Handling Tough Customers: Strategies Every Laundromat Owner Needs With Michele Replogle

Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
Hey. Hey. What’s up, guys? This is Jordan with the Laundromedia Resource Podcast. This is show one eighty three, and I’m pumped you’re here today. Today, we have Michelle on the show, and this is genuinely just a down to earth, just awesome interview. You’re going to love it. A lot of really practical stuff, a lot of really like insightful conversation that we have about what it’s really like owning a laundromat. So we have a really, really great conversation, a lot of really practical takeaways and a lot of really cool things that Michelle is doing to help her grow her business.

Jordan Berry [00:00:33]:
And so I know you’re going to love it. Cannot wait for you to jump into it with Michelle. And right before we do, I’ve got an announcement with the big winner for our our marketing partners contest for a free website and full branding package that’s coming right now. Alright, you laundromat lovers. This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for over the past few weeks. Many, many of you have entered the business marketing resource giveaway for a free website and a full branding package, complete game changer for your laundromat business in 2025. First of all, huge thank you to everyone who entered for me and from business marketing resource. I love seeing how many of you guys are committed to really just excelling, growing, elevating the whole, to use Dave Mentz’s word, right? Elevating industry here and elevating your own businesses, taking them to the next level.

Jordan Berry [00:01:29]:
And that is what BMR, business marketing resource, is all about as well. So today, we have got the grand prize winner that I have the privilege to announce. And they’re about to boost their business massively. So drum roll, please. Congratulations to the winner, Jacob Himmler, owner of Squeaks Laundromat in Greeley, Colorado. Jacob, you just won a professionally designed website and a full branding package from Business Marketing Resource. Congratulations. It’s the ultimate toolkit to elevate your laundromat, attract more customers, and make 2025 your best year yet.

Jordan Berry [00:02:12]:
So Jacob, keep an eye out for your email inbox. The team at BMR will be reaching out to you shortly with the next steps. Get your website off to the races. And hey, look, you know, selfishly, I am hoping that this website transforms your business and that you come on the podcast and share your story about how it worked. That would benefit me. That would benefit you. That would benefit business marketing resource. And most importantly, that would benefit everybody who’s listening, trying to grow their businesses.

Jordan Berry [00:02:41]:
So congrats to you. And, listen, everybody else I know. Listen, this is sad news that you didn’t win the grand prize. However, you may still be a winner of one of these secondary prizes that business marketing resource has given out. So they will be reaching out to those of you who won the secondary prizes, big discounts, you know, possibly a poster of me and Speedo. I’m not sure, the details on that one yet, but that could be one of the prizes for the last place winner. Anyways, everyone else out there, if you didn’t win, sorry you didn’t win. However, it is still a great opportunity to check out buildwithbmr.com and, take your business to the next level with the new website, new branding, marketing, on social media, on Google, wherever you’re doing the marketing and let them help you take your laundromat to the next level.

Jordan Berry [00:03:33]:
Alright. So that’s our big announcement. Let’s roll into this episode with with Michelle. Michelle, how are you? Thank you for coming on the show.

Michele Replogle [00:03:43]:
Well, thanks for having me.

Jordan Berry [00:03:44]:
Well, listen. I am super excited, especially I mean, we were chatting a little bit before we hit record here. And, I’m I’m super excited. You’re kind of in one of my old stomping grounds. And, so I’m excited to hear what’s going on there and what’s going on with you. So why don’t you give us a little bit of background on who you are and then maybe how you got into this weird little industry of laundromats.

Michele Replogle [00:04:09]:
Well, I’m Michelle Ropogl. I do live in Santa Cruz County. And in 2020, we bought a laundromat in Scotts Valley, which is adjacent to Santa Cruz. I’m not so it’s not super close by. It’s about ten minutes away. And we, we’re just looking for an investment, and we got this kooky little little well, it’s not little. It’s huge, laundromat.

Jordan Berry [00:04:34]:
Awesome. Is it huge?

Michele Replogle [00:04:36]:
And Oh. I don’t know. It’s a big storefront, though. We it’s a very big, it’s actually a pretty big, area. I honestly, I’ve been asked the square footage of it before, but it it’s big.

Jordan Berry [00:04:48]:
Yeah. Cool.

Michele Replogle [00:04:50]:
I think at least 2,000 square feet, I think.

Jordan Berry [00:04:53]:
Yeah. I’ve been to I’ve been to Scotts Valley. And, I mean, it’s really it’s really pretty area. Well, when I lived up there, I was on the peninsula. So I kinda almost sort of passed through Scotts Valley to get to Santa Cruz.

Michele Replogle [00:05:06]:
Absolutely have to

Jordan Berry [00:05:07]:
go to the beach, you know. So, awesome.

Michele Replogle [00:05:11]:
So when we bought it, it was super depressed. It had really bad lighting. It was dark. It had this crazy wallpaper that looked like a 12 year old’s bedroom. It looked like it was supposed to be under the sea. And it was probably really cute at the time it was put in, but it was really, really just dark and depressing. And, it had a vid when we bought it, it had a video playing of, a bit a TV with a videotape that goes in the TV, and it played ocean stuff throughout the day. Oh.

Michele Replogle [00:05:47]:
And the day the day we bought it, that broke. And it’s not like you can even get a TV and a video again and then get I mean, it was just a bizarre thing. Yeah. And we we thought it was kinda quaint, but once we started really being in the laundromat and understanding what was going on, so we were on the tail end of COVID. So we had a lot of really afraid people, people wearing masks, being very nervous about being around other people. It was just a really scary time for everybody.

Jordan Berry [00:06:19]:
Yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:06:20]:
And, it it was just like it was you just go in there and you just felt really kind of, it just didn’t have a good vibe to it. So my husband who’s an electrician right at the very beginning put in, new LED lights.

Jordan Berry [00:06:35]:
Mhmm.

Michele Replogle [00:06:35]:
Took out all the so the the it had some fluorescent lights, but the previous owner believed that by not putting new bulbs in there, he would be saving energy.

Jordan Berry [00:06:45]:
Yes.

Michele Replogle [00:06:46]:
He did not know that the ballast continue to suck the energy. And if you don’t so we put in LED lights, then we started talking to some distributors about getting new equipment because it’s all really, really old equipment. All of it was old. We got it at a fair price, I think. We found it on I found it on a really weird little business for sale side. It wasn’t even on one of the bigger ones like LoopNet or anything like that. It was just this weird little listing. And I just wanted to invest some money into something more concrete.

Michele Replogle [00:07:22]:
I was a little nervous about the stock market.

Jordan Berry [00:07:24]:
So Why laundromat?

Michele Replogle [00:07:28]:
It just seemed like a thing. I mean, I had no idea. I mean, when you bought your first one, were you just like, oh.

Jordan Berry [00:07:36]:
Oh, yeah. I had no idea either. Yeah. I just thought it was a great idea to some but I had a friend who actually up in the Bay Area, who was, who bought a laundromat and was killing it. He was crushing it. And I was like, oh, that sounds awesome. I’ll just do that. So that’s what I did.

Jordan Berry [00:07:56]:
It didn’t work out like that for me. But, that was the idea. And I was like, yes. This seems interesting.

Michele Replogle [00:08:03]:
I have a client. I’m a real estate agent full time, and I have a client who just does really well with a couple of them over in Santa Clara. Mhmm. Big money. Really big money.

