35. Using a Laundromat to Escape the Corporate Rat Race with Steve Andrews

What do you do when your well-paying corporate job just disappears? Well, if you’re Steve Andrews you kiss it goodbye for good!

Steve used his laundromat to escape the corporate rat race and find financial freedom through laundromat ownership and it this show he tells you how he did it and how you can do it, too!

Steve’s story punctuates the power that a well-run laundromat can have in transforming your life. While he was originally planning on buying a smaller, cheaper laundromat, when his corporate job disintegrated he had a decision to make. Should he update his resume and look for another job in the corporate rat race? Or, should he double down and buy a larger laundromat and use that as his escape from the corporate rat race?

In today’s show, Steve tells his riveting tale of his big decision and shares the results of choosing to go big with his Nashville laundromat. Full of valuable insight and experience, Steve’s show is full of practical advice to other laundromat owners and those who want to buy their first laundromat!

In today’s show, Steve and Jordan discuss:

Real estate investments
ROBs- Using retirement money to purchase a small business, like a laundromat
Life in the corporate rat race
Steve’s big decision to leave the corporate rat race and choose laundromat ownership
Cash flow with real estate vs. cash flow with laundromats
Tips for convincing a spouse of the merits of buying a laundromat
What makes a great laundromat location
Building vs. Buying a laundromat business
Laundromat lease negotiations
Laundry pick up and delivery business with Happy Nest
Taking care of good employees
Ensuring a good customer experience

And so much more!

Take out your notepad and pencil because you’re going to write some of this down!

Watch The Podcast Here

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Episode Transcript

Read the Transcript Here

hey what’s up guys it’s jordan with the

laundromat resource

podcast this is show number 35 and i’m

pumped

that you’re here today because today we

have an awesome guest on the show steve

andrews this show was incredible i could

have talked with steve

all day long uh seriously i

it was it was awesome and you’re going

to love it

steve made it out of the corporate rat

race and he wants to

show you how you can do it too that’s

what this episode is all about so i know

you’re going to love

it and and not only that but he also

just gives a ton

of great tips that are going to help you

improve your business

if you got one uh already so definitely

definitely

you’re going to love this one so make

sure you listen all the way to the end

and as always

i’ll share my takeaway and

encourage you slash guilty into picking

something that you can implement this

week because

success follows action and we need to be

taking action

every single week every single day

really on our businesses to move us

towards our goal

so make sure you stay all the way to the

end for that all right

well i’ve been doing these little

success tips

i think that’s what i’m calling them i’m

super on top of it over here

uh it’s you know it’s a monday morning

right now so give me a little bit of

slack

but i’ve been doing these success tips

lately

and this one is uh one i get asked about

all the time

so we have tons of information and tools

obviously on laundromat resource.com

but if you have signed up for a

free membership it’s free no credit card

needed no obligation

whatsoever free membership on the side

over there you got access to

a little bit more information a little

bit more tools

and one in particular i want to

highlight because i get asked this

all the time is the uh analysis to a

drill blank there is the analysis tool

and this is just

an excel spreadsheet that i created a

while back

that is um really helpful in helping you

analyze a laundromat and determine

whether

the laundromat is going to meet your

needs

or not and basically it just tells you

what numbers you need

you plug them in you can you can change

them if you want to

just to kind of see how different things

play out

but that analysis tool is uh man if

you’re looking to buy a laundromat

definitely go

download that if you’re not a member yet

just go sign up for a free membership

it’s free

what are you waiting for just go do it

and then go download this analysis tool

and play around with it a little bit

it would just help you get a better

better idea of how to analyze

a laundromat and give you some

information that can help you make

good decisions obviously it’s not going

to give you all the information that you

need

but it’s definitely a good start and a

good base all right

so that’s the free analysis tool i did

want to highlight

on the forum real quick because the

forums were

geez man they were buzzing this week i

was one of the busiest weeks we’ve had

over there on the forum so if you’re not

over there

you’re supposed to be going over there

every week and asking a question and

answering a question i can’t tell you

how many of you i’ve talked to

even some of the podcast guests who’s

like i know i need to be over there i’ll

get over there

uh and so make sure you’re over there

asking a question

answering a question every week because

man that’s how we all get

better you want to get better i want to

get better

help me get better let me help you get

better let’s all get better together and

just get rich and move to hawaii how

about that

all right let’s just do it so get on the

forum you move to hawaii

that’s the logical conclusion anyways

uh taylor witt over there had a great

question i just wanted to highlight this

one real quick he was asking about

payment options

and wondering if anybody has gone

with uh contactless payments lately

loyalty cards he’s wondering what’s

working right now

what what direction are we moving as an

industry i thought that was a great

question

super timely uh considering the year

that we’ve had

and from everything from obviously the

ronavirus and

also coin shortages and all kinds of

stuff going on right now

uh so i thought that was a great

question so head over there

laudermouthresource.com

forums and jump on the laundromat forum

that’s where this question is

and uh and answer taylor’s question

let’s get a discussion going on payment

systems

over there because now is the time to be

thinking about that stuff so let’s do it

together

all right cool well let’s jump into it

with steve

right after this in today’s world

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and can be found on page one of google

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and expensive to purchase through a

