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

Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
Hey, what’s up, guys? It’s Jordan with the Laundromat resource podcast. This is show 209, and I’m pumped you’re here today because today we have back on the show, Ben Higginbothen, who is episode 137. If you want to go back and check that out, because it is a winner. He’s back with a few more laundromats, and he wants to tell you all about what he’s learned getting those few more laundromats, how he did it, and how he’s operating his businesses. Now, I know a lot of you guys out there. The goal is to sell, scale up your business, and Ben’s got the formula. So here we are today with Ben. Lots of really practical stuff in here, including how to measure the performance of your business, which was a really interesting conversation, and I know you’re going to love it.

Jordan Berry [00:00:46]:
So let’s jump into it with Ben Higginbotham right now. Ben, you’re back on the show, man, and for good reason. How you doing today?

Ben Higginbotham [00:00:56]:
I’m doing well. How are you Excited to be here?

Jordan Berry [00:00:59]:
I am doing awesome, and I’m excited you’re here. You know, obviously. Listen, you’ve been on the show before. If you have not listened to Ben’s first episodes, episode 137, you definitely got to go check it out because it’s a really cool story. And we’ll do a quick little recap here in a second of that one, but it’s definitely worth a listen there, and then we’ll kind of catch a. Catch up from where. Where he’s gone. But I’ve been following Ben saga, you know, online mostly for the last couple years since he was last on.

Jordan Berry [00:01:34]:
And I’ve. I was like, dude, this guy’s got to come back on. I kind of threw it out there, and he reached out and I was like, I’m sending you an email. Like, let’s get this going. And I got it scheduled, so I’m super excited about it. Dude, can you give us just a quick rundown of, you know, as best you can remember of, like, where you were at at the end of, you know, a couple years ago, that. That last episode.

Ben Higginbotham [00:01:56]:
Yeah, for sure. So really, I started in Laundromats in 2021, purchased my first one then, which was total zombie mat. I think I’d had that one for about a year and a half or two years, and then had just right before we did the podcast, acquired a set of two more that I. That Were also zombie mats, so I acquired those. And I think I was just starting to remodel those when we talked last. So those are done. And since then I’ve purchased one more and then actually found a free laundromat, rented out a closed down space in a strip mall and remodeled that one. So up to five stores now, which keeps me plenty busy.

Ben Higginbotham [00:02:47]:
And yeah, it’s been a whirlwind.

Jordan Berry [00:02:50]:
Awesome. Well, you said the magic word, free laundromat. So we’ll definitely jump into that here in a little bit because I know I. I don’t know about you, but I get asked about the free laundromat thing all the time. So let’s hear it from the horse’s mouth here in a little bit. But before we get there, how expensive.

Ben Higginbotham [00:03:07]:
A free laundromat is.

Jordan Berry [00:03:10]:
Yeah, yeah, let’s. That’s what I was looking to hear. So before we get to that free laundromat, I mean, like you said you were, you had just acquired those first two or those second two. Two, number two and number three laundromats and were just beginning, I think, the process of fixing it up. When we were talking, can we talk about sort of how that went, what the progress is like and how they’re doing today?

Ben Higginbotham [00:03:38]:
Yeah. So those two stores are in two different cities. One of them is a large college town. I think it’s got about 80,000 residents and then another 80,000 that come in during the school year. And then the other one is in a teeny tiny little town that’s just outside. So those two stores are actually only about a seven minute drive apart. But they do have different addresses and total different kind of markets that they’re in. The way I went about that is the smaller of the two stores.

Ben Higginbotham [00:04:17]:
We actually closed it for about three months. And I think when I purchased that store, it had, I believe, 24 washers in it. And I think four of them worked. And then, you know, you hear all this stuff. We’d go in there and I ran it for about maybe three weeks, but maybe a month between purchasing it and shutting it down to remodel. And you’d go in there and the customers would be like, hey, you got to use this dryer over here on the side. If you hit it just the right way, it’ll, you know, run for free with no coins and all the tips and tricks that you’re like, yeah, this place is crazy. So, yeah, we shut that one down.

Ben Higginbotham [00:04:59]:
That was the one in the smaller, I’m going to call it A town, it’s not really a city. The smaller location. And we ended up rebuilding it back with nine washers. Initially we put a mix of larger hard mount equipment in to replace the old. I think it was built as a top loader store. And then when I was in there, it had. They weren’t horizons, but they were the inexpensive wascomat soft mounts from 20 years ago. Whatever they call those.

Ben Higginbotham [00:05:33]:
Yeah, that were just worn out. I mean they were like I said, probably 15 years old. And that’s way exceeds the lifespan of a soft mount residential style washer.

Jordan Berry [00:05:44]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, I mean you got in there and I mean you had some more like buying and redoing one zombie mat is a lot of work, but you just. You took on two at once while running another store.

Ben Higginbotham [00:06:02]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:06:02]:
What was that like?

Ben Higginbotham [00:06:04]:
That was definitely a big bite to take all at one time. And the result of that was the second store, the one that we didn’t initially remodel. Well, there’s some story I’ll go into about what happened. We did put some new equipment in that one kind of right away. But like it’s been a slow growing store. We did a rolling remodel on it versus kind of shutting it down and doing a complete retool. And like it took about almost a year to get all the remodel work done and revenue increased slowly. And so like I know there’s a lot of fear sometimes about hey, should I shut my store down? Should I not shut my store down? Should I do a full remodel? Not do a full remodel.

Ben Higginbotham [00:06:56]:
But like when I graph out the revenue, the, like if you close your store for a month or two months and then reopen with new equipment, the revenue that you can generate day one of being open with new stuff versus the climbing revenue over an extended period of time, say six or eight months of doing it. Like I believe the math supports just if your store is in a bad enough condition, just shut it down, rip everything out, fix the infrastructure, redo the layout, do all the stuff, bring it back as a brand new store and price it accordingly and you will actually be more profitable over the long haul than doing it as a stretched out version.

