on.

Sharon Brinks [00:27:25]:
Yep. And it’s amazing how prevalent it is. You know? You’d be talking to somebody at the grocery store. Oh, yeah. I’ve had I had that. I had a mastectomy, and, you know, so and so. It’s, our plumber on this new bill, his wife is, a few years past it, and she’s had a double mastectomy. I’m like, I had no idea.

Sharon Brinks [00:27:46]:
So nobody it’s still kind of a taboo thing. Nobody really wants to talk about. It’s not like, you know, I don’t have a T shirt that says, ask me about my breast cancer. You know? I just you know? But nobody really the more awareness you bring, it’s kinda like there’s this huge, there’s been a huge push like October’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. That has helped a lot. There’s a huge push for colon cancer awareness as well. There’s actually a person in our industry. I’m not gonna name who it is because I think he’s kept it he’s he’s keeping it really quiet, and it’s his news to share.

Sharon Brinks [00:28:19]:
But state he has stage 4 colon cancer. He’s been given, you know, a very short time frame to live. So, he’s been kind of on the down low, but it’s here. People have it. And whether they wanna talk about it or not, that’s totally it’s a totally personal thing. But with me, you know, if I was terminal, I don’t know that, well, we would probably be sitting here having this podcast. I’d be outside. It’s sunshiny.

Sharon Brinks [00:28:43]:
I’d be on the deck enjoying my time. But yeah. Okay. Not that I’m not enjoying my time here, Jordan, with you. I’m enjoying my time here. I won’t

Jordan Berry [00:28:50]:
take offense to it.

Sharon Brinks [00:28:51]:
That came out wrong. But I’d be enjoying my time in a different way.

Jordan Berry [00:28:54]:
Yes.

Sharon Brinks [00:28:54]:
But, yeah, it’s it’s prevalent. I mean, it’s scary how much cancer’s out there right now, but it’s never been more treatable. So 20 years ago, her t positive. This might have been a death sentence. Who knows? But it’s it’s I’m calling it my speed bump on the road of life right now. That’s all it is. Okay. Okay.

Sharon Brinks [00:29:14]:
My hair will come back. I hope. It will.

Jordan Berry [00:29:18]:
It will. My mom’s did, so I think you’re good. It’ll come

Sharon Brinks [00:29:20]:
There we go.

Jordan Berry [00:29:22]:
It’ll come back.

Sharon Brinks [00:29:22]:
I don’t know if it’ll be nice and thick and, blonde again, but we’ll see. It’d be a change.

Jordan Berry [00:29:28]:
It a new adventure. You know? New adventure.

Sharon Brinks [00:29:30]:
See what’s the hair.

Jordan Berry [00:29:31]:
Maybe we could all take bets on what the hair looks like when it comes back.

Sharon Brinks [00:29:34]:
It’ll be curling gray, and then there’ll be matter of whether I treated it. It’s color treated, so I’m not a natural blonde. It was a cover of gray. So

Jordan Berry [00:29:43]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. I appreciate you sharing all that and being just kinda open, honest, vulnerable, about that and filling in, you know, the people. It’s hard when you’re a part of a community like this too where we’re all spread out all over the country and you don’t see people, you know, super often and all that stuff. So sometimes being able to just kind of fill everybody in at once too is

Sharon Brinks [00:30:06]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:30:07]:
Is good. So Yeah. Alright. I’ll pause here, and, I’ll give you a chance to go, you know, freshen up a little bit.

Sharon Brinks [00:30:15]:
I’ll freshen up a little bit.

Jordan Berry [00:30:16]:
Talk about this new, this new laundromat you got going on.

Sharon Brinks [00:30:19]:
Okay. Awesome.

Jordan Berry [00:30:20]:
Alright. She’s back Looking like a superstar again. Although, I I gotta say, I might I I might just stick with the bald look if I was you. Like, if I had if my head shape was like that, I might just show it off.

Sharon Brinks [00:30:33]:
Yeah. No. No. I don’t think so.

Jordan Berry [00:30:35]:
Okay.

Sharon Brinks [00:30:35]:
Steve actually likes it. I’m like, yeah, I don’t know. I’m not doing that, but I am envious of all you guys with, like, really short hair or no hair. It’s it is super easy to take care of, you know, a tiny dollop of shampoo and boom, done.

Jordan Berry [00:30:50]:
Yeah. So Yeah.

Sharon Brinks [00:30:51]:
I know. That is nice.

Jordan Berry [00:30:53]:
I have, like, my hair short, short. I’ll just do a little dollop of shampoo and that covers my entire being everything. I’m just shampoo and I’m good. Just all one thing, you know?

Sharon Brinks [00:31:05]:
Yeah. Before, I mean, I got these mega bottles of shampoo and conditioner, so I’d go through a bit. Not not now. So last a long time.

Jordan Berry [00:31:13]:
Saving money. You see what

Sharon Brinks [00:31:14]:
I’m saying? There’s some

Jordan Berry [00:31:15]:
there’s some silver linings right here.

Sharon Brinks [00:31:17]:
I tell you, and I’ve been going to my hairdresser every 5 to 6 weeks for a cut and color, and, you know, he’s probably crying now, bless his heart, because I did have him whenever there’s so much of it falling out that I just like, okay, Blake, it’s time. So, to just cut it all off. And that was that was interesting. But, but, yeah, when it’s when it’s time, you kinda know it’s it’s time to just make it go away. Just yeah. And I had my wig, so I was ready to go.

Jordan Berry [00:31:46]:
Ready for it. Well, it looks good. You’re back, looking fresh as a daisy and, ready to talk about this new laundromat fiasco? Not fiasco, adventure. I’m a call it an

Sharon Brinks [00:31:55]:
adventure. Adventure. Yeah. Yes. Opening a new laundromat wall on chemo. Not something I recommend, but when it happens, you just gotta roll the flow. Make it happen. So Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:32:07]:
Okay. Well, let’s go let’s go back to 2022 when you’re looking for I mean, were you looking for a property to put a new laundromat? Did it just fall in your lap? Like, how did that process

Sharon Brinks [00:32:18]:
happen? We were like so, I mean, you know, I’m a real estate broker and my broker’s license. So, and I mainly just keep it for our own commercial property searching, just for such a, such a reason. And, so we’ve been searching the south part of town, and we wanted to buy rather than lease. It is Wichita, Kansas land is relatively cheap compared to, you know, the coast. And, I just, I just, I, unless it’s the perfect place, I just can’t bring it myself to lease, but maybe I’d rather buy the whole building and then have everybody else pay my mortgage. But anyway, so we were looking for a property. This one came up, the total building’s about 8,300 square feet and price was right. Location was right, right in front of an apartment complex, like their exit, more on that later, their exit is right next to the building from, you know, ingress and egress to the apartment complex.

Sharon Brinks [00:33:24]:
Heavily Hispanic neighborhood, just the demographics just all fit. So, nice, nice little, just nice little mix. So we, went ahead and bought that, demoed and had the interior demoed, wound up having to tear out all the concrete also. Report the floor. It was so this veterinary clinic had tile floors. Okay, fine. So we’re going to take out the tile, not a problem. Only just find another layer of tile under it and then you get that out and then there’s big chunks of concrete missing and it’s uneven and the sides, anyway, it was just too ugly.

Sharon Brinks [00:34:07]:
So we had to demo the whole thing and repour the whole freaking floor. So as usual cost overruns that you don’t expect, right? There’s another 30,000 that, if you’ll remember from my first podcast on the, building of our first store from the ground up, I, we had to put in our own fire hydrant because we’re just far enough away from everybody else’s fire hydrants. So I have my own $25,000 fire hydrant that I still am going to paint pink someday. I haven’t painted it yet, but, and then we have to have the privilege of paying extra on the water bill every month because we have a fire hydrant that is quote out of district, so it’s an extra like $25 a month, which irritates me to no end. But anyway, there’s always the dachshunds that you had no way of foreseeing. Like they made us put in a fire hydrant in our own storm sewer project. So this one’s okay, well, the concrete all has to come out because there’s no way we can, because I want to put porcelain tile down. And even if I didn’t put the tile down, we still add so much unevenness and, you know, ledges and stuff, carts would be all over the place.