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the description

all right steve thank you for coming on

the show man i am very

very excited to have you cannot wait to

get to know you a little bit better and

hear your story

how you doing good man good thanks for

having me i’m

excited oh man this is going to be i can

tell already this is going to be one of

those episodes where

i slowly slip back into my southern

accent

because i have family from tennessee

you’re in tennessee right

um so uh i well hopefully i can

but i don’t i don’t i don’t really have

an accent right right right

uh yeah uh dude well man what is going

on out there

uh in nashville right now anything

interesting yeah man too we’re just

uh we’re like this cold winter it’s like

40 degrees here

man that does sound like a nightmare to

me once we dip below 50s

i can’t handle it growing traffic every

single day this city is

is it doesn’t look the same as it did

even just five years ago just even if

you look at the skyline of downtown

nashville it’s like

different yeah it’s booming out there

well for good reason nashville is pretty

awesome

so tell us a little bit about you who

are you tell us a little bit about your

backstory and then maybe

get into how you got into the business

yeah sure no

thanks for asking um so i

literally just had my 45th birthday so

i’m like i told my wife i’ve got about

10 more years to live i guess so i

better make this laundry thing

well happy birthday yeah thanks

appreciate it i’ll come to your funeral

in a decade yeah so

um i’ve i’ve been in the laundry

business now

for coming up on almost three years uh

prior to that i spent about 17 years

in the corporate world which is

the main reason why i do this now i mean

it was

one of those things where i did a lot of

sales customer service client management

uh some operations management at one

point i had a team of like 85

folks and you know it was it was

fruitful um and but it just

it didn’t give me that that drive and

that passion i just

felt like i had 27 bosses every single

day that i had to

report to so i really wanted to

i’ve always had an entrepreneurial

spirit so i was really looking for

something where i could utilize that

um as a matter of fact uh one of your

your previous guests

uh jd dixon from national laundry

equipment yeah

is his his wife and my wife are actually

good friends

and um so i’ve kind of gotten to know jd

over the years and

you know he told me about this crazy

laundry business and you’re nuts why in

the world would you be

doing laundry that’s just ridiculous

i i finally got to the point where i was

just done you know my wife and i

had done a lot of real estate investment

over the years and so

i was kind of looking for another option

another investment option so i was like

all right jd tell me about this uh

this laundry thing he obviously it

had built two as he mentioned on his

show he built one for his brother

fairly recently and the brother was

doing pretty well so i was like tell me

about it

and the more and more he talked i

started researching

you know what was out there which you

know really wasn’t a lot

uh but i tried to find as much as i

could and just absorb myself in it

and it just it was just something that

really piqued my interest so i started

exploring it

um and uh went on a couple of ride-outs

with

uh one of his sales guys actually to

check out some laundries and him to kind

of fill me in on the business

that that really just uh wetted my

appetite just a little bit more

so um i i actually i don’t know how many

folks have done this but

i um kind of used some creative

financing

to get into the business i used what’s

called a robs which is a rollover 401k

and

i think someone’s mentioned it before oh

they’re booming

on the forums right now they’re yeah

there’s like a mega thread happening on

robs right now so a lot of people are

interested in that maybe you could tell

us a little bit about it

yeah so i i’ve literally i just joined

the other day so i’ll get on that forum

and check it out

if i can offer anything additional i

will but so essentially

um the the way i describe it

easily is so for all those 17 years i

was in corporate world

i’ve been chunking away money on my 401k

and i moved from two or three different

businesses so as i

moved to a new company i would take my

old 401k and put it into a rollover

401k um i think i did with fidelity

so those were still accumulating value

over the years

and when i started looking at the

capital that was involved in

building or remodeling a laundry i

realized that i was going to need some

help so

i researched the rocks and i’ve worked

with a company called gaiden

they were spectacular it’s not

commercial for them but anyway

um and essentially the way i described

it would be though if the price was

right

guidance yeah commercial for you i’m

just saying

yeah i think you need any marketing

opportunities yeah

um so essentially what you do is you use

your

your 401k dollars uh to invest in your

business now there’s certain

restrictions that are out there that you

can’t use the money for

uh but luckily enough laundromats are a

perfect opportunity

so i always describe it as i am part

owner in my business

my 401k is the majority owner

which is great especially if the

business is doing well so essentially i

bet on myself and bet on my business

that

i could do better than what the market

was going to do with my floor

yeah and uh are you happy with that

decision so far

yeah yeah so far so good now

they always they will tell you that at

some point you can

buy 401k out if you ever want to

you have to go through a process where

an account comes in

values the business and then you buy

back the shares

from your company at the new valuation

so if at any point from a uh accounting

perspective if there’s a need to change

that then

then you can do that but if the business

is doing well then the value is going to

go up you’re going to pay a little bit

more than maybe you would have on

right either way it’s good for you

personally even if you’re 401k

um so anyway um worked with with jd and

his team on finding a good place

i had financing in place um worked with

with eastern to kind of cover their

portion of the equipment they were

wonderful uh jennifer whitney over there

she’s spectacular

um we we found a great spot in a little

town called uh

just just south of here called smyrna

it was an old jack-in-the-box actually

so we’re like yeah this would be great

it’s right on the road up front parking

you know standalone building is going to

be great well we couldn’t get the

the owner still had an existing lease

with jack in the box

so they were still paying her even

though the building had been empty for a

year plus and

she didn’t want to drop that lease a

year early even though we were telling

her hey we’ll do ten years

two five year uh add-ons after that but

she didn’t want to so we had to move on

and

god what a blessing that was because we

landed where we’re at

today which is actually uh in a little

a portion of nashville called antioch

and i you know those guys

the my uh distributor was just

spectacular they

everything they they suggested to me to

do i literally i did it

and they were right about i would say 90

of everything almo all the way down to

the point to where they would say

hey the bulk of your customers are going

to come from over here

they’re going to pass right by you on

the road to get to the interstate

trust me and they were just dead on

right because it was absolutely true

that’s awesome did you end up going with

yeah yeah yeah we did uh he he

supplied our equipment on our first

store and um

i’ll talk about a little bit later but

we’re getting ready to do store number

two and then we’re gonna work with the

game on that

so awesome but we we found a location

and

so we’re like all right three months

we’re gonna be in got the contractor

literally a week into the project the

project leader

quit from the crash so

and and honestly he was the main reason

why we chose this contractor because we

knew he had done laundromats before

it was just so what was supposed to be a

three month

long process turned into a nine month

build out

was extremely painful because again you

know i had the money to

um to to get to do the build out

i hadn’t allowed for nine months of

personal capital to cover

bills and expenses so it dug into my

savings a little bit

stress along with that and my wonderful

wife she was very supportive

along the way and uh anyway lo and

behold december 2018 we opened up our

doors

30 minutes after i flipped on the on

switch people started rolling in

and they haven’t stopped since so it’s

just been wow

that’s awesome i mean that’s i get the

just the stress and frustration of

you know these prolonged you know

build-outs or construction or

installations or whatever and you know

you’re you just see money

going out the door you know just going

out nothing’s coming in you’re like

you’re not it’s your first one too right

so you’re not even sure if it’s coming

back

after you’ve flipped the switch because

you’ve never done it before so

that’s definitely stressful yeah

definitely and those guys kept telling

me don’t worry as soon as you turn it on

you’re gonna do well i promise you they

were

not wrong at all uh so anyway um

i i thank them and i think of the word

where i’m at today

yeah well real quick as a quick side

note if you’re

in that area i’ll i’ll throw a link down

to um

national and jd’s episode also

in the show notes in the description in

case you’re interested because it was an

awesome it’s one of the more downloaded

episodes jd’s episode um so definitely

check it out

and if you’re looking for equipment and

you’re in that area hit em up

uh cool okay so you

went through you know looking for this

investment and you

stumbled on laundromats and njd and you

got

you know you caught the fever at some

point

and what were they doing for the the

build-out you said it took nine months

were they

building it out or were you just

retooling it what were you doing

yeah so um it before it was a laundromat

it was a daycare on one section a barber

shop

and like a little office building so we

combined all three

about 4 600 square foot total wow

so it’s it’s pretty big space but i mean

honestly the

the biggest struggle was trying to get

water in the building

so it was a daycare so it had a small uh

small pipe so we had to upgrade the

meter we had to upgrade the pipe

and um kind of a funny story

um i one of the things that our site

plan showed was that the

water line or the water main from the

city was located in the middle of the

road

and so the cost was going to be enormous

to try and tap into that line to get to

put the new meter in

and i still remember i remember the

exact moment in the day

um and uh what

the day before i’d had uh the services

come out you know how the

811 where they’ll mark all the utilities

so i had to

come out they mark the water line gas

line all that stuff

and so i i remember coming around the

turn there’s a four-way stop right there

at our

four-way red light at our store i came

around the turn

the first thing i was looking for was

where those spray paint marks were

and a lot of prayers answered because

those spray paint marks were not

in the middle of the road they were

actually in our front yard oh

perfect so probably saved me about 17

grand

right on the back end of the project

which at that point

was you know money i didn’t really want

to have to spend so

it was pretty pretty exciting i i did a

little happy dance in the middle of the

road

yeah i bet it kind of probably helped

offset a lot of the cost of that

nine months instead of three months that

extra six months too

well and one thing too is we had

negotiated in our lease

a build out time frame so you know we

weren’t paying any rent for the first

four months so that was meant i had to

pay it for five months of that night

there was extra cost yeah that’s

that’s stressful you’re paying rent for

a business that

isn’t open and probably at that you know

four month mark or five month mark

it probably wasn’t even looking like it

was close to being ready either so

that’s even harder

i was uh i was struggling but i was

keeping the faith so uh

man has it paid off because i i

absolutely love this business

it’s been a godsend for me because like

i said i was miserable sitting at my

desk every day in my corporate job

of course i never envisioned that oh

yeah you’re going to be some kind of a

you know

laundry mat i don’t think too many of us

had that dream as a kid you know maybe

some who like grew up in the family or

something but

not too many of us i’m always like how

did i end up here i don’t i don’t know

i tell my kids i was like are you guys

when you grow up are you gonna you know

work with daddy and they can’t look at

one

so i don’t we’ll see

yeah yeah the new dream laundromat owner

no longer astronauts or

youtube stars or anything you can

you know wash clothes yeah it’d be great

okay so so you went through this process

took nine months super stressful money

going out nothing coming in

and you flip that switch tell me about

what that was like that day

and i i still have like the

uh video saved on my phone where i

turned on the water and water actually

came out of the faucet

i turned on the machine and there was

water in there so

it was a you know a pretty joyous day

here’s the thing though so obviously my

my build out went long

my cost went way above where i expected

i originally planned to be attended from

the start

that was my plan um and i i did

actually uh i was attended from the

start

by me so for

literally the first i think it was 93

days that we were open

i worked every single day as the

attendant

usually eight to 10 hour days every

single day

again my wife was a single mom for three

months plus

taking care of our kids while i was

trying to stand up this business

and you know my plan all along was to

be attended uh get the self-serve part

down pat learn learn more about it get

my hands dirty

which in 93 days you learn a lot being

there every single day

yep and so i did i really got a you know

trial by fire hose i guess where i was

you know drinking

way too much water every single day

and uh but i was able to learn the

business i got to know the customers

so many that’s one of the awesome things

about this business and

if you’re an owner that never goes into

your store and talks to your owners i

urge you to get out and talk

to these people because there are just

some wonderful people that come in and

out of these stores

every day oh there’s some some

questionable ones as well but

i guarantee the good ones far outweigh

the bad ones because

they’re just really really down-to-earth

people you learn some awesome stories

and