Jordan Berry [00:07:44]:
Yeah, that’s. I mean that’s a scary thing to do, especially if you’re. I mean again, this is. This wasn’t necessarily your first. You were still relatively new to the business, but it wasn’t your first rodeo. Right. And you did it both ways, which is interesting too. But was, I mean, was there a.

Jordan Berry [00:08:01]:
Was there A reason you did one all at once and one over time?

Ben Higginbotham [00:08:09]:
Yes and no. So the initial reason was I ordered a full store worth of equipment for the smaller location. And I like to put in 80 pound machines because customers like to use 80 pound machines. Well, with. I use Speed Queen equipment. I’ve stuck with that throughout all these remodels and speed queen 80 pound machines, as compared to some other manufacturers, are shorter and wider. And so we got a shipment of equipment into the parking lot and then realized that it didn’t fit through the front door. So that kind of changed everything on the fly.

Ben Higginbotham [00:08:53]:
Remodeling the first store, which is what resulted in us taking about half of the equipment that I had ordered and putting it in the second store, the two bigger machines and the other. And then, like, to be honest, the finances did not justify. Like, I would have loved to shut that store down and put another $600,000 worth of equipment into it, but I had to wait a couple months to kind of cash flow that in. And that’s just how it is sometimes, but totally, like, especially when you’re doing two at the same time.

Jordan Berry [00:09:32]:
Yeah. Yeah, man. Like straight up glutton for punishment over there. Yeah. But I love it. I love it. Okay, so it’s, it, you know, a lot of work, a lot of stress. I, I think the, the debate of, and this is a question I get all the time from, from consulting clients that like, should I do it chunks at a time, you know, a line here, a line there, or 30 pounders here, 40 pounders there, or should I do it all at once? It’s an interesting debate.

Jordan Berry [00:10:04]:
I mean, it’s definitely, there’s definitely some math involved, right. Like the numbers have to justify total redo. But one, one big consideration is there, there are some benefits to doing it all at once that you just can’t get from doing it, you know, a little bit at a time. I think that’s kind of what you’re getting at, right? Like when you have a brand new shiny store and everything you know is new and looks good and everything. Like, people love that. Right. Also you, you know, you can charge more kind of across the board for like you said, charge accordingly, right. You can charge more and people will pay it because it’s new, it’s shiny, they know they’re not going to have any problems.

Jordan Berry [00:10:44]:
You know, the experience of, of doing laundry is better when you’ve got new equipment, all that, you know, obviously you get some, most likely you’re going to get some energy and utility. Efficiencies. With new equipment. So there’s a lot of benefits that sort of add up. You know, by attracting new people, by charging more, by saving a little bit on utilities. All that stuff really adds up to, like you said, in a lot of cases, day one, you’re going to do better than if you would kind of do it over time. But it’s scary because it’s a big chunk of money that you’re putting up front to do it.

Ben Higginbotham [00:11:21]:
Yeah. I think another benefit that is really not noticeable and not talked about enough is the vast majority of these stores were not built for the equipment we use today. A lot of stores that are 30 or 40 years old were built for 35 top loading machines or 40 top loading machines. And nobody wants that style store anymore. And so if you do it a piece at a time, it’s really hard to change the layout of your store. Or it’s really hard to change. You know, if you. I like to use drain troughs.

Ben Higginbotham [00:12:03]:
I think drain troughs have a lot of benefits. But it’s not always easy to stick drain troughs into bulkheads that were designed for top load or any. Any sort of machine that slides out has a different bulkhead than a machine that is built like a hard mount that’s permanent and you need to be able to access behind it through that bulkhead. And so as an example, the most recent store that I did is in a strip mall. And it’s got kind of the normal aluminum frame glass windows that you see on the front of all strip malls. So it’s all glass on the front wall. Right. That store was designed with a row of single stack dryers on both the left side and the right side of the room.

Ben Higginbotham [00:12:55]:
And then the washing machines were transverse to the front of the store. So standing in front of that store, especially at nighttime when it’s dark outside and the lights inside are on, you could see 10ft into that store, maybe 15, whatever the front kind of lobby space was. And then you hit this hard stop basically of this bulkhead of washers.

Jordan Berry [00:13:20]:
Wall of washers. Yeah, yeah.

Ben Higginbotham [00:13:22]:
And then behind that there was another aisle and then another bulkhead and then another aisle, so on. Right.

Jordan Berry [00:13:27]:
So there were like what is in those aisles?

Ben Higginbotham [00:13:30]:
Yeah, oh yeah. Like who knows what’s happening in there? And my avatar customer, like I cater to people that typically have bigger families. We’re doing bigger sized machines. I’m in the Midwest where it’s not like we’re sort of a family centric culture here. It’s not as many Single people and all that. So my avatar is kind of the mom of two or three kids, wants to come and do her laundry in peace and quiet and have no trouble. Right. Well, she likes to be able to walk up to a brightly lit store and see from the front to the back and know that there’s no shenanigans happening in the back.

Ben Higginbotham [00:14:08]:
Well, if we went into that store. So when we remodeled it, we turned and went to one single front to back bulkhead. So now you can stand in front of the store, it’s 60ft wide and you can see down both sides of the washers. And we moved all, we took out one side of the dryers and went to double stacks only on the right hand side, which made the store effectively like 12ft wider by the time you take out all that space from the dryers. So it feels huge even though it’s basically the same square footage. And I actually have more pounds of wash capacity now with fewer machines than I did with the old style layout for small machines.

Jordan Berry [00:14:51]:
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it’s interesting. These are, these are some of like the nuances, right. That is that they’re hard to get information on. Right. Because you know, unless you have a good distributor, which there are good distributors out there, right. A lot of times the distributor trying to sell you as much equipment as possible. And a lot of what I do in consulting with people on store layout, machine mix and stuff is, is talking them out of doing one to one replacements for the machines that are in there and thinking more holistically about who, the demographics that you’re serving, you know, what, what are their needs, who are the competitors around you, what are they offering? What can you offer that they’re not offering that makes sense for the demographics and then how do we price that accordingly? But just like you said, more machines doesn’t mean more revenue necessarily because like you said, you have more capacity now than, than they did before.

