Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
Hey.

Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
Hey, what’s up, guys? It’s Jordan with the Laundromat resource podcast. This is show 228, and I’m pumped you’re here today. And I haven’t said this in a really long time, but you can find the show notes to all your podcast [email protected] show and then the number of the show. So this is 228. Show notes [email protected] Show228 for this episode. In any episode. You can find them at, you know, at that link, I guess. Or you can go to a lot of myresource.com click on the podcasts and you’ll see all the show notes there.

Jordan Berry [00:00:34]:
Speaking of going to lawnmowerresource.com Listen, we’re coming up to the end of the year here. The beginning of the year is coming up. Now is the time to start making plans for your future year. If that’s something that you are starting to wrap your head around or you’re wanting to prepare yourself for this new year and how you’re going to level up next year, maybe that’s buying your first laundromat, buying your next Laundromat, launching a pickup and delivery service, whatever it might be. Listen, I just want to throw it out there. We have got the team to help you get on your way and accomplish those goals. Check out laundromatresource.com coaching and you can book a free strategy call over there, even get on a zoom call with one of us and let’s talk about how we can help you accomplish your goals next year. All right, listen, I say every episode action is what leads to success.

Jordan Berry [00:01:25]:
So maybe for you today or this week or within the next month or so, the action you need to take is go to laundromatresource.com coaching and come chat with us about how we can help you accomplish your Laundromat goals. All right, without further ado, we’ve got back on the show, Chuck Post and Chris Mason, a couple of gurus who’ve been around the industry for a long time, all around, good people, lots of wisdom and take homes from this one. So I hope you enjoy it. I know you will. Let’s jump, jump into it with Chuck and Chris.

Jordan Berry [00:02:02]:
Chuck and Chris. How are you guys doing today?

Chuck Post [00:02:05]:
Great. Great. Good to see you, Jordan.

Chris Mason [00:02:07]:
Great. Good to see you too, Jordan.

Jordan Berry [00:02:09]:
Yeah. Hey, man, I’m super excited to have you guys on the show again. We’ve Done some things in the past, some podcast episodes, Q&As. And you guys are back because things are changing in this industry and we wanted to chat about that here on the podcast. But before we jump into that stuff, why don’t you guys, for anybody maybe who’s new to the podcast, why don’t you guys fill everybody in on who you guys are and then, then we’ll jump into it.

Chuck Post [00:02:34]:
Okay, Chris, I’ll let you do that.

Chris Mason [00:02:38]:
Okay. So welcome guys. We are PBI Laundry Consulting and Chuck Post and myself, Chris Mason. Chuck has, and he’ll give you a little bit more background on himself, but has been in this industry many moons since the 80s. Coming up on 40 years and I have been in the industry. I’m the baby. I’ve been in the industry for about 20. Coming up on 20 years now.

Chris Mason [00:03:03]:
I started in 2006, started working for Chuck as he was the president of a distribution company and learning this business from the ground floor.

Chris Mason [00:03:13]:
And then.

Chris Mason [00:03:16]:
At that time I was dating his daughter. So that’s how I got. It’s all nepotism. That’s how I got into it. I was dating his daughter, he was looking for a sales guy and I was probably like the fourth or fifth on his list. I was just the one that like, I guess I’ll try it now again back in 2006 and quick brief little bio about me and I’ll let Chuck kind of discuss his is in 2006. You know, it was a very profitable time. It was active, there was a lot of lending, it was lenders were aggressive.

Chris Mason [00:03:48]:
And it became, it was a really interesting time to get into this industry blowing up. And then it came all to a crushing halt in 2008 and 2009. The housing market failed, the banks failed, the bubble burst. And at that time of chaos created what I felt it turned from a job to a career for myself. I saw laundromats that were taking care of the customer base, were doing better in such a difficult time in the economy that that was the light bulb that said, hey, what a resilient industry this is. I can be with this and let’s really dig our feet into what we do. Chuck and I actually partnered up in 2010 and so I married his daughter in 2007. So now he is my father in law and partner.

Chris Mason [00:04:39]:
And it’s been great ever since. The industry. I’ve seen the industry trained a couple times over the last 20 years. I’ve gone through two different life cycles of equipment. We’ve gotten into Covid we got into a lot of different things that have changed how we operate, but the business itself, at its core, has stayed the same. Chuck, discuss a little bit about your brief history. Brief history, Your history and how you got into it, and then we’ll kind of jump in.

Chuck Post [00:05:08]:
Well, you know, I come out of a different business, the bicycle business, and we were very consumer oriented. So I spent an awful lot of time in studies and analysis and projections and things like this in developing product lines for the Jatron company and the Lotus companies that I worked with. And basically, Lotus was one of my products that I was a part of very closely. And we had issues.

Chuck Post [00:05:39]:
And ended up. Sid Star, the primary owner, ended up selling that company. And I was trying to figure out what to do next. I love the bicycle business, but there weren’t really, you know, the kinds of positions I wanted anywhere in California. And so I, I started looking around, and I meant a guy. I was at one of my bike shops in San Francisco and met a guy by the name of Chuck Beard who’s been retired now for several years. And, you know, he told me about what he did, and I said, well, that’s fascinating. Find locations, build them out, create businesses.

Chuck Post [00:06:10]:
You know, that’s just right up my alley. So this is 1985, and I went ahead and I, I made that change.

Chuck Post [00:06:19]:
Which was pretty significant. And I took over the Sacramento and Valley areas into Nevada and up to the border. So I had a big market area to work in. And it just clicked for me. You know, I spent most of my early years building new stores. It was hard to get Maytag customers, which is a product I worked with at the time, to replace equipment because they could fix those things up and get another five years out of them for 100 bucks, you know, and, and back in those days, it just wasn’t the same. It was just, you have machines, the necessity of life. People come in.

Chuck Post [00:06:54]:
I mean, that’s, that’s, that was the primary and almost the entire market at that time. People that had to use the laundry and. And you get your share, and everything was just fine and dandy. And rents were low and things were changed. And as time went on, they became more complicated. Rents started going up faster than vend rates, for one thing. And it was challenging because to keep raising the price of the wash was deteriorating, processing revenue in the long run. And we just didn’t have room in these stores to put in the big machines and that sort of stuff that were just really starting to come out into the product line.

Chuck Post [00:07:37]:
The American Dryer, developed a stack dryer. Two dryers in one space. Man, that was a savior. It amplified the growth. And wascomet came and was pushing the front load washers and that stimulated growth. And then, you know, as society grew, we still continued to work with that necessity of life business. That has been the primary.

Chuck Post [00:08:03]:
Money maker for the industry and in many areas still is. But especially since COVID and a little bit before this is, this is something that we’ve been doing for 25 years now, is building better stores and fully attending them, even the smaller ones. We’re adding more attendance time and by doing that, we’re keeping the stores cleaner, more attractive to a larger percentage of the population. So now these market areas have, in many cases, especially in primary markets, have grown to include, you know, a lot of people who would never have gone into a laundry before. So we’re actually, we’ve actually fattened up the pie through operational quality. And this is really important because overall, Jordan, I know you, you’re aware of this too. We’ve been living on about 10% of the population, you know, forever. And, and we have an opportunity and we are in fact, in many areas, changing that considerably where, where laundries are becoming much more dominant.

Chuck Post [00:09:05]:
They offer something for, you know, and, and now what’s really great is that because of this we’re finding out the cost of the laundry. Isn’t that a big deal? I mean, you can go into any laundry in the country and for cheaper than a hamburger and french fries, you say for the cost of a hamburger and fries, but now cheaper than a hamburger and fries. You can wash your own weekly clothes. You know, it’s not about the money or the cost except in the lower income areas, people that have, you know, seven kids to wash for and things like this. And you have to address that issue. But at the same time, overall, you don’t need to give away your, your watch. You can charge an appropriate price and offer the services that are backing it up. And the experience, because it’s not about the price for most people, it’s about the experience.

Chuck Post [00:09:54]:
People don’t not go to a laundry because it’s too expensive. You can’t argue that that’s not even true. Okay? They don’t go to a laundry because they don’t want to go into those steeping places with all those homeless people hanging out. You know, they don’t want to wash clothes in an area, in a place where they see people that they don’t respect washing their clothes and dirtying the place. Up and snotty kids running around laundry. Owners have to take control of their businesses and operate them like businesses today.

Chuck Post [00:10:22]:
And that does a lot to the market, but the results are fantastic. We’ll get into the operational parts of that too if you like. But, but the, the, the results are phenomenal. Stores that were doing 14 to $18,000 depending on the time of year at one time are doing 25 and 32. You know, I, I mean that have followed this pattern. That’s that the example I’m thinking of is only has an attendance 7 hours a day and it’s in a lower income, high Hispanic market area. So they’re managing to offer the security and everything else with a minimal amount of staff, which is inexpensive comparison to the ability to grow that store the way they have. We’re fattening that particular store up right now, putting in more big machines and taking out more of the twenties even to make room for those big machines to get that store up to about 38,000.

Chuck Post [00:11:18]:
So that’s a 1450 square foot storage.

Chuck Post [00:11:22]:
Okay, That’s a lot, a lot of, a lot of business for a small store like that. And we’re duplicating that in some small stores with that operational system. But that’s been the reluctance, you know, of owners is to invest the way they need to. And then a lot of times they look at fluff and folders. The savior for that. And it can be, but it’s not necessarily, you know, the cost of staffing, the wind up period is longer. You know, you, you can, it can take you months to build that business up. It’s very competitive now.

Chuck Post [00:11:59]:
You know, there are a lot of people offering that service independently. There are a lot of laundries that are offering that services. It’s becoming.

