5. Learning From Laundromat Legends! 40+ Years of Wisdom in the Laundromat Industry With David and Donna Stark

Today we sit down with true legends in the laundromat industry! David and Donna Stark have been in the laundromat industry for 40+ years and have played just about every role in the industry there is to play. Not only incredibly knowledgeable about the industry, David and Donna are both genuine people. You’re going to love hearing their stories and you’re going to learn a ton that will help you find financial freedom in the laundromat industry!

In part 1 of our interview with David and Donna we focus on their early years in the industry, including building over 800 (!!!) laundromats and we get a treat into how laundromats led to love!

Watch The Podcast Here

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Episode Transcript

Read the Transcript Here

[Music]

you’re listening to the laundromat

resource

podcast the show by laundromat owners

four laundromat owners with your hosts

jordan barry

[Music]

all right what’s up guys this is jordan

from the laundromat resource podcast

we have made it to the end of our first

hand this is show number five

i hope you’re excited to be here today

is a very special day because we have on

a couple of guests

who have been in the laundromat industry

for 40

years that’s not combined years that’s

actual years they’ve been in the

industry and they have run the gambit

of anything there is to do in the

laundromat industry from

building they’ve built over 800

laundromats 800 laundromats

that in and of itself is worth sitting

down and listening to

listening to these guys but they’ve

owned and operated a ton they’ve

uh been distributors they’ve anything

there is to do in the lawdman industry

these guys have done it and you do not

want to miss in fact this is only a part

one

where we’re going to sit at the feet of

these people and just listen to their

stories and learn from them

we’re going to come back with a part two

uh this this first one

has to do with a little bit of their

earlier years part two will be focused

more towards

the later years and current times and

man i’m telling you

these guys are just they’re not only are

they a wealth of knowledge

and experience but they’re just great

people um so we’ll meet them in a minute

but first i want to talk about a few

things

uh the first one being there’s been a

little bit of life in the forums lately

so i know i’ve mentioned that in the

past um and

i i’ve just been so excited that there’s

been a little bit of life in there so

i’m in there um all the time every day

i’m peeking in there and

um it’s not a ton going on but i’d love

for more

to be happening over there so if you

have questions go

throw those in the forum um and and get

your questions answered over there

i’ll be in there to answer help answer

some and hopefully

you know some of you even if you don’t

have questions maybe peek in at the

forums and see

uh if you can help answer some questions

that’d be awesome i just would love for

that to be a place where people can

come and interact about the laundromat

industry whether they’re new or

experienced

whether that’s about you know how to get

into the industry or how to operate your

business

any of that stuff that’s a great place

to do it so that’s laundromat

resource.com

forum f-o-r-u-m

and uh yeah go check that out so thanks

for those of you who’ve been over there

posting questions

that’s been awesome the second thing

i’ve been getting asses

all the time and i’m actually very

excited that i keep getting

asked this question but um but man i’m

feeling the pressure and so i just

wanted to take a second

and just address it um i’ve i’ve uh put

on my site

that um that we’d be releasing our our

first book

uh on how to buy laundromats

um last month um in april 2020

and obviously it’s not out yet and

you know just with some of the

coronavirus stuff happening and

uh just kind of delays due to that

both on my part and on the part of of

those helping me put it together

it’s just been delayed a little bit so

i’m hoping to you know i’m

buckling down on that thing and i’m

getting it cranked out and i’m hoping to

get that out within the next couple of

weeks

so stay tuned and make sure you

subscribe here to this podcast not only

to get great information and insight

about the industry from laundromat

owners

just specifically for you but also so

you can get an update on when that

book’s coming out um so i’ll let you

know there and maybe we’ll do like a

giveaway and give a couple of them away

that’d be awesome

um so we’ll do that and thanks for

hanging tough with me on that one and

uh yeah we’ll get it out asap because

i’m excited to have it out too

and i keep getting there’s a um a book

request on the website

for people to sign up to um hear about

when the book comes out and hear

information about it

uh along the way and i’ve been getting

more and more requests on that so

um if that’s you if you’re one of those

people waiting for that book to come out

uh just hang on a little bit longer and

we’re almost ready to go

um so yeah now i i don’t want to delay

too long because we just have some

great great great conversation today

with dave

and david and donna stark and again

they’ve been in the industry

for ever and they know

more about the laundromat industry than

probably anyone else out there

to be honest so and you’re going to love

them as people they’re

they’re very very sweet and very very

cool people so

i don’t want to delay that too long but

before we get to them

let’s take a quick break for this little

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[Music]

all right without further ado let’s

bring in david and donna stark and

find out who these guys are and how they

got into the laundromat industry

yeah well that’s pretty easy

yeah how we got involved yeah it is kind

of interesting

because quite frankly it’s probably

not a lot different than how a lot of

people get involved

by mistake rather than

we had a real purpose or that we really

intended to go the direction that we

went

so i can recall back my parents owned

apartment buildings

and my brother and i being he’s a twin

brother

and we thought it would be a great idea

to put a washer and dryer

into the apartment building so

we decided that we were going to go to

find a commercial distributor

that would allow us to buy a washer and

dryer that we could put into the

apartment building

so lo and behold we ended up hooking up

with pws

and we happened to walk in one day

and there was no sales people available

and so bernie steinberg happened to be

walking through the lobby and he saw us

and we told him why we did we didn’t

know who he was

and we told him why we were there and he

says well come into my office

so we went down and chatted with him for

a while told him what we were trying to

and he sold us one top load washer

and one dryer

so we put it into the apartment building

and it worked out great and so we said

well why don’t we

start buying washers and dryers and put

it into apartment buildings

so we decided we were going to do that

and then

lo and behold we came across webb

that controlled the entire market they

could buy all the locations

and we had no money so we couldn’t do it

that’s a problem not having any money

right so there was no way we could do it

we couldn’t get in every apartment

complex we went to they either had

contracts or they were getting paid a

bunch of money in order to

give the contracts so that wasn’t

working

so somehow we went back to bernie

and said well we’re not going to be

buying any washers and dryers it doesn’t

work we can’t get in

and he goes why don’t you do a

laundromat

and we thought about it we says okay

well it’s kind of the same thing washers

and dryers yeah why don’t we do that

so he hooked us up with a location

to buy and it was a little store

that was um

right in the path of where a freeway was

going

so we actually put it into escrow

and we were gonna buy it for like

fifteen thousand dollars i think was the

purchase price

and we were going to um when was this

this would have been

[Music]