and really you make friends i mean to

this day there are people that i’ll walk

in and say hey peter how you doing

you know uh hey marguerite you know

you’re here on a tuesday usually come on

wednesday what’s up with that

you know things like that and they just

they just eat that up

especially when they know that you’re

the owner and not you know just some

random bobbin store

yeah yeah we just we had a guest peter

mayberry who was on not

too long ago and he was saying the exact

same thing he’s like you know everybody

has

something to offer so i like to go in

those stores and spend a little time

with the customers i could not agree

more i got friends that

you know both of my stores that you know

if i ever

sell them it’s gonna be hard actually to

sell because it’s gonna be hard to leave

some of these people that i see every

week when i go in there you know so

i know their stories and you know their

families and i’ve gone through

i’ve gone to funerals for you know

family members of customers and stuff

and so yeah it’s

it becomes a little community and i

think that’s one of the beauties of

this business and this industry is that

if you want it to be

you know it can be a little community

and a gathering place for

a community and you can be a part of it

even if you don’t live in that community

yeah you can be a part of it so it’s

pretty cool yeah absolutely

but my plan was to start get the

self-service right

uh then i even put on our sign

originally our site or our sign said

the name of our store is the wash house

which i didn’t know about the willow

first in north carolina when i

came up with that name uh but anyway so

the watch house a full service laundry

mat so my plan all along was to

offer additional lines of business so

get the self-service right

learn the drop-off piece of it and then

eventually expand into pickup and

delivery and

my my time frame got kind of expedited

along the way which is fine

but now we’re into all three of those

lines currently

yeah so you’re doing them all now yeah i

want to hear

a little bit about that in a second um

out of curiosity are you are you still

working your corporate job or did you

quit that job or tell me about that

situation no um so

when i first started looking for the

laundromat

i was working corporate corporate job

six figure job

great great job and

uh my plan was to do a small laundromat

probably unattended um and

just go from there as an investment well

the year turned and a lot of times

happens a lot of times at the

beginning of a year corporate world they

do realignment so

my job actually got eliminated and

they came to me and they said well steve

we got some other options over here

you know would you be interested in

doing those and i said

nope nope uh this is this is my time

um give me the severance i’ll take that

and so i took the package and

decided that instead of going smaller

unattended that i was going to go full

blown

full service fully attended large store

and really do it right

and that’s probably the best decision i

ever made in my life because

it’s really paid off for me and

so have you not had to go back to

corporate

world at all no so now part of it too

remember i mentioned my wife and i

dabbled in some real estate investment

so at the time we had four rental

properties

uh that were pretty beneficial and so we

did liquidate a couple of those

to kind of help pay expenses during the

build out

that’s part of that savings i mentioned

earlier so

we were able to sustain our lifestyle

while we were doing the build out and

into the growing of the business as well

uh that that worked out well but i i

love real estate i’m going to get back

into it again very soon so

we’ll see yeah i’m i’m with you on that

i love

i love real estate too and i think it

pairs well with laundromats

oh yeah so yeah

okay so you you got out of the rat race

kind of you kind of got shoved out of

the rat race and but because of

investments you had made and because of

you know this laundromat

you you were okay with it like you

didn’t have to claw your way back

into the rat race you could just let it

go yeah

yeah definitely and that was that was

probably

you know you you you go into work some

days and you think

god man i’m not feeling this i just

i could have done this maybe i could

have worked a little harder here or done

this a little differently or or what and

but then when you get into something

where you own your own business it’s a

business that you love

i never question myself as far as how

much effort i’m putting it because i

know i’m always going 200 percent if not

so uh it’s just it’s a matter of finding

your passion and my passion was always

to own a business

and i love this business so those two

things just work well together

i i will never go back into the

corporate world again

um i mean we we even cut back a little

bit on kind of what our monthly expenses

were my wife and i did and

we’re you can ask her i guarantee you i

smile

a whole lot more now than i did you know

and that’s that’s what it’s all worth

yeah well i

i mean that’s awesome thank you for

sharing that because i get

you know i have i do coaching with a lot

of people and a lot of people

just they want a way out of the rat race

right

and and i think laundromats can be a

great

escape you know from the rat race

because

um and you know if as long as you buy it

correctly or build it out correctly

you know you can get such great returns

that

you know for a relatively small

investment you can get a

a large return back and it can help you

get that cash flow that you need

to to free you up to you know

exit the corporate world if that’s what

you’re trying to do a lot quicker than

other

average investments you know you can do

well in real estate and i’m a huge fan

of real estate

but the average real estate investment

is not going to be able to touch the

cash flow

of the average laundromat investment so

you just hit on the exact sales point i

gave my wife

so when i told her all right we need to

sell these properties

and then we’re going to use that to live

off of while we do the video she was

let me let me tell you more about that

and so

i literally used that same argument i

said well yes we’re gaining equity by

them paying on the mortgage

every month but our actual cash flow

right now is

maybe just a few hundred bucks out of

each one of these properties

turn that into you know tens of

thousands of dollars in cash flow

and a salary for me and maybe for you

down the line

then you know there’s a real opportunity

there so she bid on that now

i did have to promise that she would

never have to do laundry again

so that’s part of the deal

so that’s what expedited the drop off

and pick up and delivery isn’t it be

honest

yeah yeah it did help now the first 90

days that i worked

guess he was doing the laundry yeah

hey like you said you can learn a lot of

things in 93 days

being out in the laundromat every day so

how to fold socks in a fitted jeep which

yeah well we had a mark last camp was on

and he was talking about how

you know he he he feels like he can

fold a fitted sheet with the rest of

them you know the best of the best of

the best out there so

we’re gonna have to have a competition

out there someday of all the uh

owners yeah

that’s so funny um yeah that i mean

that’s awesome

and and it’s awesome that your your wife

trusted you enough to do that you know

because i know

i know the struggle of having a vision

of what

it could be and and having to bring

somebody along with that vision

sometimes can be tough very much you got

any tips for uh

for anybody out there trying to convince

a spouse to buy a laundromat

well i mean obviously if you convince

them they don’t do laundry anymore

that’s a massive one

so i literally i just sit there and and

of course i helped sometimes

not as much as i probably should have

bad on me but i mean it would take her

hours to do and we have two kids so

folding those tiny clothes everyone

knows is a pain in the butt

so uh you know i just convinced her that

her time

savings alone would be worth whatever we

put in the building

but yeah a lot of sweet talk and offer

that up and

honestly i mean there really is if

you’ve got a vision for what you want to

and you’ve got a set plan and you follow

that plan and you’re you’re diligent

about it

and you do things the right way then

this business can open up so many doors

i mean

your vision might be i just want to own

one laundromat and that’s it that’s

great

you can you can live off of that very

easily if you’re in the right place and

you do the right thing

but if you’re kind of like me and you

have crazy dreams that want to do bigger

and better things then

whatever job you may have had uh in the

corporate world like i said i left a

six-figure job

i see this as a bigger opportunity than

that ever was

yeah well that’s that’s huge and i love

that and i love that you have

big dreams and uh you know again like

just like you said

you know you can get one laundromat and

live a nice life off of that and that’s

totally

fine but it also gives you an

opportunity to do

more if that’s what you want to do and

yeah

i love that i love that um okay

so you bought this laundromat

do you have any do you have any idea how

long okay

because you built this thing it wasn’t a

laundromat before you built it into a

laundromat

any idea on how long it took to become

profitable

less than a month oh my gosh well

and you know that was because i i didn’t

have any employee costs right

so um and we yeah so we opened on

december 18

or december 14th we just had our

two-year anniversary yesterday

yay happy anniversary yeah and uh

so we were december that first half

december was a problem

and then it was balloon from there and

that is not typical i will tell you that

not i’m hearing you guaranteeing that if

you build a laundromat

it will be that’s what i’m hearing right

now

no that’s awesome i mean it’s a good

time to build you know to fling open the

doors because

i find that the end of the year has been

some of my busiest days

i think i don’t know if people just want

to start the new new year off with clean

clothes and that’s what it is

or um we we have a lot of

uh hispanic customers and a lot of them

tell me that you know their their

culture is

they want everything clean going here so

they bring

everything which is just great

um so yeah okay

so well man that’s a short story then

you just less than a month you’re good

to go and

you had a profitable first year it

sounds like even though it was only like

12 days now what’s unique in

for new owners the demographics are

really important so our demographics

were really really good when we

selected this spot but we were

so if you look but i don’t know if you

people listening can’t sing but behind

me i’ve got this giant map of

nashville and i literally have marked

out

every single laundry mat with their

demographics all over the city

on there and if you look at where we’re

at we are smack dab in the middle of

about

six or seven other laundromats and

so there’s a lot of competition in the

area but

you know we just put a product out there

right off the bat that

people fell in love with and i’m not

patting myself on the shoulder

it was a combination of things that that

jd’s team

wanted and i’ll say uh john pell on jd’s

team is

he’s a genius because he had all kinds

of ideas about what we should and

shouldn’t do and we followed a lot of

those

and but we just put a product out there

that i think people really liked and

came to love and so we took off right

off the bat now

the nine month build out that we had

hurt us

but most of that nine month build out we

had a coming soon sign out front

so it was kind of building up a little

anticipation in our customer base too

because they would drive by and see that

coming soon and then they were probably

like well when is it actually coming

so it’s a relative term

to check it out so that helped a lot

yeah okay so

at what point then did you decide hey

this

is awesome i want to do this again

man right from the start i i knew

in the beginning i told my wife i said

you know i want to do

five and five years and again that had

to take some

selling but um you know

obviously with the success we had in the

beginning

i felt like we could probably recreate

that if we could find the right location

the right spot

and so um you know for the last i would

say probably the last year i’ve been

really kind of looking at different

locations and i think we found one we

we’ve signed a lease

um another spot here in nashville

that we think we can recreate what we

did in the first flight so

um i you know i think

a lot of i’ve heard a lot of owners come

on your your site say well we’re gonna

do 10 or

you’re the watch house in north carolina

you’re going to do 50

and you know some people say 40. i’d be

past 50 now

i don’t know he’s collecting them like

they’re nothing that’s

great but

you know i i looked at it as an industry

where

for the most part if you go into any

laundromat man they’re just

they’re just rough and i saw it

as an opportunity because like i

mentioned to you i was in real estate so

i enjoyed flipping houses i like taking

something ugly and making it pretty

that’s just the ocd in me so i saw it as

an opportunity to do that with a

whole industry not just me alone but to

do my part in it

where i could go in find something that

i mean

why isn’t this done better it could be

done better

you know i talked about putting out a

product that people really like

the way i see it is there’s no reason in

the world

why a person who comes into a laundromat

to do their laundry

can’t have the same experience and

atmosphere

that they do when they go by their

iphone at apple you know why can’t it be

clean

why can’t it be you know tops and

technology why can’t

just the aesthetic just feel good you

know with plenty of space to move around

you know people not jumping on top of

each other machines

working all the time uh just a clean

clean clean clean and that’s really kind

of what we

we shoot for and if you

if you get the chance to look at any of

our reviews

man that’s that’s the number one thing

everyone says cleanest place i’ve ever

been to

their tenants are so friendly they’re

great you know and so those are the

those are things i really

like to focus on yeah yeah that recipe

is not

so complicated but it can be tough to do

so so kudos to you and

that’s the thing that we did we’ve got 4

600 square feet but

we didn’t slam 100 machines into 4 600

square feet you know i didn’t want

you know two people getting clothes out

of their washer and dumping booties that

kind of thing so

um you know i wanted people to get a

nice what do you always hear an hdtv oh

it has a nice airy feel

right open concept laundry yeah

[Laughter]