Chuck Post [00:12:10]:
A part of our, our culture. You know.

Chuck Post [00:12:14]:
Delivery services are booming on, in all levels. So I guess it’s not surprising that it would here There are laundries that are doing, you know, well over £10,000amonth in, in, in the fluff and fold at $2 or more a pound, you know, in addition to their, their self service business. So this is a very good business to enter, but you have to do it smart. You have to have a plan. You need to hook up with people that know this system. You need to have a good website and a good strategy and you have to know how to keep costs down and you probably ought to be in a position to do some of that pick up and delivery yourself and get out there and you know, keep the costs down and the exposure up and learn what the challenges are for the people that are doing this service. So it’s, there’s a learning curve and it takes us out of the, or theoretically takes us out of the hands off mode that so many people enter this business looking for. But not necessarily, you know, if you take the time and invest into the proper training and have good policies and procedures.

Chuck Post [00:13:24]:
Well, geesh, I mean, run it like a regular business, you know, like, like a record store. Well, we don’t have record stores anymore, but you know what I’m saying. And run it like some of these businesses, restaurants and things like this that show appreciation for the customers. Then, then record store. I don’t know where that came from. Excuse me. But, but you know, but by, by greeting people and, and showing them that we’re being taken care of and answering their questions and being, you know, they’re of the things that we want to understand can be a great help.

Chuck Post [00:14:02]:
So all these things are, are changing in our industry in certain locations and they’re being rewarded heavily, you know, with net incomes like gross revenues used to be. You know, I mean it’s, it’s amazing. It’s lovely to see and it’s good to see that the population is starting to appreciate our business and that’s where we focus a lot of our time is regardless of the size.

Jordan Berry [00:14:27]:
Yeah.

Chuck Post [00:14:27]:
Chris, did you have something? No, I’m sorry.

Chris Mason [00:14:31]:
Yeah, I just wanted to add a little bit of, to jump to piggyback on some of the stuff that you were talking about with kind of the services and service being so important.

Chris Mason [00:14:43]:
At the heart of our business. We are a service industry, right? The heart of it, it’s customer service, Customer service, Customer service. And it doesn’t matter if you have.

Chris Mason [00:14:58]:
It doesn’t matter if you have a large store, small store, doesn’t matter the type of volume. If you do not create a customer experience that’s pleasurable to them, they won’t come back. So the customer service aspect of it is so big. And what creates that customer service aspect? Right. Chuck and I talk about this all the time. Actually. Every single client that we deal with, when we deal in retools and we deal, we’re trying to create a custom experience. So.

Chris Mason [00:15:22]:
And how do we do that? One is making sure that very simple, tried and true methods work right? Keep your store clean. Right. You’re in a clean business. This is a laundromat business. It’s amazing how many times we’ll walk into laundries and there’s stuff all over the floor, the counters are dirty, you know, and things like that, or you know, the machines are broken down. I get it, things happen when machines break down. But do your best as an operator to make sure that those machines are well taken care of, that they’re fixed to the best of their ability. It doesn’t matter if you have 20 others, people see the one that’s broken.

Chris Mason [00:15:54]:
So just these are very simple things of customer service, you know, safety. Right. And then Chuck, I’ll let you jump off of that safety itself. I would, you know, as an owner operator for 13 years on a store that Chuck and I retooled, that we developed and took a store that was losing money into a store that was 30% return for 10 years straight. And then as decline it started to go down a little bit. But my experience was making sure that 60% of my customer base were female. They were.

Chris Mason [00:16:27]:
And I wanted to make sure that they felt safe. And how did I do that? I created a safe environment that lends into that customer service. I kept it well lit, kept cameras in there. You can view cameras remotely. It’s cheap. You can get them cheap from Costco or wherever you’re going to go.

Chris Mason [00:16:42]:
And for me, I had an attendant there Chuck was talking about earlier. I think having an attendant there can add extra turns to your store. It can add 20% income to your store if you get the right attendance. So training them correctly into that customer service background is really important. Sorry about that Chuck, didn’t mean to jump in on you.

Chuck Post [00:17:02]:
Hey, no problem Chris. Thank you. So.

Chuck Post [00:17:06]:
What you said too. So the real key is this, you know, when we, when we create laundries, we look at what Chris and I, where we do it at least we create the base level laundry. What, what is the 85 assurance level for this store? If we do basics, you know, and does it pan out. And our opinion is that in order to go into the acquisition it should, in other words, if we, if we put in, you buy a store for 250 and you put in another 250 so you have a five hundred thousand dollar store in the end, you know, when you’re done and, and the operations are balanced out, you know, it should be worth 650 to 8. You know, I mean that, that would be the theory that you’re going after. If it’s not going to achieve that, then you have some issues to work out. So what we do is we find where that base level is, where is the necessity of life business for the store and then we look at the market very carefully. We look at the populations, you know, where, where, where are the population segments and then we focus on bringing those people in above that.

Chuck Post [00:18:10]:
So achieve base and then, and then with analysis, know where to go after the rest of that business. And, and where. In the old days you say three to six months and you’re grown. Well, three to six months now you may have achieved base but you’re not grown, you know. And we’re proving that with the One Planet Laundry that, that used to be Chris’s Blue Planet Laundry. And we, we’ve retooled it beautifully and very heavy. It’s 45 pound average washer and a lot of extra look to it. It’s in a university area in a shopping center that attracts from a two and a half mile ring.

Chuck Post [00:18:46]:
So it’s a destination type store. Lots of parking and all the advantages and stuff. And that store, it took us almost six months to achieve base.

Chuck Post [00:18:58]:
That we wanted to achieve with that larger machinery and everything. But since then it has grown at a higher pace. The word has gotten out that there’s something different in the area and more and more people are coming in at greater rates. So it’s growing at a very rapid rate right now. And then now we’re going into the seasonal months which should boost the store 15 to 20% for that season. And then, and then hopefully we’ll retain that and grow from there too. So the growth curve can go two or three years. Another story that we did grew over three different periods, all within a three year period.

Chuck Post [00:19:37]:
Actually it’s been around for a little longer than that. But, but, and this was a store in a high Hispanic area that was suffering because another store was built virtually on the same parking lot. You know, brand new big store. It used to be a Bank of America. And, and now, and this, this store just, just got beaten up. It and the sales were down around 17 000. Its nut was about 22, you know, 21. So he was in bad shape and wanted out.

Chuck Post [00:20:05]:
He just wanted out. He’d only had it for a couple years and then built a new store. So we found a new investor and brought him in there. We made some operational changes and added a couple more big machines and that’s all we did because everything was operational in there. It wasn’t great, but it was operational and we gauged it. We threw it up to about 24,000 with that first.

Chuck Post [00:20:32]:
And it gave us confidence to take another step. So we replaced the bulk of the machinery in there at that time. With new machinery and increased the capacity and, and that sort of thing. And, and, and it grew up into the high 30s. You know we were pushing 40 grand now and, and once again that was a great success. So we added a couple of more underground machines, big machines, you know and promoted that, that we did that, we were doing that and it continued to grow and then we changed the marketing all the way around on the store to reach out to a larger percentage. This is a destination store but it, it’s, it’s in.

Chuck Post [00:21:15]:
Not such an accessible area for outer room to get. But there are good paths and there were opportunity. So we started promoting the business differently. Showing that it’s you know the, the low price favorite always attended and things like this. Today that store is pushing 70 in self service revenues. Okay. I mean that’s that, that and, and that’s and that took us a three to four year period. And we’re making you know, now, now the challenge is different.

Chuck Post [00:21:47]:
We have to ease up some of the time today stuff because it gets too busy in their premium times and you end up turning away business because they can’t park. They’re going to that store down the street that was the beat them up so bad. So now we’re examining you know, different strategies which there are off our pricing, special promotions, increasing the price during the regular the busy times and lowering them during the off season to bring more people in using the big machines during. Things like this can be done. So it’s a constant challenge regardless of what growth level you are. But.

Chuck Post [00:22:24]:
The fact is is that it starts with the location. And I don’t mean just where it’s located in the market area because honestly market areas are deceiving. I, I, you know, I’m sure you do too. But we know laundries that are in unlikely areas with a lot of more expensive places and things like doing phenomenal work, making a lot of money. You know, their turns may not be six and six turns or five turns or something like that, which is the highest of the higher levels but, but they’re making more per bend rate at three and a half turns, you know. But you know, if you read that market that way, you know how to achieve that. And then and another thing that’s fascinating is that if you sit in that store and watch people come in, they come in and they have a basket of clothes and they go right to the 80 pound or the 60 pound machine and put about 26 pounds in it.

Chuck Post [00:23:20]:
It’s what’s comfortable for them, you know, whereas in A lot of the lowering areas, there’s stuff. They got a rod and they’re pushing stuff in. You know, you can do that, by the way. You know, those front loaders will wash those clothes stuffed in. But. But the fact is, is that it’s just two different types of environments, so you have to approach them differently. You don’t. Don’t approach a store in one market area with one type of population as you do the other.

Chuck Post [00:23:49]:
And then there are also areas that have pockets, you know, of. Of customer bases, apartment complexes, and things like this in certain parts of it. So you need to find ways of getting the word out to those people. And if you have cultural differences, finding ways of keeping those cultures separated to some degree with price controls, daytime, nighttime, things like that is also an advantage. But you’ve got to read your customers. I find the biggest problem with laundry owners is they really don’t know what they’re trying to achieve. They want the store to grow and they do it, and they raise their prices or lower their prices or do a promotion, but there’s no real understanding of market and there’s no real strategy there with most of them now, you know, it’s changing. There’s much more intelligent people coming in that do take that time.