Sharon Brinks [00:35:14]:
People would be tripping. So we were going to have to do something with it, maybe just a leveler layer. But anyway, I I did get my porcelain tile. So that all came out. We had our layout, sent that to the city. By now it’s 2023, sent to the city. We wanted all the dryers on the north end of the building, exhausting out the side of the wall. And because I don’t like poking holes in the roof, I’ve had bad experience with having roof leaks in the existing laundromat, that my first little one that I had, was leaked all over the place.

Sharon Brinks [00:35:50]:
So sent that to the city and they’re like, nope, you’re too close to the property next door, the property, the driveway for the apartments behind us. Apparently they let them, when the building was built in like in our, this vendor clinic that we bought like 1969 or whatever when it was built, they let them put it right on the property line, like right on. So it has to be at least 10 feet for anything to vent, out of the building. So nobody’s ever going to build right there. So there’s actually a little alleyway and then the, ingress egress driveway. So I should have gotten my city councilman involved at the time and I feel kicking myself that I didn’t because he asked me later and was like, well, why didn’t you call me or let me know? I was like, I didn’t think of that. So we had to have plans redrawn, customer service counter is now over there, dryers are over here venting. How are we going to vent them, get fresh air and vent them in the middle of a freaking building? It’s in the middle of the building.

Sharon Brinks [00:36:55]:
What are we going to do? How are we going to do this? Well, the engineer figured it out, plus his heart. So we wound up with makeup air from the, I think it’s 8 foot overhang, 6 or 8, over the sidewalk, the big soft, soffit area there. So we have a bunch of makeup air grates there, taking it in from there through the attic and then down. So that’s the makeup air. And then we had to poke holes in the roof and that’s our exhaust. So, but that whole process slowed us down 6 to 8 months, having all the plans redrawn and then submitting that to the City and then going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth with the City, getting that approved. So, yeah, we should have scraped the whole thing and started over and felt what we wanted to. Oh, and then, then we bought a building that has a pitched roof.

Sharon Brinks [00:37:42]:
You can’t put a rooftop unit on a pitched roof. So our existing laundromat, we have, you know, this is the slant of the flat that’s slanted just for drainage. So we have 2 rooftop units, 2 7 and a half ton units. This one, now it’s pitched.

Jordan Berry [00:37:58]:
So you’re talking air conditioning unit.

Sharon Brinks [00:38:00]:
Air conditioning. I’m sorry.

Jordan Berry [00:38:01]:
I’m just not sure if everybody’s tracking. So that’s all.

Sharon Brinks [00:38:05]:
I appreciate that. Keep me on. Yep. Yep. So pitched roof is one that’s like that. Right? And what you really want is flat roof or flattish to where you can put those great big rooftop units up on top. That’s why I love rooftop units because they’re on top. It is harder to seal copper out of, right? So now we have the building came with 4 residential furnaces, furnace units inside the building.

Sharon Brinks [00:38:34]:
And for the amount of cooling that we needed for the whole building, which I might add also over the years has been, oh, they added on some here and then they added on a piece in the back, which is stuff that you uncover once you start knocking out walls. And we tried to figure out and tried to, do the furnaces as much as possible before we closed on it, but you know, it can’t knock out walls. Owners frown upon that before you’ve actually bought the building. So, we, so we had to add 2 more residential units. Now I’ve got 6, air handler air conditioners, the air conditioning units that are outside in back of the building. Before we bought well, before we only back up a little bit before we bought the building, those 4 units were actually inside. They disconnected them and put them inside so they wouldn’t be targeted. I mean, they’re old units anyway, the air conditioning units, the ones that came in the building and put them inside to keep from copper thieves from going after them.

Sharon Brinks [00:39:38]:
And then we wound up, we put brand new ones out there, but after we closed on the building, but before we started any electrical or anything, we did get hit by copper thieves who, we didn’t have alarm system in there yet. It was just a vacant building. I mean we hadn’t even started interior demo. I think there was some interior demo, but not a whole lot yet. Busted the front door, went in, went through to the back, got all the copper from the the meter, the panel inside, you know, maybe got 10, $15 worth of copper. I was gonna say, when the elect

Jordan Berry [00:40:18]:
how much this cop copper is worth because this happens I’m surprised you guys have it there. Obviously, we get it over here in LA. Yeah.

Sharon Brinks [00:40:24]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:40:24]:
I’ve never looked up how much copper’s worth, but I need to look this up. Because if this is this lucrative, I might be, you know, going changing careers. Yeah. I might be going all Ross Dodd’s, laundromats around here and stealing all those copper.

Sharon Brinks [00:40:38]:
Alright. Ross, you better add the cameras because, yeah. I think Jordan’s gunning for you. That’s right. But, yeah, the, so we did get hit with copper thieves before we had actually put in any, done any of the electrical work, so it didn’t hurt us any. We just had no electrical service at all there for a little bit, so we couldn’t, you know, run a fan or do whatever. When the electric company came out, they said they could tell it’s an amateur job. It wasn’t professional, and they were really surprised they didn’t die while they were doing it.

Sharon Brinks [00:41:08]:
So that is a real risk that you run. So, you know, actually dying during, you know, Hawaii justice.

Jordan Berry [00:41:15]:
But Hey, listen, if

Sharon Brinks [00:41:16]:
the guy is

Jordan Berry [00:41:17]:
right, I might be willing to risk it. I don’t know. We’ll see how much it’s worth. I

Sharon Brinks [00:41:20]:
don’t know. It’s not worth your life, Jordan. Just don’t. Just don’t. So I do have we do have 6, air conditioning units sitting on the ground back there. Oh, and mind you, it did have a fence. It had a chain link fence there, which they just, you know, cut through this set of wire cutters. I mean, I could cut through it and get through.

Sharon Brinks [00:41:41]:
So we are having a serious security fence put up back there now. That’s actually in progress. We have a ring, one of those ring cameras with the flood lights, that’s hardwired and it says, hello, you’re being recorded and has a siren we can turn on and I can talk to him and, you know, more and more like yell at him. And, anyway, it notifies us if anybody’s in that perimeter area. So, but we’re getting that even more secure than it is right now. So that really didn’t slow us down any, but made us cognizant of, yeah, I really didn’t want that pitched roof. Really, really, really didn’t want a pitched roof. So, this reinforces the next one we’re going to build unless it’s a fairly new build that’s building that’s been built and abandoned like a family dollar, you know how all the family dollars so many of them are closing.

Sharon Brinks [00:42:38]:
Great big nice open building, fairly new build which would be perfect. But, anyway, I digress. So we had that. They didn’t really slow us down, but that was an adventure. The reason they found out was, somebody was driving past, called the police, saw if the front door had been smashed in and then the police showed up and managed to track us down and call us. So, that was fun. Let’s see. So just little setbacks here and there.

Sharon Brinks [00:43:13]:
We had, the reason that, one of the reasons water is near and dear to SeaTahart was we had a little issue with water pressure. And want to be very careful here. The, even though the plumber had done the plumbing on our first laundromat, he wanted to use a new product, a new type of PEX on this laundromat. When you’re drawing calls for 2 inch copper lines, when your architectural drawings call for that, that means 2 inch OD outer diameter of the copper. 2 inch PEX is not equal to 2 inch copper. The inner diameter of that, pipe is, Steve could tell me, to the 10th of the inch. It’s like 1 3 quarters or 1 and a half or whatever, but it’s, it’s a lot less. Yeah.