well i mean you mentioned a couple times

that you’re

you know you’re looking for the right

location can you can you give us like

a sense of what are you looking for that

makes a location

a right location well um so there’s a

few different things

obviously there has to be a volume of

people there that will

support a laundry laundry and you know

you look at look at the competition in

the area how many other laundries are

there

and even if there’s a bunch like i said

i went in and there were seven around me

but i walked into every single one of

those and i felt like we could

we could do better um i also

i mean obviously one of the most

important percentage numbers you want to

look at are the percent of renters

percent household vendors in the area a

lot of the numbers that

you know i was seeing out there was you

know almost 35 or better

i like to do better than that there’s a

lot of areas in nashville where

i mean we’re we’re at almost 60 percent

in our location percent renters

there’s tons of locations that are 45-50

so i think those are areas that

are just ripe you know a lot of folks

just they’re they’re transient so

they’re not going to spend money on a

washer and dryer they don’t

have to move it every single time or

maybe they just don’t have the

the liquid cash to buy one so those are

perfect

opportunities for an awesome laundry

yeah and i literally i i got out and i

drove the area as well if i find a spot

i like i’ll drive around

i’ve got files where i would do a google

map put a three mile radius around that

location

and pinpoint where all the apartment

complexes are

where maybe there’s government housing

or there’s some

mobile home parks you know a lot of the

areas that are usually

good customers for laundry mats that

need an awesome laundromat

and i’ll draw it out and if that picture

looks good let’s go for it let’s see if

we can get a good leads

yeah that’s that’s awesome i think

that’s super helpful a lot of people

you know when they’re looking to buy

their first laundromat or build out a

first laundromat

that location is so critical and it’s so

key because

well just like real estate like you

can’t move your location

right so once you’re once you put those

routes down

it’s real tough and real expensive to

move a laundromat and really not that

practical

so you got to get that location right

and you know looking at you know the

population numbers the competition the

percentage of renters

you know those kind of availability of

parking

you know visibility from the street

you know traffic going by i mean you

mentioned that with your

you know laundromat that there’s traffic

going by it all the time

you know you got to have these things in

order to

get the traffic that you need to to get

the numbers that you need to make the

business profitable

the the parking styles are super

important

so when we built our laundry we had

17 all up front parking spots

and i felt like that was going to be

enough but it wasn’t so now i’m actually

looking at expanding my parking lot

and hopefully within the next six months

we’ll add some more but the parking

is is just massive i can’t tell you how

many

customers i probably have lost because

they see the parking lots full and

there’s a lot of other places they can

go so they just drive down the street

and go there so yeah the the

big windows you mentioned visibility the

big windows are

huge both for people who are in the

store so they feel comfortable they can

see out lots of

lots of natural light but then two

someone who doesn’t know you or what

you’re doing or what you’re laundering

that’s like they’ll drive by

they’ll do it right you know the good

kind of drugs

and they want to see as soon as they

look through that window

we put the biggest machine right up

front the big granddaddy’s our 80-pound

machine

so the people see that they’ve got a lot

of capacity there we can

we could watch everything in one machine

yeah you actually can

yeah yeah pretty awesome

uh super good tips too um okay

so you decided you wanted to build out

a store why

why build as opposed to buy

well so yeah that’s a that’s a good

question

i and i’m i’m kind of contemplating

contemplating the the two different

options as i move forward so store one

we did build out

i was looking for build out right from

the get-go because

again i didn’t want to be relying upon

any other store’s existing

infrastructure

i wanted to develop it build it exactly

as i wanted i wanted

bathrooms in a certain spot i wanted my

attendant desk in a certain spot

and i wanted the machines in a certain

area and

and like i said most existing laundries

especially the ones that have been

around for

you know 20 plus years which are usually

the ones that are potentially on the

market for sale

the layouts are just awful and they’re

they’re small

and i didn’t want small i wanted large i

wanted big

we got a really good you know friendly

lease as far as the per square footage

and so that just worked out now as i

move forward

as i was looking for a second location

uh we’re actually gonna the second

location is gonna be bigger than the

first one

um it might be a little too large i

think it may be the

the happy spot is between building one

and building two so

number two is going to be about 6 600

square feet

and so there’s going to be just a ton of

space in there

but again the new space has high

ceilings my

my existing one does not so i like the

the open field high ceilings

um we’re gonna do ozone in the new

location

uh i’m also gonna retrofit my old

location with ozone and

oh my gosh i’m so excited about that i

can’t even begin to tell you because

just just the opportunity especially

with cobit but just moving forward

in this market there’s not i don’t know

of any that have it now i think there’s

one other that may be getting it soon

but um just to have that kind of niche

in our pocket to be able to market and

to offer not only to our self-service

customers but

i’m thinking more as we grow our pick up

and delivery that that’s going to give

us an upper hand against a lot of our

competitors because

that ozone just really adds a lot to

what you’re doing the end product that

you’re giving your customers so

yeah huge good it’s a good time to

own stock in the ozone companies right

now with

everything that’s going on yeah

a lot of people are adding those things

and for good reason i think it’s you

know

definitely a unique selling proposition

that

i think you’re right bodes well

especially for the pickup and delivery

yes it’s such a

an infant market for pickup and delivery

that uh i just think that it it’s going

to explode

my my good friend dave mins who you know

very well

oh yeah we’ve we’ve talked a lot about

this market

and the opportunity here and he’s he’s

told me on a couple of occasions that

he’s jealous i’m in this market so dave

thank you laundromat millionaire i’ll

link to his too if you haven’t his

his episode is actually the most

downloaded episode of the podcast

it’s phenomenal it’s show number two he

got there right in the beginning

and it’s it’s great so i’ll link that to

you if you haven’t heard it yet

go listen to it um okay so where are you

at in your build-out process

right now so we literally um

are have submitted our permit and uh the

only thing i’m waiting on

i need a and so as part of our lease

i got the landlord to agree to take on

some of the cost of the build out which

i suggest

as an option to all all folks that might

be negotiating a lease

so it was a restaurant formally

and so there’s a decent amount of demo

that has to happen so the landlord’s

going to pay for that

they’re going to pay to ensure that we

get

the uh the correct size water meter

and line in there so

the backflow preventer as well has to be

upgraded

they’re going to take care to make sure

we get the right uh gas meter

they’re going to ensure that we’ve got

the correct electrical ampage that we

need

and they’re also going to take care of

any improvements that need to happen to

the existing hvac and sprinkler system

and so they’ve been they’ve been really

great at trying to

help with some of the build out which uh

i say get as much as you can whenever

you do it

now one of the things that they they do

want is they want an agreement with my

contractor

for all of those pieces so once that’s

negotiated which we expect that to be

this week

man we’re hoping we might be able to

start demo

maybe next week obviously christmas

throws a little bit of a wrench in it

but

we’re hoping to start demo before the

end of the year and

maybe be able to open the doors by

middle of april

first of may hopefully hey that’s

exciting man this is uh right on the

precipice of

hopefully this time the ride won’t be as

bumpy as the last

you know there’s always bumps though and

you just

you just know it going in well you

probably didn’t know it going in

you know the first time around i didn’t

know it going in my first time

but there’s always bumps and you just

you adapt like you survived you figured

it out and

hung on and here you are man again

pinnacle of your life probably being on

the podcast right now so

absolutely you have made it my friend

you have made it no i’m just kidding

um yeah well i mean that’s exciting to

have that happening

and it’s your second one it kind of

takes you to

another level too you know after you

it’s kind of like having kids right you

have one and it’s like a big deal

and then you have another one and it’s a

big deal too but it

it changes things because now you just

you can’t focus all your attention on

your

your one kid you know now you got two

kids and you’re splitting your attention

and so there’s news

new skill sets to learn and new systems

to put in place and it’s just it’s

exciting

it’s exciting times yeah the new systems

in place i think is the big point there

i’m i’m right now trying to put the

infrastructure in place

so that the existing work i’m doing

doesn’t

double with the second store so

we’re looking at putting some some store

managers in place

and also hiring a new driver for a