let’s see well i know i don’t look old

enough

but it would have been

49 years ago oh my goodness i’m having a

hard time

buying a single washer for fifteen

thousand dollars

so we were gonna buy that store we went

into escrow and then we decided

that it was not a good idea

because the freeway was coming you know

i’d be in the middle of the freeway

you know this is not a good idea did you

have a good breaker

to do this he told you the freeway was

coming no we figured it out

bernie didn’t tell us the freeway it was

coming oh whoops

details yeah details um so we said no

we’re not gonna do it

so then he put us in touch with a store

in los alamitos okay and it’s in a

uh on los alamos boulevard so we

purchased that store

and i don’t remember what the price was

probably not much more than

15 but somewhere and we ended up having

to actually borrow five thousand dollars

from our mother

in order to come up with the down

payment

and so what happened

something had happened was we purchased

that store

i drove by it

a month ago that store is still there

still there huh

we should buy it 50 years later and that

store is still operating

wow which i found fascinating that it

was actually still there

but anyway it is so that’s actually how

we got in

it was really by mistake it was default

because we

couldn’t figure out how to get into the

apartment complexes

and so that’s how we bought the very

first store

i like hearing that story i’ve heard it

a lot but i like it i’m not in the

business by the way quite yet jordan

just so you know

i’m not in the business yet at this

point in the story at this point in the

story yes are you guys

together yet or not yet oh my gosh no

no because she would have been 10 years

old

it’s okay no i was still trying to get

through elementary

school all right

that wouldn’t work that wouldn’t have

worked okay

so you got in your first one and

how did that go how was the how was the

experience

no it was it was it was good

and it’s really interesting when you

reflect back and look at the way that

you operated

stores then they were unattended

and so basically you would go through

and we would go two three times a day we

would clean it

and so forth and take care of equipment

we do all our own repairs

you know we pretty much did everything

yeah um back then

and it’s fascinating when you look at

the stores they were

[Music]