Sharon Brinks [00:44:03]:
It’s a lot less. And I was like, oh, it’ll be fine. And Steve’s like, no, it won’t be. Oh, yeah, no, it won’t be. I want either copper, it needs to be copper because that’s what the drawing says, or you’re going to have to use a bigger PEX. Now, the trenches are all open. PECS is laid. We go on vacation, run, you saw the crews kind of bit us in the back, trench is open.

Sharon Brinks [00:44:25]:
We go on vacation. I think we’re gone for 3 weeks in February this year. This is before this adventure happened. We came back and they poured concrete and it’s all in there and, underground and concrete. And Steve was not a happy camper. Let’s just put it that way. He’s still recovering. So we wound up, having the plumber at his expense, run the appropriate size.

Sharon Brinks [00:45:00]:
So that underground line now is just hot water. We have the cold water coming in overhead, which is I know every, there’s so many people that have overhead lines and that’s fine, but it’s not the look I like. It’s not the look I want. I want a clean look with nothing overhead. So I’ve got these great big like 15 inches columns with the copper coming down with the cold water. I have 2 of those because we have 2 bulkheads. That was an adventure. That slowed us down too.

Jordan Berry [00:45:29]:
So Well, and that’s a that’s a huge bummer because you’re building from like, one of the perks of building from scratch is you can do it how you want it. Right? And if you want that clean look where you can look all the way across your store and

Sharon Brinks [00:45:42]:
Yeah. Nothing’s distracting it and you’ve got those

Jordan Berry [00:45:45]:
2 columns there and you know, like, probably, you know, customers probably won’t know the difference really. I mean, obviously, they’d probably enjoy the visual experience better if those columns weren’t there. But having them there, probably not a massive deal. You’re not probably losing anybody because of that. But you’ll

Sharon Brinks [00:46:00]:
know. No. And that’s gonna

Jordan Berry [00:46:01]:
bug you and Steve for every time. Forever. Yeah.

Sharon Brinks [00:46:06]:
We’re on the cameras. We’re checking the cameras. We’ve got one of them that’s a fisheye right in the middle of the building and everything turn and do the 3 60 degree. And invariably, Steve will be on there looking because God, I hate those columns there because there’ll be something right behind it. The blocks of view or the dryers or something. So it’s like, I know, I know I will hear that the rest of my life. I understand. I hate them too.

Sharon Brinks [00:46:27]:
But we had to have water and now we know we’ve learned. So it, anyway that was an adventure. Let’s see what else. So now the usual I had to have a bigger electric service, gas service, water service, sewer line, the sewer main had to be bigger, bigger and better. So the front half of the 8,300 square feet is, well 3,000 or so. That’s laundromat. Probably about 3,200. Then we’ve got the back half that is the pickup and delivery area.

Sharon Brinks [00:47:03]:
We’re using the equipment on the floor right now. We did go ahead and rough in plumbing for our own OPL washers and dryers back there if we wanted to. On the south end of the building, there’s another 1,000 square foot area that we’ve had finished out into an office area, training area, whatever we want to be, a meeting area. So it’s finished out really nice and has its own, some thermostat and has its own address and everything. So that’s another 1,000 foot. Then behind the pickup and delivery area, I mean, there’s doors obviously close it off. But then behind that is another, I don’t know, probably a 1,000 square feet of dog kennels, which we left those in there. So we have dog kennels.

Jordan Berry [00:47:44]:
Are you gonna start breeding dogs or

Sharon Brinks [00:47:47]:
No. No. What they are handy for is storage. The trades really liked them when they were in there because they have the, you know, like close the gate on them and lots of tools up. Yeah. Even the tops on them. So electric had 1, plumbers had 1, our general contractor had 1. So that was really handy.

Sharon Brinks [00:48:07]:
So it’s, it’ll be nice if we release out that space and they’ve got their own lockable area. So

Jordan Berry [00:48:14]:
Yeah. Kinda handy. Laundry lockers if you ever need to.

Sharon Brinks [00:48:17]:
Yeah. I don’t they’re not that clean. No. They do have drains also, floor drains. So as things get messy back there, we can just hose them down. That’s Right. So

Jordan Berry [00:48:27]:
The the employees that aren’t performing well, you can put them in there. No. Don’t do that.

Sharon Brinks [00:48:32]:
So that back area also has its own, like, little kitchenette because that’s where the, and we left that all intact. And then it has this all, it has its own full bathroom. And when I say full bathroom, it’s like the size of a bedroom. It’s huge. And it has, it even has a urinal. Yay. And a shower. So, I guess, you know, after you’re, you know, the veterinarian after they have surgery on some of the animal, they’d have to go shower up or something, but it’s got its own great big huge bathroom out there.

Sharon Brinks [00:49:05]:
So that’s, that’s how it’s, you know, it’s a chopped up, it’s a chopped up area. But, yeah, not the whole, the whole 8,300 square foot is not laundromat. It’s divided up into different areas and different purposes.

Jordan Berry [00:49:18]:
So, yeah. What, you know, comparing your last one

Sharon Brinks [00:49:23]:
to this one,

Jordan Berry [00:49:25]:
what what are some of the lessons you, like, carried over from your last one? And and was there anything that you’re like, we wish we would have done this on the first one, so you

Sharon Brinks [00:49:34]:
did it

Jordan Berry [00:49:35]:
on the second one?

Sharon Brinks [00:49:37]:
We did go ahead and put in bollards on this one. We we do also tore out the, the front sidewalk, which is kind of old and chunky. What’s really important to us is 0 entry. A lot of our demographic has issues with mobility and we’ll have a lot of people that, you know, they’re disabled, they’re on crutches or wheelchairs or, you got moms with kids, strollers, not to mention the carts, taking the laundry carts out and it pops off the curb. We do allow people to take the carts out off the curb and back up and stuff like that. So we did go ahead and do that. We did not put bollards in on our 1st store. Never had a problem yet.

Sharon Brinks [00:50:18]:
Thank goodness we do have parking blocks at each stall, but we did go ahead and put bollards in this one.

Jordan Berry [00:50:25]:
Explain bollards.

Sharon Brinks [00:50:27]:
Oh, bollards are those, those big things in front of a store that’s like 3 foot, 4 foot tall to keep you from running into the glass in the front of your building.

Jordan Berry [00:50:34]:
So Concrete pillar basically.

Sharon Brinks [00:50:36]:
Yeah, yeah. Big old concrete pillars. So we did go ahead and put those in. It was important that we had the overhang already there over the sidewalk, and that was nice. That’s nice. So it keeps people, nice and dry when they’re coming in or going out. We knew we wanted to still have an automatic door just like the other one. What was something I found that wasn’t as important at this one? It was, I can’t remember.

Sharon Brinks [00:51:10]:
It seems like there was something that I decided, yeah, I don’t need that at this one. Oh, one thing we did learn, in the first one we only, in the restrooms, we only had tile up to like wainscoting level, like 4 foot high. And, then people can, we only had one problem with this, but people can write their name or write stuff on the walls. We only had a problem with it for a short time until I Facebook shamed him. And it was some, a guy who’d been writing, a guy or a boy, I don’t know if some of, sometimes it was pretty high up, but he’s writing his name over and over again. I posted some pictures and said something about appreciate you, and I’m not usually this snarky online. I mean, I’m private, personally I am, but, you know, appreciate you wanting to practice writing your name. However, I’d appreciate it if you would come up to the front desk and we’ll give you some scratch paper and some crayons and you can practice all you want to, just don’t do it on our walls anymore.

Sharon Brinks [00:52:10]:
And it stopped. So, anyway, that’s what I’m hoping. Yeah. As I’m hoping a mom saw, I can’t believe you’re doing that. So, so in this one we just tiled all the way to the ceiling. So yeah. And yes, we do have 2, the photographs have been approved by Brian Grahl that he does approve visually of the restrooms. And I look forward to having a free laundry day there sometime this next year to where he can see them in person and personally give him their stamp of approval.