Jordan Berry [00:08:15]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:08:18]:
We’re doing better. I mean, since we and we so we started with the lights, then we started with a little bit of new equipment, then we had it painted. We took all the wallpaper off. And Sad.

Jordan Berry [00:08:30]:
The the starry night or the waves under the ocean.

Michele Replogle [00:08:33]:
Video is just water bubbles or something. Yeah. And then we, got a logo. We put some stuff on the front. I’ve got a new sign. And one of the things that I would say really stood out to me is that women felt safer there after that.

Jordan Berry [00:08:49]:
What what was it that made them feel safe? Was it just the new stuff and the lighting? Lighting You guys being around more? What was the

Michele Replogle [00:08:56]:
Yeah. We were around more. We, I would regularly for a while go up and just get people out. I’d been threatened. I’d been yelled at, and I didn’t care. It was my business. You have no right to be here. And then once they got the message and it got out that, you know, you have people that are gonna confront you

Jordan Berry [00:09:14]:
Mhmm.

Michele Replogle [00:09:15]:
It got better. But a funny story, and I did a blog on it was I had we put in cameras, and I was kept getting notifications something was happening. And there was a guy taking his clothes off in the back of the laundromat. And he was having an he was having a problem. And so I watched on camera as he was being taken away by the cops. But then right after that so we had the cameras in, but right after that, then we had somebody who I think it was right on Christmas Eve, actually. Went in the bathroom and stopped it up with a bunch of needles.

Jordan Berry [00:09:56]:
Oh, no.

Michele Replogle [00:09:57]:
Christmas Eve. So I I I came home and I was like, no. This is not this is not gonna do. Went on Amazon, found a door lock, put a door lock on there. People have to get a code Mhmm. To use it. So they have to go through, and there are people that have gamed it. They still use the bathroom and not use the laundromat.

Michele Replogle [00:10:16]:
But that whole idea that they actually have to go through something to use the bathroom

Jordan Berry [00:10:20]:
just Yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:10:21]:
Curved all of that. But they have to put in a name or a phone number. So they by texting me to ask for it, I have their phone number. So it really cut down on the so that’s another reason some of the women felt safer as we got rid of that element.

Jordan Berry [00:10:35]:
Yeah. Which is not easy to do. You know, you’re you’re telling these stories. Right? And I’m like, yeah. This is, like, weirdly parallel to like, my very first day that I came my first full day of I walked into the laundromat, and there was a woman there completely nude washing all of her clothes. Yeah. And I was like, what did I get myself into? That was my that was my welcome party. And then, you were talking about the toilet getting stopped up with needles on Christmas Eve.

Jordan Berry [00:11:04]:
I had a toilet get stopped up with a potato on Christmas Eve, that I had

Michele Replogle [00:11:09]:
to go I know.

Jordan Berry [00:11:11]:
That’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying. It’s so funny. But it’s I mean, it’s true in like the I always talk about like the one of the difficult things if you’re in a in an area where you’re dealing with people hanging out that shouldn’t be hanging out, doing things they shouldn’t be doing at your laundromat is, like, this is fine line of making it uncomfortable for them to be there while making it comfortable for your customers to be there. And that’s a tough balance. And,

Michele Replogle [00:11:39]:
you

Jordan Berry [00:11:40]:
know, it’s it’s hard to, it’s hard to sometimes get those people from you know, out and and get them stop hanging out at your place and seeing it as a place where they can go. And it takes some of that confrontation. Sounds like you had some confrontations with people, which is not easy.

Michele Replogle [00:11:58]:
We would go in there. They’d have their radio plugged in to one of the outlets. They had coffee like, they were hanging out, like, you know, like it was their cafe. And I was like, no. No. You gotta go. And they would get mad at me and I’d be like, no. Bye.

Michele Replogle [00:12:11]:
You know? But I wanna get back to the code on the door only because people were really, really angry about that. They gave us so much grief about it. They, there was the incontinent elderly that I had, you know, made their life harder and all this stuff. Now people text me for the bathroom code and say, hi. Thank you. We love this place. Like, just complete one eighty about the the experience they’re having now. They they didn’t like it at first, but they like where it went.

Michele Replogle [00:12:48]:
And we when we go there, you know, there’s always that question like, are you the owner? And you’re like, do I wanna say yes? Or

Jordan Berry [00:12:55]:
Yeah. I’m not sure. Do you have a problem?

Michele Replogle [00:12:59]:
Why? But now it’s like, yeah. And then they’ll tell you, oh my god. It’s so much nicer here. We love this place. And we used to come here all the time, but they stopped coming. So we’re a lot busier now, but we had to go through this whole I mean, last July 4, somebody was texting, and I was driving and I couldn’t get to him. I gave him to my husband. I mean, within seven minutes, this man had taken an ax to one of our washing machines.

Michele Replogle [00:13:28]:
Broke the glass. There was glass and blood all over. When we got there, he was gone. The washing machine was full of glass. I mean, we pretty much we just took that washing machine out. We could never guarantee that that glass wasn’t still in there. I mean, he totally just so and I kinda felt like that was the crescendo. Like, we kinda went through this whole all this experience and all these things that we’ve been doing, but I kinda felt like that was it.

Michele Replogle [00:13:54]:
Because then after that, it just kinda, like, everything kinda smoothed out. Like, that was it.

Jordan Berry [00:14:01]:
Oh, thank goodness. Good

Michele Replogle [00:14:02]:
grief. Something. Well, there’s the fire and then there was a fire. I got all these calls that the place was on fire, and my my employee would just see it. Oh my god. We’re on fire. And we go there I go there. It was just a motor.

Michele Replogle [00:14:14]:
By the time I got there, it was out. It was fine. Okay. It’s much drama.

Jordan Berry [00:14:22]:
Yeah. I know. It’s true. I mean and listen, you sit down and you talk with any laundromat owner who’s been an owner for any length of time, and you’ve got stories like this. And I don’t know that if you got, you know, axe axe stories from everybody, but, you know, crazy stories. Well, you know, you encounter weird stuff at laundromat sometimes for sure. That sounds a little extreme, you know, bloody bloody axes and and stuff. But, but you do get a lot of weird stories at laundromats.

Jordan Berry [00:14:53]:
We tend to attract, you know, weird things, I guess, for some reason.

Michele Replogle [00:14:58]:
And people really see it as a public place, and you have to you have to when it’s left like it was, they those people got that idea reinforced. We had to come back and go, no. We are the owners, and these are the rules, and this is not public. And part of that was through the bathroom, changing how they use the bathroom. I mean, most laundromats don’t even have bathrooms. But we got told all kind and first, we checked the law too to make sure we weren’t required. I mean, that was a that was a big, big deal of and everybody was so mad at us. And now when everybody seems to think that was a good thing.

Jordan Berry [00:15:39]:
Yeah. Well, most likely, what happened is the people who are mad at you are the people who are misusing it, and they probably ended up leaving, which brought the people who should be using it, and they’re happy about it. That’s probably what happened. So good on you. That’s not easy to, like, stand your ground on that when you’re getting a lot of negative feedback, though.

