New to laundromats and entrepreneurship

Hello all,

My name is Christina and I am a mom of two. I have never owned a business but because of my job, I study entrepreneurship all day, every day. I think if I were to go to business school, they would give me an honorary MBA just based on my career experience.

I love my job and I do not want to quit, so I’m looking for a side hustle to scratch that entrepreneurial itch. I think a laundromat would be a great option because of how flexible my job is (100% remote, flex time), and because my husband, who would be my business partner, used to work as a Maintenance Manager of a commercial laundry. There’s nothing mechanical that could go wrong that he couldn’t fix, and he can teach me how to do simple maintenance jobs on my own.

All that said, I’m not sure this is the ideal gig for us. I think we are good candidates but for one thing, money will be a challenge. We have a good but saved up, but probably not enough. We have great credit, but after listening to the podcast episode with the commercial lender, it looks like they’re wanting a down payment of 40% to 50%. I have very little idea what a laundromat costs, but I don’t think it would be easy to scrape together that kind of down payment.

Anyway, those are the basics about me. I’ll be posting much more with specific questions I have and I’m looking forward to your feedback. If you’re a pro, let me know what you think about our background and qualifications!