Sharon Brinks [00:52:45]:
So, I love it. I know

Jordan Berry [00:52:47]:
the bathroom, the old bathroom test.

Sharon Brinks [00:52:51]:
Brian Grell loves the nice bath, nice clean bathroom. So, yeah, And they are clean. One thing you learn as a real estate agent that, smells and dirt can’t be seen in photographs. So it’s nothing like seeing it in person.

Jordan Berry [00:53:06]:
That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.

Sharon Brinks [00:53:09]:
So you bought

Jordan Berry [00:53:09]:
you bought this property in into 2022. Mhmm.

Sharon Brinks [00:53:13]:
And

Jordan Berry [00:53:13]:
you’re just flinging the doors open August 24. So talk talk

Sharon Brinks [00:53:17]:
to me

Jordan Berry [00:53:17]:
about, like, you know, as somebody maybe is considering doing a build out or, like, what why why did it take that long? Is that normal? Did you run into issues? What was that?

Sharon Brinks [00:53:29]:
The, well, that that permitting, having to change the the whole layout and then which involved having the architect and then having it approved again. That was huge. Mid, build, our the bank we had been using suddenly decided that they didn’t want to, they didn’t think we were good credit risk, I don’t think, or didn’t believe in this location or something. But anyway, we refinanced that construction loan midstream and, I’m glad we did. So the, the lender we went with was able to, you know, cost overruns, right? By that time, the price of materials continue to go up. The price of, the trades, you know, just the labor keeps going up. So, what was bid, not going over. So we had to refinance the construction loan and provide all of our numbers all over again.

Sharon Brinks [00:54:33]:
So our current lender is, shout out to Hill and Silcott, RC Bank here in Wichita, RCB Bank rather. You got the B, it doesn’t stand for bank. So RCB Bank, they’ve been amazing to work with and, just a joy. It’s hard to say that about a lender, isn’t it? They’ve been a joy to work with. So, and as a result, we moved our other loans over to them as well. So they’re getting a lot of interest from us. So anyway, but Helen’s just a sweetheart. So, so that took, that slowed us down another month or 2, at least.

Sharon Brinks [00:55:12]:
And that was in the dead of winter. That was December, January this timeframe. I think we closed in January on that loan. What else? It seems like everything was a little bit here and there, you know, every couple of weeks here, a couple of weeks there, just slide, slide, slide. So had we demoed the whole thing and just use our own plans, we would have none of the existing issues, you know, issues from the existing building, put up the rooftops the way we wanted, and I’m positive it would have been a lot cheaper. Not just the loan payments and having to, you know, having to support that, while we were building it from proceeds from the other longer map, which I don’t have to pay for that, but just the overall money outlay would have been a lot cheaper. So good lesson learned. It was expensive to learn, but it’s okay.

Sharon Brinks [00:56:10]:
We’re still still glad we did it. You know, a good learning experience. So Yeah. Sometimes It’s doing okay.

Jordan Berry [00:56:16]:
Sometimes those expensive lessons make sure we learn them. And, you know, like, I’ve I’ve made, you know, I I’ve learned my fair share of expensive lessons and you better believe that those are the ones that I have for sure learned. And I’ve made a lot of much less expensive less, mistakes than the lessons I hadn’t quite learned because the pain just wasn’t there.

Sharon Brinks [00:56:36]:
It’s one thing to make the mistake, but it’s another thing not to learn from it.

Jordan Berry [00:56:40]:
That’s right.

Sharon Brinks [00:56:40]:
So it’s okay to make mistakes. If you if you don’t do anything, you never make a mistake. Yeah. But then you don’t have any successes either. So

Jordan Berry [00:56:51]:
Yeah. Well, and I found too that a lot of times the mistakes are the things that really propel us forward if you can if you can endure them, if you can learn from them and and keep going forward. Right? Like, I just think of my own journey. Like, I’m not here talking to you on this podcast or doing half the things I’m doing right now if if I didn’t persevere in that first fiasco of a laundromat that I had. Yeah. I was losing a bunch of money early on. Right? And like

Sharon Brinks [00:57:17]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:57:18]:
All the all the difficult lessons I look back on my life, you know, in the middle of them, they’re awful and horrible sometimes, and you don’t wanna go through them again. But when you can kinda persevere through them, a lot of times those lead to a lot of your biggest successes. So

Sharon Brinks [00:57:33]:
They really yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:57:34]:
I see those mistakes not as something to be feared, but, you know, as something to be embraced. And, you know, I’ve I’ve grown a ton mostly because of the many many many many many mistakes I’ve made.

Sharon Brinks [00:57:49]:
Yeah. You just try not to make the same ones again. This next time, it’ll be different mistakes.

Jordan Berry [00:57:53]:
That’s right.

Sharon Brinks [00:57:54]:
That’s right. Always, always different.

Jordan Berry [00:57:56]:
I’m on a quest to find all of them and make all of them. Simple as hell.

Sharon Brinks [00:58:01]:
Well, there you go.

Jordan Berry [00:58:02]:
So okay. So you’re you’re building out this other location. Right? At at this point, you’re doing the construction. You’re, you know I mean, listen, anytime you’re doing construction, doesn’t matter if it’s a laundromat, a house, apartment complex, commercial like, you’re just gonna have cost overruns a lot of times and you’re gonna have delays a lot of times. It’s gonna just take some time.

Sharon Brinks [00:58:22]:
Yep.

Jordan Berry [00:58:23]:
And it can be very frustrating. But also, if you just kinda know that, it makes it less frustrating. But still frustrating a lot of times. Especially

Sharon Brinks [00:58:30]:
because it’s overruns. Yeah. Always try to have a plan b. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:58:36]:
You’re you’re building this out. Right? You’re you’re running your other laundromat. You’re building this out. You’re trying to, you know, design it how you want it as best you can. Did you do any prep work for, like, as as it was getting close to being open? Were you doing prep work in terms of, like, promoting it, advertising, any of that stuff? Did you wait till after? Like, can you talk us through that? Because one of the big concerns of opening or building a brand new one is that it’s never had customers there before. And so Yeah. Everybody who’s doing who you need to come do laundry at your brand new Laundromat is doing their laundry somewhere, some way.

Sharon Brinks [00:59:13]:
Yep.

Jordan Berry [00:59:13]:
And you need them to stop doing it that way wherever they’re doing it and come to your place to do it. So how did you

Sharon Brinks [00:59:19]:
Yeah. How do

Jordan Berry [00:59:19]:
you go about opening this thing and making sure there’s people there when you open?

Sharon Brinks [00:59:23]:
We knew there was demand because people kept stopping by and saying, when are you gonna open? Because I I I hate going to x y z, or I hate doing laundry at my apartment complex and my laundry in there is awful. So I knew the demand. The most frustrating thing for me was saying, I’m not sure when we’re going to open? Spring? Maybe? Maybe summer? Maybe fall? And it just kept slipping. I couldn’t give anybody a hard date or even close to a hard date. The closer we got then, so I didn’t do a whole lot of online promotion because I really couldn’t, couldn’t really not even nail down a date. I couldn’t even give up, you know, maybe a quarter, maybe a quarter. And then we got to where, okay, now this month, I think we’re gonna open in this particular month. I mean, I was trying to tell people by 4th July, I’d hope in July.

Sharon Brinks [01:00:14]:
Okay, well that didn’t happen. Then it was going to be August. And, you know, I made sure everybody knew it wasn’t because we didn’t want to open. I seriously needed to open, but I have to have a certificate of occupancy. I can’t open without that and to have that, you know, parking lots to be striped and this has to happen. We have to, you know, owe that darn government. They have to bless it, you know, kind of make them a bad guy, which somewhat was the case. But, so as we got closer, then I was, you know, occasionally I would put Facebook posts up.