Jordan Berry [00:15:54]:
And you’re probably able to charge more too because you’ve got. Everything feels safer, feels more spacious. It’s just a more pleasant experience being in that store.

Ben Higginbotham [00:16:05]:
Yeah, for sure. And some other things that like. So I’ve done some interesting things in that store. We went from, I, I think there were 36 washer hookups in that store and we went down to 24 washers. But I also didn’t put any 20 pound machines in that store. I went with 30 pound. I think it’s 30s, 40s, 60s and 80s in that store, which I know a lot of people just Hang on to the small machines. But like my demographic there, it’s in a college town.

Ben Higginbotham [00:16:41]:
And so it’s in that particular store is on the south side of town for the same college town as my other store. Right. So now I have two in the same market. I can look at what’s going on. I looked at my other store and I said, hey, most of these college kids are coming in here once every two weeks. They bring in probably every piece of clothing they own, everything, wash it all.

Jordan Berry [00:17:04]:
Yeah, yeah.

Ben Higginbotham [00:17:05]:
They never use the 20 pound machines. They don’t separate colors and whites. They don’t break things down. They want mid sized washers that hold whatever they’re, you know, two weeks worth of laundry. It goes in, it gets washed. That’s it. So I said, hey, I don’t need really small washers. If they want really small washers, they can go up to the other side of town and use those.

Ben Higginbotham [00:17:27]:
And obviously that store, I just opened that store a little over two months ago. So I’m still in the learning phase of like, how did the design work? But so far it’s been very successful. I think it’s launched really well and we’ll see.

Jordan Berry [00:17:43]:
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, it is interesting, right? But that’s what comes with knowing your demographics and knowing your customer base. Right. Of there is no, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of principles and we can talk about some of the principles that separate out, you know, successful owners from not successful owners. And there’s a lot of, you know, there’s a lot of overlap of like what successful owners are doing. There’s a lot of the same things that successful owners do that, that struggling owners don’t do or even just average owners don’t do. Right. But there are some nuances to every location and this is one of them.

Jordan Berry [00:18:21]:
Right. So there’s no one size fits all with an equipment mix. And one thing I see a lot with distributors, not, not all distributors. Like I said, there’s some great distributors out there that can really help you out. One thing I see a lot with distributors is there’s a, there’s a template, so to speak. Maybe not written down or anything like that, but there’s a template of you need this many 20s, this many 30s, this many 40s, 60s, 80s. Right. And it just doesn’t, it doesn’t work that way.

Jordan Berry [00:18:50]:
Like, it’s just everywhere is different. Right. And so you’ve really got to know your market and understand who it is you’re serving and what their needs are. To be able to design a store. You know, like you said, you made some bold moves on this, this last, most recent one. Right. You turned the store sideways, basically. You got rid of all the twenties.

Jordan Berry [00:19:08]:
Yeah. There’s probably people listening to this right now who are having a heart attack because you don’t have top loaders and twenties in your store. But you know, and, and yet, yet to be seen if it’s successful or not. But it also sounds like you’ve got, if you have to, you could probably add some in. Cause you had 36 washers and you only have 24 now.

Ben Higginbotham [00:19:27]:
Yeah, there’s some stuff that could be done, but like I said, honestly, it’s launched really well. It exceeded my forecasted launch. So we’ll see what a year end. Because honestly, here’s the other thing that I think people like. I think the laundry laundromats are a slow moving vehicle. I think it takes at least 12 months, maybe 18 to 24 before that thing is stabilized. And I think a lot of people get scared when they get into one initially in their first one. It’s like, hey, we’re doing this stuff and it’s not changing the way we thought it was going to change.

Ben Higginbotham [00:20:01]:
Well, yeah, but give it six months and I bet it will be more what you thought it was going to be.

Jordan Berry [00:20:08]:
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, that’s what we talk about a lot, right. Of like people get into, you know, buying a zombie mat or something. Or like, listen, on average it takes six to 18 months to, you know, to get to a somewhat stable position. So you just need to be aware of that. And I think, you know where I see. I’ve actually spoken with a couple people this week who have been struggling and a big part of that with their laundromat and a big part of that is they didn’t plan for that growth period. Right.

Jordan Berry [00:20:38]:
It’s not an. If you build it, they will come if you throw in new machines. That was a hard lesson I learned early on too. If you throw in new machines, they’re just going to come. Number one, you got to get them in there and create the awareness, running ads or whatever. But number two, it just takes time and you need to be able to stay alive during that six to 18 months. If it’s not hitting profitability right away, which sometimes it just doesn’t. But, but if, but if you can’t like that, that can be a problem for sure.

Ben Higginbotham [00:21:10]:
Yeah. And I think there’s something to be said like we’re in an industry that’s not terribly complicated. Like, are, you know, finances for a laundromat are pretty straightforward, but it’s still easy to get wrapped up in kind of the big number fallacy of like, hey, this store makes XYZ amount of money, and that’s more than I make in my job. Well, yeah, but when you play big, big boy games, you get big boy bills, too. And an extra 20 or 30 thousand dollars out the door is real easy to spend, not profitability. And you can blow through a safety net, can go really quick if you don’t have it big enough.

Jordan Berry [00:21:52]:
I just had a client who They’re. They’re actually an escrow to buy a laundromat. And one of the things that we always recommend, and you should do this if you’re out there buying a laundromat is we recommend you scope the sewer line just so you kind of know what’s going on, because that could be a big expense. And they. They had it scoped and got a quote to fix some quote unquote problems for they said ballpark of the quote was 60 to 80 grand. And that’s not counting shutting down the store and lost business that way. And, yeah, that was a big shock to them also. It was kind of a shock to me, like, that that is not a normal number.