Chuck Post [00:24:39]:
But overall, you know, we’ve got 30 to 40,000 laundry somewhere, and everybody knows for sure, but we’ve got a whole bunch of laundries all across the country, and the majority of them are still run the old way. So that message.

Jordan Berry [00:25:01]:
Well, listen, that was, that was. That was the easiest part of the interview I’ve ever done, Chuck, other than maybe your other episodes.

Jordan Berry [00:25:12]:
Well, I mean, you talked a lot about changes happening in the industry and how things are shifting and stuff. Two questions about that that are similar. But what’s something you feel like new people who are trying to get into this industry need to know about the changes and be aware of and how do they navigate that? And then the second question we could jump into after maybe is what do existing Laundromat owners need to know? Maybe they haven’t been doing anything to their business. I mean, you talked a lot about how you’re being very proactive about, you know, how you’re marketing, how you’re pricing, how you’re driving traffic, how you’re directing that traffic once they get in your store, all that stuff. So. So what do newbies need to know and what do existing owners need to know about changes to help kind of navigate? Because the, you know, we said this before on the podcast, like, there’s probably been more changes in the last two years than at least I’ve seen since I’ve been in the industry. I don’t know about you, you’ve been in a lot longer than me. But changing so fast.

Jordan Berry [00:26:14]:
And I think it’s going to continue to change and accelerate for a little bit here at least. So what do you think we need to know here?

Chuck Post [00:26:23]:
Okay, well, that’s, those are both great questions and very related to each other because both, both parties need to do the same thing, you know, and, and basically that’s it. First of all, when you’re looking for a laundromat, you know, you, you should take a little time to define not just how much money you have to spend, but what your lifestyle should look like when you own that store, you know, and, and realistically, what, how’s it going to fit in time wise? How far away can that store realistically be from where you live? What’s the traffic flow? Now? The beauty is that you don’t need to go to your laundry during the busiest times of day. You know, traffic wise, when you go, you can kind of select your time, but at the same time, you know, if something happens and you’re an hour and a half away from it, that’s a big inconvenience. If you’re 20 minutes away, that’s not so bad, you know, so you want to kind of select how far you’re willing to go and then, and then you want to take a look at the stores. And the real thing is, first of all, you have to know the physical limitations of the business you’re looking at. We’re upsizing everything. Fortunately, it’s more economical equipment. So the load factors aren’t, you know, creating a big problem most of the time and things like this, unless the store was already overstuffed, you know, but.

Chuck Post [00:27:43]:
The, the physical location has to be there. As a for instance, if you’re going to view high turn levels, you need more space in the aisles, right? You have to be able to not crowd those people in. If you’re in a market area where you’re the only laundry for two miles and you’ve got a whole lot of customers, you could probably crowd that market a little bit more, crowd those aisles a little bit more if you wanted to, until somebody else comes in the area better. But you know, you could do that. But you’ve got to be realistic about how you fit things, machines back to, back to each other. They have to have space for access. If they don’t, then you have to pull a machine down, which isn’t a big deal if it’s a top loader or a 20 so much. But if it’s a 40 or 60 or 80 pound machine, pulling that down and moving it so you can access this machine behind it is pretty expensive and difficult.

Chuck Post [00:28:31]:
So you, you need to be able to see how you can lay that store out. You need to see what kind of capacity you can realistically put in there and compare that to the marketplace. So the gist of it all is that you’ve got to know everything about that store. One thing we promise our clients that use our diligence is that you’ll know the store is better than the person that owns it. Now when you’re done, you know, and you have to, you have to know what you’re in for. So many people so often get into the store. I, Mr. Barry, get into a store and all of a sudden discover all the issues that he didn’t see ahead of time.

Chuck Post [00:29:06]:
And this happens all the time, you know, because who’s going to tell you? You know, the seller’s going to tell you what he feels he has to tell you, but he’s not going to tell you. Well, those machines are going to go down in a year, maybe two. You know, you fact is, average machine’s over $10,000 for a laundry. Now if you’re buying the best, the best of them, you know, that’s, that’s a whole lot of money. And it brings you another question. You got to ask, okay, is the rent reasonable? Is the opportunity to advance the store reasonable? If I do everything, can I afford it? I mean, is it going to return properly? So you have to know at base levels what that return is. And you have to have a good feel for how you’re going to market the store to go after that excess business that, all that business, that 90% of the population that you’re not going after now. Yeah.

Chuck Post [00:29:59]:
And you have to have plans in order to do that because rents have gone skyrocket. You know, we’ve got a lot of stores paying three bucks and over a foot now. I mean, that’s just, you know, heck, a decade ago It’s a buck 60, you know, so it’s doubled in, in 10 years, so a pretty rapid rate. And, and it, it does strain the market a little bit, creating new listers and people getting the extended terms that you need, you know, getting 20 or 25 years. Ideally, I like to see two life cycles in a lease, you know, the current one and another one you know, at least. So you’re looking minimal of 20 years, if the machines are going to last 20 years. And you need to negotiate like you buy a new store, because you’re going to be putting a whole bunch of money into it, you know, and you need to know what you’re going to have to put into it and how are you going to get it, Are you going to qualify? You know, so there’s just so many things. The current owner’s got the same challenge.

Chuck Post [00:30:56]:
They need to go out and understand their marketplace, know their competition. You know, my clients, they get mad at me because I’m always saying, well, what are they charging over there? And if they don’t know, I say, well, go find out. Why don’t, you know? You know, you should know what your competition is doing. What’s your turn levels on the 40s? I don’t know. Well, you should. Why don’t, you know? Is it proportionate to the 60s and 20? We analyze these things for our clients, you know, on a regular basis. But, you know, they need to know it because they need to feel it. You know, being told something is one thing, but understanding it takes personal involvement.

Chuck Post [00:31:31]:
We want these people to be personally involved. They can work two hours a week in their laundry or less. That doesn’t matter so much to us. You know, we can put policies together with them and procedures, and they can train staff or we can help them train staff or whatever is necessary to get them to have that kind of free time. And most of our clients, by the way, are in that category, you know, except for the. Most of them. And. And.

Chuck Post [00:31:58]:
But at the same time, you know, they’ve got to make sure everything is taken care of. They’ve got to have policies, procedures. You know, somebody needs to oversee things. They’ve got to get cameras that you can watch it. And they need to know what their store is doing, keeping up or slowing down, you know. Anyway, Chris, you. You raised your hand there. Do you have something?

Chuck Post [00:32:23]:
Yeah, I’m gonna.

Chris Mason [00:32:24]:
I’m gonna go back a little bit on what a new buyer should be looking, because that’s part of, you know, what they need to know. Right?

Jordan Berry [00:32:33]:
What.

Chris Mason [00:32:33]:
What does a new guy, a newbie need to know as they go in? And the short of it is going into a laundromat blind and trying to understand what the true value of a Laundromat is is extremely difficult. Okay. Because there are so many different elements that create that value that we’ve been talking about, the diligence part of it. Right. I Mean, you may say, you know, the, the blue sky or the net income is not what really creates the full valuation. There are so many different factors. And as a new buyer coming in and understanding that the devil’s in the details of, because of the high capital cost to get into a laundry, that if you know the income may be correct, it’s verifiable, we’re able to work our diligence system to be able to do that. But then as maybe they omit a bill, maybe they omit some payroll, these little chunks can add to a large cost of valuation to that store.

Chris Mason [00:33:35]:
And it’s so crucial that a buyer comes in and understands what they’re looking at for a true valuation. Because we say this in almost every webinar we do, and we do these weekly.

Chris Mason [00:33:48]:
Your investment can be made or broken on the initial buy in price. If you do not understand what you’re buying in and say, you, you know, there’s $1,000 difference just in the net income, right in the expenses that can create a $60,000 valuation difference. That’s a monster number. And so the devil’s in the details when you start going into the actual diligence. Now, we help buyers all the time. In fact, that’s one of our primary focuses, is really understanding and helping clients understand how to look for laundries, what they’re looking for, get into the diligence once they find it. But as we understand the values of laundries, as we discussed, it’s not just the net income, right? Because that’s what the seller is going to tell you. The seller, hey, I make all this money.

Chris Mason [00:34:39]:
This equipment could be 15 years old, but they’re still running. So you should pay full value. The lease only has five years left, but you should pay full value. Well, that’s not the case. I mean, it’s the totality of the, of the location, it’s the quality of location ingress and egress, it’s the quality of lease age of the equipment. All these things are what create value for a buyer and a seller. And so we have to get in there and get into the details. But it’s important for us to really stress how important it is that the buyer experience understands what they’re looking at, why they’re looking at it, and how to just decipher the information that they’re given.

Chris Mason [00:35:19]:
Sorry, Chuck. I just wanted to make sure that, that for me, as a new buyer coming in, I want to make sure that that’s something that they understand.

Chuck Post [00:35:27]:
That’s, that’s a real good point, Chris. And let’s talk about value first.

Jordan Berry [00:35:30]:
Yeah, real quick.

Chuck Post [00:35:33]:
Pardon me?

Jordan Berry [00:35:35]:
Well, real quick, Chuck. I, I just wanted. Yeah, I just wanted to say, like, I couldn’t agree more with that. And I mean, it is like really eye opening that even, just being wrong by, you know, even, even $500 a month, you know, which is not really gonna make or break your deal in terms of your cash flow, really. And if it does, the margins are too small, maybe shouldn’t do that deal. Right? And you know, it’s $500 a month is, feels relatively inconsequential. Even $1,000 a month, you know, it’s not that much money. But 30 to 60,000 plus at today’s valuations, the laundromats and equity that you’re losing on day one, when you close is.