Sharon Brinks [01:00:45]:
I wasn’t doing any promoted boosted posts, but I have one Facebook page for both the locations. I don’t have separate ones. So, I would put up a post saying, well, here’s our progress. Here’s what it looks like inside. Here’s, here’s what these machines are going to look like. We got our flooring down. I’ve got shelving up. So that was fun.

Sharon Brinks [01:01:10]:
I got, I got to tell this story. So I was looking for shelving to put our product on because we sell soap over the counter, we’re fully attended. I don’t have any vending machines. I have a refrigerator, like a, a glass door merchandising machine like you would have at a convenience store refrigerator that people take their snacks and drinks, take them to the counter. And we have that at the other store. I wanted to do the same thing here. It promotes the customer, employee interaction. Also, I don’t like the moving parts of any vending machines and I’m not gonna give a, vending machine company any, you know, split off of my square footage.

Sharon Brinks [01:01:50]:
I’m going to own that machine and we’re going to stock it and we’re going to get the profit off of it. So, but I need shelves to put the soap and stuff in. At the other store I was able to find a counter off of like Craigslist or something like that. So we have a glass display case that’s right under the POS system and you can pick what product you want, you know, just point it out and we hand it to you and you pay for it. So over here, it didn’t have that. So I’m looking for shelving, linen for shelving, and I saw a post from, Habitat For Humanity’s ReStore store here in town. And they have this beautiful shelving that had just been donated. And I I love Brighton jewelry.

Sharon Brinks [01:02:34]:
And Brighton, I love Brighton purses, they’re too expensive though, but I do have pieces of Brighton jewelry and some key chains and stuff like that. And I recognize that signature heart at the top of the shelving unit. So I was like,

Jordan Berry [01:02:46]:
it looks like Brighton.

Sharon Brinks [01:02:47]:
So next day I’m over there and I bought all the shelving. Turned out it did come from a Brighton boutique that had recently closed. So, I’m the only laundromat I bet that has Brighton shelving but for display. So we have all that and it is fancy. And you know what, who’s your target demographic? It’s women. Women with, you know, families and kids. Yeah. You want the guys in there too.

Sharon Brinks [01:03:18]:
But your target demographic is women and they want to see something nice and pretty and stuff. And I liked it. So, if you want me to send a personal paper

Jordan Berry [01:03:27]:
myself over to you, speaking of nice and pretty, if you want to hang that up.

Sharon Brinks [01:03:31]:
Yes. You’re missing the point here, Jordan. That’s a no. So maybe the nice part. So, so we’ve got I got I have Brighton shelving. And if you look at our website, the conversationks.com, and then locations go to Seneca. I’ve got pictures of that. I don’t have professional photos yet.

Sharon Brinks [01:03:56]:
I’m working on some signage. I’ve got all my interior signage complete and then signage on the front windows. Then I’ll have a professional photographer come out and take pictures. And I can’t stress that enough. I think I said down the first podcast, it’s not that expensive to have just a local photography company come take pictures. Find somebody who does real estate photography, chances are they do commercial. It’s less than $200 and they’ll come and put your store in the best light possible. Again, smells and dirt don’t show in photos, so don’t worry about it if it doesn’t smell perfect or you got a little little hairball over in the corner, it’s not going to show up.

Sharon Brinks [01:04:32]:
But it’ll look amazing online. So, so right now the ones, the Seneca pictures are just pictures I’ve taken with my cell phone. So better than nothing. So, I guess talking and I forget where we were. What was, what was the original question?

Jordan Berry [01:04:48]:
Well I

Sharon Brinks [01:04:49]:
got the shelving in there. You have to look at your notes too, don’t you? You don’t mind. So what was your I don’t know. It’s a long time

Jordan Berry [01:04:54]:
ago now. Yeah. No. I mean, the the going back real quick. Like, I I love the, I love the the the little touches, right, of, you know, finding, like, the Brighton, shelving and, you know, I you know, I’ve I’ve seen pictures, obviously, and I kinda watched the saga, you know, as you were kinda going through it too. Yeah.

Sharon Brinks [01:05:16]:
I didn’t put half of it up online. Yeah. Sure. I’m sure.

Jordan Berry [01:05:19]:
I’ve seen that right. And but the just the thoughtfulness and all of that that you guys have put into your your build out and all that stuff. And, you know, you’ve got the, you know, the logo mats and, you know, all that stuff. Everything’s well branded. Like, in the the seating you have in there, all that. I like, I love just the thought that you guys have put into the design.

Sharon Brinks [01:05:40]:
And then a kid’s area. I’ve got the kid’s table and the little chairs and the bookcase of the kid’s books. So place over there. You know what’s what’s fun is so often I see kids at the Seneca store at this new store sitting down at that table and actually reading books and I rarely see that at the other store. Like this is a more literate group down at the Seneca store, I guess. I don’t know. But I just, I really don’t see that much. They, they tend to just destroy them and tear them at the all, tear them up at the Oliver store.

Sharon Brinks [01:06:11]:
But at Seneca they’re actually reading the books. So it’s like, yay, they’re gonna grow up in Lander Me.

Jordan Berry [01:06:17]:
So I’m scrolling through pictures of your mat right now.

Sharon Brinks [01:06:20]:
I’m seeing shells.

Jordan Berry [01:06:21]:
They’re really pretty actually.

Sharon Brinks [01:06:23]:
I was gonna so they look kind of boring. Just, when I first put them in there, it’s just the walls are all white. Because I wanted that as like a blank palette. So then I could put when I put the signage up, it makes it pop a little bit more and white bright. Everything is light. The, we have a hard deck ceiling, hard deck, so sheetrock ceiling. We don’t have drop ceiling. And then the, the tile.

Sharon Brinks [01:06:49]:
I did learn from the other, I did learn that from the other store. I went with the whitest tile you could get at the other store. The white porcelain tile, which is amazing when it’s clean. But as soon as you have a rainstorm and somebody or not or anybody tracks in dirt, it looks gross. People will still say, oh, this is so clean. And I’m like, I see every little speck and every little bit of dirt. So I learned from that. So I went more with the, if you look at the pictures of the Wilfords, the wash house, the 2 by 4 tiles, that’s white background, but gray and brown stripes in it.

Sharon Brinks [01:07:23]:
That’s more what ours looks like. It still looks clean. But, first time somebody tracks in stuff, it’s not blatantly obvious.

Jordan Berry [01:07:32]:
Yeah. Yeah. I I did the same thing. I did a I did a light, like, an epoxy. Really, it wasn’t white, but it was like a light light light gray. And I was like, it’ll be great because it’ll it’ll it’ll show dirt and we’ll just keep it clean. Like, it’ll be great. But what I found was there’s just so many people are coming in and out.

Jordan Berry [01:07:50]:
Even if it doesn’t like, it never rains here. Even if it doesn’t rain, like, people people are just there. Like, our feet are dirty. The snowmocks are dirty. Like, and it just tracks in and it’s just impossible. And especially over time, it’s just impossible

Sharon Brinks [01:08:03]:
to keep that. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:08:05]:
All the

Sharon Brinks [01:08:05]:
time. So that light

Jordan Berry [01:08:07]:
gray ish with some striping in there, like some wood grain striping and stuff. Just

Sharon Brinks [01:08:13]:
It’s I think I think that’s ideal. Seems to seems to work well. So so, yeah, I went with the white walls and then I put the shelving in there. It’s like it’s the gray metal. And it’s, this doesn’t really pop. I probably should paint that back wall accent color or something. Then we put on the product on it. I was like, oh, I’m glad I didn’t paint it because you got the orange Tide bottles and the green game bottles and and blue bottles and all sorts of purple Swadditel bottles, and there’s plenty of color there.