Jordan Berry [00:22:31]:
And I was like, why don’t we get a couple more opinions? And we got a couple more opinions. And it turns out the issue is not the first one was saying, like I suspected. And it’s not gonna be anywhere near that price point. But the point is, is that you can get big boy bills like that, and all of a sudden you’re like, whoa, I am in trouble here.

Ben Higginbotham [00:22:50]:
So either it’s just my luck or it must be common for us, but it’s air conditioners. I swear, every summer I get some air conditioning guy out here that’s telling me I need to spend 10 or $20,000 because I need a whole new system, you know, and usually it’s something that you. You start pushing on them, and they’re like, well, we can put a part on it for $600, but we’d really like to spend. You know, we’d like you to put a whole new thing in here to the tune of a lot of money. But, yeah, that stuff comes up, and you got to have some cushion there to take care of it. If you’re just living off straight cash flow, you can get yourself in a bind real quick.

Jordan Berry [00:23:27]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wanted to. I. You know, I don’t I don’t want to get too far into the weeds, but you mentioned something I thought was interesting that, you know, gets talked about some, but not a ton. And you mentioned the trough system. Can you explain what a trough system is and versus, you know, a direct line and, and why you like the trough system? Just, you know, for people out there who are thinking about buying a laundromat or redoing their laundromat.

Ben Higginbotham [00:23:56]:
Yeah, for sure. So the best way that I can kind of explain a trough plus the benefits at the same time is everybody knows about like a sink trap underneath your sink. You’ve got the little curve in the pipe and that’s what keeps the sewer gas smell out of the laundromat or house or whatever. Right. So if you hard plumb in a washer and you go straight out of the washing machine into the, the white PVC pipe plumbing of the building, typically you’re going to have to put a trap on each washing machine. That’s, I think, code most places anymore. I have had one store where it was trapped, where it went into the floor. But either way, you kind of still have the same problem that everything that goes through that washing machine, which is actually quite a lot of like, it’s amazing the amount of solid coins and hotel key cards and everything else that goes through a washing machine comes out of that washing machine and it goes straight into those pipes.

Ben Higginbotham [00:25:02]:
And then all that stuff collects at the low point of that trap. Usually if you go to a trough, you can. There’s a lot of different ways you can make a trough. Some of them you can pour into a concrete floor. Some of them, some of them are made out of metal, some are made out of plastic. Doesn’t really matter what they’re made out of. But basically it gives you an air gap on that drain. So the water comes out of the washing machine, goes into this open box container of whatever shape fits your bulkhead, and then the water goes, flows through the box and goes to a single exit point out of the trough into the plumbing of your building.

Ben Higginbotham [00:25:43]:
And what that does for you is it basically gives you a spot for all of the contaminants that come out of the washer, hopefully end up in the trough. And fewer of them go into your plumbing. That means fewer plumbing bills, less clogs, all sorts of things. There are a few other benefits. Like, you can see the way my troughs work, where I just dump an open pipe into the trough through the side or whatever. You take the top off the trough and you fill a washing machine with water, you can see if the drain line is leaking the drain valve because you’ll see water running into the trough when it’s not rinsing. So there’s some maintenance benefits to it. And then kind of the third benefit is.

Ben Higginbotham [00:26:29]:
So my largest trough is 52ft long, which is probably one of the largest troughs ever. But if you think about a box that’s like 12 by 18 inches and 52ft long, that sucker probably holds 500 gallons of water. So even if I do have that particular store has a 6 inch drain line, so it can pretty much flow anything. But if you do have a smaller drain system plumbed into your building, then you won’t have any overwhelm of that drain line. If all your machines flush at the same time, you’ve got that trough that can kind of hold that water. It lets your machines drain faster. Faster machine draining leads to quicker laundry for your customers. So there’s a ton of benefits to them as far as I’m concerned.

Ben Higginbotham [00:27:20]:
But mostly it’s because it keeps your drain lines cleaner.

Jordan Berry [00:27:24]:
Any downsides that you know of.

Ben Higginbotham [00:27:29]:
If you do not keep your trough clean, they can start to smell. That’s the only thing. Like your, the whole point of having that P trap or S trap in your plumbing line is to keep the odors from the sewer down. You’re not going to get any sewer gas out, but you do get like buildup of soap scum and sand and whatever else comes out in the washer water, which is super easy to take care of. You just clean your troughs out every so often and it’s not a big deal. But realistically, that’s about the only downside I know of for troughs.

Jordan Berry [00:28:05]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. And you know, I think they’re becoming more and more popular, like laundromats. As far as I know, laundromats were not built with troughs very often, if ever, until not too, too long ago. But I see them more and more now as people are retooling or building new. These trough systems get more and more popular for all the reasons that you, you stated, which is awesome and some.

Ben Higginbotham [00:28:33]:
Stuff that I know. So like when I order a trough, I buy a trough with a sloped bottom right like that. You can get them made where they have kind of a drain angle built into them. And then when you set it on the floor, all of my troughs sit on the concrete floor. It helps keep all the water flowing, helps helps keep any odors and build up A material down. I also put. When I’m building a drain trough, which I buy them, but when I order them, I have them put the drain in the bottom of the box. A lot of times you’ll see drain troughs with the drain in the side of the box, which is fine, but usually that ends up kind of leaving a little quarter inch of water in the bottom or something.

Ben Higginbotham [00:29:17]:
And again, I don’t know if it’s a big difference, but I figure any water that’s standing there has the potential to be a problem. So that stuff out of there.

Jordan Berry [00:29:27]:
Yeah, awesome. Good. Good trough tips, man. I bet people did not tune in expecting good trough tips. There you go.

Ben Higginbotham [00:29:33]:
There you go.