Michele Replogle [00:16:00]:
It’s hard. Pretty hard. Yeah. We kinda kinda tiptoed around, but now I’d like to go there. I like to go and sweep up and clean up and kind of poke at people a little bit like, you know, hey, shut the door, pick up your laundry sheets. You know, like Yeah. In a kinda casual way, like, don’t it’s, you know Yeah. Yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:16:21]:
Be cool. You know? But it’s still I I like to. I like to go clean up and see what’s going on. We we had a, a vending machine we put in that totally vexed my poor husband for a year. I mean, it was just one thing after another kept breaking on it. I mean, just to get the vending machine off the truck, I wrote a whole blog about it. It’s hysterical. This man almost killed himself with this vending machine.

Michele Replogle [00:16:44]:
He like wrapped the cord around himself and the machine and was gonna somehow get off off the truck. And I was I was just going, oh my god. I wanna leave. I don’t even wanna watch this. What if this man dies? I mean and that was just the beginning. And then after that, every little piece and part broke on that thing. And we were just trying to provide a service.

Jordan Berry [00:17:04]:
But did he get it off the truck? That’s what I wanna know.

Michele Replogle [00:17:07]:
He got it off the truck.

Jordan Berry [00:17:09]:
Of course, he got it off the truck. Come on. It in. Of course, he did.

Michele Replogle [00:17:13]:
But it didn’t work. And then he didn’t have the keys. He didn’t have the right keys. And and today, we are doing we don’t make any money off it. It really is just as it’s just cost and but it’s it’s a service we wanna provide, and people do like it. So we struggled with that. We, we had, our boiler break, $30,000 boiler line. But when they opened it up, this is why I wanna say this on the podcast to encourage people to not be afraid.

Michele Replogle [00:17:46]:
It was expensive, but when they opened up the wall, we found a blocked off, drain that actually was preventing some of our machines from getting the air gap that they needed to drain properly. It was stuffed full of stuff. So when we pulled out the the boiler, besides actually, we think the other boiler wasn’t working for a long time really, not that well. And when we put in the new one, it was pre you can kinda tell by how the soap trays are cleaner. Right? Because the water is actually hotter. But when we open the wall up, we started to kinda discover stuff. Then we had some of our drain issues went away. So on an older mat, I would say try not to be too afraid of change because that change might be solving a a problem that you’re having you don’t even know.

Jordan Berry [00:18:37]:
Yeah. That’s that’s great advice right there. And that’s, you know, that’s something to you know, another kinda checkbox on the checklist of things to be looking for. And, you know, as as issues come up and stuff, you know, checking some of this old, you know, the old piping or the old electrical or the old machines or the old boiler or whatever, You know, like, when you’re buying an existing laundromat, you are inheriting, you know, stuff that you don’t know you’re inheriting a lot of times.

Michele Replogle [00:19:10]:
Kinda like buying a house.

Jordan Berry [00:19:12]:
Kinda like buying a house, but maybe even sometimes worse.

Michele Replogle [00:19:15]:
Oh, it’s worse because there’s there’s nobody I mean, I called my favorite plumber to look at it. He said, well, you need to redo all the drains up to $60,000. And I was like, well, that’s not gonna happen. But turns out, probably, they do need some work on them, But really, that main problem was something we unearth somewhere else. But I would recommend getting a plumber that you love that you can call. I have one I can call. He he’s been there two Christmases

Jordan Berry [00:19:43]:
Mhmm.

Michele Replogle [00:19:44]:
Trying to keep me open.

Jordan Berry [00:19:46]:
Well, I had to go unclog a toilet on Christmas Eve from that potato because I called the plumber and he went out and he said, oh, there’s something solid in your toilet. Oh. And promptly left, said he wasn’t gonna do anything about it. And I was like, well, that’s why I called you. I know there’s something solid in there. So I think

Michele Replogle [00:20:04]:
there’s a big potato in there, though. That’s I don’t know. But I

Jordan Berry [00:20:06]:
had to pull that I I here I am Christmas Eve. I pulled the toilet out. I pulled it into the parking lot, and I’m digging out a toilet out of this thing. Luckily, it was in in the toilet itself and not down in the drain somewhere, which would have been worse. But, you know, just weird stuff. Weird stuff going on.

Michele Replogle [00:20:25]:
Weird stuff. I had, I I had somebody, well, somebody got their clothes stolen, and we watched it on camera. They they contacted us and said that happened. And we were like, well, we’re really sorry. We don’t even know why. You just watch watch this woman just walk up and just take this stuff out of the dryer. And we were looking at it and we’re like, we’re not sure to this day if they didn’t know each other because it was, I mean, it was like a rug and a shirt. I mean, it was just weird.

Michele Replogle [00:20:56]:
I I don’t know. That was kinda one of the weirder ones. Then they wanted us to call the police. Then we called the police and the police said fine, but we need to talk to them. And then we told them and they’re like, oh, no, no. We don’t wanna talk to the police. It’s like, okay. You have issues with the police, but you want us to and we’re like, okay.

Michele Replogle [00:21:11]:
Yeah. But the other thing that blows us away about our laundromat is how many people come and put their clothes in and leave.

Jordan Berry [00:21:18]:
Yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:21:20]:
Just flat out get in their car and drive away. We don’t get a lot of complaints about stuff being touched, but it’s kind of a thing that everybody does. And then last night when we left, they were all in their cars. Like, they’re not and that’s fine, but it’s just like if something happens, this is this is your clothes. I don’t I can’t leave my clothes.

Jordan Berry [00:21:40]:
Yeah. No. I know. Well, I mean, I think the temptation is there, right, to go do other other things. But, you know, I you leave yourself open to clothes getting stolen. But also the other issue kind of coming from the owner’s perspective or other customer’s perspective is sometimes, yeah, people who do that, and they don’t come back for a while, like hours. And then that eats up a machine that can’t be used while they’re gone. And if it’s a Wednesday, mid afternoon, okay, maybe no big deal.

Jordan Berry [00:22:12]:
But, you know, if it’s busy, you know, then you gotta make the call or another customer has to make a call to take the stuff out. And then there’s potential for conflict and, you know, so it’s it’s a real thing. You You know, these are all the little things that people don’t really talk about before you end up buying one that you’re like, I’m not sure.

Michele Replogle [00:22:32]:
Well, that’s the other thing too, is that we were buying one that was kind of dying and then we started reviving it and then you get problems of people, like, a lot of people using it. Like, you get well, it wasn’t very busy before, so we were able to just kinda, you know, fix the machine here and there and kinda maintain the status quo and then we got it busier and then we have that and I’ll go there And my big machines where we make our money are just sitting full of clothes. It’s really hard not to take those clothes out and say, too bad. You know?

Jordan Berry [00:23:03]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s tough. Well and, you know, I think one thing, it sounds like you’ve done a pretty good job of this. And, you know, I’ve said this before, and I this is a big lesson I learned is, you know, it’s a lot easier to rehab the laundromat than to rehab the reputation of the laundromat. So getting all of those, you know, the people who shouldn’t be there out. And then for word to get around that, that’s no longer a place where people are who shouldn’t be hanging out or hanging out.

Jordan Berry [00:23:35]:
That’s tough to that’s tough to do. That’s tough to, you know, it’s tough to get the people out. And then it’s tough to change that reputation too. But it sounds like you’re on your way to doing that, but it also sounds like it’s taken a little bit of time.