Jordan Berry [01:08:41]:
Yeah. And I’ll I’ll put the I’ll put the link for anybody who wants to go check it out, on the show notes page, conversation ks.com. But I’ll put it on the show notes page there. If you go to the, location, there’s a bunch of photos she’s got on there. It looks it looks real sharp. Bathroom looks good. It looks good.

Sharon Brinks [01:08:58]:
Yeah. And bathroom phone. Yeah. So but I have professional ones put up probably probably next month or 2 when I get the signage finished and get them scheduled. Yeah. So that’s common.

Jordan Berry [01:09:08]:
So I remembered as you were talking what we were originally talking about, it was like, how did you get how you how are you getting people coming to your store? That’s where

Sharon Brinks [01:09:14]:
we Yes.

Jordan Berry [01:09:15]:
That’s where we started. Yeah.

Sharon Brinks [01:09:16]:
Yeah. So so post on Facebook when I found the Brighton shelving, I put that up. Then when we were getting close, I had new signage put it up. I I took pictures of them, you know, putting the poll sign up, you know, with the crane and everything outside. So just little status updates occasionally. And then once we did finally open, then, I was doing some paid Facebook posts, which I do myself, you know, I don’t pay a marketing company do it but, and then I just draw a radius around, my store and maybe any place else I want to target to, let them know that, yes, we’re open now. And then let kind of let word-of-mouth handle it as well. But that’s the only notices that I’ve done so far.

Sharon Brinks [01:10:08]:
I’m literally in the process of scheduling. We did join the Chamber of Commerce, our members. We’re going to have a ribbon cutting next month. I tentatively, it’s October 23rd. We have a, you know, Wichita Regional Chamber Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting. And they’ll promote it as well. And then we will probably so I’d like to have it sooner, but I have to schedule it for when am I going to be recovered enough from chemo, from October 7 chemo to actually do it and have any energy and be able to think. So October 23rd seems to work best, with all the other scheduling issues.

Sharon Brinks [01:10:47]:
Then probably we’ll have a grand opening, I think maybe in November. I’m not quite sure when, but, because then my manager’s off on a week of vacation and then I meet her back in there for the, for the grand grand opening. And, then we’ll do, you know, we’ll have food and we’ll have t shirts and face paintings or whatever, whatever you normally do for that sort of thing. But by November the weather will probably be horrible because, you know, it’s Kansas. So anyway, but that’s a little ways down the road. Kind of letting word-of-mouth handle it also. I am amazed at how many people have been driving like as the crow flies it’s about 5 miles or so. The new story is from the old one, but how many people have been, live in that area where our new store is, and they’ve been driving over to the other store all this time.

Sharon Brinks [01:11:39]:
They will drive past about 3 of the laundromats to come see us. So I’m going, oh, I’m so glad that you’re, you’re here. Another interesting thing is we’ll ask them, well, where did you use to do your laundry? Before you came here, because now this is your new favorite place, but where did you use to do laundry? And it’s not just been one location, it’s been, and not just other laundromats, when you put in a new store, you always forget about the ones, the customers that are doing their laundry right now at their apartment complexes and typically really crappy laundry rooms where sometimes the equipment works, it’s not clean, you might have like one washer for, you know, a bazillion people. It’s, yeah, you forget about those people because those aren’t the ones you see in water. When you go past the laundromats and you count cars, how many people do they have? You don’t, you don’t see those. So, we do have that large apartment complex behind us. All those people will walk over, to use us, and they’re they’re thrilled. They don’t have to get in the car and go anywhere, and they don’t have to use their apartment laundry room.

Sharon Brinks [01:12:50]:
So, yeah, just figure out where where’s your just figure out. Make it sound simple, right? Your target market, who are your target customers? Where do they live? Where are they currently doing laundry at? And then, you know, your aim is not to really, you don’t really want to shut unless it’s a crappy zombie mat trademarked by Brent Grill. You really don’t want to shut down anybody. You just want to provide a better laundry experience and draw from everywhere. And I think we’ve been doing that. So it’s been fun.

Jordan Berry [01:13:25]:
That’s awesome. I mean, I think you’re right. It’s like it’s a matter of serving an underserved area. Right? Well

Sharon Brinks [01:13:33]:
Exactly. Exactly. To

Jordan Berry [01:13:34]:
the to the question, which I guess is kind of backtracking, but it’s also kinda relevant to what you’re talking about right now. When you were looking at locations and stuff, how why did you pick this specific location, or how’d you know this specific location was gonna be a good one for a laundromat?

Sharon Brinks [01:13:53]:
Well, I have a have a map where map of Wichita where I’ve got little pushpins of every laundromat, in town and then, numbers that correlate to spreadsheet because I Steve geeks out on his engineering stuff and I geek out on the business end of it. He likes to build them, I like to run them. So it works altogether. So I just looking at, okay, where is there a big gap in a good quality laundromat? What is an underserved area? What is an area that has a demographic that I feel would be well served. And, I can’t underestimate boots on the ground. You can look at stuff on a map all you want to in different cities around, but get in the car and go drive it. Go in the grocery store, go in the, you know, the gas station, the quick trips around here, go in and ask people, where’s the nearest London map? Just kind of ask what’s the, what’s the awareness? What’s their impressions of things? What’s the demographic that’s at that grocery store? At those dollar trees and dollar generals and stuff. What do the houses look like? You know, and if you’re a realtor, I think you’ve looked at stuff enough that you realize, oh, that’s going to be, that’s about the $50,000 price range.

Sharon Brinks [01:15:15]:
That’s about a $100,000 price range. That was built in the 50s, that was built in the 60s. You can usually tell by how many garages they’ve got. If it’s single, no car garage, single car, 2 car. Now standard is 3 car garage on no builds, right? And new builds with a 4th car optional. Anyway, just it’s, it’s kind of interesting how you see those, but, drive around the neighborhoods, how the yards look, what the cars look like. Does everybody have bars in the windows? Do they have, front yards are fenced, no dressings passing signs around, there are kids toys in the yard. You know, you kind of get a feel of the, of the people that live in that area.

Sharon Brinks [01:15:52]:
So and, but yeah, this wasn’t the only area we’ve looked at. We’ve looked all over the place and we do, we’d like to probably put in 2 to 3 more in the Wichita area and we do have areas that we’re, we’re interested in. So we’re now we’re in the looking phase for the other areas. We’re gonna build the, build the customer base for this one and then, but always with eyes towards the next build because we are gluttons for punishment and we’re both crazy now. So

Jordan Berry [01:16:21]:
Well, you cut the bug. That’s a problem.

Sharon Brinks [01:16:24]:
Okay. I get

Jordan Berry [01:16:24]:
all these, I get all these, like, coaching clients and stuff who come in and they’re like, yeah. I wanna I wanna buy a laundromat and then we get them a laundromat and they’re hooked. Like, they’re

Sharon Brinks [01:16:34]:
like, oh, yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:16:35]:
Go get another one. Like, what’s like, yeah. You got the like, it’s hard once you get

Sharon Brinks [01:16:39]:
because it’s so passive. Right?

Jordan Berry [01:16:41]:
Yeah.

Sharon Brinks [01:16:41]:
I had to say that. That’s a joke. It’s a really big joke. It’s passive.

Jordan Berry [01:16:46]:
Yeah. Well, especially building one out, that doesn’t sound, like Yeah. Really passive for you guys.

Sharon Brinks [01:16:51]:
Yeah. One

Jordan Berry [01:16:52]:
other question about the the build out, that I had was, what about machines? Like, how do you know, like, what size machines, what kind of mix, how many of each kind? Can you talk about how you kinda went about that process? Because I think that’s another I mean, there’s a ton of, like, nuances that you gotta kinda

Sharon Brinks [01:17:11]:
Yeah. All these pieces, you

Jordan Berry [01:17:13]:
gotta kinda fit together to make just the right business. Right? It’s more building out from scratch. So this is just another one of those, like, pretty pretty key things of, like, what equipment do I put in? How big? How many of each?