basically 95 top load washers

and a couple of front load washers

sitting off

to one side and that was pretty standard

in the industry back then you know

that’s pretty much what it was

and so it went fine we did you know we

remodeled it

and which was kind of a natural for us

growing up in the apartment complexes

with our parents because from the time

we were

able to walk we were working at the

apartments either

mowing lawns putting on roofs changing

out windows water heaters whatever it is

we did all that stuff growing up so it

was just a natural thing for us

that when we had that store and it

needed to be remodeled and it needed to

be remodeled

yeah we just did it ourselves yeah

because that’s kind of what

it just seemed like the thing to do it

never

occurred to us that we’d hire somebody

to remodel it you just do it yourself

so that’s what we did so that store

went fine and then we

came across an opportunity

to buy a group of three stores

but we didn’t have any money problem

so i’m sensing a theme

bernie said this was with bernie and so

bernie said

no problem he goes come with me

so he took us down he like he kind of

took us under his wing he liked our

enthusiasm he liked our energy

he liked our drive and so he said

okay come with me so he set up an

appointment

with bank of america downtown l.a

and this was the bank that they did

business with the pws did business with

okay so he set this appointment up we

walked in

sat down with i guess would be his loan

officer

and he says i want you to loan these

guys money

to do these three projects and the guy

says okay

no problem and that was it

and simpler times they’ve loaned us the

money

we bought three stores

and we were off and running but it was

also helpful that bernie i mean had they

just walked in on their own

it would have never it would never have

happened it was and by the way

maybe for the audience bernie steinberg

is the s in pws for those that

we assume everybody knows but for for

some that may not know

well and and for those who may not know

pws

is a laundry company and they they’re a

supplier they do a bunch of stuff and

you’ll hear a little bit more about what

they do here in a little bit

from uh yeah david here but yeah yeah

they’re a laundry

company so um david and daryl would have

been going to 20 banks themselves but

bernie

you can tell we have a lot of um love

and respect for bernie and you’ll hear

more of that in a little

minute but yeah he was very very helpful

wouldn’t you say oh it was yeah he was

incremental

in us getting moving forward

and of course it’s at the end of the day

it’s up to you

to be able to capitalize on the

opportunity

right and so either you do something

with it or you don’t

but you know if you don’t then you know

that the way it goes but if you do

then you could benefit from having

relationships with people

that can put it in front of you

yeah so you know they can open the door

for you but you got to be able to walk

through it

that’s right and if you don’t want to

walk through the door then

you’re probably not going to go very far

yeah

okay so you walk through the door and

now you have

do you have a total of four laundromats

now we have four laundromats or at this

point in the story

yeah just bought in three and and did

you remodel those and

how did that what happened we remodeled

those

and we operated those for

a few years unattended unattended stores

coin we did calling stores we did

everything

ourselves so

we kind of got on to that

cycle that we were going through all the

stores several times a day

keeping them clean keeping equipment

operating

doing vending supplies picking up money

going to the bank

so we got into this real i’m overwhelmed

already this monotonous routine

of just going through constantly

and what happened is i would say we both

sort of got burned out with the whole

process

because we were doing it so mechanically

rather than methodical yeah and so we

weren’t

um utilizing at that point in time

expertise that we could have taken

advantage of

and maybe done it in a smarter way

rather than just working

and working and working and working and

not going anywhere you just feel like

you’re spinning your wheels

yeah so ultimately

we decided to sell the stores

okay we ended up selling all the stores

off

um all four of them all four of them

okay peace out and

because of my background

we thought well we we’re builders we can

build we can remodel

so we really got into the business

of remodeling laundromats

and doing equipment installations and

that was

really developed along with

pws so we would do equipment

installations for them

we would do remodels of existing stores

we would go through and paint dryers

that needed to be painted

back before they’re you know stainless

steel which most of them are now

so we would go through and do remodels

in stores

and we did that for a number of years

were you a general contractor at that

point did you have your gc license at

that point

no okay no we were just doing remodels

at that point

and then that really took us up to the

point

where donna comes into the picture yay

so she has arrived yes

how did she arrive tell us about how she

got into this picture here

well i was 18 just graduated from high

school

and um obviously needed to find a job

now that i wasn’t in high school anymore

and i went on three job interviews and

one of them happened to be for a company

called

pws okay and um

for whatever reason that was the job i

selected and i started working

um as the sales secretary i’m 19 at this

point

and um in walks david and daryl one day

and they kind of stop and they’re twin

brothers for those of you that don’t

know they’re twins

which ones they look very much they look

they look very much alike

so they’re both equally as handsome okay

oh that’s so sweet

i know isn’t that nice i know um

and they stop and david kind of takes

two steps back because

i’m obviously in your face and i’m right

in the front of

the old pws office in commerce and it

kind of pats me on the head

and kind of wants to know who i am and

what my job is

so i have now entered the world of pws

and

obviously my life has changed forever um

i ended up working for bernie within a

relatively short period of time

and um he used to call me curly

not really sure why but he called me

curly

and um i you know i became his um

you know his assistant and bernie was

the one in charge of building stores

and so i was in charge of construction

loans

and um they were subleasing a lot of

stores at that point so i was in charge

of all the subleases

and um and then at that point then david

is trying to break into

the building of all of these brand new

stores

because we were building a lot of stores

a year so you want to take that from

there

yeah there were contractors

that they had been using for a number of

years

and the way they had it structured was

that they had a couple of plumbing

contractors

they had one specific carpenter group

and they had a couple of electrical

groups

and so the way that they were building

the stores

were basically by contracting electrical

plumbing and carpentry

through these subcontractors or

contractors

as it may be rather than using a general

contractor to

coordinate and we were doing

at that point a lot of the equipment

installations and all of the new

stores but we weren’t building them so

basically it was being built by these

other contractors

we’d come in as part of the process and

we would install

the equipment right so we were doing

that for some period of time probably a

few years that we actually did that

um where we were just going in and doing

the equipment side of it

and i always had in the back of my mind

that

these guys were getting to the point

that they were being difficult to work

with

because they’ve been doing it for so

long

and they were set in their waves and it

was either

their way or the highway

and quite frankly they became difficult

to work with

for pws simply because they

were not willing to go the extra step

they were they had so many projects that

they were just pushing through them

and they really weren’t very good at

follow-up detail or come back and take

care of issues

because they were already moving on to

the next project yeah we couldn’t get

the last 10 percent done

so that was kind of a problem sounds

like all my

home projects can’t get

and so what that did was it told me that

there was an

opportunity in order to

go to them and say look we’ll do the

whole thing

and we’ll be the general contractor and

we’ll coordinate all the subs

and we will supply you with a finished

product

rather than you having to contract

individually

with all of the people and then chase

them to try and get the work done

then you got one central person to go to