pickup and delivery business so

i think with those things in place i’ll

be able to get more of the ceo

how far apart are the two locations

about 20 miles which is a little more

than i wanted because

actually my my plan i i have some

excellent points i mean i i was very

blessed in the beginning

we’ve got currently seven total

employees at

one store but i have i have three or

four that are just

absolutely management material maybe

even bigger and better than that

so i’m hoping that i’m going to be able

to transfer one of them to the new store

to help stand it up which is going to

make that

that initial 90 days a lot easier than

the last one exactly

learning from your last mistakes i love

it not mistakes but your last

the lessons you needed to learn next man

i learned everything by screwing it up

man welcome to the club welcome to the

club

so i’m hoping to be able to get one of

them to uh to travel the extra 20 miles

help you know i’ll give her some upset

yeah are you planning on um

running pickup and delivery out of both

locations

well um that’s a good question i haven’t

decided yet so

the pickup and delivery customer base is

still growing we cover two counties here

in nashville williamson county and

davidson county

um both of my stores are in davidson

county i

personally live in williamson county so

it’s easy to cover that

but um you know i like i said i’d love

move the pickup and delivery and one of

our large commercial clients we have

to the new store number one there’s more

space

number two because of the ozone so we’ll

see how it works out and what the

logistics look like

um like i said this other store is kind

of uh

i don’t give anything away but it’s a

decent drive away from our existing

store which is a little more centrally

based so

we’ll we’ll see how that goes to being

returned yeah

yeah wow yeah that’s there’s a lot of

there’s a lot of logistics involved

especially when you’re adding two

locations and you’ve got that much space

so i think probably your best course of

action is just to

buy up everything between them you know

over the next few years and

i want to go back real quick i want to

talk to you about pick up and delivery

for a second but

before that um you mentioned um

which i thought was like great advice

for anybody building out or even if

you’re just buying a laundromat

negotiating a new lease you talked about

negotiating

with the landlord and how they’re

helping you know with some of the

build-out costs and stuff

out of curiosity did you do that

negotiation did you have somebody doing

that for you how did you navigate that

so yes i did most of the negotiations so

a lot of what i did in my corporate life

uh with a lot of my client management

pieces i negotiated a lot of contracts

now i negotiated they wrote it up and

then i had a lawyer review it so i

really suggest but essentially what i

gave my lawyer was our

loi um so we we had an loi between the

two of us

but um i mean yeah there were certain

things i knew i wanted uh

as far as rate goes what type of lease

um so in my existing my existing

store we’ve got a triple at least which

yeah i’m not a huge fan of that awesome

for the landlord

it is right so i knew going second go

around i didn’t necessarily want to do

that unless the rate was just

ridiculously good and i’d be like okay

so we’re we’re in a gross lease on the

new one which i feel a lot better about

because

in especially in davidson county they

just they just

up property um interest rates so

uh property taxes so obviously that gets

passed on to you in a triple net lease

and

and i just didn’t want to take on that

cost they went up 34

in in davidson campbell jeez

yeah thank you covet right um yeah

real quick real quick i just want to

interrupt you i don’t want to lose

anybody so if somebody doesn’t know what

a triple net lease is

it’s where the essentially the business

pays for taxes

insurance and maintenance on the

property so if you’re a property owner

you essentially have no expenses you

pass

all expenses on to the businesses under

the triple net lease so

the three nets the triple nets taxes

insurance and

maintenance and usually the way they

they put it

they’ll say okay it’s um x amount of

dollars per square foot per year

is the lead and then there’s what they

call cam charges ca

those that’s where all of those extra

extras come into play so yeah and cam

stands for common area maintenance

which basically means you use this part

of the business but you also got to take

care of everything else

so it’s awesome awesome if you’re a

landlord it

is kind of a bummer if you’re the

business but anybody

it is and what sucks is the landlord put

a new roof

on the my existing store before i leased

it from him and whoever he had to do it

was awful

so again i think what i’m going to do is

go back and try to negotiate something

with him on that he’s

he’s pretty amiable so i feel like he’ll

work with me on it but yeah

yeah yeah and that’s the danger

of having a triple net lease is you know

there’s deferred maintenance or so if

you’re if you’re looking to buy a

business

and you’re being offered a triple net

lease well it’s worth your time to go

have somebody check the place out and

see like is that roof gonna need to be

repaired in three years because you can

get slapped with a

pretty huge bill in three years you know

and usually it’s split i mean it can be

anything but usually it’s split between

all the tenants

as a percentage of the the total square

footage that your business is

that’s usually how it works but it could

be other ways but it’s worth

trying to figure out you know does the

parking lot need to be redone does the

roof need to be redone you know

any of those you know maintenance issues

that’s going to be passed on to you that

could be

big costs well worth checking that out

just to so you know going into it what

expenses are coming down the pipeline

hvac and if they have a sprinkle of that

as well so

yeah an inspection is not an awful idea

yeah um okay so so you negotiated this

i think the the thought of negotiating

a lease or

even like a purchase agreement or any

any kind of negotiation i think

strikes fear in the hearts of many

uh and and to a point where i think some

people if they feel like they have to

negotiate

something like that that they’ll just

pass on

it completely because they’ll feel like

they’re out of their element

it’s kind of can be it’s it’s like a

conflict right when you’re negotiating

you’re kind of in a conflict and you’re

trying to resolve it and and people

don’t

a lot of people feel uncomfortable with

that so you have any

tips for somebody who’s feeling like

that and hearing that you negotiated all

these cool

things and them feeling like i have no

idea if i could even do that

well so let me tell you this if this was

my first laundromat there’s no way i

would do it

the the only way i kind of had an idea

when we were doing the first lease of

okay that’ll work

was uh just feedback from my distributor

you know i would ask them questions so

typically

is this something that you see in your

leases is this something that that works

well

um or if you happen to know a

reputable broker in the area that you

feel comfortable with a business broker

that

might have done a couple of laundromat

deals then you know it can’t hurt to

have them on your side to

negotiate for you there there was a

broker involved in this

it was the landlord’s broker but you

know they were they were very amiable to

most of my needs this this spot had set

open for a number of years so i had a

little bit of leverage

uh in trying to get in there and um

they’re

they’re trying to kind of you know

reinvigorate this particular

strip mall there’s some pretty exciting

things going in there

that if i could say i would but i can’t

they won’t let me but

it’s pretty cool what they’re doing so i

feel like i’m getting in at the right

time but

i would tell most people to if you’re

not comfortable

then don’t do it because you’ll get

yourself in trouble

uh go find someone that you either know

of that

either your distributor a broker or if

you have someone in the business that

you know of or reach out to someone on

some of these uh

these boards i know on your board uh

jordan there’s probably some folks that

would be willing to mentor some people

you

uh i know dave mends does some of it so

there’s options out there

uh people take advantage of that don’t

don’t step into the poo

with no shoes on so

i i think i’m gonna have to quote you on

that one don’t step in the poop with no

shoes on

uh that’s genius yeah and i would i

would

wholeheartedly agree with you

don’t try to negotiate don’t and

especially don’t let that

the fear of negotiating stop you from

getting into the business because

typically you’re not negotiating your

own leases typically you’re not

negotiating

your own purchase agreement typically

you’re working with a broker

and or a distributor or hire a lawyer

who can negotiate these things for you

or a consultant

you know we do that dave mintz does that

there’s a ton of consultants

out there that can do uh lease

negotiations or purchase agreement

negotiations

uh lois you know for you so

i just i just wanted to say that because

you know it’s pretty impressive

you know what you were able to negotiate

but i just know from talking to a lot of

people that

that is terrifying for most people so

well again there was a little bit of

leverage on my side just because how

long it had been vacant

but and they they just they liked the

concept of what we were doing to

the the space usage and uh you know we

showed them

what we were already doing at our

existing store and they just

they they collapsed onto it yeah

and i think he made a good point too uh

and you know mark stern made this point

in his episode um that right now is a

great time to be negotiating

leases because there’s a lot of vacancy

out there and there’s a lot of

businesses that aren’t really going to

survive

this year and so landlords are looking

for

stable long-term tenants which is

what a laundromat is right we need a