Jordan Berry [00:29:37]:
Going back to laundromats number two and three that you remodeled. I mean, first of all, thank you for sharing about how it went. You know, kind of retooling all at once versus over time. I think that’s a huge, you know, I, I know it’s anecdotal, but I think it’s a huge piece of advice that kind of showcases the pluses and minuses of doing both. Because there are pluses and minuses. Anything else you feel like you learned by going, I mean, you kind of went through the fire. A little bit of like redoing two laundromats at the same time is. That’s a big deal.

Jordan Berry [00:30:10]:
Anything that, anything else that you feel like you learned going through that process.

Ben Higginbotham [00:30:17]:
So I did end up having. I had mentioned that we did split kind of the equipment between the two locations because of this door sizing issue which we could have fitted in, but it was going to involve ripping the door frame out and all this other stuff. But what ended up happening was try.

Jordan Berry [00:30:36]:
Going through the window. A lot of times they go through the window in that situation if there’s.

Ben Higginbotham [00:30:39]:
A big enough window. The windows in this facility are like the waist high. Like it’s kind of got a Wayne’s coat up about waist high. So the windows aren’t. Aren’t quite big enough not to get off of the weeds too much. But the details there were. I thought it had a double door in it because it’s got two doors side by side. But when we actually started looking at it, they had taken two single doors and mounted two single door frames next to each other.

Ben Higginbotham [00:31:05]:
So there was no center post that we could take out. So yeah. Anyway, what that resulted in though was like my plan got adjusted and I under equipped the smaller store. So we, we ended up having to go back in and add, I think five additional Washers about six months later, which isn’t a big deal. But I think that it goes back to like I had planned out what I was going to do on the smaller store, but I hadn’t really planned out what I was going to do on the bigger store. And it’s just really easy when you’re in the moment and you’re kind of, you know, the guy for the install guys standing there saying what do you want to do? And you make decisions like that, sometimes it’s a lot easier to mess them up. And that wasn’t a big mess up. But like I, I had the equipment that I should have put in there that we moved to the other store.

Ben Higginbotham [00:32:00]:
And I think that there’s a lot to be said for kind of trying to plan as much as you can before you’re on site. And there’s decisions that have to be made in the moment and all of that. Like get a written plan before that.

Jordan Berry [00:32:18]:
Yeah. Is there like if you could go back for that smaller store, is there a different plan you would have done? Knowing you couldn’t get the 80 pounders in there easily, I would have probably.

Ben Higginbotham [00:32:31]:
Put more 60 pound machines in. So that store we initially intended to have two 280s and two 60s and when we took the 280s away we ended up with 60s, 40s and 20s in there. But there’s only two 60 pound machines. And I think I was looking the other day and I use a point of sale software that interfaces where I can see what my turns per day looks like. And I think those two 60 pound machines are turning like 5.7 times a day. So they are really getting used. And so that’s if I do anything more because there’s plenty of square footage in that store. If I do anything else it’ll be.

Ben Higginbotham [00:33:15]:
Add more bigger machines.

Jordan Berry [00:33:17]:
Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting because the, the, you know, we’ll talk about turns per day because we had a, had a spirited discussion about it before we hit record. So we gotta definitely talk about that. But it’s, it’s an interesting equation, right. Of if since that’s sort of the metric that’s used right now. By and large it’s this like interesting equation where you know, you’re essentially averaging six turns a day on two. You could add one more and be averaging like four turns a day on three. Right.

Jordan Berry [00:33:49]:
But maybe also it would free it up a little more so you might actually get more than that. Right. So it’s kind of an interesting equation when it comes to equipment mix of Trying to get that right mix of usage versus cost to add new machines and all the different variables that go in there to figure out your equipment mix.

Ben Higginbotham [00:34:11]:
I think that. So with that particular store, there is like, I think it is easy to cap yourself on the market. You can do. So I started that store with nine washing machines in it, and then we added. I think there’s 13 in there right now. So it’s a pretty small store. And I believe that it has the demographics surrounding it justify that it could run more often. But what happens is customers come in there and they see, you know, there’s 13 machines and six or seven of them are filled up.

Ben Higginbotham [00:34:55]:
It looks like it’s way busy. And I think that. So, like, that’s another dynamic to think about is like, if I’m doing six turns out of two machines and I add a third one, do I really get four turns average or, like, can I gain another turn per day because the customers are more likely to come in? I don’t know. That’s the, that’s the hard one, I think, is what’s your potential?

Jordan Berry [00:35:22]:
Yeah, yeah. And how many. How many people are utilizing the 40s and just shoving everything in 40s because the 60s are taken up, you know.

Ben Higginbotham [00:35:32]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:35:32]:
While they’re, While they’re turning and. And also, like, what’s that ideal turn Right. For. For machines? Right. I know, I know guys who run their machines and they’re doing seven, eight, nine turns a day on their machines. And, you know, obviously, like, nobody’s going to complain about nine turns a day, but I mean, there’s extra wear and tear that happens on those machines. And, you know, there’s some downsides to it, too, that you got to kind of consider. And, and I know, I know guys who, once they hit.

Jordan Berry [00:36:03]:
They have a threshold in their mind. Maybe it’s five turns a day or whatever. And once they start to cross over that they raise their prices to try to get the turns back down on those.

Ben Higginbotham [00:36:11]:
I think there’s a. There’s a lot of things to consider there of, like, you say wear and tear on the machines, but let’s be honest. If you’re, you know, I put commercial tile floors in my, like, vinyl tile floors, which are a shorter lifespan than ceramic and whatnot, but that’s about a $15,000 bill. And if I get nine turns a day, there’s more people walking on my floor than there are if you’re doing four turns a day. Right. Like, that floor doesn’t last as long. Your power sliding door doesn’t last as long your parking lot needs redone more often. Like, there’s a whole slew of expenses that kind of don’t even get considered when all you’re thinking about is, like, turns per day.