Michele Replogle [00:23:52]:
It has, but I do pretty well in real estate. So actually, at some point, really, a lot more income really wasn’t in our best interest at this point because it’s just more in taxes. Yeah. But, but I like it. I I think it’s kinda fun, but there, you know, there’s still they’re still kinda you can’t go on vacation for more than about seven, eight days. We have a friend that helps us to come and collect the quarters, and she loves to do that, which is so funny. She just we pay her, but she just loves to do that. She’ll go up there and kinda, take the quarters around.

Michele Replogle [00:24:26]:
And then we changed a lot of the key boxes so they we didn’t have a million keys. We got a huge box of keys. It was like this big full of keys. Yeah. We started going through them. They were forty years worth of keys. There were maybe there was, like, maybe 10 in there that were for

Jordan Berry [00:24:42]:
For something.

Michele Replogle [00:24:44]:
And we thought, well, we’re probably doing the next owner a favor by really throwing a lot of I mean, part of the thing we’re doing for them is throwing this stuff out, really finding out that it doesn’t go to anything and just, like, we cleared out the whole chase behind the dryers. Oh, that’s the other thing. We had to take some of the dryers offline that were very, very popular. They were super old. I think I could make more in selling the metal out of them than having them running. Yeah. And people were so mad at us. They were just so mad at us about that.

Michele Replogle [00:25:15]:
But then they started using the new ones, and they discovered they dry better.

Jordan Berry [00:25:20]:
They actually dry. Yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:25:21]:
They won’t just throw heat at it. Right? These big heat bombs. It’s actually, you know, circulation of the airflow and all that. We’ve had to, tell them too is, you know, it doesn’t get us hot. It’s a different idea of how air flows through your clothes and how it, you know, it’s not just super heat. And because they’ll go put their hands on the on the the dryer glass. Right?

Jordan Berry [00:25:43]:
Yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:25:44]:
Check the heat. And they they like the other ones because they can feel the heat. And we’re trying to tell them, no. That’s not how this works.

Jordan Berry [00:25:50]:
Yeah. It just makes hot water in your clothes.

Michele Replogle [00:25:54]:
It just yeah. You pull them out and they’re just warm, hot clothes. That’s exactly it.

Jordan Berry [00:26:00]:
Yeah. That’s funny. Well, I mean, it sounds like you got a lot of you got a lot of pushback about different changes you were making and all that. Like, I’m where how confident were you that the changes you were making were the right changes with that? Yeah. It sounds sounds like you you had a lot of friction there.

Michele Replogle [00:26:19]:
We had a lot of friction. We had a we have a lot of regulars. I have to, say, I think we weren’t getting some support from some people very close to the business. Mhmm. And I think that’s turned around. I think that’s what helped where we are now. I think that they’re a bit more supportive. Some of the regulars were very grumpy and kinda give a side eye, and now they’re very nice and welcoming.

Michele Replogle [00:26:43]:
They do like it. They they do like all the changes, but, yeah, it’s tough. I mean, it when people don’t like what you’re doing. And I just thought, you know what? I’ve learned a lot of marketing from real estate. I’ll go get more people. People need to wash their clothes. There’s more of you. I’m sorry.

Michele Replogle [00:27:03]:
You don’t like it? Go over there. And for a while, we were telling people, yeah, if you don’t like it, we’re okay if you leave. And I can tell I mean, if I really went and looked from all the people that asked for the bathroom code, I can tell the people that told us they were never coming back have come back.

Jordan Berry [00:27:19]:
Yeah. Oh, for sure. For sure. Well, and that’s that’s the thing. Right? It’s like, you know, people have their opinions or routines, their habits. And when you change them, it’s uncomfortable, and they get upset. And sometimes you just need to hear them out. Right? And just they just need somebody to listen to them.

Jordan Berry [00:27:38]:
They need to feel heard. And once they do, then or maybe they leave for a time, but then, you know, then they end up kinda coming back and coming around. And then some of them, not so much. But, you know, all customers are not created equal. Right? And so being able to say to the wrong customer, hey. It’s okay if you leave, or I prefer it if you leave even, maybe not to their face. But, you know, is it it sounds like a counterintuitive thing because it feels like you’re, you know, sending business away. However, there there’s different types of businesses.

Jordan Berry [00:28:20]:
Right? There’s business there are businesses that cater to, you know, the people who are looking for the lowest price and who are gonna complain a lot. And then there are people in businesses who cater to a different clientele where the atmosphere is different, and it’s not gonna be like that. And we’re not gonna just, you know, mold the whole atmosphere of our business to you because you complain. And sometimes it’s better to let customers go. Fire them.

Michele Replogle [00:28:47]:
Yeah. And by doing that, often you create a better experience for a a larger majority of people. Because what we also noticed when we first bought it is the people that were really the grumpiest were the people that were used to having it themselves. Mhmm. It wasn’t very busy. So we had two guys. One of them, he just he always seemed really mad at us. And then I kinda figured out he really just he had the place to himself Yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:29:16]:
On a Saturday morning. And that’s he didn’t like anybody else coming there. His his biggest complaint was not you know, there was dark half the time because it was so dark in there. It was just, oh, now there’s people in there. And he never said that, but I kinda figured it out because he started going earlier and earlier. We open at seven. He’s there at ten to seven because the door is actually open a little early.

Jordan Berry [00:29:37]:
Mhmm.

Michele Replogle [00:29:38]:
And he’s out of there by eight. Yeah. So he still has kind of his alone time. But, yeah, we found we kinda figured out some people had it was like their space and they kinda owned it and they could kinda rule over everybody that was in there. Like, this is my table. These are my dryers. And they don’t get that anymore. And I think that was a big thing when we first took it for

Jordan Berry [00:30:00]:
Yeah. That was like my my least favorite quote, unquote compliment that I would get from customers early on there. I was like, oh, we love coming here. Like, oh, great. You love coming here because there’s no never anybody here. And I’m like, well, damn, that’s like, why did you say that to me? It’s like the meanest thing you could say right now. I’m trying so hard. I don’t know what to do.

Michele Replogle [00:30:22]:
Yeah. Yeah. There people can be really, really tough. We owned a roller blade business in a skateboard town. So we Okay. We know about adversity.

Jordan Berry [00:30:33]:
Yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:30:34]:
Being in real estate, there’s pretty much there’s always kind of a 90% you guys are okay, 10% you guys are the worst people in earth. So I mean, it’s still sales. It’s still Yeah. You know? And so I I don’t know. I just kind of figured out that what we like, we’ve I really wanna redo the floors, and part of that is just because I want it to look cleaner, and people bring their kids and stuff like that. And I want there’s a lot of dirt underneath the layer because of how old the flooring is.

Jordan Berry [00:31:03]:
Right.

Michele Replogle [00:31:03]:
It’s gonna be pretty expensive to do. But there’s a vision I have for it still just being a really nice experience. And most people go, oh, you keep it so clean. I’m like, oh, it could be so much cleaner.

Jordan Berry [00:31:13]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:31:14]:
You know how that is.