long-term lease because we can’t move

our business

and laundromats are you know they’ve

you know by and large stayed open this

entire year

um mostly and so even if business was

down they were still

bringing in some money and so that’s

really attractive for a landlord right

now so you have that leverage

also when you’re at least doing lease

negotiations right now

and i think going forward i mean we

mentioned this in in mark stern’s

podcast but going forward

we can stick a pin in this year and say

you know even if you’re listening to

this in

2025 say hey remember 2020 when all that

stuff went down

guess who was around and still paying

rent laundromats give me a good lease

well that literally was one of the

bullets in our presentation to the

landmark because you know

we are a business that is pandemic for

recession proof you know it’s not idiot

proof

but so hopefully i’ll make it we’ll see

to be determined

uh no you know you’re no dummy i can

tell that

already uh well tell us a little bit

about your pick up and delivery

business when did you launch that and

how’s it been going

man so i mentioned dave’s name a minute

ago

so i am literally a fish that dave

reeled in um

partnered with uh with happiness you’re

like a marlin though

yeah like a big old trophy marlin

no no like i’m you’re like a marlin

so yeah we i went up and visited dave’s

uh cincinnati location in february

uh man that guy’s got this thing down to

a t yeah

so we we literally started the first of

march which

guess what else happened first in march

yeah

i i don’t know if that is was good or

bad or what it was

but um so we started in march of this

year

um and i literally have been driving the

van ever since which was

not the plan at all the plan was to to

very similar like i did with the cell

service i wanted to drive for a few

months

learn it figure out all the problems you

run into and then go from there

but it really was kind of slow going in

the beginning and honestly it was us

trying to feel

get a good feel for exactly where we

needed to land

price-wise so happiness is is a good

partner from the standpoint of and this

isn’t a commercial

but they’re a good partner from the

standpoint of you know they

they understand the marketing piece of

it uh

and what it need what needs to be done

in order to get out

from the customers but they also

understand all the analytics so one of

the things that they

discovered as we were moving along was

we were

having a lot of potential customers go

to the website

uh get to the price page

and didn’t go any further so

uh that means we had to kind of look at

really where our pricing was so we’ve

made a few adjustment

adjustments over time and man the last

uh last 60 to 90 days it really has

picked up a lot

as i mentioned i was rushing in here to

make this podcast video with you today

uh which again just reasserts that i’ve

got to get someone hired soon

uh hopefully i will before the end of

the year and we’ll start off 2021 the

right way but

um yeah it’s really picked up very fast

and

we’ve learned a lot from it and i talk a

lot with my attendance about

the the nuances and differences between

uh our drop-off service where the

customer comes in

and this pickup and delivery and really

what i explained to them

is hey when they come in and drop off

they get to see you

every single time they see your smiling

face they learn your name

they they get a feel for if they’re

comfortable with you

personally doing their laundry and

laundry is a personal thing

i mean it is so that’s that’s what’s

different with the pickup and delivery

in our end product that we deliver to

our customers

i really want that to be top-notch so i

really tell them to take extra special

care when they’re folding

when they’re packaging uh so that they

would do it

as if they were receiving the the

package themselves so

when you when you’re done folding these

people’s clothes and putting them in the

bag

and that was put on your front porch how

would you feel about that would you feel

comfortable that that stuff was

number one clean but number two was it

taken care of while it wasn’t

within your view and so um they really

do a great job of handling things really

well and and i think it really helps us

to put a little more of a personal touch

on it

i mean every once in a while i get the

chance to talk to a customer they’ll be

out in the front yard or something

not always every single time i’ll

definitely greet them but ask them how

has everything been

any any questions or any issues and you

know every once in a while they’ll say

well you know last time

this share got folded i wish you would

would hang it okay we’ll make a note of

that

and so that that’s one thing we really

we really try and focus on is the

customization part of it so that

you know they can feel more like they’re

they’re having their laundry done at

home

it’s just done by us yeah you want to

hear

uh you want to hear a customer say man

you did it just the way i would have

done it

and when you hear that that’s when you

know that

you you hit something you’re doing it

right the other day i had a customer she

was literally

stuffing her bags on her front porch as

i was pulling

up and she’s been a customer that’s

right from the first month she signed up

and she’s been ongoing which is great

and i this is the first time i actually

got to see her face to face and so i

asked her i said well you’ve been with

us for a long time you know how’s

everything she’s like oh

i couldn’t live without this now i mean

which like i said this is an

infant market pickup and delivery in

nashville so to hear that i mean like

ah that just made my my week my month

whatever

we need more like you and how can we get

more like you

yeah yeah that’s awesome that’s the

biggest uh

that’s the biggest compliment you can

get right there if you’re doing pick-up

and delivery is

can’t live without you and that’s what

you want to hear

can we clone you now yeah

uh that’s awesome well cool man i mean

it sounds like a lot of exciting things

going on you got a laundromat that’s

doing really well

even after a you know a bumpy start you

got a pickup and delivery service that’s

starting

to pick up yeah no pun intended

and deliver the goods um

uh and then you know and you’re building

a new one so

i mean things are rolling you got some

good goals uh

is your goal still five and five years

is that still your goal what you’re

shooting

for so we’re gonna have to escalate our

time frame

um my wife you know she’ll still ask me

about it yeah that’s the plan we’ll see

so um i was talking literally with jd

today about

another potential spot we’ll see we’re

gonna have to figure that out

but um yeah i still want to do that and

then you know my my intent

with this all along was to make this at

some point in my lifetime a family

business so

i have two young kids they’re nine and

seven and um you know it would be

the most awesome thing in the world if

they decided that daddy was cool enough

to go to work

uh i’m not sure they will like my son’s

gonna you know be some type of

frontline infantryman and my wife is or

my daughter is gonna be a zoologist or

something but you know if they if they

don’t

that’s fine as well but me and i sure

would be off it sure would be awesome if

they would

yeah yeah or even even for a time you

know maybe when they’re

you know in high school and they need a

job after or

you know after high school you know just

i i i agree

totally like doing stuff with your kids

and letting them learn

you know you kind of took your lumps

early on to learn some

tough lessons you’re learning lessons

right now with the pickup and delivery

and it’d be cool to just be able to pass

that on to the kids

for sure yeah pretty cool

well hey uh we got a section called down

to business

and down to business is just you know we

want to hear a little bit about

some of the details of your business so

you’re located in

in and around nashville right tennessee

um you got do you still have um so you

have the one you’re building another one

do you still have any real estate out of

curiosity

you do um so at one point we had four

rental properties

uh we now have one it’s actually it was

my grandmother’s house so

i will never leave you

great rental property in a great market

so it’s been a good investment

is it local around you yeah it’s like

10 minutes from my house yeah cool

that’s awesome that makes it easy

also when it’s so close

so you’ve been in the business for about

three years is that we said

yeah and now i’m counting the year

basically when we started looking for a

site and then the build out so

running actual operational two years

yesterday

hey two years yesterday now you got all

kinds of like anniversaries and

birthdays happening right now

yeah man and christmas is coming up it’s

like a party out there

me and santa we’re like this you know

what the deal is though is that

you got all these exciting things

happening i didn’t get invited to one

single party so what’s going on with

that

i don’t know man no parties these days

what it’s like

oh no man yeah it’s just so sad we need

to have like a zoom party with just

everybody

oh that would be fun yeah that would be

fun or chaotic i don’t know

uh okay so can you can you give us like

a ballpark of what it cost to do laundry

in nashville

like vin prices yeah so uh our smallest

are our 20-pound machines we we usually

go about a dollar and a quarter dollar

and a half

over a size so our our 20 pound machines

are three and a quarter

our 30 pounds are four and a quarter

our 40 pounds are five and a half

and our sixty pounds are seven and a

half

and then the the big boys the eighty

pounds are ten dollars

and and we do uh you know add-ons for

hot water

you know extra wash things like that

um you know it’s it’s it’s

some of those things don’t get a lot of

usage but you you would be surprised at

how often we you know get

hot water versus cold water that kind of

thing

i think in november we were about

77 cold water so

you know most everybody goes with what’s

on the

[Music]