Jordan Berry [00:36:18]:
That’s a big deal. That’s a really big deal. And you know, if you go to sell it, you’re. It’s on you to make up that difference, to, to grow your business, to be able to recoup that lost $60,000. Right? And so it’s, it’s so important and it’s so easy to go wrong. Like, it’s so easy to go. I tell clients all the time, like consulting clients and stuff. Like, it is very easy for us in many scenarios, I’d say probably most scenarios, it’s very easy for us to make up the investment in, in our, in our help, in our helping them, in our consulting fees.

Jordan Berry [00:36:56]:
It’s very easy for us to make up that. And in almost every case, because there’s so many little ways to go wrong, and there’s so many little ways to just make one little mistake. And I know because I’ve, I’ve made most of them, if not all of them myself. And then I’ve obviously, like you guys, I’ve seen them happen all over the place, right? And so it’s, it’s so important. And especially like, you know, in two scenarios in particular, this probably covers pretty much everybody. But in scenario one, if you’re taking the majority of the funds that you have in your putting those into a laundromat, whether that’s $150,000 laundromat or $1 million laundromat, if you’re investing, you know, a vast majority of your funds into that business, it’s so important that you do it correctly and you don’t miss anything, you know, along the way that’s going to affect the cash flow of your business and the return you’re going to get on that and also the equity in your, in your business on day one and when you’re buying those higher price, like if you’re going to drop a million dollars or $2 million or more than that, we’re seeing now on a Laundromat, listen, it’s almost inconsequential to pay somebody to help you make sure you do it correctly. Like I don’t, you know, talk to these guys about what their fees are. But I’ll tell you, our fees are, you know, reach out to them.

Jordan Berry [00:38:23]:
PBI Laundry Consulting, the RFEs are inconsequential. If you’re buying a million dollar Laundromat, I will just say that it’s, it’s a no brainer to find somebody, somebody who knows the business, somebody that you trust to, to help you make sure you do it the right way the first time. Because there’s so many things of like you don’t know what you don’t know. There’s so many of those landmines that you can stumble into and buying any business or investment, but especially a Laundromat and especially if it’s a cash based laundromat as well. So I just want to jump in on that. Chuck. Sorry.

Chuck Post [00:38:54]:
Well, yeah, Chris and I, we’re having.

Jordan Berry [00:38:56]:
A fight to jump in here because you’re just so full of wisdom here.

Chuck Post [00:39:01]:
Well, just raise your hand like that. Now I’ll, I’ll submit, but you know, that’s absolutely right. I don’t, you know, I’m, I’m don’t like to boast what we do for people, but we know what we do for people. You know, we, it’s ironic. Sometimes people are concerned about our fees and we’re thinking we know what we bring to the table. You know, it’s the best return investment that most of them will get by by employing you or us or somebody with our kind of knowledge to guide them through the process. But back to valuation. So see, here’s the thing.

Chuck Post [00:39:37]:
The valuation baseline of Laundromats is it offers a 20 ROI, cash on cash, kind of. You know, I mean let’s, let’s get real. It doesn’t replace you. It’ll pay you for your time. It doesn’t, it doesn’t pay depreciation costs. It doesn’t pay the loan service. You know, so that 20% has to be looked at as an entry level. It’s the NA up.

Chuck Post [00:40:04]:
And if you’re buying a laundry thinking that you’re just going to go ahead and make a hundred thousand dollars and take 20 every, every year or something. That’s not, that’s not the way it works. You know, you’ll get eight or 11, you know, out of it. Yeah. But the rest is gonna, some of it’s gonna go back into the operations, you know, and things like this as well. So you have to kind of be realistic. It’s important that you see that you can grow that up to a 26 percentile ratio. And here’s another thing that you have to consider is why is the valuation so high on Laundromat? In other businesses they’re three and three and a half times annual or five, you know, as a baseline.

Chuck Post [00:40:41]:
What’s the equipment? Are you kidding me? It’s the cost of the infrastructure and the equipment is huge in Laundromat and that’s why we need that. And your, your investment is secured by those things. So let me ask you this. You’re going to buy a store with 11 year old, 12 year old equipment in it and you’re paying 60 times multiplier.

Chuck Post [00:41:03]:
You know, you’re kidding yourself unless you see a path ahead. And that’s what it all comes down to. You’ve got to look at your Laundromat investment. Laundromat owners are not operators, they’re developers. Okay? You have to constantly, especially at the beginning, develop the business that the way you want it, the way it’s going to go after the market the best. You’ve got to have stringent policies and procedures to make sure that the air, the store is being taken care of, especially if you’re semi or all absentee. In order to do that, you have to analyze the market and have the strategies and stuff. And this is part of the acquisition process.

Chuck Post [00:41:41]:
It’s not part of the oh, what do I do now? After the acquisition process, you know, you’ve got to figure these things out. You have to know how much funds you have and how you’re going to do it. Which is another area, I’m sure you help your clients. What we do, you know, to make sure that they’re, they’re taking wise steps, that they’ll be able to perform as needed, that they’re not surprised with. Expensive after acquisition costs that they didn’t know about. Things like this, these are the things that really hurt people. And then, you know, unfortunately a lot of people buy in that position, you know, unknowing and with the equipment that they’re surprised that they’re going to have to replace so soon because the broker and the, then the owner just said, yeah, you got to keep it fixed, you know, and, and that sort of thing. And that becomes unrealistic.

Chuck Post [00:42:29]:
You have to understand that the potential, what is the potential in your particular location that allows you to expand the store physically and, and market wise? You know, do you have room to put in the 80s and the hundreds more of those are going to turn, you know, 60s, 80s. It’s amazing how many times we’re joining 60s faster than we are 40s. In a lot of these newer stores, people once again, they like those big machines, even if they only need 30 pounds of wash, you know, they put them in a 60 pound machine pretty freely. So, you know, you, you’ve got to make sure that you’re, you’ve got everything before you sign that bottom line that you need in order to increase that income steadily. And, and that’s the way it, it needs to work. You’ve got to know what you have to reinvest, which requires getting pricing, which requires bringing contractors out during the diligence process. You know, at some point when you have enough confidence, you might want to check that ground line to see. You have to send a camera down there to see if it’s fogged up.

Chuck Post [00:43:30]:
That can be a really extensive problem. A lot of these old laundries have problems like that, you know, so, you know, you’ve got to check the electrical panel. Do you have enough capacity for what you intend to do? You know, regardless of it does for now. There’s a lot of laundries overstuffed out there, you know, where people have added machines and doubled up and, you know, they don’t really have the full capacity they need, which creates problems and things like that going forward. You, these things need to be checked out. You’ve got these vents going through the roof and you know, if a guy bought his laundry four years ago and he didn’t know what he was doing, chances are he’s never cleaned it. You know, his gas costs are probably higher because he’s burning more gas to dry the clothes. And it’s, it’s, it’s a fire hazard to be you.

Chuck Post [00:44:13]:
Yeah, almost every laundry fire I ever followed was due to the dryers, you know, so these things have to be investigated. And if you don’t, then it’s on you at the end. Now some of that you can negotiate with the seller. You know, if you know about it ahead of time, what are you going to do after that? You know, you have a store with 30 washers and six of them are Done. You know, they’re still running, but they’re done. You know, how do you address that during the diligence process? Well, they’re working, they’re fine. You know, step deal with those. So, you know, is that acceptable? Well, it depends on how far can you grow it.

Chuck Post [00:44:53]:
I mean, you and I both know we, we find stores that are doing, you know, $15,000 a month and a couple thousand square feet and we’re looking at the market, we’re looking at the location, the infrastructure and all this stuff. And we’re saying I can build this to 45, 50, you know. Now if that’s the case and, and that’s the plan for the buyer, well, it might be worth paying a little higher multiple to get possession of that store. Or maybe you’d rather have one that has machines that are going to last eight years and it’s doing about as good as it’s going to do and it’s netting nice and you’re going to pay 20 times that. What’s the ride like then? It’s going to be a downward row. You know, machines don’t get younger and the lease doesn’t get shorter. I mean it doesn’t get longer. You know, it.

Chuck Post [00:45:39]:
Those are the two primary factors other than revenue that control the value of the store and the potential for long term success. So they have to be in check, you know, and the lease, of course, is a big issue. Negotiating leases is difficult. Landlords are reluctant to give the time. You know, we approach landlords as experts. We do a lot of work for landlords too, by the way. You know, landlords that have laundries that are problematic, they don’t know how much lease that they can afford and that little thing and things like this. And.

Chuck Post [00:46:16]:
They need to be, they need to understand the model of the laundromat because if they are only going to give you a 15 year lease, they’re bucking them off. They’re making it difficult for you to invest heavily into that store. If you’ve got machines that are going to last you four or five years and you’ve got a 15 year lease, how are you going to replace those machines with new stuff? If you can’t get the extension then, and of course you could do that realistically and logically, the landlord will give you that extension because you’ve been a good guy and all that sort of stuff. But let’s face it, he also knows.

Chuck Post [00:46:50]:
That you’re going to make some real money. So he may give it to you and charge you a Whole bunch more. So, okay, I’ll extend it, but I want 50 cents more a foot. We had one landlord who I’ve renegotiated with four other times, but all of a sudden he’s more. He got greedy. He’s starting to do some development and center and things, and he’s realizing what values are. But he literally took the rent from $2 a foot to $3 a foot, which devalued the heck out of that store. 60 times that amount, you know, but at the same time, the income’s still huge and the opportunity to grow it is still good.

Chuck Post [00:47:25]:
And we’re expanding that store right now, you know, for the new owners, taking that tight spot, putting in more big machines. So, you know, every store tells a story, and it’s good to know its history, it’s good to know its situation. It’s good to understand the market. You know, it doesn’t. It doesn’t cost you anything to contact the police department, get the crime reports for the area. When you’re about to acquire a store, if you’re going to have those issues.