Jordan Berry [00:31:15]:
Yeah. Well, that’s that’s the curse of your own it’s your own thing. Right? It’s like you’re always gonna see I don’t know, like, I I, like, did some work on our house and everybody’s like, oh, it looks so good. And all I can see is, you know, the one tile that’s a little off or, you know, whatever it is. Like, that’s all I can see. But, you know, in a way that I mean, that’s a good thing, right? Because that helps us continually improve. And the other the opposite is also true sometimes where we become blind to the things we just see every day. And so sometimes having you know, what I call an outside eyes audit, having somebody who isn’t doesn’t come there all the time come and and give their impression, their honest impression can help us see things that we come blind to.

Jordan Berry [00:31:59]:
Yeah, too.

Michele Replogle [00:32:01]:
Yeah. One of the advice I give in real estate for people sometimes I say if you’re not sure of your property, how it looks or smells, which is huge, bigger than people think, have a friend come over and let them honestly tell you what they see or say don’t don’t have me do it, but have somebody, you know, give you some honest feedback. Yeah. What was I gonna tell you about? Oh my gosh. I forgot. So, when we got the, laundry mat, there was a lot of older equipment. We’ve been replacing that as we go and just trying to afford it, but, oh, that’s where I was gonna go. We don’t really make a whole lot of money, and we owe some more money just for getting new equipment.

Michele Replogle [00:32:44]:
But I’ve kinda figured out a way to get some equipment, make some sales, get some equipment so we’re not so heavily in debt. But that’s really helped us get busy, newer equipment, stuff that doesn’t, you know, break or fail. In fact, the, drain issue I mentioned at the beginning that we didn’t know that the machines that we kept having trouble with were probably having trouble with that drain.

Jordan Berry [00:33:09]:
Yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:33:10]:
We put in new machines that get used a lot, and we’re not having that trouble anymore. Of course, the ax to the one. Oh, and the foam pillow. The foam have you had a foam pillow yet?

Jordan Berry [00:33:21]:
Oh, yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:33:23]:
Yeah. Those are good. We never got it out. That in fact, both machines we had to replace, one from the axe, one from the from the, the foam.

Jordan Berry [00:33:32]:
Foam pillow. Oh my gosh. Yeah. My other my other favorite is, like, the bath mats and stuff with the rubber backing. I don’t know if you had that, but that rubber stuff at some point disintegrates and it just goes everywhere and it’s, like, impossible to get it all out.

Michele Replogle [00:33:49]:
Or the beads. Oh, my God. Yeah. Toaster. Please don’t use beads. Sometimes I’ll just sneak up to people and go, they don’t work. Yeah, they just don’t work. That’s my biggest complaint.

Michele Replogle [00:33:59]:
Number one is they’re being sold something that doesn’t do anything. Yeah. But then the mess.

Jordan Berry [00:34:05]:
Yeah. Everywhere. And then people put them in the dryers, and then they go through the dryer holes, and they get stuck to the lint traps. And you’re like, god, man.

Michele Replogle [00:34:13]:
And they don’t do anything. They don’t

Jordan Berry [00:34:15]:
do anything. I know. It’s it’s a nightmare. It’s a nightmare.

Michele Replogle [00:34:18]:
And I went on a deep dive of soap, and I won’t get into any brands, but the but some of the soaps I feel are so toxic, and people are putting that on their clothes. That just drives me insane. The the chemical toxic mix that they’re putting on just in the last year, I started carrying all, no dyes, no perfumes. And that started to pick up in sales, which I’m very encouraged by.

Jordan Berry [00:34:47]:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s good. And, I mean, honestly, you’re in a really good area for that. I I feel like Northern California in general is very is more, sort of conscious of that, more open to that than a lot of other parts. But I agree, man. I think, you know, and, like, not just in our detergent, it’s like our food and, like, everything right now is

Michele Replogle [00:35:13]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:35:13]:
It’s it’s craziness. But, you know, I love that. And I love kind of giving people that option and helping people become sort of more aware of yeah. And conscious of like, what’s going on, you know, in our little our little niche, right? Just laundry. And here’s here’s one thing. You know, here’s one option for you that’s gonna be a little bit better for you and your family, that you’re putting on your skin. And, you know, we absorb stuff through our skin and you know? So

Michele Replogle [00:35:43]:
Yeah. And, I also got a TV given to me by a client, and I did it. I do a monthly slideshow. So about a hundred slides of stuff for the month, like,

Jordan Berry [00:35:57]:
January. Laundromat?

Michele Replogle [00:35:58]:
Yeah. So if you’re sitting there, there’s a few things to look at. There’ll be jokes or trivia in the slides. Sometimes I try to do history. History is pretty hard because I have to cut and paste it. And a lot of times where history is is not in a really good space. So

Jordan Berry [00:36:19]:
You can get negative pretty quick. Yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:36:22]:
But I do, like, for January 29, it’s got puzzle day, you know, so it says happy ’20, you know. And then in between all that is take the change out of your clothes. Yeah. Don’t overstuff the washers. You know?

Jordan Berry [00:36:40]:
Oh, the service announcements. Yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:36:42]:
Yeah. Kind of we need quarters. We’re having somebody take our quarters again right now.

Jordan Berry [00:36:48]:
Yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:36:48]:
We’re on that. You know how you kinda go up and down with that.

Jordan Berry [00:36:52]:
Oh, yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:36:53]:
So we then I’ll put in an extra slide saying we need quarters, and then we’ll get more quarters. And then, the local SPCA sends me slides of available pets.

Jordan Berry [00:37:03]:
Oh, cool.

Michele Replogle [00:37:04]:
Yeah. And then we got, we like dogs so we’re okay with dogs there and most of the dogs are really well behaved. We have a few favorite but we got a complaint a week ago that said there was a dog here and the dog peed and the person didn’t clean it up and we’re like oh and then there’s there was a dog in the grocery store and then there was a dog you know there’s just dogs everywhere and the complaint just said, why are there dogs everywhere? We’re like, well, we can’t fix that for you.

Jordan Berry [00:37:39]:
I don’t know.

Michele Replogle [00:37:41]:
And I’d have to say we’re probably gonna stay more of a dog friendly and if you don’t like it, we’ll probably be okay with you going somewhere. For the most part, whenever we’ve been there, the dogs have always been really well behaved. I had one dog and I just said to the lady, oh, you know, your dog’s just barking a little too much. It’s just it’s just hard for everybody here. And I and then I said, I imagine that maybe that they’re not enjoying this, and she just put the dog in the car. Yeah. It was fine. She this dog was not into it.

Michele Replogle [00:38:10]:
And then, yeah, the same thing happened with another dog, and the dog really just wanted to be on a leash. They put the dog on the leash. They were fine.

Jordan Berry [00:38:18]:
It’s fine. Good. Yeah. Well, I mean, I I love dogs too. Obviously, I’ve got I’ve always had dogs and, kind of a dog dog person versus a cat person, I guess. All cats are okay. But, is there I’m just I’m just thinking out loud here. Is there, like, liability issues or insurance issues with that? I don’t know.

Jordan Berry [00:38:45]:
I’m just

Michele Replogle [00:38:45]:
I think you just have to say they’re supposed to be on a leash, and you have a sign up that says they’re on a leash. And then if they’re not on a leash, then that’s on the person.

Jordan Berry [00:38:52]:
Yeah. Okay.

Michele Replogle [00:38:54]:
Yeah. That’s something to think about. There’s a stool that my employees stash for people who are too short to put soap in, and that just freaks me out.