Ben Higginbotham [00:36:54]:
And so I think that that’s. I think that whole model of, like, shooting for a target number of turns per day and adjusting your price based on that is interesting because, like, if we think about what makes up a healthy store, it really doesn’t have anything to do with how often your washers turn. Right? Like, it has a lot more to do with what’s your profitability ratio of, you know, what’s your expenses, how much are you making over that, how much of that are you setting aside for, you know, repair, replacement, all of those things. And are you setting anything aside for repair or replacement? Like, that’s a big thing. I see looking at stores for sale, they’re basically worn out and there’s no plan to make them any better. Right. Like, they’ve just exhausted all of the. The value has been squeezed out of the equipment, and there’s your 100 financing to get it back.

Jordan Berry [00:37:57]:
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Well, listen, I feel like we’re in it now. We’re in it knee deep, so we might as well get in it neck deep. I mean, we both, we were talking about turns per day before this, and neither one of us are huge fans of that being our, Our go to metric in this, in this business, and I’m not sure that either one of us really has the answer to that. But, you know, I, I think you make a good point of saying, like, turns per day really doesn’t have anything to do with the bottom line. Like, what we’re trying to do here is, is make money.

Jordan Berry [00:38:32]:
Right? And, you know, turns per day is a metric. I guess that can help you sort of figure that out. But is it. Is it the best one? I’m not, I’m not convinced that it is. And I think that there’s other metrics that we should be paying attention to. Um, and I’m. I’m trying to figure out, like, why turns per day sort of like, rose to the top as, like, the king metric for our industry. And I’m, you know, I think part of it has to do with, like, it, you know, it.

Jordan Berry [00:39:04]:
It’s a way to measure how. How productive your store is, I guess, and it’s a way to sort of determine machine usage. But. But I think it doesn’t serve us in the way. That is super beneficial most of the time, actually. I don’t know, what are your thoughts term turns per day? Jump in here.

Ben Higginbotham [00:39:29]:
Yeah. So turns per day. I think that turns per day is an interesting thing to know and maybe as an off the cuff number, it’s not bad. I think that it’s probably a little more accurate for say, forecasting or comparing businesses on a micro market. So like maybe in the same city. I think it completely falls down when you’re talking about an industry. As an example, you know, like I said earlier, I’m out here in the Midwest, we do leases. I think most of my leases run around a dollar a square foot, you know, $12 a square foot annually.

Ben Higginbotham [00:40:11]:
Right.

Jordan Berry [00:40:11]:
Like you can’t get a parking spot for a dollar square foot.

Ben Higginbotham [00:40:15]:
Right. And so if I say, hey, I do industry average is three turns a day. Right. And I’m doing three turns a day out here in Indiana compared to you doing three turns a day in California or, you know, in New York, something like that. Like, you’re not going to be able to be as profitable based off of that same number as I am. Just because your expenses are totally different than my expenses and it doesn’t really take that into account at all. Same way with machine pricing. Like my machine pricing is different than your machine pricing.

Ben Higginbotham [00:40:48]:
Turns per day doesn’t really account for that. And so yes, it tells you how busy your store is. But I like to use the term a healthy store. Like what do we call a healthy laundromat? I think a healthy laundromat is a laundromat that looks and feels like it should for the market that it’s in. Right. And I think a healthy laundromat pays its employees a decent wage. I mean, we all know nobody’s making a ton of money working in the laundromat. But there’s a big difference between paying somebody minimum wage and paying somebody a decent wage.

Ben Higginbotham [00:41:31]:
And I think that if you expect to get good employees, you have to pay them pretty well. And so, like, are you healthy enough to do that? A healthy laundromat.

Jordan Berry [00:41:42]:
So.

Ben Higginbotham [00:41:43]:
And I don’t think that we need to get into an argument over like, how long do machines last? Because I feel like that’s totally subjective and how much you want. Like, there’s plenty of ways you can skin that. Right.

Jordan Berry [00:41:55]:
But somewhere between eight and 20 years is the correct answer.

Ben Higginbotham [00:41:58]:
Right? Probably exactly an average between these two.

Jordan Berry [00:42:02]:
Yeah, yeah, it’s.

Ben Higginbotham [00:42:03]:
It’s crazy. But like, whatever you choose your equipment replacement cycle to be, I think a healthy laundromat should have a plan to Purchase that equipment at the replacement rate over the period of time that you, you know, if you’re going to run your equipment for 10 years and it’s going to cost you $500,000 to replace that equipment, you need to be maybe not specifically saving back $50,000 a year, but you need to understand that you have a $50,000 a year expense that that laundromat has to cover. And if you’re paying yourself and not like with no plan for that replacement value, all you’re doing is converting your hard asset of equipment into a liquid asset of cash that you’re then paying yourself. And, and as a whole, the business isn’t sustainable, can last a long time, but it’s not sustainable over a replacement cycle or two. I think as an industry, and I think that this is probably partly because of the massive change in pricing for replacement equipment. But like we’ve gotten into a cycle of saying, hey, we’re going to run this equipment until it’s totally ragged out and then we’re just going to finance everything to rebuild to new, which is okay as long as financing is cheap and easy. And like, we had that for a long time. I’m not sure that we have that as much right now.

Ben Higginbotham [00:43:34]:
Right. Trust me. I have some variable rate equipment loans and they varied a lot over the last couple years. So anyway, I think that’s, that’s what I, what I would look at is like, how do you define a healthy laundromat?

Jordan Berry [00:43:51]:
Right. Yeah, yeah. And you know, and the point you make of like, you know, that the, you kind of mentioned like the expenses of higher turns per day and like the trickle down effects of all that. Right. That the turns per day also has these trickle out effects of, you know, when we start comparing regions as well. Right. Because like you said, there’s a lot of expenses that are going to be a lot different. You mentioned like rents are going to be a lot different, labor is going to be a lot different, utility costs are going to be a lot different.

Jordan Berry [00:44:23]:
You know, and on and on and on. Like those are your three big expenses already. Insurance is going to be a lot different depending on where. If you’re in Florida, you know, good luck. Right. Like, right. It’s going to be expensive for insurance. Right.