Chuck Post [00:47:54]:
Homeless people don’t scare us away. We fix up stores and we do what we have to do to move them on their path of least resistance. People, you know, they’re not going to come there and apple with you for a long period of time to stay there. But you’ve got to run the store in a manner that will discourage them from hanging around. You know, you do what you got to do to create that model that you need at that point. So you don’t want to be surprised with these issues after the fact. You want to know them ahead of time. So doing good diligence, and I know you, you probably have a diligent program.

Chuck Post [00:48:26]:
We have a diligence kit that we use and things like that. Get in on one of those, have an expert with you and make sure that you’re getting the guidance you need to not step on it, you know, because stepping on it’s really bad.

Chuck Post [00:48:39]:
There are a lot of people out there, you know, people say, I can’t find stores. Well, let me give you one good reason. A lot of people stepped in. They can’t afford to sell the store. They’re not making any money. They’re not paying their bills. They can’t face the fact that they’re going to lose their entire investment and hurt their families because they didn’t. They made mistakes getting into the store, and now they.

Chuck Post [00:49:02]:
People want to buy it, but they’re not going to pay what they paid you know, especially after a year, you know, you’re not going to be suspect to somebody selling a business after a year, especially in this kind of business. Then you have questions, but yeah, what’s the average turnover rate? It’s between three and four years. Right. The average turnover rate on these laundries is three to four years. That’s amazing. But not the good ones. They’re cash flow and heavy like the ones we’ve been talking about. Those are keepers.

Chuck Post [00:49:30]:
And you can retool as you go, you know, increase capacities as you go. If you’re a good operator, you don’t wait until everything’s dead to replace it. You replace it as you go and increase the capacities and change the models and change the promotions and give it a new look and make some periodic changes. You have to intervene every, every period and keep the thing fresh. Change your signs around, change the marketing around, make the exterior look different, you know, keep it exciting. People see things when they drive by something that’s new. After they’ve driven by it several times, they don’t see it anymore. So if you want to have a promotion, but you need to do something new outside, get them to see what you’re doing, see something’s going on.

Chuck Post [00:50:15]:
It’s, it’s just, you know, Marketing 101, you know, take a class or join us or Jordan for our programs and learn some of this stuff because it makes a monster difference in your revenues when you, when you do these things right and be unafraid, be ready to invest. It doesn’t mean waste any money. You know, I, like I say a lot of people decide to enter fluff and fold.

Chuck Post [00:50:42]:
Business and, and then they hire people and they put out all this expense and they get almost no business. You’ve got to grow into that. You have to have plans and strategies and you have to be ready to pick up slack with a trusted friend or yourself or one employee that you have or something like until you get it going and then you bring people in and you build it up. Which leads me to another valuation topic.

Chuck Post [00:51:09]:
With a 60 multiplier with the strength behind the equipment and lease, of course. How, how does the fluff and fold when it’s that big? I mean, I understand walk in trade between 3 and 6,000amonth. Maybe somewhere in that level that your, your employees are doing for walk in trade, you can call that sustainable. But you’re competing in that, that pickup and delivery business pretty heavily. There are a lot of players out there.

Chuck Post [00:51:40]:
You know, that, that extra business. Is it fair to give that a 60 multiplier those revenues.

Chuck Post [00:51:50]:
I could, I could do that in my garage with good marketing and a few machines and an employee. Right. So why do I need to buy a laundromat to go out and do all that? So is, what am I paying for? I’m paying strictly for the cash, which is really one third of the equation. If you break it down three most obvious, the lease. Well, you still have a lease. Do you need a lease for pickup and delivery? Be anywhere. Okay. You still have the equipment to use, you don’t need all that equipment and you really, if you’ve done a viable business and this is something I really gotten on my clients about, you can’t be inconveniencing your self service clients with doing pickup and delivery and the big fluff and fold.

Chuck Post [00:52:37]:
You can’t be using the machines they want to use. You can’t be spread out on folding table that they want to use. You can’t have big bags out in the aisle that you’re doing for clients. When you’re busy with customers in there, they feel degraded, they feel like they’re not being attended to, that you’re paying attention to some commercial trade and they resent it because your self service business and that you can’t afford, that’s your base. In the end you have that, you have to hold on to it.

Chuck Post [00:53:06]:
But the pickup and delivery is a competitive business. It’s great extra money and if you’re good at it, you’re probably continue to be with the valuation at 5 times multiple or 50 times monthly multiple is probably a stretch for that part of the purpose. I would think the 3.5 or so annual 36 to 42 somewhere there would probably be a fair valuation for that. But you know, you’ve got to convince the seller of that and then you have to weigh, if you won’t go to that level then you have to weigh the overall advantages of this store and, and your confidence in what you’re going to do.

Chuck Post [00:53:49]:
These are, these are critical thought processes that you don’t necessarily have on your own. Because we watch our buyers and we tell them all this and we explain it to at the very beginning. We have a series of meetings at the beginning preparing them to get into this business and how to search and where to search and we identify stores and things like this and then we tell them what they need to look for and what to be careful of. And then when they see a store get any information, we go over it with them, you know, thoroughly each, at each Interval and kind of discuss these things. But what, what about the guy that’s out there just looking, he found a store that he’d like to buy. He doesn’t really know the business that well, but the owner, the owner and that broker guy said that it’s great, you know, and everything is working fine. He just has to keep fixing it if it breaks down and all these things and that revenue on the fluffing fold was really great. And then multiplies everything, you know.

Chuck Post [00:54:53]:
And, and then he buys it and then, you know, in a short time he finds out that equipment’s not going to last. If he does, he’s going to be paying a fortune. You know, we know guys that are paying 15 more monthly of their monthly income, their gross towards fixing machines that are just old dead machines. They just won’t replace them. I mean it just doesn’t make sense. Let alone the fact that the utilities would drop in half doesn’t seem to impress them. The fact that by influencing the store we get new business doesn’t seem to impress some people. Just feel like, well, I paid for the store, I’m not going to invest any more into it and it’s going to have to pay for itself.

Chuck Post [00:55:31]:
And that’s an attitude that self destruct. You’ve got to be prepared to take advantage.

Chuck Post [00:55:38]:
Yeah. Chris.

Chris Mason [00:55:41]:
Let me say something real quick and then I’ll let Jordan, I know he’s itching to say something.

Chris Mason [00:55:47]:
In the end, our job is to make sure that we, we help guide our clients in nurturing their investment.

Chuck Post [00:55:53]:
Okay?

Chris Mason [00:55:54]:
You have to nurture your investment. This is not a buy set and forget, this is not a quick. You know, funny I want to mention this. We see, you know, advertisements for you can buy a laundry in 30 days and you, you don’t have to do anything, you make millions. Doesn’t work like that. This is still an investment and says it’s still work. Right. And to believe that you’re going to just put a bunch of money into something and walk away and let it grow is absolutely insanity.

Chris Mason [00:56:23]:
It doesn’t work like that. This takes time to develop. It takes expertise to develop. So just believing that you’re going to be able to walk into a store in 30 days, buy it and not work is absurd. There actually is work involved. That doesn’t mean that you physically have to be at your store 40 hours a week like a restaurant or 80 hours a week like a restaurant. I mean literally my experience, I ran a successful laundry for 13 years. I lived an hour and a half Away.

Chris Mason [00:56:49]:
And I was literally only in my store physically about three hours at a time. Okay, that’s, that’s. And Chuck will tell you, and I say this every single webinar. Chuck will tell you that’s probably twice as much as I really need to be. But, but the fact is, is I was there, right? And I was there about three hours at a time. And this at that time was a full cash store. It was coin only. I didn’t have any alternative pay systems, which again, as we talk about, you know, advances in technology and in this industry, it’s all gearing towards cards.

Chris Mason [00:57:20]:
It’s all gearing towards different payment systems to get away from the coin. The coin itself is destroying the machines. The coin itself is making it difficult for operators. And the old adage where they used to just stuff your coins in your mattress and it’s just gone. The amount of programmability and the way that we’re able to promote in this industry is through these other payment systems. The way we’re able to grow not only in the store itself with the walk in trade, but also with these ancillaries that Chuck was talking about with pick up delivery, fluff and fold all these extra items. It’s all geared and all geared towards these new payment systems that are allowed. And that’s what I really am excited about is kind of the technology now, you know, with the equipment itself.

Chris Mason [00:58:07]:
The equipment itself, you know, there’s only so much water it can, you can not use. Right. I mean, so the efficiency is going to get down to what it is. You know, at some point they’re going to have no water and you’re going to get your clothes clean, which will be really, really interesting. But I mean, so they can only minimize the efficiencies so far. So what and how do we grow these stores and that? It’s the bells and whistles, it’s the upsells, it’s these alternative pay systems. It’s all these different things that are getting added now. And for the savvy owner and the stores that we are working with and we are dealing with successful owners are all going to these systems to grow.

Chris Mason [00:58:45]:
They were taking these stores that were capping that Chuck was Talking about at $20,000 gross and now $70,000 gross, we’re growing these stores by using these different systems in technology. So again, to fall back. What I started on was our job is to make sure you understand how to nurture your investment, the education part of that. But you have to be vested. I don’t Care, Jordan. If someone pays for you, for your service, for our service, for someone else, and someone just gives you a bucket of cash and says, go find me a laundry and they want no part in the active search in it, they want no part in the active operations and how to operate it and then think that they’re going to be successful long term, it doesn’t happen. It just doesn’t happen. This industry is so well run that you can absolutely run it for a couple years without even paying attention to it.