to resolve your issues

so i put that forward and it went

nowhere

and i thought it was such a good idea

but it didn’t go anywhere and so this

one so we continued to work we continued

to do

the equipment installations

and which was not a bad gig i mean

really it was good we were very busy we

put a lot of equipment into a lot of

stores

so we were making a decent living doing

it but i knew that we could do more

so one day

unbeknownst to me which i didn’t

really know was that behind the scenes

donna was still working on it

to try and get me into the

new store construction

so i came in one day and i was

frustrated about

the fact that we couldn’t move forward

he was not frustrated he was very mad

and the steam was coming out of his head

so he just wanted to

paint the clear tell him yeah tell him

like it is yes

i was ready to march into barney

and tell them that i thought this was

ridiculous

you know that i put forward a great

opportunity for them

and they weren’t pursuing it and i was

going to give them a piece of my mind

with the steam blowing out of his head

all the way

and i am right outside of bernie’s

office so back in the day there was

u-shape

so bernie’s got a big the three of four

actually but three the three pws had

you know very large offices all the

windows and i’m sitting right outside

bernie’s office at this point

okay continue so curly

me says to me

hey you may want to wait a minute

i wouldn’t barge in right now is what i

said very very low under my breath

i think maybe now’s not the time and i

said

okay i was mad but that’s

fine all right i won’t go in

and so lo and behold she had been

working

with bernie to get us the opportunity

to build a new store

and so this was right at the time that

he was prepared to say yes

we’re going to give them a shot and let

them build a store

and so probably within

actually a week of when i was going to

go in

and blow my opportunity forever

they gave me my first job wow to build

out the store

yay donna okay well the contractors were

causing bernie and i a lot of fuss

the stores weren’t cleaned up they

weren’t cleaning up after themselves

i’m getting calls from landlords at this

point i am organizing all of these subs

myself and of course with bernie

obviously

and it wasn’t it just wasn’t going well

they weren’t

they weren’t being overly helpful so i

told bernie we have nothing to lose

we really don’t by letting david

try this let’s just see we have nothing

to lose and so

bernie said curly let me let me think

about it and so anyway

long story short enter

david stark the general contractor of

stark and stark enterprises by the way

that was the very first company

that is true yeah but this goes back to

the same thing we

talked about earlier is that okay now

you’ve been given the opportunity can

you perform

can you actually get it built and can

you provide

them with what their expectations are

that you’re going to give to them

so my job was to exceed their

expectations

and so what do you do you end up working

24 hours a day in order

to make sure that that first door

turns out to not only be

done well but produced on a timely basis

which is what they were having trouble

with because we were paying rents

because these stores couldn’t get

completed because we couldn’t get the

utilities off well you know i mean i

don’t

we can go into it hours of that

conversation but it was costing more

money

to have the three subs three in essence

um so i told david you have to get this

done on time

so that we don’t have to send one rent

check

the first rent check will be when it’s

opened or or fairly close

yeah continue yeah so that was really

how we got started

in the construction side of it so at

that point i was a general contractor

and i was also a plumbing contractor

and so that entity was starting stark

enterprises

um when when was this about

well uh what has been

what 35 years well well 80

1980 85

80 probably probably mid 80s

yeah somewhere in there yeah that sounds

right

mid 80s and my brother had now

exited the company

so he was not with me at that point in

time

he moved to washington to raise chickens

yep so he was gone

he pissed out and uh sometimes that

sounds nice

yeah i don’t know there’s a lot of

problems with chickens by the way

but he wanted to you know he was you

know he had small

kids at the time and he wanted to really

into a different environment you know

more of a

chicken environment yeah chicken

environment

it’s the truth we can get onto that

story i know but that’s

just another hole yeah i have you on my

chicken podcast

no yeah i’m not sure that your listeners

really i mean we got to make sure we’re

keeping this entertaining for

the listeners jordan yeah but no don’t

go in the chicken business i wouldn’t

i i wouldn’t encourage you to do that

okay yes all right we’ll stick with

laundry let’s do that yeah

so do do should we move ahead in the

story are we

being laborious here with the with the

small little details

i am fascinated i don’t okay so but ask

questions

maybe if you want to continue to ask

questions so if you think there’s

something more that we could be

because you know we’re obviously going

down memory routes

that’s right

you’re 15 minutes of fame you take it

sorry

so it was fascinating that once we got

the opportunity to build

then we had to figure out okay well how

are we going to structure that

and so being a general contractor and a

plumbing contractor it made sense to me

that if we were going to do projects we

should bring a lot of the work in-house

so that’s what we did with stark and

stark

was we then said fine we’re going to do

all of our own carpentry work

and we’re going to do all of our own

plumbing work

because those are obviously two of the

major areas

right um involved and obviously we were

already set up to do equipment

installations so that was nothing new

so basically that’s the way we

structured the company

was to do obviously the general

contracting side of it

so we would do the layouts of the

laundry

we would do all the city work all the

permit

work get it ready

to go and then we would do

in-house all of the carpentry work so we

would build all our own

bunk heads and pulling tables and

bulkhead tops

and whatever it was we would do that

we’d put in all of the plumbing

ourselves

um so we would do obviously the water

and the gas

and so forth and then we would hire a

subcontractor for the electrical

we never did get directly involved

with doing electrical in-house we always

sub-contract

that out yes and we had a couple of guys

that we worked with that were

quite good at it and so we got to the

point that we could turn out a lot of

projects

a lot jordan and a lot

tell me about a lot a lot jordan

so it took

what donna was doing on the inside

according

you know coordinating all of the

projects from the standpoint of leases

and

all of the things that go on uh

with getting projects on board that we

could then build

and so it was pretty

easy to move forward um

once we had the structure in place and

that was

half the battle was having the structure

in place

so that we could then produce the

projects

and at that point in time we were

probably doing

maybe 15 or 20 a year

so we were probably putting one out

every two to three weeks or whatever it

was

it was insane um that is anatomy

it went to it went to a much higher

level

down the road but that’s a separate

project

um so that that kind of comes later

so we we did that for

a number of years where we were building

outside of the structure of

pws and through that time

i was learning more and more about

design of stores

layout of stores and coming up with

new ideas or maybe new

sorry sorry sorry we’re back lost you

for a second

okay that’s all right so we came up with

you know ways to do layouts that we

thought were more efficient and

of course they start transitioning into

more front loaders and

you know the industry as it evolves over

time

so there was a point then

where pws came to me

and says why don’t you bring this

in-house

and i thought okay

he thought for a long time but at this

point he’s designing these most

beautiful laundries like he really took

the industry to a whole other level by

the way he was designing them because

that’s really his strength

um is is the design i mean

they were it was a whole new ball game

in the laundry industry the design he

was coming up with

meanwhile bernie and i are patting each

other on the back for this such a smart

move

because bernie’s life became easier

because i wasn’t coming to him

constantly

saying mr steinberg we have got to do

something

this plan currently as it stands is not

working

so we solved the problem

pretty easy so anyway continue

yeah and i i think part of it

part of the um

[Music]