Sharon Brinks [01:17:26]:
Mhmm. All that.

Jordan Berry [01:17:27]:
So what did you guys do, and how’d you think about that?

Sharon Brinks [01:17:30]:
So the the first one was, I think, probably the hardest because we didn’t have anything to go by. The second one we based off of machine usage on the first one. So we we do have, Speed Queen, currently have All Touch equipment at both stores. And with the insights, or I’m sure other equipment vendors have the similar thing, but you have programs where you can see how often, do those machines run, how many turns do you have per day, Per per day, per per week, per month? Which ones are your most heavily used? Usually, you know, what’s the favorites? So the first store was more like, it’s kind of a crapshoot. I mean, you know, everybody likes the bigger machines, and we have no talk loads in any of our stores. So we have the 1st store we have, the 2 load, 4 load or, you know, a load’s considered £10. So £20, £40, £60, £80, and £100. We have a total of 30 washers and then we have a total of 35 dryer pockets.

Sharon Brinks [01:18:35]:
So we’ve kind of figured out what we wanted there and I think that was a really good mix. I’m glad we did what we did. We probably would have put in a couple more forties. Forty’s the sweet spot and that’s the one people wait for on Sunday afternoons. Sunday afternoon’s your busiest time, and you need the throughput. So the other store were like, okay, we know these 5 sizes work. I went ahead and went with 4 sizes. I skipped the 100 and I’m already wondering if I’d made a mistake.

Sharon Brinks [01:19:03]:
But anyway, I probably should put 100 in down there too. But, we went with 20s, 40s, 60s, and 80s. I’ve only got 24 machines down there instead of 30. And only because I happened to cram the layout into my washer dryer layout into an existing building. That’s how we wound up doing it. And I’ve got the bulkheads broken up into 2 pieces. The sixties and eighties are over here on this side, and then the twenties and forties are here with aisle between them. So when you walk in, you can walk straight through and go to the dryers.

Sharon Brinks [01:19:36]:
But more importantly, we don’t have just one row and then you pick a washer in the middle and you got to go all the way around one end or the other. So it’s just kind of a flow thing once more convenient to get back to the dryers. There’s a, I start with twenties in my store. We also do drop off, so that’s for drop off usage as well. There’s another school of thought, which I like also, which the smallest machine you have in your store would be thirties. But then you can get a higher VIN price. They don’t cost that much more than twenties, then twenties and then forties, or thirties and forties, but forties are so close in size to thirties. I don’t know.

Sharon Brinks [01:20:22]:
I like I like the twenties because, I always think like my mom and me is also you’ve got this little dab of stuff that you want to bleach, but then you got everything else that you want to wash. And older ladies, like my mom was always like that too. Gosh, I guess I’m an older lady now too. But you got a little dab of stuff you don’t want to pay, you know, for a 4 load machine to bleach your stuff to just for that one little dab. So I get 2, you get to use 2 machines now instead of just 1. So I do have twenties in there, probably should have went with 2 less twenties and put in a couple of hundreds instead, but, we do have plenty of forties. I think that was important. That’s the sweet spot.

Sharon Brinks [01:21:07]:
And then, 460s and 280s in there. So, yeah, people like their bigger machines and whenever I’m, you know, looking at machine usage right now, like live view of what’s being used, the big ones are always being used. So Yeah. Yeah. It was kind of a you you get a feel for it. Right?

Jordan Berry [01:21:28]:
Yeah. It’s always interesting to hear, you know, talk to different people about how they think about machine mix because,

Sharon Brinks [01:21:33]:
I mean,

Jordan Berry [01:21:33]:
there like you said, there’s a lot of different sort of philosophies of machine mix and number of machines and stuff like that. Right? Some people, you know, some people still do put in even even brand new put in top loaders in because they they are like, hey. I have customers who want them, so I’ll put them in. Right? Yeah. And

Sharon Brinks [01:21:53]:
They want them because they don’t know they can do better.

Jordan Berry [01:21:55]:
Yeah. Well, more and more people are saying, why would we put them in there? They cost more money to run. They’ve been for less. They break down more often.

Sharon Brinks [01:22:04]:
Yada yada.

Jordan Berry [01:22:05]:
They make a bigger mess, like, all the all the reasons I hated top loaders and

Sharon Brinks [01:22:09]:
Yeah. Yeah. I I think, luckily, the VIN price tends to go about 2.50, for a top loader. So, hey, I can put a whole week’s worth of laundry, a whole month’s worth even in one top loader and get it done for 2.50. Yeah. And then you’re cramming it, that agitator, the thing underneath at the bottom breaks because it’s made of plastic these days and the agitator won’t agitate anymore and then it doesn’t get cleaned. But they’re super cheap and you don’t have to have them hardwired. You just have an outlet and you plug them in.

Sharon Brinks [01:22:40]:
So I get it there. The traction’s there. If you’ve, if you’re limited on budget for machines, I get it. But man, I’m not going there.

Jordan Berry [01:22:51]:
I know. Well and and I do it. You know, it’s interesting too because you’re you said, hey. The forties is the sweet spot. We put a bunch of forties in.

Sharon Brinks [01:22:57]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:22:57]:
And then you’ve got, you know, it’s been a long time since Brandon Undersell has been on, which Brandon, you need to come back on. I need to call you, dude. But he’s he’s like, we don’t do forties because

Sharon Brinks [01:23:08]:
it

Jordan Berry [01:23:08]:
takes away from the sixties and people put £60 worth of clothes in the forties and they’re cramming in and yada yada yada. And Yeah. You know, so it’s just it’s I always like to hear just how different people are thinking about, it, and there’s not one kind of magic bullet. There’s not one system.

Sharon Brinks [01:23:22]:
There’s not. Yeah. And,

Jordan Berry [01:23:24]:
and and I think hearing how different people think about it helps us as we’re like, each of us as we’re trying to figure out our own machine mixes and all that, how to think about that. So thank you for sharing, all that too.

Sharon Brinks [01:23:37]:
And they like the bigger dryers too. So we’ve got 5 each store has 5.75 pound dryers. So, you know, you can get 2 big old comforters in there and and dry them and they’ll they’ll dry well. But, but yeah, there’s, there’s different schools of thought there. Another fun fact, water fun water fact that, my engineering husband would share a, top load washer uses about the same amount of water as a 60 pound hard mount washer extractor. So that’s a lot of water. Yeah. That’s a lot of water.

Sharon Brinks [01:24:08]:
And I don’t know if that’s one fill or if that’s the whole wash and then 2 rinses. But, I’d have, he has spreadsheets on this. Of course he has spreadsheets on this. So he can talk in-depth about them.

Jordan Berry [01:24:22]:
Yeah. And they’re probably extracting less of that water than the 6 pounders are. So the dryers take long.

Sharon Brinks [01:24:27]:
So, yeah. So you get more dry time, but then, you know, so you get more quarters in the dryer. But what’s the, what’s the last thing somebody remembers when they leave unless your attendant is surly? How long did it take to dry it? Yep. Unless unless the person that puts in a whole bunch of quarters or in our case, app uses the app, sets it to 2 hours and then goes and does a grocery shopping and comes back. And they don’t really pay attention to the price. I’m like, thank you. I’ll take it.

Jordan Berry [01:24:54]:
Yeah. Gotta

Sharon Brinks [01:24:55]:
do what you take your money.

Jordan Berry [01:24:57]:
Yeah. Well, you’ve been open just a few weeks now. Maybe a month. Yeah. About a month. How how has business been so far?