can i ask how much it costs to do a pick

up and delivery pound

um yeah so right now we’re doing a

promotion

uh where it’s it’s super cheap

uh we’re a dollar ten weekly dollar

twenty uh

at by request uh our normal price

is uh a dollar fifty nine weekly dollar

sixty nine

by request so we’re doing a massive

promotion which has helped us gain a lot

of footprint

um now that will will change it’ll it’ll

probably land somewhere in between those

two going forward

yeah well you know there’s people in in

new york right now listening to that and

saying that’s not cheap it costs us

you know we’re charging a buck a pound

normally that’s our normal price so

it’s all relative man it’s all relative

it’s pretty funny

uh so are you

are you fully attended partly attended

unattended

yeah so we’re open 24 hours uh

24 7 365. uh

we are attended from seven in the

morning until night at night seven days

a week

cool and are you guys do you guys have a

card system in there or are you running

just coins or what are you doing

yeah so we’re we’re hybrid we got a

little bit of everything uh

so coin um credit card

um we also do uh

our loyalty card as well which

the the it’s kind of interesting to to

watch those trends over time

kind of how they they change um

our right now we do about

63 64 in coin sales

uh credit card is about 24 and then the

remaining is our loyalty card which we

use fast card

in that store yeah yeah that is

interesting have you seen any trends of

it going up or down for cards or

coins or so in this market as a whole

there’s not a lot of

uh of card stores and there’s definitely

not

a lot of loyalty card stores so

in the beginning i think people just

didn’t really know it existed

so they were like 85 coin in the very

beginning

and so now we’ve seen that drop off to

63 64

and all of that remaining percentage is

mostly gone to

credit card and

yeah that’s pretty it’s pretty

interesting i think it’ll probably

continue

moving that direction and especially

if you you know i know you can utilize

those card systems to

run good promotions and kind of move

people in that direction

uh so if you if you really push it i bet

you could grow it faster if you wanted

yes and to be honest with you as we get

ready to open store number two

we’re gonna do massive marketing push

around here

a lot of it towards that that loyalty

card and

you know i i hear a lot of people

talking about going to all card or all

loyalty cards

and that is so tempting every time i

have to empty out those coins and every

time i

go to the bank i mean now that’s going

to double right with two stores

and so it’s awful tempting but we just

we just have such a

heavy kind of historical use of coin

that i’m hoping maybe if we can do some

marketing efforts to to turn that 64

into maybe like 50 or 40 percent

then we would be closer to being able to

just move all the way from coin all

together

i don’t know we’ll see what time tails

maybe i might just get so frustrated

with it i’ll just force it so we’ll see

yeah

yeah yeah and especially as you scale up

more and more you know you got five

stores and you’re collecting coins from

all five

that’s that’s task you got right there

yeah but uh you know i think

i think you’re right i think that is the

struggle for a lot of owners if

card versus coin is you know customers

are used to the coin some of them

refuse to go to card stores and

sometimes it’s just an education thing

you got to educate

customers on how it’s better for them to

use the card system they can get

different promotions and

yeah we do a promo on our fast card

where

for every thirty dollars you spend you

get a bonus three dollars so

that that helps a lot as far as it goes

because again

not a lot of other laundries in the area

are doing that

but i’m hoping to really start to

leverage

fast card and in the new store we’re

going to use hips command

so we’re going to kind of compare the

two do a you know best case scenario and

then

kind of settle on one and then really do

some

strong marketing efforts to try and

capture a lot of different markets

so there’s a lot of room for some

commercial

growth with within our business

commercial customer growth

so i want to go out and start capturing

that but then also

you know i just see opportunities with

some of the large businesses around here

offer some some rewards benefits to them

um that i think we can get creative and

do some things and just get out in front

of some of these businesses to say hey

you know here’s uh here’s a thousand

cards for your employees

you know every month if they if they

come and use our laundry then they’ll

get

you know 10 bonus bucks or something you

know i’m not sure what the promotion

will look like in the end we’ll have to

do some run some numbers on it but

i want to do some things to really kind

of especially with the new store opening

to really drive business early on

yeah and i think that’s smart too i

think if you can get them

in there early they come see your shiny

new store your new machines

it’s tough for them to tough for them to

leave that’s right they love shiny

uh how many how many hours a week are

you spending right now on your business

i know you’re driving the truck right

now for pickup and delivery so you’re

you’re putting in the work what’s that

looking like for you yes and that is not

ideal

at all so before we start a pickup and

delivery let me just tell you a few

different worlds because they really are

uh before we started pickup and delivery

i was probably eight to ten hours a week

um and that was a lot of times

just just going more often than really i

really needed to

you know still kind of early in owning

the business now

that i’m driving i’m probably putting in

an extra

15 hours a week i would say um so

my intention is to hire a part-time

driver in the beginning

uh with the hopes as this thing

continues to grow that it will be

will be full-time pretty quickly yeah

yeah but i mean i love that you

say that i love that you’re doing that

because i mean so many owners get in

with the idea of it’s just gonna be

hands off

but you had to put in time early on both

your self-service business and in your

pick up and delivery business so

you know sometimes it’s got to go that

way and

that’s okay like you just got to be

ready for it

well you know i think if you’re a new

owner that’s that’s probably the most

important thing now you can you can say

just go collect some coins you know

spend a couple hours that’d be good

and you could do it that way you really

could if you wanted to

i wouldn’t suggest it because it’s not

the best way to run the business because

number one you won’t know

anything about it uh so you know

how how can you run something that you

really don’t know

what happens when things move from a to

b to c to all the way to z

so i really suggest getting in and

getting your hands dirty and having that

expectation in the beginning that it’s

going to be that way

because if you do it that way then one

day you know

you could be like our good buddy dave

mintz and just focus on

on other opportunities so um you know i

think it’s

it’s one of those things that people

need to be really smart obviously if

you’re if you want to keep your day job

do that but just know that your weekends

are going to be busy in your evenings

awesome advice okay we got another

section we like to call secret sauce

listen up it’s the secret sauce

and secret sauce is this what’s

something that’s working in your

business that other

owners can implement in their businesses

to help them do better

well um really there’s a 1a and a 1b

um i would say 1a and this is this has

been for me the most important thing

is take care of my employees um

and and what i mean by that i’m sure a

lot of people have heard the quote from

richard branson that you know

if you take care of your employees

they’ll take care of your customers and

oh my gosh that is so absolutely true so

i i try and create a very employee

friendly environment it’s best that i’m

able

within reason obviously you know i don’t

let them run around and do ridiculous

stuff but

i want to to compensate them them well

and i want them to feel comfortable

and i want them to have ownership in the

business itself so

i have you know i mentioned i have a

couple of really strong employees and

these folks have come in in the vision

that i relayed to them the very first

day

and then as i worked with them training

them they literally have picked up that

football and ran with

it and so they look at this as their

business

and they know because i’ve talked about

it all along that i want to grow this

into bigger and better things

and they want to be a part of that and

so i feel like if i take care of them

you know i can’t offer all the greatest

benefits in the world

because but i do i give them paid time

off

a certain amount of paid time off i work

with them i’m as flexible as possible on

their schedule again within reason

um there are occasions where they do not

have a babysitter so i tell them okay

you can bring your son with you

as long as he doesn’t get crazy and

stays in the back room then that’s fine

you know you can take care of them while

you’re there

which i’m sure a lot of owners like

that’s ridiculous

well you know these are these are people

that i really trust with my business

at this point uh and i know that they’re

gonna do the right thing so

you know i i try and give them an

environment that they

they really want to come back to every

single day so take care of your

employees

give them the incentive to want to do

well and to do and if they do well then

that means your business

um one b would be focus on

the customer experience i know in your

podcast

that i just listened to earlier um you

talked a lot about atmosphere obviously

it was atmospheric tv

but the the the environment around which

your customers

are experiencing is probably one of the

most important things to get them to

come back again like i said there’s a

lot of

competition where i’m at so i want

people to come to me

and maybe even pay a little bit more

because they know

that when they come in it’s going to be

clean every single machine is going to

be working it’s going to be working well

when they they’re going to be greeted

they’re going to be told hello and

they’re going to be

told thank you when they leave or if

they’re coming in to drop off their

clothes it’s going to be taken care of

just like it was being done

by their mother at home

the overall customer experience is

really important as well

that that that’s awesome that podcast

episode came out like

six hours ago so you are like on it man

i told you i’ve been driving all day

that’s what i’m talking about way to get

on it all right well i mean that’s

incredible incredible secret sauce and i

love you know

taking care of your employees and

focusing on the customer experience

huge and both of those things

are the common thread that i see

in successful laundromat owners you know

those

that’s what people are doing you got to

have good employees once you find those

good employees

take good care of them like you said and

like richard branson