the difficulty i was having

during that point in time of just

building

was that i was also trying to

work with all the different salesmen

that were trying to put

projects together so they would come to

me and say

okay i’ve got this location blah blah

blah blah and

how much it’s going to cost to build it

they’re giving you no information right

yeah there’s no layout there’s no design

there’s no plans there’s no utility

infrastructure information so i became

pretty good at being able to go out

analyze sites and be able to come up

with obviously a design was not

difficult

you know you got the dimensions and you

can figure out how to lay it out

and you can come up with a design that’s

pretty simple

yeah for you it was for the most

difficult part

was then trying to ascertain without any

information

the utility infrastructure

that’s going to be required in order to

convert it into a laundry most shopping

centers don’t have the

utility infrastructure that you need to

handle what a laundry needs

so you’ve got to have to try and figure

that and come up with the price

so you’re shooting from the hip all the

time

and praying and praying that you did it

right and sometimes

most of the time you do sometimes you

miss it horribly and i don’t want to get

on to

those ones i could tell you a couple of

stories of ones that didn’t work out so

well

that i was on the hook for uh

so but we could do another whole one on

that

interestingly enough going back to the

issue of where they

said we think you ought to come in house

there was a part of that that was

attractive to me from the standpoint

that i would have more support

than what i was getting doing it all on

my own

so i thought okay i’ll do that i’ll go

ahead

and i’ll make that transition in

and i will run your development

department so

that was the transition that i made

and we actually continued to operate

stark and stark

as an entity outside

so we were contracting

i was inside in essence inside pws

and we were contracting a lot of the

work through stark and stark

and we did it as at in arm’s length

distance the way it was being reviewed

by others so it wasn’t like i was doing

and nobody knew what i was doing other

people were reviewing the contracts

it was bernie that was doing all of that

i mean yeah well

and sandy and sandy yeah and both yeah

so is there any questions you have for

us up to this point

that we’ve taken you down this hole yeah

i need to take a quick detour though

because i feel like i need to know

like it’s dangling out there and it’s

just driving me crazy

when when did the love start to

enter into this relationship a long time

oh well let’s see um i think because we

work

so closely together for

a number of years that we really

thought of ourselves more as business

partners than we did anything else

well we yeah we kind of were that’s what

that’s what we were

okay and we’ve both been married and

divorced so throw that in there

yeah but we’re both divorced for first

you know for several years

so i think i don’t know how i do

i know i know she knew ask me donna you

tell us

how did this happen bernie asked me one

day

he just said curly like

i don’t understand you seem to get along

well bernie was at my first wedding

and um so was i and so was david stark

by the way

yeah yes oh my goodness sorry

yes so anyway yeah i just decided that i

was gonna have to ask him to go out on a

date because obviously he wasn’t gonna

ask me

so i just asked him one day i don’t i

don’t even i honestly i mean the story

has been convoluted over the years so

i’m trying to really

remember exactly but i asked him if he

wanted to go

on a date with me i asked him

he didn’t answer right away he just

stared at me

you know what david she opened the door

for you but you gotta

walk there you go

you are so correct so we had we dated

for

i don’t know three months and then i

asked him to marry me

because at this point now i’m 29 and

i wasn’t getting any younger and i

figured if i can’t wait

it’s not like we didn’t know each other

exactly yeah yeah so we had been working

together

for you know 10 years at this point yeah

and we had been through

it wasn’t just shane bralaj you know it

was not

being in the laundry industry anybody

that tells you that it’s all kicks and

giggles

is not telling you the truth yeah so we

had been through some financial

issues and uh well i think the

fascinating

thing is that when you think about the

industry as a whole

it’s much more complex than just running

lumber maps that may be the end product

but there’s a whole lot that goes on

[Music]