Jordan Berry [00:39:04]:
Yeah. It’s it’s hard because, like, anything can be like a lot of money. It’s

Michele Replogle [00:39:10]:
hard. Yeah. We wanna put in a bar in front of the window with some stools, and, you know, my husband’s like, well, they’re gonna steal the stool. And I’m like, he’s like, I wanna, you know, secure them to the floor. And it’s just like, oh, once you do that, though, you you have no autonomy.

Jordan Berry [00:39:28]:
Yeah. But it’s true. It’s it’s hard because you wanna do things, but if it’s not bolted down, at least in my laundromats, man, if it’s not bolted down, it’s and sometimes if it is bolted down, I’ve had I’ve told the story before my son saved his money and bought a gumball machine. And so I made him a little sign, Noah’s gumball land and stuff, and we installed it. We did a little like mini opening ceremony.

Michele Replogle [00:39:55]:
Oh, my gosh. Super cool.

Jordan Berry [00:39:56]:
He was super excited. We have a photo of it and bolted it down and everything. And literally the night that we put it in, somebody came in, tied a chain around it, tied it to their truck, and pulled it out of the laundromat, like, at night. So we pulled up the next day. He was excited to check it and stuff. And I saw when we parked, I saw on the rearview mirror that the thing was gone. And I was like, oh, man. And I’d have a little little business lesson with them.

Jordan Berry [00:40:26]:
But, you know, like, if it’s not bolted down, you know, people will walk off with them. And it’s just unfortunate because, you know, then people can enjoy it. Like, most people aren’t gonna walk off with it. But the view that would just kinda ruin it for everybody else. And, you

Michele Replogle [00:40:42]:
know Yeah. That’s why we don’t have an ATM. But we did put in Tangerpay, which is a amazing system for people. So it’s a pass through. They don’t need an app. And that really was great because it took away at least half the cash. So people have another way to pay. There’s a lot less cash running through the store.

Michele Replogle [00:41:08]:
I, you know, I I understand all the people who get laundromats that don’t have to do with that. But but for us, we weren’t going up there. Once we started getting it busier, you know, once we before we could get it settled, we were up there all the time. The Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:41:22]:
The change

Michele Replogle [00:41:22]:
machines kept going out. So that that actually helped us a lot. But the other thing is the TangerPay with the cameras and the bathroom actually give us a way to kinda keep an eye on the wash Mhmm. Which is nice. My husband’s really fighting the urge to put a speaker and to go, don’t do that. Do you have a speaker in yours? Or did you?

Jordan Berry [00:41:47]:
I Yeah. I had well, I had two way cameras. I know people have connected up, like Alexa’s and stuff like that. But yeah, absolutely. I there’s something to be said, especially if you’re gonna have an unattended laundromat to be able to communicate with people inside your laundromat. You know, whether that’s somebody calling, because there’s a problem, and I can I can kinda jump on and, you know, see what’s going on? And, you know, I guess I’m on the phone with them if they’re calling. But, but if there’s something going on, or somebody’s having a problem, and I’m I just happen to be looking at the camera, I can say, hey, you know, like, try the next change machine or go to this machine and I’ll start it up for you or, you know, whatever or, you know, get out of the store. You’re not supposed to be here.

Jordan Berry [00:42:31]:
You know what? Whatever the case may be.

Michele Replogle [00:42:34]:
I think lately my husband’s is don’t sit in the dryers. That’s what he wants to say.

Jordan Berry [00:42:39]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:42:40]:
Don’t sit in the dryers. You know, we don’t take calls. We only take text messages.

Jordan Berry [00:42:45]:
Yeah. Which is smart. I I like that.

Michele Replogle [00:42:49]:
The call we can’t because we get sucked into their drama, and they get so worked up. They need that time to actually text to calm down because they they kinda freak out. And then sometimes when they freak out, just that moment that they’re texting is when they figure out, oh, or they have to sit with it for a minute when I say, well, you didn’t close the door like we’re looking at on the camera. We know what happened. You did not close the door right. You know? We have two machines that say, if you don’t shut the door, it’s not gonna go. But, yeah, that there’s been some ways that we’ve been able to kinda manage keeping an eye on it. So, yeah, between the changing the lights, painting, we repainted the bathroom because it had the same wallpaper craziness in there and cleaned it up.

Michele Replogle [00:43:45]:
And we’ve put in some new machines. We’ve got the Tangerpay, the bathroom lock. We kinda got it to a to a system. And eventually, maybe it’ll make money, but the the overhaul on the equipment is still fairly costly. I don’t know how these people do these big builds.

Jordan Berry [00:44:05]:
Gotta do I mean, you’ve got when you do the big bills, you’ve got potential to bring in a lot of customers, but you’ve gotta you’ve gotta you’ve gotta go all out. Like, you’ve gotta go after every possible customer because obviously, you’ve got a lot of liabilities, you know, to when your your costs are so high. So you’ve gotta do a lot of volume and be aggressive with it. Have you guys done any advertising or anything at all?

Michele Replogle [00:44:32]:
You know what we did that actually kinda worked is, I don’t know if you remember much about Santa Cruz, but you have to come over a mountain to get here.

Jordan Berry [00:44:41]:
On the seventeenth. Yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:44:42]:
In the mountains, there’s a lot of people that have septic systems, and they can’t use their washer and dryer because of that. It’s too hard on the septic. Mhmm. We didn’t know that when we bought it. We didn’t really understand where the the clientele was coming from, but we were there enough that we started to see who was kinda using it. Then I advertised on a little radio station for drive time for when they were driving home from work to remind them that we were there. And and and, basically, it’s the tiniest spot, but it just says new equipment, mobile pay, you know, just kinda some of the conveniences that people are looking for. And that was able to kinda give us the boost that we needed, but also it really worked for people who come and camp here.

Jordan Berry [00:45:34]:
Mhmm.

Michele Replogle [00:45:35]:
And then we did Facebook ads, which I’m gonna be start I’m gonna be actually stopping the Facebook ads this month because I’ve hired a marketer who’s gonna be more, active on the website and with Facebook. So I don’t think we need the ads as much. But that’s what we did for promotion. We probably could’ve done more, but really to be honest at the beginning, I really didn’t want more business. I needed to figure it out. I know people do that. They come in and they flood it, but with business, but the same you can’t figure it out. You can’t figure out your clientele.

Michele Replogle [00:46:08]:
You can’t figure out the machines and how it runs and works, and it’s really better to leave it slow for a bit to for me to get a handle on it.

Jordan Berry [00:46:16]:
Yeah. Yeah. Did, did you hire a marketing agency, or did you just hire, like, a freelancer or somebody to help

Michele Replogle [00:46:24]:
you market? A freelancer. She works for me doing my real estate stuff. Oh, cool. I knew she was kinda getting antsy in, like, a few more hours. So Yeah. I said, well, why don’t you start doing this? It’s kind of a new project. And then work on the website. I had some new photos.

Michele Replogle [00:46:39]:
Once we kinda cleaned it up and did it, kinda nicer looking, then I had a professional photographer come in and do photos, a little video, so we’d have some promo materials.

Jordan Berry [00:46:51]:
I love that. I mean, I think I think everybody should do that for their laundromat, you know, get it get it cleaned up, get it shine, and get it sparkling, and have professional photos, you know, cause you can use all over the place. Right? You can use it on your website. You can put them on, you know, your Google business listing. You can put it on social media. You can, you know, create flyers with I mean, just all kinds of different things. Ad cop or, ad images and or videos, you know, with it. So I think that’s a great idea to do that.