Chris Mason [00:59:37]:
It could be profitable. You can turn a high profit. At some point it’s going to hit a wall and it’s going to hit it fast and it’s going to go downhill quick and you’re going to lose that investment that you originally put in if you don’t nurture. So something to really keep in mind as you’re looking for stuff. And I did want to touch base a little bit on the technology and the new things that are coming out because I think it’s great.

Chuck Post [00:59:59]:
Let me just add at that point that Chris is just talking about, that’s when you want to be there as a buyer.

Chuck Post [01:00:06]:
Go ahead, Jordan.

Jordan Berry [01:00:07]:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s exactly right.

Chuck Post [01:00:12]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:00:12]:
No, no, I mean, I think that that is huge. You know, the irony of the whole, you know, I, I still run into a lot of people who, you know, like the cash based model because they want to, you know, shove quarters under the mattress or whatever. The irony of it all is that they would make much more money 9 times out of 10, doing it above board, but implementing some of the things you guys are talking about, you know, utilizing the, the technology, the payment systems, the softwares to help manage drop off, pick up and delivery, you know, security camera, all that stuff. Right. We’ve got technology AI now that we’re able to utilize in our laundromats in a variety of different ways. Right. And you know, it’s like I, I forget the saying, but it’s something like, you know, tripping over dollars to pick up pennies or something like that. Right.

Jordan Berry [01:01:04]:
Like that’s what it feels like to me when, when people say that. But you know, and, and also there’s been this like hesitancy. One, one thing I wanted to say and you mentioned, like, hey, these card systems, they help, you know, streamline operations for the operator and stuff. One of the big arguments that I’ve heard a lot that I really, I disagree with. I’d be curious to hear what you guys say is that the quarters are better for customers. Customers Prefer the quarters. Quarters are better for customers. In my experience and with my clients experience, it’s been the exact opposite.

Jordan Berry [01:01:36]:
Right. The card system gives you a lot more leverage and flexibility to be able to.

Jordan Berry [01:01:43]:
Give things to the. It’s easy to do if you want to set up a simple old school. I did this for a little while where I had like punch cards and then we had blue quarters that we would give and you know, and like, then I’d have to collect and then I had to sift out all the blue. It was a huge pain. I hated it. Right. But we’re like 10 watches get one free, right? If you want to set that up with the digital payment system, card system, super easy. And you don’t have to worry about blue quarters, right.

Jordan Berry [01:02:08]:
If you wanted to say, hey, put 20 bucks on your card, we’ll give you an extra two. Super easy. If you want to say, hey, for the first week, well, every, you know that we’re, we’re reopening every dollar you put on, we’re going to double it. Right. Super easy to do. Really difficult to do with coins. And I found that if you’re out there and you’re in your like going through this debate of like quarters versus, you know, coins versus card, you know, in some stores, I will acknowledge, hey, it doesn’t really make sense. Your rural area, you’re real small.

Jordan Berry [01:02:37]:
You might as well say that maybe you want to put a pay range or something like that on there. But if you’re in like a metro area, even like one of the secondary markets, even maybe a tertiary market and you’re having this internal debate here, I will just say this one thing, that this is what clarified it all for me and landed me firmly on add digital payment system is customers will get over a whole lot of things, even if they don’t like the learning curve, even if they don’t like not having quarters anymore. They get over a whole lot of things if you give them something for free. So if you say, hey, we’re going to give you $2 for free every $20 you put on or first week or the first month or whatever, we’re going to double your money, we’re going to give you twice as much money as you put on there. I find that customers get over a lot of things really quickly because you’re able to serve them better. And you mentioned like customer service, right? You’re able to serve them a lot better with this technology in place. Go ahead, Chris.

Chris Mason [01:03:34]:
Yeah, let me add and then I know, Chuck, is itching to jump at it too.

Jordan Berry [01:03:37]:
So absolutely a couple things.

Chris Mason [01:03:41]:
One, even in the lowest income areas, what do the, what do the, what does the support come in as? You know, for instance, ebt, what does it come in as? It comes in as a card, they are so savvy, the customers are so resilient that a lot of times they, what we hear is they fear change, change from quarters, change from what they’ve been using. Right. And Chuck will talk about, I’ve heard Chuck talk about this at length of how we started growing from the top loader to front load machines. The customers are so constantly using the top loader, it took a little while to shift them over to the front loader. Now as an operator, you make a lot more money per square foot for a front load machine than you do a top loader. Right. Now as far as the payment systems, we have seen payment systems work in the most low income areas. We’ve seen them thrive in the most low income areas.

Chris Mason [01:04:33]:
And it really shows us how again, the resiliency of the customer base and as you talked about the promotions that we’re able to do free washes, the different things that we can accommodate for with customer base separate from what could be a float, what could be income generating items as well. You know.

Chris Mason [01:04:52]:
I love the retention value of it. I love the systems now that allow for us to gather information as an operator that on the customer base and then be able to push out these different promotions that you’re talking about. You know, Chuck and I, as we, as we deal with a lot of operators that we put together, you know, they set up raffles, they set up these kind of, you know, these free TV giveaways, you know, these other things. Something that just caters to what, to what you know, they may want, they may need, you know, whatever it is. And again, it all circles back to the customer experience. Without good quality customer service, you’ll never grow, you’ll never grow your store without the customer experience being enhanced. And how do we do that as operators is really offering the best opportunity for them as well as guiding them in the correct areas. When we put stores together, we put the machines in certain way.

Chris Mason [01:05:50]:
We don’t just throw as much equipment as we can into a store as chef or software about the aisle space alone can create more flow, can create a busier store by creating more aisle space and less machines by creating larger machines that allow for people to move through your store faster. I mean, there’s just so many different advantages as we look at stores. There’s a science behind laundries. It sounds so simple that it’s not right. It sounds like, hey, I just walk in, collect my quarters and I leave. But that’s not the case. The real, the real laundry owners that make a lot of money in this industry dig into the science of how to grow the store. Chuck, I’ll let you kind of jump in as I know you, I know you’ll get in there.

Chuck Post [01:06:29]:
Oh, there’s, you know, I’ve been a supporter of anything for an awful long time. Back in the last century I was mad at because there was a drop called world that would take quarters or dollar quarter coins.

Chuck Post [01:06:46]:
You know, we need something, you know, you’re putting in 12 quarters out and now you’re putting in God, how many. So you know, it was, but, but back in the, in the, in those days when I first started, it was really funny because I’d be selling laundries to people and they, they collect all the quarters and they take them home and sit in front of the TV with the kids and roll them up. You know, can you imagine? That was, that was laundry ownership back in the 80s and 90s. So it’s come a long ways, baby. You know, but you guys are right, you know, the card system brings a lot more to the table. And so there’s a more sophisticated machine like you know, upsells for instance, actually keying you to increase the wash quality or options at additional cost. So we’re getting upsells on some of the machines that offer that of 66 to 8% above the norm. That’s 6 to 8%.

Chuck Post [01:07:44]:
You just wasn’t even available before. The people would have been happily happy to spend. So there’s so many advantages going forward. And sure, the cost of, of doing business is higher because of that, but so is the memory. You’ve gotta, you’ve got to analyze your market and what the market really takes. You know, it’s funny, everybody’s all price sensitive in this business and things like that. And I go, you know, I just, I just did one of my laundry tours through the west coast. So I went through seven states and stopped at different stores to see how they operate.

Chuck Post [01:08:13]:
And by the way, all over the place there are plenty of those old fashioned, never go in, keep them clean by somebody walking and cleaning them at night, closing them down. Heavy top load machine stores in a lot of the rural and suburban areas and various places and things like this are doing just fine, you know, so that market is still there. Not that it can’t be Enhanced with intelligence and doing some of the science like Chris was talking about to understand the market. But at the same time that opportunity is still out there. It’s just not prevalent and you still have to test it against time.

Chuck Post [01:08:53]:
Can I keep operating it this way? I mean there’s a huge used equipment market sitting here. If I were a couple years younger or something like that, I’d probably develop a company to distribute used machines. Street because I think the opportunity is, is great for that. You just can’t, everybody can’t afford a ten thousand or eleven thousand dollar machine, you know, or more. I mean that’s just, that’s just beyond it. The market won’t take it, the rent’s too high. The opportunity just isn’t there. So what are these people going to be doing? You know, they’re, when they produce cheaper machines.

Chuck Post [01:09:27]:
Unfortunately so far most of them have just been too cheap. You know, they, they break down too easily, too often and they don’t last long enough and in the end you end up paying almost as much as if you started.

Chuck Post [01:09:39]:
So a good use market may make sense and, and the opportunity there, the better stores are going to the higher G force now. You know, with Chris and I sell Almost nothing under 200G now just because the, the dryer time has reduced so much and, and machines performance is better and utilities that used to be 22% are now 17, you know, with these, these systems. So there’s a lot to be said for, you know, these improvements but it doesn’t mean that you, if you buy a laundry, you can’t enjoy the free time that’s still available. And fortunately you no longer have to sit in front of your TV and roll up quarters no matter what. So that’s, we’re beyond that part.

Chuck Post [01:10:25]:
The.

Chuck Post [01:10:30]:
The technology that’s coming is going to continue to come and it’s also much less expensive. You know, we used to be well over a hundred thousand to equip even a small store with a card system. And we do that for, you know, less than half of that today. And the systems are much better and offer more data and have more controls and more capabilities to them than they did before. We have our preferences. You have yours probably the same ones, but, but you know, and the hybrid system is, is also still out there. But again you can’t, you can’t do incremental pricing. You have to stay at quarter pricing for those.