between being a distributor and a

builder

and so forth that’s on the other side of

the game

a lot of people never even see right and

so it’s fascinating

how it all ties together whether

whether it’s equipment or whether it’s

leasing or purchasing real estate

or whatever it may be

the laundromat is only the end product

of what it what it is as an industry

it’s a big industry right

when you think of all the pieces of the

puzzle that go into it

and it’s not glamorous the laundry

industry is not glamorous

i mean it it just isn’t it you know

people that own restaurants that’s a

little more glamorous which i would

never do by the way but

laundromats really aren’t but just to

give

a little forward motion on this i mean

we have been in all that facets of it

we’ve been distributors

we you know again we’ve we started a

whole other company which i guess will

be down the road uh

a little bit but we’ve owned real estate

so we’ve done it all at this point in

the journey but anyway do you want to

get back to me marrying david stark

yes that was only like two seconds

jordan yeah

well bring it out come on we want to do

it we want to know the story

okay yes i felt like i was getting

shortchanged and we were getting

back to building laundries nobody cares

about laundromats we don’t know about

the love

so yeah so i asked him to marry me he

kind of had to think about it for a

minute or two

but then i just assumed he was gonna say

yes so then we decided

i decided that i better not wait and so

i said well let’s get married in like

six weeks

so we set it for october

of 1989 and then the venue we were

getting married at

we were getting married at the surf and

sand they were going to tear down the

deck that we were going to get married

on so then we got to move it up to

september 9th

so then it became like a four week

something engagement i don’t know that i

would call it quite fast

how do you how do you call it i think i

did ask her to marry me

no in front of her mother it was after

she’d asked me to marry her

okay yes that’s an important part yes he

did but i actually

did and your mother at dinner i did ask

her

and your mother yeah we were at del mar

we owned race horses at the time and we

were at del mar

and um he did what do you want to hear

about the racers yeah well no i mean

that’s on my racehorse uh podcast we’ll

get you yeah okay

chicken first then racehorses with the

chickens yeah yeah

we did we did own them yeah anyway the

thing was launderland the silks but

anywho

so i asked him and then yes he formally

did ask me for all the viewers out there

that are listening he did so we got

married nine nine of 89

yes oh that’s remember 30 years ago

yeah okay so anyway yes and

people okay here’s a fun fact in our

wedding cards it said see you in

division two do you know what division

two is

oh no divorce court because they said

there’s no way that these two

can run this company get married

have a family and not lose their minds

and or get divorced

so all i needed to see was that one card

that said it

and i went oh oh they don’t know who

they’re dealing with here

no way uh-uh so here we are so here we

are

two children oh no we’ve made it believe

me he’s not leaving me

not leaving me at this point he has no

choice

now hold on there’s another part to the

story

i committed he did to 40 years

he did that was it yeah so

so i’ve got 10 more years to go

his mother lived to a hundred so i’m

quite certain we’re good

but do you also want to know we have two

children yeah

yeah i know that’s how you through your

kids

jenna jenna stark and craig stark craig

stark’s the oldest they’re 18 months

apart

and craig’s also in the laundry business

now owns his own laundry

and is the operations manager for uh one

side of our company

so yes so we have two children there

craig’s going to be 30 and jen is 28 and

jenna’s a firefighter for ocfa is which

is how you met us through

jenna stark that’s right yep that’s

right

who is it okay jordan well okay so we

got we got the love i’m i’m just happy

that that’s out we got the love

into the podcast it’s something that

we’ve been missing yes

at this point yes okay so

you know we’ll round out this we’re

going to do a whole another episode

because there’s so i mean

you guys have such rich experience um

from so many different angles like you

were saying of the laundryman industry

so we want to hear about

more of that so today we’re talking a

little bit more about

you know kind of these early days if you

if you had to put a number on it how

many

this just blows me away so how many uh

laundromats do you think you’ve built

over the years

oh eight to nine hundred

eight to nine hundred yes

laundromats yes

by far and away the majority of them in

california

we did go back and build a number of

them

in chicago and

a little bit cup you know we did a

little bit in arizona

yeah um but mostly

predominantly california and under the

brand of laundroland

yeah wow yeah and a lot of remodels and

you know when the riots happened in la

we went in and rebuilt a lot of those

stores

unfortunately that were burned to the

ground yeah um

so yeah there was there was a lot of

them

wow that’s like a whole industry in and

of itself

worth it we still drive by stores and

somebody will say

give because you i don’t know jordan i’m

gonna just tell you this

because i’m not sure if other laundry

owners feel this but everywhere we go

and we try to explain what we do we

david and i always look at each other

and say i don’t even really know what to

say at this point but

i kid you not and jenna if she were here

in craig they would say the same thing

people will say i’ve always wanted to

own a laundry

yeah tell me a little bit about it i

don’t know how many people we have

talked to and david’s so great with

sharing his knowledge with everybody

um that we get we that’s what we get

asked

really no the truth of it is is that

i’m very good at talking about it

you know simply you know it’s really it

is interesting though because you have

people come in and they have a

perception of what it is

and quite often the perception still

today

believe it or not is that they kind of

operate themselves

which is the biggest mistake you can

make absolutely and

when i look at some of the deals they

bring to me

that they’re looking at to buy

it scares me to death yeah for that

because

i can just see

that they’re going to be confronted with

because

somebody is trying to pawn their problem

up on them

and so i probably have discouraged

more people then i have encouraged to

get into it

but i feel good about that because i

might have saved them

a tremendous amount of heartache

and money they choose to go forward and

money

yeah if they choose to go forward okay

you know more power to them and i hope

the best for them

um but i try to direct them towards if

you’re gonna do this

get with a good broker one with

integrity