sir richard branson said you know

they’re going to take care of your

customers

but you also be thinking through

customer experience

what feeling do they get when they come

experience your business experience your

laundromat and if you can do those two

things you’re in

you’re in real good shape going back to

something we mentioned earlier about

being the owner and actually being in

the store

so when my kids see me there they’ll see

me picking up trash

they’ll see me closing doors on open

dryers putting away carts

they’ll see me helping my employees do

different things and i think that’s

important too

because they see that you’re involved

and that you care

if they never see you there they’re not

going to feel so bad about

taking your cart out and leaving it in

the parking lot because you know

he doesn’t care so why should i but most

of my customers bring long bring it

that’s why i let them i let them take

the carts outside because they always

bring it back inside yeah again i know

that’s crazy laundry owners but that’s

how i roll

i let customers take cards outside and i

never see them again they’re just like

yeah

i guess that’s true they’re gone for

good i don’t know all right well we got

another section called

pro tips pro tips

and pro tips is just this

what advice do you have for somebody

maybe looking to buy their first

laundromat um go do it i mean

you can sit around and research and dive

and and talk to people and do it just

just go do it because i promise you it’s

going to be

you know if you have if you have the

financial means to do it

you have the the time you have the

supportive family to do it

then it’s going to be one of the best

decisions that you ever make i know for

me it has been

uh and i’ll be an ambassador for this

industry

as long as i’m alive because i really

think it’s a

it’s an industry fraught with

opportunity

and the the opportunity to make things

better from uh

just a service perspective from a

technology perspective

uh from an atmosphere perspective uh

so much opportunity so don’t don’t sit

around and think about it if you have

like i said the financial means if

you’ve got the

time and you’ve got the family support

do it jump in

find a good spot find a good distributor

find a good broker a good

uh financial partner just go do it

don’t don’t play around now is the time

to do it

i i just love that advice

i just love it because yeah i mean every

episode i’m trying to think of

and i’m listening intently for an

actionable

thing that i can take away from every

every episode because i just think that

if we can all do that if we can take

one thing away from every episode i mean

success is going to be inevitable

because we’re going to be growing every

single week and we need to

you know as long as we’re putting those

things into action and

that’s the key and you know success

follows action right success doesn’t

research success doesn’t follow learning

that’s why you’ll have a lot of very

very smart people

who live very average lives which

there’s nothing wrong with that

but if you if you want more if you want

freedom if you want choice if you want

options if you want wealth any of that

stuff it’s not coming to you unless you

take

action right so i love the advice of

you know go like learn what you need to

learn and and meet who you need to meet

but then go do it

like yeah yeah you know have a plan in

place don’t just really

do it but you know put your plan in

place and then go execute it

one other section that we all uh

one other section that we have is called

uh recommended resources and that’s just

hey do you have any resources that you

would recommend to

uh people to help them grow their

business or to grow themselves

personally

um yeah so i have found some of the

uh and this has been mentioned before so

i apologize but

there are some facebook groups that are

just absolutely

just gold i know one you’re one of your

previous guests

i think he’s the administrator of one of

them i’m a member of that one

i think that’s laundromat owners only

like laundromat owners

[Music]

the there’s literally thousands of

laundromat owners on some of these

and and they are just they give

spectacular advice and and i know

uh yours as well you’re growing your

your base as well so

uh laundromat resource forum i’m gonna

get on there and start contributing

their

uh asap toward them but i

think my pressure here well you know man

these people have knowledge and i go on

there all the time and i’ll i’ll just

say

you know hey when you’re dealing with

this situation how do you usually handle

it you know and it could be something as

simple as

an example right the other day i went on

one of the forums and

we have a few customers in our pickup

and delivery that

uh require all free and clear so you

know a non-allergic

type of detergent and again

i’m really concerned about what the end

product is for our pickup and delivery

because that’s all they see or the

clothes in the finished package

and so i was asking some of the other

owners for some some good tips and i

asked if any of them

actually would like because a lot of

times in these commercial washers

there’s soap residue from

a previous user and you know i asked if

anyone would you know run a quick rinse

cycle to clean out any of that soap

residue before they

put a customer who needs a

non-allergenic

type detergent and so i got some really

good feedback on that and it’s just

things as simple as that that’ll help

you run your business better that

you know maybe you didn’t think of

before or

or maybe you’ve got a good idea about

how to solve the problem but

some other input never hurts so

definitely use forums wherever they are

facebook

use your forum wherever you can find

them because there’s a lot of

really smart people who’ve experienced

it before you so why create the oil

yeah and it’s kind of the premise behind

this podcast behind

laundromat resource in general and

everything that we try to do is that

we’re just we’re better when we’re

sharing information together and i think

a long time

the industry it was hard to find good

information because it was all

tight-lipped

and it’s the whole industry is going to

be elevated by

us working together and helping each

other build better businesses and we’re

all gonna

do better that way so i love that advice

great recommended resource

yeah i think so and as far as like a

book one that really

impacted me both in my corporate career

and in my entrepreneurial career

was good to great yeah you hear that one

talked about a lot but you know i’ve

read that one a couple of times and just

you know his approach to everything just

really kind of changed how i approached

my work every day i mean

i don’t want to be good at this i want

to be great at it and so whatever i can

do to get me to that point

i think is the direction that i know

even if it requires a little bit of work

the work that’s jim collins right good

degree that’s right yes sorry yeah

that’s

no that’s a good book that’s a good book

i’ll link to that too if you if you

haven’t read it

it’s it’s great i was gonna call it good

but it’s great

it went from good to great like right

great yeah all those things

yeah well hey this steve this has been

incredible having you on i just i feel

like i’ve been soaking up

all this like knowledge from you uh for

like an hour

more than an hour i think and it’s just

been so good you’ve shared so much

really really good information thank you

so much

for coming on uh one more quick question

i have for you is that

you know all of us listening here i know

that you have more

to give us so if anybody has a question

for you or if you

you know just wants to contact you and

maybe say thanks for coming on the

podcast or whatever

what’s the best way they can get in

touch with you or maybe you know see

what you got going on

yeah um so you can definitely email me

um my email address and this is

my my corporate address it’s steve

at all things

ent.com that’s a l l t

h i n g s e n t

dot com good all things is an enterprise

right

all thing enterprises yeah it’s based on

romans 8 28

love it can do all things well man this

has been

great and again thank you thank you for

coming on sharing your story

looking forward to staying in touch

hearing more

about what you got going on and we’re

definitely

gonna have to uh keep tabs on this build

that you got going on

i’m excited about it for you yeah sounds

good sounds great i appreciate you

having me jordan it’s been a blessing

and then i again i

know i speak for everybody when i say

this but what you’re doing is awesome

man i think it’s really like you said

lifting up this industry i think anyone

who

has a good feel for for this industry

and where we wanted to go

i think that’s an awesome thing so well

hey i appreciate you saying that

and look forward to talking to you guys

soon man man steve is so

cool that was so awesome i could have

talked to steve all

day long uh so good and i forgot to pay

attention to whether my accent

got thicker throughout that but that

leads me to think that maybe it did

i don’t know i’ll have to go back and

listen uh but anyways

it was so good but i want you to pick

something every week

this week is no exception i want you to

pick something that

you can take away and actually put into

action

uh say it all the time but action leads

to success or success follows action

really uh because you can learn all you

want and you can be entertained by the

stories but

if you’re not putting that stuff into

action you’re not gonna be able to reach

your goals

um so let’s pick something from this

show from what steve was talking about

and let’s implement it so whether you

are looking to buy your first laundromat

or whether you already have a laundromat

or multiple laundromats

pick something and let’s implement it

today i’ll tell you what my

big takeaway was and it comes straight

out of the pro tips actually and it’s

very

uh pertinent to this conversation and he

said just go

do it just go do it and i know for me a

lot of times i get stuck

on an analysis paralysis

or i just i’m not sure exactly

what to do so i don’t start

and i love steve’s advice as hey you

know what learn what you need to learn

and get the right people around you and

then

do it go do it whether that’s going to

buy a laundromat whether that’s

upgrading equipment whether that’s

whatever the case might be go and do it

uh and take that step and it can be

scary

but the fear subsides after you take

action

it only grows before you take action so

make sure that you’re moving forward and

as always

super grateful to be a part of this

community thank you guys

for letting me be a part of it and

cannot wait

to see you again next week all guys

we’ll talk to you then

[Music]

Links from the Show

Become a Laundromat Pro & Join the Pro Community!

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Become a Laundromat Pro and Join the Pro Community!

Unlock the secrets of laundromat success! Join our Pro Community now to access expert insights, exclusive resources, a vibrant community, and more. Elevate your laundromat journey today!