Sharon Brinks [01:25:07]:
So far so good. So far so good. It suddenly continues to increase each week even though I haven’t been able to advertise, I haven’t been able to be down there as much as I wanted to be. When we first opened the 1st store, Steve and I worked every single hour for the first probably at least 3 months until I finally found somebody to at least open for us on the weekends so we could sleep there a little bit. But we worked, we worked that store ourselves a lot. So you get to meet and greet, you go help people in and out and you get to talk to them and, you know, kind of build that rapport. This store, it’s just been me going in and out, usually without a wig on and just a ball cap and everybody’s like, who’s that freakish woman with no hair? So I’m looking forward to feeling better enough that I can go down. I still get tired really easily.

Sharon Brinks [01:25:59]:
Usually, usually by this time of day, I’m about to fall over, but so I have plenty of energy. We’re doing good. But being able to go in there on a Saturday, on a Sunday, visit with people, you know, put my polo shirt on my name tag and hey, how are you doing? How did everything turn out for you? Has everything clean and dry like it’s supposed to be? And then, yeah, I’m the owner and, you know, just listen to them visit with me and just, you know, build that rapport. I think that’s really important and I have not been able to do that yet, but it’s still growing. And, yeah, hopefully it’ll hopefully it’ll grow faster once I can get down there and schmooze. But, like I said, we’re fully attended and I’m trying to get my attendance to get out from behind the counter. That’s a, yeah. Hiring in the laundromat world is a whole another podcast.

Sharon Brinks [01:26:50]:
Wow. You got some that are rock stars and some that, yeah, they’re real close to getting fired. So yeah, go out and do your job. Yeah. And part of that job is to go visit with the customers and build build that rapport.

Jordan Berry [01:27:11]:
Yeah. And it it’s a huge part too. Right? Because that whole kind of overall experience

Sharon Brinks [01:27:15]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:27:16]:
Is so important, you know, to if you Yeah. How how people feel about your business. Right? Like, that’s that’s really kinda what we’re selling too is how people feel when they leave. Like, maybe I shouldn’t say nobody wants to do laundry. Some people like doing laundry.

Sharon Brinks [01:27:31]:
I love laundry. I love doing laundry. Weird. But whereas we established that my life and my level of crazy. Yeah. That’s right. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:27:42]:
But most people don’t. But if you can make them feel good, despite having to do loan, like, that’s a big deal. Right? People don’t do that.

Sharon Brinks [01:27:49]:
Yeah. And we’re and that’s our business model to be fully attended to be, I mean, our counters at either store, we’re not even set up to where we could be unattended. There’s no pull down bars or cage or anything. Just walk right behind the counter and grab product and there’s the VOS system and everything. So we have somebody has to be there. So if you’re there, go clean something and talk to the customers.

Jordan Berry [01:28:12]:
Yeah.

Sharon Brinks [01:28:12]:
So yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:28:14]:
Awesome. Well, this has been awesome. I you know, for thank you again for taking the time to come and and catch us up and share, your experience in building out the Laundromat, of course, but also, you know, with the the personal update. And I’m so glad to hear that you are kicking butt, taking names

Sharon Brinks [01:28:36]:
I am.

Jordan Berry [01:28:36]:
Right now. Let’s keep that train rolling. We’ll be, you know, saying prayers for you, continued, you know, health and longevity, and, get this thing up and running so you can go find another one so you can come back

Sharon Brinks [01:28:50]:
Absolutely.

Jordan Berry [01:28:51]:
Share about that one too.

Sharon Brinks [01:28:52]:
I appreciate. Well, thank you so much for having me on, Jordan. So I’ve been waiting to announce it. So this is probably the first for you. You probably never had anybody, do a cancer announcement and a public service announcement like that on your, on your podcast. And, this is the way I wanted to kinda let everybody know all at once and tell them all the same story at once.

Jordan Berry [01:29:14]:
Yeah. So Yeah. Definitely the first

Sharon Brinks [01:29:16]:
I appreciate it.

Jordan Berry [01:29:16]:
Over here. But,

Sharon Brinks [01:29:18]:
you know,

Jordan Berry [01:29:19]:
thank you. Yeah. And and also, I’m pretty sure the first time anybody’s ever pulled their hair off here.

Sharon Brinks [01:29:26]:
I know. Well, I thought about saying, you know, you asked me, what was it like building a new longer mat? And I’d be like, I pulled all my hair out. It was awful. So but, yeah, I didn’t wanna do that.

Jordan Berry [01:29:37]:
Yeah. It

Sharon Brinks [01:29:37]:
it seems like it sometimes though.

Jordan Berry [01:29:39]:
I can imagine. Yeah. I can imagine. So Well, thank you again. And, you know, tell, you know, tell Steve also thank you for, you know, all all the support, you know, for you and in that build out and stuff. And, you know, I know, like, he’s he’s not getting any of the glory because here you are, you know, on state on screen.

Sharon Brinks [01:29:59]:
He doesn’t want it. He’s very much in the shadows kinda guy. But I

Jordan Berry [01:30:02]:
do wanna acknowledge, you know, his his contribution, not just to your laundromat, but also just to the to the industry in general. Him sharing his wisdom and stuff too at the conferences and all that stuff. So Yeah.

Sharon Brinks [01:30:12]:
We

Jordan Berry [01:30:13]:
appreciate you guys. We love you guys. And, you know, continue praying for you guys and, you know, health and and and wellness and all that. And, again, you know, thank you for coming on. You obviously are welcome here anytime Mhmm. You want. You just you just say the word and

Sharon Brinks [01:30:30]:
you’re Well, I’ll tell you what. In the spring, when I got a little bit of hair back and looks completely different, we’ll, we’ll do it again.

Jordan Berry [01:30:35]:
We’ll we’ll go on it.

Sharon Brinks [01:30:36]:
Yeah. I love it.

Jordan Berry [01:30:37]:
Maybe I’ll, shave my head then and then we can

Sharon Brinks [01:30:40]:
Heck yeah. Heck yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:30:42]:
Do comparison on head shape.

Sharon Brinks [01:30:44]:
There you go. I don’t

Jordan Berry [01:30:45]:
know I don’t know that my head can yeah. I don’t know.

Sharon Brinks [01:30:48]:
I don’t I don’t think that’d be

Jordan Berry [01:30:49]:
a good look for me. Alright.

Sharon Brinks [01:30:51]:
We’ll see. You never know until you try it, so give it a shot.

Jordan Berry [01:30:53]:
That’s a good point. Well, thank you again.

Sharon Brinks [01:30:56]:
Appreciate it.

Jordan Berry [01:30:57]:
And, we’ll talk soon.

Sharon Brinks [01:30:58]:
Thank you for having me on, Jordan. I appreciate it.

Jordan Berry [01:31:00]:
Anytime. Alright. I hope you enjoyed that episode with Sharon Brink’s. Huge shout out, and thank you to her for coming on and sharing not just like a gold mine of information on laundromat build outs and operations, but also for coming on and being vulnerable and sharing what’s going on with her. It’s not only telling us, but also showing us, which was a great, her Heisenberg look was my highlight, for me of that episode. So if you’re listening to this, you might wanna go check out the YouTube video and, and and see the big reveal there. But, listen. This is a community.

Jordan Berry [01:31:36]:
This is this is my big action step takeaway. You know, pick something for you, but this is mine. This is this is a community. This industry is not that big. So being able to do things like this, share what’s going on with us personally, we’re building these relations. We’re getting to know one each other, each other or one another, and, and supporting each other through life. Right? And I have said this before, but laundromats are great, and I love laundromats, but they’re a vehicle to help us build life. Right? They’re they become a big part of our lives for a lot of us, but but life is more than just that.

Jordan Berry [01:32:15]:
So it was great to actually be able to just share life together with Sharon. So thank you again, Sharon, for coming on and doing that. Feel free to reach out to her if you wanna encourage her, support her in her journey. And just a reminder, let’s listen. Let let’s be there for each other. This, like I said, is a community and an opportunity for us to be there for one another. Alright. Alright.

Jordan Berry [01:32:38]:
That’s it for today. I will see you next week. Peace.