Chuck Post [01:11:11]:
And I don’t like that. I like to be able to increase pricing like the commodity if the utilities are up and that Sort of thing. After about two or three months, you have to take a look at some way to get. Get that back, you know, and you can. You can only increase pricing so much. So we. We incorporate promotion with pricing. We have a system that allows us to grow.

Chuck Post [01:11:34]:
Grow our volume of customers as we reduce, as we increase our prices by promoting certain ways and certain things in certain markets. So what we’re doing is we may be losing some business at that lower end, but at the same time, we’re picking up more, that’s more willing to spend the prices that we need and that sort of thing at the same time. So ultimately, we keep growing that by every time we raise prices, it pays off. How often do you hear, Jordan? Well, I raised my prices $0.50. The first week was really good, and the next week was okay. And then kind of the income’s almost the same now as it was before. Well, good. You found that magic spot.

Chuck Post [01:12:19]:
How many customers can I lose to equal the price increase? So you reduce your utility costs a little bit, maybe some maintenance. Right. By doing that. But you just cut off your face. You need customers. You can’t. You know, I had. I.

Chuck Post [01:12:34]:
We’re getting low on time, but I had a guy in near the beach. I won’t say make it too obvious who it was. And he kept raising his prices and raising his prices. And I mean, this is a decade ago now, and he was like, at $3 for a top load. I mean, it was just ridiculous. And he was down to, you know, hardly ever anybody in the store. But until, you know, up to a point, he was still making the same amount of money. So he thought he discovered, you know, he says, well, it hasn’t cost me a penny.

Chuck Post [01:13:05]:
Well, yeah, okay, let’s see how far that goes. So we sold the store, and, you know, and right away I reduced all the prices and changed out the equipment. So I’m a very successful store today. But that’s how he decided to approach it. And the customers just withered away. And when they withered away, he kept raising his prices to get the money back. I mean, what a strategy. He had two stores.

Chuck Post [01:13:27]:
He’s not in business now.

Chuck Post [01:13:32]:
Anyway, Jordan, you have anything else you wanted to bring up? You know, we encourage everybody to reach out to us. Yeah. And yourself.

Jordan Berry [01:13:44]:
Yeah. And I want to give you a chance to talk about PBI here in a second, but I do have one more question. I think this would be a really good one to kind of wrap up.

Jordan Berry [01:13:53]:
You know, what. What we’re. This. This episode. Because, I mean, this has been great. Obviously, like, anytime you guys, come on, you guys know this business that as well as just about anybody out there. So I appreciate you guys taking the time, but I mean, you guys have mentioned like multiple times. You’re like, hey, you know, we, we’ve helped our clients, you know, go from, you know, 18 to 20 to, you know, 25 to 30 or 70 or what.

Jordan Berry [01:14:16]:
You know, that’s obviously like what everybody wants to do, right? You want to buy a laundromat, you want to increase it two fold, four fold, whatever you can do, right? Like, so I’m curious to you guys, as you’re seeing from your perspective, you know, average or even below average operators versus these newer kind of superstar operators that are driving more revenue and stuff, what do you see as the differentiator? What’s different between your average laundromat owner and your superstar laundromat owner? Is it all just location or are they doing anything or making decisions different than the average laundromat owner? And we’ve talked about some of the things that I’m sure will probably come up in your answer, but I, I think a lot of people would be interested to hear that because I think most laundromat owners, nobody goes out to be, hey, I want to be the, the averages laundromat owner out there. You know, I kind of half joke, which I’m not really sure if it’s a joke or not, but when I got in the business, I was the world’s worst laundromat owner. Definitely. Nobody wants to be that, right? Everybody wants to be, you know, to operate performing store and to make the most money. That’s, that’s why we get in this business. So I’m curious, what do you guys see as like a differentiator between that? I’m going to throw it to Chris first and then Chuck, I’ll let you kind of wrap it up with that.

Chuck Post [01:15:36]:
Go ahead, Chris.

Chris Mason [01:15:36]:
So, and I know Chuckle will. Will echo what I’m saying for me, what I find the best operators have a plan, have a model and implement it all the way through, follow through with the plan, have a model going in and understanding what you’re going to do, how you’re going to increase. And then, and as Chuck will also discuss, you have to look at your stuff, you have to look at your numbers, you have to look at the, the, your competition. You have to be aware. You have to be aware of, of the level in that area. Right? So vend rates, promotions, fluff and fold, all these Capabilities.

Chris Mason [01:16:17]:
And I think this kind of discuss. It goes back to kind of what we were discussing a little bit earlier of the difference between the laundromat owner who comes in and just wants to stuff their mattress and be done to the, to the actual businessman who comes in. And we’re getting a lot more businessmen and women businessmen and women into this industry. People that really know how to grow business by implementing plans, implementing a model forward. It’s really important. And those are the successful ones that stick to it that don’t see a lot of times. And Chuck, I’ll let you answer after this. A lot of times I see when we talk with some, with some laundry owners and their store is in some sort of defunct state or maybe the equipment is getting old and they have to replace it, they see buying new equipment as only an expense.

Chris Mason [01:17:05]:
Chuck relates it to buying a car or things like that, where it’s, that’s it, it’s money out. But if you’re only replacing the same machine for the same machine, you’re not increasing anything. You’re not having a plan. The idea is to understand what you’re going to be buying, putting money out to be able to make money back. Right. If you’re going to do loan service, you’re going to be able to make more than the loan service, to be able to cover that equipment and turn a profit on top of it. This is something that we do with all of our clients. These successful business operators understand that, that it’s not just an expense you’re creating.

Chris Mason [01:17:44]:
You’re creating business by understanding what you’re buying. So Chuck, go ahead and I’ll let you finish off that.

Chuck Post [01:17:50]:
Yeah, well, I’ll just start with this. You know, I, I learned very early.

Chuck Post [01:17:57]:
That in order to be successful in any kind of selling or offering service.

Chuck Post [01:18:04]:
Is to find out what the people want and give it. Right. There’s no path of resistance in that. That’s the simplest thing in the world to do. So start there, find out what the customers really want, know what the machine uses are in the stores around you. You know, if they’re using more larger machines, you want more larger machines than they have. You know, there’s a growth pattern there. And big machines are good for business, good for your products.

Chuck Post [01:18:33]:
So analyzing it. But, but the fact is, is that a lot of people that come our way and, and some of them even bss as to how involved they’re going to be and things like that, but a lot of them are just looking for the return on investment with a Minimal amount of hassle, and they misunderstand this business in that regard. You know, there’s no minimal amount of hassle in this business. Things happen. You know, you got electrical and plumbing and machines that break down and issues that occur and cultural issues that can occur. You have to make sure that people are being protected and safe when they’re in store and that it’s always clean. And so you have to be committed to the operations. And most people that fail in this business, it’s a failure to act.

Chuck Post [01:19:21]:
It’s very rarely the location. We’re pretty smart dudes to build Laundromat, you know, I mean, I’ve built something like 40 new laundries and been involved in over 400 total now, you know, so, but, but we know when we build, we don’t go and build laundry where we think it’s going to fail. You know, we know, we do our research and we know how, how big it’s going to be and how best to design it and things like that. When we put them there, you know, there’s a reason for it. And if they’re not performing, it’s usually something that was missed by somebody. Now could be that the developer mis built the story. Maybe he wasn’t a good developer. We’ve run into that in a situation where store was designed in such a way that it would never properly pay the rent and return money.

Chuck Post [01:20:08]:
Market wasn’t there. We had to reconstruct the store basically eventually to, to turn it around and get the right equipment, mix in there and get it right because it was built with too small of equipment. But for the most part, you know, they’re, they’re built to work and you need to understand your market, your customer, what the needs are, what the problems are. You need to understand the pricing in the area, what you can charge, and what kind of service you need to do. It’s knowing your business that really makes the difference from one operator to the other. I, I can’t say, you know, I. I had a guy that I worked with when I first started in this business. His name is Harry Tomlinson.

Chuck Post [01:20:48]:
He was, he looked like a pirate, you know, he’s just, he’s tall and lanky and had beer. Didn’t have a patch, but you could do it, you know, and, and he, he was a salesman.

Chuck Post [01:21:01]:
And that area for the same company, but he owned five laundries all through the Sierras. So he would, every week he’d take a trip and he’d go visit all five of those laundries. On the way to Tahoe where he had a place to stay. And then he’d stay in Tahoe and he’d come down the other side and, and visit the other laundries on that. He did that every week, spent the weekend up in Tahoe. And none of those laundries were attended. They’d be let go. You know, somebody going there a few days to close them.

Chuck Post [01:21:30]:
They were in areas where he didn’t bother to lock them up or anything. But I mean, you know, the cleanup even was rare, but there was no option. You know, we built one laundry in that area adjacent to an Indian reservation that had no laundry facility for miles. You know, and we, we had a space that we built out where we, we could only put like eight washers in there. It was open 24 hours a day. You go in there 3am and every washer return. That was the busiest little laundry I’ve ever seen in my life. Because the need was there, you know, so the opportunities are all over the place.

Chuck Post [01:22:05]:
This, this industry is a necessity of life for 100% of the population. You know, so you need to assess the market, you need to assess the location, you need to look at the competition, you need to analyze what the market will bear, a bend rate rise, how many times it should turn. You need to know that base level and then you should have a plan to go beyond that. And so the answer to the question is open your eyes, learn the market and give the people what they want.

Chris Mason [01:22:40]:
Don’t be afraid to take action. Right. That’s a big one. You know, fear will freeze you. I’ve seen the best operators take action.

Jordan Berry [01:22:51]:
Yeah, that’s, that’s huge. Right. And like that, I think that’s what stops most people.