Jordan Berry [00:44:35]:
Like so, so there’s a whole lot that’s not accounted for in that. And then same with the pricing. Right. Like ironically, a lot of times the Midwest laundromats are able to charge more than the coastal laundromats, even though they’re more Expensive markets to work in. So not only are you have less expensive expenses, you have more income per turn, you know, on average too. So the profitability can go up, you know, middle, middle America versus the coast a lot of times. So there’s a whole lot to, to factor in there. And I think your, your point is like an industry metric, it’s not super useful.

Jordan Berry [00:45:12]:
And you know, in terms of like what should we be using? I mean first thing that comes to my mind is profit margin. Like I don’t know, like how much are we making?

Ben Higginbotham [00:45:21]:
Like profit margin is really good. I think part of the problem with profit margin is like it is difficult to bandy profit margin around like you’re really successful if it’s not really good, which you can do with turns per day. I think that maybe like profit margin as a ratio, like a percentage was, would be good or I have been trying to kind of think through in my mind a metric that’s based off of like what’s your gross revenue per washing machine broken out over a timescale, whether it’s monthly or annually or something. Because I feel like that would kind of tie together. Like what, how does your pricing affect that? How does your machine mix affect that? Because to be honest, I know that my stores are going to turn fewer turns because I have a lot of big machines, right. If I put in a bunch of 18 pound top loaders and somebody comes in with 60 pounds of laundry, I’m going to get four or five turns out of that, whereas my stores get one turn out of that. But I am significantly more profitable doing one turn than I would be doing five turns just because of my pricing. Right.

Ben Higginbotham [00:46:40]:
Like I think that there’s got to be a better way. And anybody that’s listening who has an idea, feel free to, yeah, read us an email or something, give us your ideas. But like there’s got to be a better way when you’re evaluating a store to measure like what the potential is there.

Jordan Berry [00:47:01]:
Yeah. What I like about the revenue per machine per month is if you have that. I know my camera’s wigging out, but I’m just keep rolling. If you have that. Oh, now it’s the bad camera. But if you have that number that revenue per machine per month, you can start tweaking different things and seeing how it affects those that number. Right. So obviously if you change price points it’s going to, you know, if you change price points, it’s going to change the revenue per machine per month.

Jordan Berry [00:47:43]:
Right. And if you go up, it might make the that number go up, it might make it go down. You might find that people are using your machines less or people leave into other places. Right. So I do actually like that metric, which I think is interesting. I don’t know that a lot of people are tracking it that way, but I like that metric.

Ben Higginbotham [00:48:03]:
Yeah, but it’s super easy to track, right? Just take your gross sales for the month, divide it by your machines. I like to see, just so people can kind of get a reference point here. But, like, I am always on the hunt to find a store that grosses more than a thousand dollars per month per washing machine. And I think that if you can exceed that, you should be pending other crazy expenses and stuff. But, like, that should put you into a good, healthy situation where you can afford to retool, you can afford to do a lot of stuff. And so, yeah, that’s kind of my baseline, what I’m shooting for. And obviously, if you can exceed that, that’s great. But, like, I would.

Ben Higginbotham [00:48:53]:
I don’t know a great forum to figure this out, but it would be really cool to kind of get those numbers across, you know, a dozen or more laundromats and see where people fall on that.

Jordan Berry [00:49:02]:
Yeah, I’ve been. I’ve been kicking around the idea of like, throwing together a. Like a dashboard that people can use to, you know, they use it for their accounting purposes or things like that. But also that would create benchmarks from, you know, anonymized data and create benchmarks for different laundromats. Some of these key metrics, like, you know, for example, revenue, you know, per machine per month, or, you know, some other kind of key metrics that we would be looking at that you could see, hey, on average, nationwide, or on average in my region, or an average on this size store. Here’s what people are doing, and here’s how my laundromat kind of compares to. To those. To those different metrics.

Jordan Berry [00:49:44]:
I think that would be really interesting information to have. Uh, so I don’t know, if you’re out there and you’re listening and you think that maybe that’s a good idea, let me know. Cause I. I’d like to put something like that out there if people are interested in doing that, because I think that would be just super helpful across the board. And, you know, honestly, like, in the back of my mind, I’m. I’m a little bit concerned. Long, you know, long term, big picture, long term, I’m a little bit concerned with who’s accumulating industry data right now and what their plans are with that data now. I mean we’ve, we see like Tide coming in and building a lot of laundromats.

Jordan Berry [00:50:21]:
We’ve, you know, alliance has sort of toyed around with putting in some franchise stores around and it seems like maybe they’re utilizing some customer data to figure out spots to put it based on, you know, some of the locations they put it and stuff like that. I’m a little bit concerned that if we fall too far behind as independent owner operators tracking our data, collecting our data and having some of this benchmark data to, to help us figure out where we need to improve and you know, where there’s opportunity. I’m a little concerned long term that we’re going to fall behind and lose our businesses, frankly down the line.

Ben Higginbotham [00:51:03]:
Yeah, I think that there’s a lot of interesting things going on right now. First, I think there’s kind of this, there’s a fear of kind of if I share too much information, somebody’s going to come and steal my business. And I think that there’s two things that need to be thought about on that. The first one is when it comes to other owner operators, there’s very few people, like realistically in the US the number of people that are willing to go out and build a brand new laundromat for a million bucks or whatever it costs, like the number of people that are willing and able to do that is very slim. And honestly, like I just, I don’t know of anybody that actually has a good example of that of like, hey, I told somebody about my information and then they came and built a store next door to me because let’s be honest, most of the information like demographics, you can, I can pull demographics off the census myself. Right. Like anybody can do demographics. But specifically to, hey, somebody knows that I have a profitable laundromat and they came and stole my business.

Ben Higginbotham [00:52:13]:
I don’t think owner operators are doing that.