has the ability to give you the straight

shot of what’s going on

and you will come out ahead

99 out of 100 times if you do that

overthinking you’re going to go in and

do it on your own

where were you six or seven years ago

when i needed you

jordan that’s right and david was also a

broker too he sold he was a broker and

sold laundry

i wasn’t a pro i was just i’m sorry yes

i had a real estate

license right yeah so he was yes

and i wasn’t very good at it because

i’ve been so

honest yeah like don’t buy this

like no no uh

yeah well i mean i i think that that’s

valid like i mean i’ve shared my story

and you know

here before and with you guys and right

you know i i had such a rough rough

entry into the business and you know

just the fact that you’re willing to say

hey you know what

this is not a good this is not a good

deal don’t don’t do it i

i i would have i would have paid

thousands of dollars to hear that

because it would have saved me tens of

thousands of dollars

in the long run so just having that

wisdom is

and and you know just a willingness to

share with other people

right yeah that’s key one you’ve got to

start with somebody that knows what

they’re doing to sell it

to you and with integrity yeah yeah

that’s that’s the number one thing i

tell people now too and even

even when you get somebody like that

even just having a third party someone

like you who knows what they’re doing

who can just double check everything

and you know who knows the industry and

who can tell you you know what

pass on this one or this isn’t this

right yeah well we pass

on them all the time yeah yeah because

the last thing i need to do is take

somebody new coming into the business

and lead them astray

because when it goes bad then they’re

going to come back to me

and they’re going to say well you know

couldn’t you have

warned me about this or this or this so

at least if you lay it out for them

then it’s up to them to make the

decision i can’t control that

but i can certainly control what

information they give them

so that they have an opportunity then to

make an informed decision on what

they’re doing

yeah david’s a good david stark is a

good person

yeah oh yeah oh my gosh i mean

you guys both are amazing and incredible

i just wanna uh we’ll wrap up this

section right now but

right before we do let’s just do a quick

snapshot what is your business we’ll

we’ll talk about this more in depth

you know in the next episode that we do

together um but give us a quick snapshot

what does your business look like right

now

how many laundry mats do you own what

are you guys doing are you guys still

building

general information yeah we are not

building

um per se we would

if somebody well let me phrase that i

don’t know that i would if somebody came

to me

because they do come to me from time to

time and still ask me

if we would build one and we just

basically say no

i would build one for myself

so if i was going to get back on and

build one

um because we no longer have the

infrastructure obviously

of the employees so we would end up

contract we would

generally subcontract to different

contractors but i would do it

if i was building one for myself which

is not

out of the realm of possibility that

that could still happen

somewhere we’re operating uh four stores

now all stores that we originally built

and our son’s operating a store

that he owns that we originally built

and all of those stores were built

under the sparkling name which was the

distribution company

that came later than where we are

in the story right now

we and when we built them we bought them

i mean we kept them

so these stores weren’t built and sold

and we came back and rebought them we

built them

and we operated them right out of the

gate except for one

in riverside which is another story but

um the three the three uh we

built and operated them right out of the

right out of the gate so that’s what we

own

because you guys have a pretty

successful pickup and delivery service

also right

and that’s the newest thing on on board

to our company that was the latest thing

that was just launched uh about a year

and a half ago

okay but we did also we’ve been doing

fluff and fold for a very long time now

it’s hard to believe how long but it’s

for a very long time yeah probably we’ve

probably been doing the fluff and bowl

for like maybe four years yeah

four or five years yeah so we do fluff

and fold after two of the locations

and we do we do a pretty large

commercial account business

as well um and then the residential

has the last thing that has come on to

the corporation um in the last in the

last year

we’ve added that piece awesome

awesome well i i mean your guys’s story

incredible um your love story incredible

donna what it is way to be a go-getter

and just

find what you want and then go after

jordan oh no i

i knew once bernie put the little seed

in my brain i’m like yeah

i don’t understand why don’t i ask this

guy to marry me

so yes yeah i’m kind of like that jordan

i get something in my

mind and i it’s i don’t get derailed

ever actually yeah

my mind is something and i’m like oh no

this is the way this is going to go

this is it david stark’s a good sport

because i always have

side hustles too and he just says donna

honestly

no more side hustles i’m like but

they’re so much fun

yeah according to whom i don’t know

maybe but

anyway if you’re listening to this

david is just shaking his head right now

oh no i still have side hustle ideas

yeah and he just says no and jenna

actually has side hustle ideas too which

i guess the apple doesn’t fall too far

from the tree but

yeah jordan thank you for having us and

letting us do this with you

well i can’t let you go yet i still have

a couple more questions to ask

of course that i want to get into so

don’t thank me yet

uh but i want to know this okay we have

a little section that we like to call

the secret sauce listen up it’s the

secret sauce

yes and i want to know what what’s

something that’s

working really well in your business

right now that other owners can

implement

that you know can help their businesses

improve

yeah this one’s you yes this one she’s

got this

man so because we just don’t own one

store that’s just a walk-in laundry

uh we’ve diversified so much um over all

these years that it became very clear to

me that we needed a

website and not just a website that you

build on your own because there’s so

many that you can build on your own i

knew we needed a company that knew what

they were doing to do it

and i probably looked for three years

and i just couldn’t find somebody that i

thought was a good fit

for me because i was going to be the one

working directly with this company

and we just hit the lottery it’s a

company called creative marketing

services

they built our website which is beyond

fabulous um they handle

all the changes that need to be done to

it especially with this latest version

of covet 19.