Michele Replogle [00:47:25]:
Yeah. And then Google presence, that’s kinda tough. We’ve had a few people write nasty, reviews, and sometimes I just don’t go look at it because it’s like, oh, you’re just impossible to please. Do you know what it’s like to run? And then, then there’s the we really probably should raise our prices again, and I just don’t want to. Yeah. It just sucks.

Jordan Berry [00:47:48]:
It’s hard. I know.

Michele Replogle [00:47:49]:
And they yell at us. Just like, you wanna say, but I don’t this doesn’t make any money.

Jordan Berry [00:47:56]:
Yeah. I know.

Michele Replogle [00:47:57]:
We need profit.

Jordan Berry [00:48:00]:
I know. Well, that’s what’s that’s what’s hard about it too. Right? It’s like and, you know, try to be empathetic. Right? Like, everybody’s getting squeezed.

Michele Replogle [00:48:08]:
Everybody. Everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Jordan Berry [00:48:10]:
All angles. But, you know, our businesses are an exception. Like we’re getting squeezed to our utilities are going up, our rents are going up, our labor costs are going up. You know, our the machine costs are going up. Financing costs are going like everything is going up. And if you don’t keep up with that, I mean, I get it like, it’s emotionally exhausting to raise the prices. But if you don’t, you’re you’re not gonna be able to stay in business for too long. You know, you’re gonna fall behind.

Michele Replogle [00:48:48]:
Yeah, it pays its bills. But yeah, it’s that part’s still a little tough. We had to raise the price on the soap from a dollar to a dollar and a quarter, and people just literally lost their minds. And we’re like

Jordan Berry [00:48:59]:
Yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:49:01]:
We’re not making anything on two of the soap brands. We don’t make anything.

Jordan Berry [00:49:07]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:49:09]:
Yeah. I think it’s pretty fun. My husband’s retiring from his job. He is a me and an electrician, and he’s been doing all the maintenance. So we probably would have been out of it earlier if we didn’t have him fixing the machines. They’re really hard to fix machines. He’s really clever, and he can figure it out and order the part and, fixing some 40 year old Maytags that are just and people love them, and they’re they’re a favorite. We can’t figure out how to reconfigure it.

Michele Replogle [00:49:41]:
We kinda feel like that might be for the next owner. We just don’t think we’re up for that. We’re putting in some new dryers, which we already bought. We’re gonna put them in in April. And then we wanna put in a few more newer machines, but they’re just so expensive.

Jordan Berry [00:49:59]:
Yeah. It’s the costs are high. The costs are high.

Michele Replogle [00:50:03]:
Crazy. We talked to a few people about buying some used ones, but it’s so sketchy. Find the used ones. I mean, it might be a year for you down south, but for us to go down there and go to a warehouse and go, are we getting scammed? I don’t know. It’s Yeah. I probably don’t know.

Jordan Berry [00:50:17]:
I mean, it can it can for sure be hit or miss. Yeah. I mean, obviously, the the pros of that are that they’re gonna be less, you know, expensive, You know? But there’s cons that come along with with that also.

Michele Replogle [00:50:35]:
We can see to when we talk to them, then we kinda can’t seem to get the exact age, and that’s you know, we for some of the machines, we already have old machines. We just we don’t wanna be replacing them with what we already have. We want newer, but it doesn’t seem like we can that’s always the hard information to extract. So we’ve just been buying new.

Jordan Berry [00:50:54]:
Well, you should be able to you should be able to determine the age if you get the, the model and the serial number, and then you can call the manufacturer or

Michele Replogle [00:51:05]:
or

Jordan Berry [00:51:05]:
a distributor of that equipment.

Michele Replogle [00:51:06]:
The thing is they’re sending that to us. But when we get down there, the guy wanted us to wire them. I mean, it was like $20,000, and we would go pick them up and stuff. And it was just like, I don’t know. It just didn’t feel right. It probably was. I think it would have been easier down there. We could just go and check them out, and then we you know, but we’re so far away.

Jordan Berry [00:51:25]:
Oh, was it in Southern California? Yeah. Alright. Well, let me know. Maybe I can hook you up with somebody who can go look at them for you before next time.

Michele Replogle [00:51:33]:
Okay. Okay. Yeah. Well, that’s about all I have. I didn’t I I guess I should end with the guy who came at me with a machete. Would you like that story?

Jordan Berry [00:51:44]:
Yeah. What

Michele Replogle [00:51:46]:
There was a guy trying to pee in our washer machine.

Jordan Berry [00:51:49]:
Okay.

Michele Replogle [00:51:49]:
And I was like, hey. Yeah. The guy was huge.

Jordan Berry [00:51:51]:
Makes sense.

Michele Replogle [00:51:51]:
Just a call. And I was like, hey, what are you doing? And he’s like, they started yelling at me and I cannot repeat what he said and he was going off and he had this machete. He’s he wasn’t at me, but he was kinda waving around. I was like, you gotta go. Get out. Get out. My husband was like, oh my god. And I don’t know if he called the police or I called the police and the police came and said, were you scared? I was like, no.

Michele Replogle [00:52:16]:
Yes. Why not? I’m like, I I just he didn’t bother me. I just wanted him to leave. And my husband’s like and they were like, were you scared? My husband’s like, yes. It was horrifying.

Jordan Berry [00:52:28]:
You’re you’re a little scary. You know why? Let me tell you why you’re a little scary is because you seem so laid back and calm, but you’re feisty. Like, you’re you’re, like, low key feisty over there. People are waving axes and machetes at you. Like, what is going on over there? And you’re just like, get out of here.

Michele Replogle [00:52:51]:
Yeah. Well, if it’s my business, I’m kinda mama bearish. So, Yeah. You know, that’s where I’ve had issues with customers too. I’m just like, yeah. You gotta go. I mean, I don’t I’m not taking this. But so far, the client still seems to appreciate it.

Michele Replogle [00:53:08]:
But the putting in the cameras, this is another takeaway for your newer shop owners. Cameras are key because the cops will come when you have cameras. They won’t come when you don’t. And they told us, like, the very first day we called them, we were having a problem because, I mean, literally, as soon as we bought it, all every every bad thing just kinda started coming out of the woodwork. And we called them, and they’re like, hey. Do you have cameras? We’re like, no. And they’re like, okay. We’ll be there later.

Michele Replogle [00:53:33]:
Now when we say we have cameras, bam, because they know they can prosecute. So it’s really, really helped. And then on the slides that I have on the TV, it says there are cameras, and it says they’re not for show because the other guy put them up and didn’t hook them up to anything. Everybody figured that out. Yeah. So we were like, these are for real. We will use this.

Jordan Berry [00:53:57]:
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s great. Pro tip. To two other ones for you regarding that. Number one is I put a I put a TV monitor up that just shows all the cameras, and that lets people really know that they’re on camera and being recorded. And it deters. It does not fully deter, I will say.

Jordan Berry [00:54:17]:
Some people just don’t care, but it does deter. And then the other one, this is a lesson learned the hard way, is make sure you keep your your the box that actually records in a very secure location. I had I literally had people rip down a wall in my laundromat and sort of pillage back. There was nothing really back there, but back behind the dryers, and then they actually stole. They cut all the cords and stole the recording box. So there was no video evidence. They had the video evidence.