Chuck Post [01:22:55]:
Right?

Jordan Berry [01:22:56]:
Is that fear? Yeah, I, I see like part of, part of my role in what I do in consulting. I’m sure you guys have some, some experience with this as well. But part of my role a lot of times is helping people overcome their fear in taking action anyways, even if they are afraid. And the way that I like to phrase it is, you know, borrow my confidence, borrow, borrow my experience, borrow my knowledge and, and be confident in that, even if you’re not confident yourself because you’re not confident because you don’t have the experience yet, you don’t have the knowledge yet. But, but that’s, that’s what we’re here for. Like, that’s what we do is help people get past that fear and take the action. Because reality of it is, and I kind of end Almost every episode like this, I say, you know, hey, glad you listened to this thing. Hope you got a lot out of it.

Jordan Berry [01:23:52]:
I know Chuck and Chris both have a lot to say, but you will have wasted your time if you don’t pick something out of this and take some action on it. Like, it will be a waste of your time. So don’t waste your time. If you want to achieve any goal, it doesn’t matter if it’s laundromat related, cash flow related, getting fit, doesn’t matter what it is. You’ve got to take action towards that goal, have a plan and execute it until it’s executed right, like see it all the way through, just like you’re saying. And you know that’s, that’s what it’s really about. Right. You got to take that action in order to get results that are different than the ones you’re getting now.

Jordan Berry [01:24:28]:
Yeah.

Chuck Post [01:24:29]:
Well, this is a huge industry and.

Jordan Berry [01:24:32]:
Well, hey, let’s wrap this thing up by.

Chuck Post [01:24:35]:
Oh, I was just saying this is a huge industry, but it’s also a sleeping giant. Yeah. Okay. We’re only just starting to really address these issues, you know, really in stores now and.

Chuck Post [01:24:50]:
The people who start thinking this way are going to, going to be way ahead of the game.

Jordan Berry [01:24:58]:
Yeah, I agree. I, I agree wholeheartedly. Actually. I think that that’s, I think that’s spot on. Let’s wrap this thing up with. Why don’t you guys tell, tell us all just a little about PBI and who you guys are, what you guys do and how people can get in contact with you if they’re interested in talking to you.

Chuck Post [01:25:17]:
Okay, well, go ahead. Our website is pbilandry.com and we’ve been around. Well, I’ve been around 40 years and Chris for half of that. So.

Chuck Post [01:25:30]:
We really have a good feel for the industry and when people join us and.

Chuck Post [01:25:37]:
Work with us. We’re a fee based company so we have absolutely no incentive to fool you about anything. We’re going to advocate your position in everything we do and we’re going to be brutally honest at times as to what what store looks like and what the plans are and what reinvestment looks like and those sorts of things.

Chuck Post [01:26:00]:
And that’s real critical because you need that understanding. We’re going to make sure you have it. And that’s what we do. We have an actual kit that our clients work with that’s phenomenal. It starts with the search and how to record things and keep track of things. You know.

Chuck Post [01:26:19]:
Laundry still at the oddest times. You know, you can talk to a guy every three weeks or a year and a half and he never wants to sell it. And you go back and talk to him again, you know what? I actually just sold it, you know. Well, what, you know, so I mean, that’s. The timing just has to be right sometimes, you know, so you have to, if you’re searching for storage, you’ve got to keep after the Target stores, the ones that look good to you. You don’t want to let them go until you’ve acquired something and then you might want to keep them around for the next one, you know. And we make sure that you’re, you’re tracking things right and that you’re getting the right data that you know the situation. We do a lot of review of each store that our clients are looking at with them.

Chuck Post [01:27:02]:
We offer either zoom or calls for that. We go through everything you look at, we look at, we pull the demographics ourselves and do our own research before each call to make sure that we’re on, we know what we’re talking about and we look at all your notes and that sort of thing and we have open discussions and plan the next strategy, you know, and that, that sort of stuff to get you a little further. One thing good about using services like ours is that people fail to act on, on the best opportunities because they really don’t know what they’re looking at. You know, it looks funny to them. Some of the best stores in the market on, on the paper look like the worst. Right? I mean, you know, so they look at these and they get scared. And one thing I know that Chris always tells our clients that are, and when you walk into something, your feet stick to the floor and it smells like mildew. Don’t walk out.

Chuck Post [01:27:53]:
Send us the information that might be the one. And you know, typically it, it oftentimes is if the market’s there, that’s the story you can pick up for a song. You know, it’s, we like to buy a store for at under a hundred thousand and put three or four or five hundred into it and turn it into an eight, nine or a million dollar store. That’s, that’s the plan. It’s not to buy a store for 500,000 and fuse it with 50 grand. You’re only going to get, you know, a 10 or 15% jump. You know, doing that kind of stuff. You know, the opportunity is oftentimes there to multiply that investment.

Chuck Post [01:28:33]:
The investment strategy is better. You’ll rapidly create equity that you can capitalize on and use for towards the down payment of a second store. We do that often.

Chuck Post [01:28:49]:
And, and you’ve got a great experience at the get go. You know, if you go in there and tape up an old store, you know, and get it running, your, your results just aren’t the same. And those are the people. That’s why we have a three to four years life expectancy of owners in this business is that, is that that’s what they do. And that experience can’t be good. They’re struggling to make money because what we talked about at the beginning, that 20 only goes so far as an Annie in gives you an opportunity to create your business. But if you’re going to live on that, it’s a deteriorating value. It’s going to go down.

Chuck Post [01:29:26]:
There’s no question about it. You know, if the machines get to where they’re eight and nine years old, you know, you should be considering what you’re going to do next. And a lot of people that means selling them and to a lot of other people that means buying at that time. So our, our, what we do is we bring true light to the picture. Guidance of how to do it, how to negotiate for your best value. We work a lot with the leases and how to negotiate proper lease because the exit strategy has to be. I start with an exit strategy. When I look at a business, I want to see what their exit strategy is.

Chuck Post [01:30:02]:
That tells me almost everything I need to know. You know, it doesn’t happen. We know our job, right. We have to create one or a path. So at any rate that’s, that’s kind of what we do. Chris, did you want to elaborate? Yeah.

Chris Mason [01:30:14]:
Just to kind of go back to how our website is a really good driver. It’s pbilaundry.com as Chuck had said in our website, we have our menu of services. There’s a tab. All of our fees are transparent. We have them on our website. So there, there’s no undisclosed, there’s no, you know, questions on what we charge. It’s all there. Our phone numbers are in there as well.

Chris Mason [01:30:43]:
And so it’s an easy way. There’s good information on there too. Navigate through it. There’s good articles, there’s good information on stores that we put together, things like that. And we’re always, you know, looking for new clients. And then it’s for us. What’s amazing is, you know, we do our consulting nationwide.

Jordan Berry [01:31:01]:
We do it everywhere.

Chris Mason [01:31:01]:
Our consulting. We’ve got clients in Florida, Texas, Maryland, Carolinas, California, which is, we’re Based in California. We do a ton of work out here as well. But the consulting that we do is nationwide, so, you know, we’re easily found. Should you. Should you want to contact us.

Chuck Post [01:31:25]:
We do weekly webinars.

Jordan Berry [01:31:26]:
Awesome. Thank you, guys. I’ll make sure I have your. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead, Chuck.

Chuck Post [01:31:31]:
Sorry. I was gonna say we do weekly webinars on Wednesdays at noon, California Pacific Standard Time that you’re welcome to. They’re free and they’re live.

Jordan Berry [01:31:40]:
Yeah. Nice. Awesome. And we’ll have the link to. To PBI laundry in the show notes or if you’re on YouTube watching this, we’ll throw it down below.

Chuck Post [01:31:51]:
Chuck.

Jordan Berry [01:31:51]:
Chris, you guys are rock stars. I appreciate not just you guys taking the time to come on here and share your wisdom and all, you know, your. Your insights. You know, one of the things that I, I talk about sometimes that I think you guys is similar to you guys is that we get to have this sort of big picture view because of what we do. We work with a lot of people all over the country and stuff. We get to have this big picture view of the industry that a lot of people don’t get to see because they’re so focused only on their market or their Laundromats even, or a machine in their laundromats sometimes. Right. And so it’s always fun to get together with somebody with that big picture view and seeing what you guys are seeing and comparing that to what I’m seeing.

Jordan Berry [01:32:36]:
And it seems like we’re seeing a lot of the same things. So I appreciate that. But I also appreciate just how you guys operate and how you work with clients and your transparency. There’s, you know, I’ve experienced this personally and I’ve had a lot of people who I’ve spoken with, probably you two who’ve worked with, you know, brokers or other people in the industry who have not had their best interests in mind. We’re not transparent. And you guys are, you know, taking a stand to operate the business, how it should be operated, and really help people achieve their goals. So I really appreciate you guys for all those things. You guys are rock stars in my book.

Jordan Berry [01:33:13]:
Welcome around these parts anytime, for any reason at all. And we’ll have to do this again soon.

Chris Mason [01:33:20]:
Yes, Jordan, we appreciate it. We had a great time.

Chuck Post [01:33:24]:
And we appreciate you as well, Jordan.

Jordan Berry [01:33:28]:
Appreciate it. Guys, listen, there’s like a pile of nuggets that you can choose from today to go out and take some action on. Huge shout out to Chuck and Chris for jumping on and sharing all of that wisdom. And listen, as always, as always, always, always, you’ve got to go out and take the action. Don’t just get that dopamine hit from hearing from cool people like these guys dishing out the wisdom they got, the wisdom they have from getting out there and getting after it. So find something, pick it, do it today if possible, or at least this week, and go put something into action from today’s episode and we’ll see you next time. Peace.