they were they were i just can’t tell

you the work that they did on it to let

everybody know that we were still open

um and then they also do all of our

marketing

all of our online marketing google

analytics

s you know our seo work our everything

having to do with our marketing

from the walk-in traffic to the fluff

from full

traffic to the residential

and commercial side of the business and

then we also

i mean from now and then we have people

that want to uh rent out our laundries

for movies

commercials and things like that and so

the website’s beyond beautiful and then

and she works with the company called

harmony three productions that does all

of our video

and on our website right now there’s a

video that i don’t even need to tell

people what we do

they just go to the website and click

the video and

they can see how the residential service

works so that’s the key to me if you if

you owe multiple stores

and you really want to do something

other than just do a walk-in

type of business you need the mark

because people validate you through your

website

yeah if your website is wonky and looks

it was built 98 years ago people will

more than likely

move on and find something that is

very professional looking and run well

and creative marketing services

is the real deal that was the game

changer yeah

yeah that’s awesome i mean i i it’s such

a especially when you get into that

you know pickup and delivery you know

online

stuff is is crucial because it is

you know there there are no phone books

anymore you know that’s that’s where

people find you

and get to know you and learn trust you

and

you know so even having that i don’t

think that um i don’t think a lot of

people understand

just how valuable that is when you think

about the dollars being spent it’s

probably the best dollars you’ll ever

spend

it is when you look at it from the

standpoint

of trying to do advertising and in

essence that’s really what it is

you’re advertising your product and it’s

probably

by far the best dollars you’ll spend and

it’s brand awareness too i mean we’ve

created a brand over the years

and um it’s brand awareness i mean the

the

the ads that they are running right now

for mother’s day in particular and just

the pickup service with mother’s day i

see them come through on my instagram

feed

or facebook and i know they’re coming

because i’ve approved them all

but i still smile when i see them come

up so

it depends on how big you want to take

your operation

of course because if you just have one

store yelp is

you know yelp and doing some you know

some google ads is helpful but

once you get to a piece that you’re

trying to manage different parts of

being a owner i i really believe that

um a functional website i mean you’ve

seen our website right have you looked

at it

yeah it’s awesome it’s awesome and all

if you don’t mind i’ll put a link to it

in the show notes and people can check

it out yeah i mean yeah i’d love for

them to see it i mean i

i just think it’s beautiful and this

company is

just a just a five-star company

the way they run their business they’re

fun too

i enjoy working with them that’s both of

them harmony 3

and creative marketing services yeah

well that’s important too

it is well that’s awesome secret sauce i

think that’s

i think that’s crucial and even even if

you only own

one laundromat you know maybe you don’t

need to get so crazy where you’re

you know paying a bunch of money for ads

and and stuff right you need to have a

good website

yeah yeah you know yeah you do and you

people know the difference between one

that’s done well

and one that isn’t because there’s we’ve

been in it too long now with websites

for people to know the difference

yeah all right well this section uh we

like to call

pro tips pro tips

and uh here’s the question and this

might be hard for you actually to narrow

it down but what’s one piece of advice

that you would give

to uh somebody who’s looking to get into

the laundromat industry for the first

time

i know okay can i well you could you go

ahead

you can both answer you can okay so

it’s it’s what david already said it’s a

broker with integrity

and somebody by the way that

knows something about the laundry

business you can’t find a broker that

sells

pet stores groomers i

i don’t believe i think you need to find

somebody that specializes in the laundry

industry and has

owned perhaps and operated one and knows

how to read a balance sheet

yeah and to somebody that can really

give you good advice i mean

that’s not to say that a broker that’s

brokering other businesses can’t be

helpful

but i really think you need to find

somebody

that knows the business and somebody

that’s got integrity

and that is not just trying to sell you

something they’re trying to sell you

something that is going to be

a workable business for you because some

people get into the laundry business and

they’re not entrepreneur i mean they

don’t have that spirit in them

they own they work for somebody else

that they get a paycheck

every two weeks yeah and as you know

jordan nobody knows better than you

it’s a whole different ball game yeah

and so that’s that’s what i would say

you can’t

you have to start point a with having

that expertise

is that what you were going to say well

is there any doubt

why do you think i married her so yeah

she knows what i’m going to say

well a vice versa vice versa at this

point

yeah nothing else just start with that i

could not agree more you know and

again i’ve i’ve mentioned this many

times we’ve talked about this but

my story would look so different if i

had

found somebody who was knowledgeable and

trustworthy

to help me get into the industry and i

didn’t

and it it cost me literally tens of

thousands of dollars

yeah a lot of emotional heartache

yeah no it’s true because you you take

your family with you down that journey

yeah oh yeah yeah you need to have a

broker that’s

that’s got integrity and good morals um

and will will not try to sell you it

yeah if you have a broker that’s trying

to sell you every laundry that you bring

to them

you better start looking for a plan b

and with another broker

somebody needs to be telling you that’s

not gonna be a good fit for you

yeah and i will say that we we’re very

lucky here we’re both in southern

california

and there are dedicated laundromat

brokers galore

around here but i do a lot of coaching

with

people all over the united actually all

over the world

which has been very cool but you know a

lot of smaller towns and smaller cities

even don’t have

any if at all dedicated laundromat

brokers and i would say

in that case find a good

third party you know like a donna and

david like

you know somebody who has experience in

the industry

who can help walk you through that

because the broker isn’t going to know

the finer details of what makes a good

laundromat

unless they have been in that industry

themselves

um so you know if if a dedicated broker

is not available find a good consultant

to help

correct while you’re here that’s that is

the key

because you have to start with the end

in mind and sometimes if you haven’t

owned the laundry before you don’t know

what that end is

yeah do you want to do fluff and fold

are you still going to work your

full-time job

do you want this to be and unless you

have somebody asking you those questions

you can’t make a good decision to buy

your laundry

exactly yes exactly well

that’s i mean that’s gold and that is

worth

it’s literally worth tens of thousands

of dollars that advice

i wish you would have shared it with me

jordan

well blame jenna had she met you you

know years earlier

than we could we could have been in

assistance to you

yeah well you know what i the way i’m

thinking about it right now at this

moment

is that that path led me to getting to

know you so i’m thinking jordan

that’s so nice that’s so sweet

what i got i have two more questions for

you the next question is

do you have one or two resources that

you would recommend

uh for laundromat owners to either help

them grow their business or help them

grow personally

do you have any favorite resources

i think that you want to network

so the more that you can network with

other

laundry owners you will develop a

wealth of information and that can come

through your equipment district

distributors

cla there’s a number of ways that you

can connect

with other laundry owners because you’ll

start hearing

a lot of their experiences the things

that work for them

things that haven’t worked yeah and you

can

learn an awful lot by just keeping your

mouth shut

and listening to what other people have

to say yeah

and so i think that that

anything you can do to connect

with other laundry owners that also

want to connect with you because it goes

both ways

they learn from you you learn from them

yeah and then there’s always

those that are interested

in the industry as a whole it’s not just

about i’m operating my two laundries

and that’s all that matters it’s more

about

the industry as a whole and how do we

promote it

in a positive way that everybody

benefits from

not just the owners but the end user

you know the person that comes into the

laundry why do they come into the

laundry as opposed to other

opportunities

so i think more than you develop those

relationships the more you can learn

yeah i mean we we still do it we still

have several people

um you know people that we’ve met

basically through building

a lot of these stores and um you know

we’ve got one person in particular

that i i call on a regular basis and

just check in with him and what he’s

doing

and he helped us get into the um start

our fluff and fold side of our company i

mean we obviously knew what fluff and

fold was obviously

but we were we were doing so many other

things that the operations side didn’t

really come into the

front until we stopped building so yes

very good advice david stark i agree

yeah yeah i i agree too and i mean

that’s a big part of why

we’re doing the podcast just yeah as a

you know a way to get to know other

owners here

wisdom from you guys and uh yeah

so beautiful beautiful advice well i

loved your podcast number

two david and i listened to that and

yeah we loved hearing that

yeah you’re you’re doing the right thing

to reach out to people you are jordan

it’s working

yeah well thank you and yeah dave mims

another all-star in the industry he

would

love to have him back on too so loved

his story

yeah and he’s doing cool stuff out there

in cincinnati so

yeah he is yeah good i’ll link to that

in case

you haven’t listened to it before well

my last question for you is

if anybody has a question for you or or

wants to

you know even just drop a note and say

thanks for being on the podcast

how can they best get in contact with

you well we’ve got

um through our website there’s several

ways they can email us

it’s um support at sparklinglaundry.com

okay um and you know we have an 800

number

they can call 800-960-1627

but the best place really is to go to

our website and they can

they can reach us directly from that

good and i’ll have a link to that

down in the uh in the show notes thanks

jordan

guys i i mean i literally i’ve been

looking forward to this conversation

for weeks since we’ve been planning it

we had dinner not that long ago

actually it was kind of a while ago now

yeah where the world went crazy

yeah um and uh yeah i know

it is crazy um but i’ve been looking

forward to it

i thank you so much for being on i can’t

wait to have you on for the part two

and hear the rest of uh rest of your

story because i feel like we’ve

barely only scratched the circle and uh

i just i can’t wait for me to hear more

of it and

and for everybody to hear more of it so

thank you guys for being on

really appreciate it okay jordan jordan

have a great day

all right you too okay thanks okay

bye-bye

absolutely incredible david and donna

stark

they are legends and man i

i i seriously i could talk to them all

day long

just listening to their stories gleaning

their wisdom

they are just they’re such genuine

people i really i love them and i love

that we’re doing a part two with them

because

i just i need to learn a little bit more

from them i need to hear a little bit

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