Michele Replogle [00:54:51]:
Oh, yeah. Ours is cloud based. So

Jordan Berry [00:54:53]:
Yeah. Which mine was not back in this was a while back. But, yeah, that was a cloud based better pro tip.

Michele Replogle [00:55:01]:
Do you still own this one now?

Jordan Berry [00:55:03]:
I just sold that one. That one

Michele Replogle [00:55:05]:
sounds crazy. Is that the gumball one too?

Jordan Berry [00:55:07]:
Gumball. There’s some there’s some stories of it. I don’t share a whole lot of them, especially from early on when I first took over. I mean, I was literally, I was literally in a gang war, when I first took over. It was literally gang turf. And there’s some crazy stories from that one. But I try not to scare people. I want to share some of the stories and stuff because they’re fun and interesting, but not typical of owning laundromat.

Jordan Berry [00:55:35]:
I don’t want to scare anybody. Like machetes and axes, that’s like scary. Doesn’t happen at every laundromat, but but also if, like, you’re gonna buy a laundromat in in certain areas, like, crazy stuff like that can happen. You’ve got to have the right mentality and personality to be able to handle something like that. And if that’s not you, then you should think about the location that you want. You want that laundromat if you wanna buy one.

Michele Replogle [00:56:02]:
Right.

Jordan Berry [00:56:02]:
Because that’s real. Like, crazy crazy stuff happens.

Michele Replogle [00:56:08]:
It is crazy. But so far, so good. I mean, I like it. We’re gonna only keep it another couple years. We’re not we really wanna retire, so that’s we’re not gonna stay in it for for much longer, but we think we’ve upped the value enough that we could find somebody. We have great landlords too, by the way.

Jordan Berry [00:56:25]:
Yeah. Well, that makes a big difference too. Did you have to do any, like, lease negotiations or anything?

Michele Replogle [00:56:32]:
No. I think it might have to this year, and I think it’s next year. We’ll have to renegotiate.

Jordan Berry [00:56:38]:
Okay.

Michele Replogle [00:56:38]:
But so far, it’s been I I mean, I think what we have is not too bad.

Jordan Berry [00:56:44]:
Yeah. Well, I’m sure the landlord appreciates you trying to clean the place up, you know, literally, but also demographically, a little bit and in making it a little safer and more pleasant place to be. That only benefits the landlord. Right? Adds value.

Michele Replogle [00:57:01]:
They understand the landlord actually feeds into a lot of the shopping center too. Mhmm. Because a lot of people that come there to do their laundry, do the grocery shopping. They do all kinds of shopping while they’re there. So they understand it’s kind of a piece of their pie, you know? Yeah. So Yeah. Awesome.

Jordan Berry [00:57:18]:
Well, hey, this has been a lot of fun and very informative, too. I mean, aside from the the crazy ax and machete stories, which were the fun parts for me, I mean, just you shared a ton of really great, really great information. And I really appreciate you sharing your story and the good, the bad, the ugly, the violent, all, you know, all of it. And also, I’m glad, you know, that you guys were the ones who got in there and got after it. And and we’re able to sorta deal with I’m sure it wasn’t easy, you know, going through all that and, you know, having to deal with a lot of this stuff and, and, you know, still struggling to sort of make money. It’s that’s hard. It’s hard.

Michele Replogle [00:58:07]:
Yeah. When you’re not getting a real income. And sometimes it seems kind of thankless, that’s for sure. But

Jordan Berry [00:58:13]:
Yeah, and people complaining on top of it, which is

Michele Replogle [00:58:16]:
Which has gone down, thankfully.

Jordan Berry [00:58:18]:
Good. Good. Good.

Michele Replogle [00:58:19]:
Awesome. Well, thanks for having me on. And I do want to hear more about the Alexa hookup. That’s something we have not quite figured out yet.

Jordan Berry [00:58:25]:
Yeah. Yeah. It there’s there’s a few different ways, to do it. And, you know, I mean, there’s I’ve seen some people explain exactly how they’ve, done it on I think on the laundromat owners Facebook group. There’s a bunch of Facebook groups.

Michele Replogle [00:58:41]:
Yeah. I

Jordan Berry [00:58:42]:
think it’s that one, the one that’s run by Ross Dodds. I think I saw on that one somebody showed how they set up their Okay. All good. And they use it also to control a lot of their smart outlets and devices that they have, like the their lights and their Okay. Fans and stuff like that that they had too. So just

Michele Replogle [00:59:03]:
make sure that fans up this year, so that would be good to know. Okay. I gotta look that up.

Jordan Berry [00:59:09]:
Yeah.

Michele Replogle [00:59:10]:
Yeah. We’re in there. Every once in a while, I’ll just see ridiculousness stuff, and then I’ll log off and have to go, okay. It gets a little

Jordan Berry [00:59:19]:
Sometimes sometimes you gotta take that camera app off your phone so you’re not, you know, not looking at the cameras too much. Or

Michele Replogle [00:59:26]:
Yeah. There are just some funny things that people say or that I think I even got I got a hard time, when we put the bathroom lock on. They thought that was crazy. And then I told then I said, well, we wanna hook up music. We want music to play. Why do you want music to play? It’s like ambiance. You know, it’s kinda nice when it’s Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:59:50]:
Yeah. Can’t please everyone, though. You know? You got

Michele Replogle [00:59:53]:
We’re not coming to our mind map. So I don’t know. Anyway, well, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Jordan Berry [00:59:58]:
No. Thank you for coming on. I really appreciate you’re welcome. Anytime and also anybody out there who’s listening who might be in the area or moving to the area. Shell is realtor.

Michele Replogle [01:00:09]:
Hook me up. Find me at Live with Santa Cruz Life. I’ve got a whole YouTube page that will all explain real estate, and I won’t explain laundromats.

Jordan Berry [01:00:19]:
Awesome. Well yeah. And especially, like, if you’re thinking about going to that area, you need somebody to explain the real estate for you because the whole the whole area up there, not just the Santa Cruz area, but all the that whole Bay Area, there’s it’s a lot of just unique little spots. And there’s all these little nooks and crannies that you don’t

Michele Replogle [01:00:40]:
know. Yeah, the content is endless for how much is going on here for sure.

Jordan Berry [01:00:45]:
You’ll never run out of con especially in Santa Cruz. I mean, you’ll never run out of content there. It’s too exciting. Too exciting. Awesome. Well, thank you again for coming on and sharing your story and and your wisdom that you’ve hard hard earned wisdom, I will say also. And, if you ever start, you know, teaching axe and machete defense classes, let me know. And I will be there and I will promote it for you for sure.

Michele Replogle [01:01:12]:
Thank you so much. Alright. I

Jordan Berry [01:01:15]:
hope you love that interview with Michelle just as much as I did. And listen, as always, find something. Find anything and put it into action today if possible, definitely this week. That’s what’s gonna help you achieve your goals. So whether that’s taking out a radio ad or rebranding or whatever it might be, find something out of that episode, put it into practice as we keep stacking that every single week, taking the right actions consistently, that’s gonna take us exactly where we wanna go in life. So take some action this week, and we’ll see you again next week. Peace.