Jordan Berry [00:52:15]:
Here’s what I know that on a. Yeah, I only know that on a corporate level.

Ben Higginbotham [00:52:20]:
So that’s what I was going to say. The only people that are doing that are the big money people and that’s going to be your private equity that’s going to be tied. Alliance. I don’t know if alliance is doing.

Jordan Berry [00:52:31]:
It or alliance has done it.

Ben Higginbotham [00:52:34]:
I’m sure that they have. Like, I don’t want to get too many aspersions, but like there are. To do that, you have to be the kind of entity that can drop 2 or 3 million bucks by the time you build that, you float it for a year or two. You market it a lot. And those are the people or the groups? I don’t think it’s people specifically, but, like, those are the groups that are going to do that. And by the way, who did you mention we’re selling all of our data to? Because it’s not the owner operators, it’s the people with all the money that can come and do that. And like, I think.

Jordan Berry [00:53:10]:
Exactly right.

Ben Higginbotham [00:53:11]:
There’s a lot to be said for being concerned about that. I mean, I don’t think there’s some great conspiracy out there. I think laundry is always going to be pinned more towards the neighborhood thing and less towards sort of the corporate empire of, you know, running everything. But there’s for sure the opportunity for. There’s been enough growth in our market in the last six or eight years that it’s become interesting to people that have a lot more money than you or I do.

Jordan Berry [00:53:48]:
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And. And not just interest a growth and interest in that, but there’s growth and opportunity in that, too. With the new technology that’s coming out, the, the ability to collect some of this data when you have multiple. I mean, you, you even mentioned, I mean, listen, you’re an independent owner operator here, but you even mentioned, like, hey, I’ve got two in the same city and based on this one, I knew this about this other one. Right.

Jordan Berry [00:54:13]:
So the more that you’re acquiring, the more information you have, the better decisions you can make, the better you can compete with anybody else who might be in the market and more likely you are to succeed. And if you take that example and you extend it out to all the stores that have your equipment that’s giving you data, you have a lot of information to where, if you want to, you can go out and, you know, you know, alliance is. There’s no secret about alliance, like going out and buying a bunch of distributors right now. Right. And there’s, you know, there’s nothing to say. And I don’t know their business plan. They don’t tell me anything. I don’t have any special insider knowledge other than what I’m like observing.

Jordan Berry [00:54:56]:
But, you know, they don’t. They don’t seem to have the intention to go out and start buying up all the laundromats and, or building across the street from all their competitors or all their customers and stuff like that. But they have done that.

Ben Higginbotham [00:55:08]:
Right.

Jordan Berry [00:55:09]:
In the past. So. And they, and they could do that if they decided to turn that part of the business on.

Ben Higginbotham [00:55:16]:
And there’s, again, there’s enough capital out there in the world. Like, let’s be honest, if any of the big operators wanted to come in and take over a metro area five years or less, and they would have a branded experience that nobody could compete with. I mean, that’s the reality of it. None of us have the money or the capital to go drop $100 million into a metro area or whatever. And there’s people out there that do. I have a fun alliance story. I’ve been putting alliance touch equipment in. I have all kinds of good things to say about it.

Ben Higginbotham [00:55:57]:
I think that their touchscreen is probably one of the better ones in the industry. Like, their user interface is really good. All that they have. I don’t know the details exactly, but the distributor that I had lost, the distributorship that they had with alliance, it’s been all kinds of a mess. I had a batch of dryers that I purchased almost a year ago now that have had, like, there was a manufacturing problem with them. Everybody knows that it’s a manufacturing problem. Every time we try to get them fixed, it’s a run around.

Jordan Berry [00:56:35]:
Like that was on our news episode a couple weeks ago. Okay. Okay.

Ben Higginbotham [00:56:44]:
These particular ones, the drum, as I understand it, the drum in the dryer is too long, so it scrapes on the front panel.

Jordan Berry [00:56:52]:
Oh.

Ben Higginbotham [00:56:53]:
So as of right now, the fix that they’ve worked with me on, I have pallets of new drums sitting in the back of my store that they sent over that we’re going to try replacing the drums and see if that helps. But, yeah, it’s been interesting.

Jordan Berry [00:57:08]:
Yeah, yeah. And listen, like, I’m not, you know, I’m not trying to throw shade on anybody or any company. Like, manufacturing, like, stuff happens. Right. Like, there are problems.

Ben Higginbotham [00:57:19]:
Super worried about it.

Jordan Berry [00:57:21]:
But. But I, you know, I. I have a special eye out online. They’ve just done some things kind of along the way that have put my radar up. And again, I don’t necessarily think they’re a bad company. I think their machines are some of the best in the industry. I also like touch screens that they have the outdoor laundromat down the road for me, it’s got touch screens. They’re nice.

Jordan Berry [00:57:41]:
They do get banged up because it’s outdoors, but, you know, other than that, they’re nice. But they’ve done some things that have just put my antenna up that I’m. I’m keeping an eye out on what they got going on, and I don’t know. We’ll see.

Ben Higginbotham [00:57:57]:
There’s plenty of other big businesses that are kind of sticking their toe in the water here in laundromats. Like, it’s not just Alliance. There’s plenty of other places out there that are doing interesting things that are worth keeping an eye on.

Jordan Berry [00:58:10]:
Yeah. But all the more reason, I think, kind of going back to what we’re talking about, like, all the more reason to, you know, as owner operators, to try to level the playing field a little bit. Right. To try to get some of this data that other companies might have that we don’t, you know, if we own 1, 2, 5, 10, even 20 stores. Like, we just don’t have as much data as these companies. You know, ties putting in, you know, franchises and bunches of 50s, 50 and 60 stores at a time. Right. And you know, alliance has got, you know, and Dexter and Electrolyte, like whatever data they’re gathering, I don’t, I don’t know the specifics.

Jordan Berry [00:58:47]:
Right. Whatever data they’re gathering, they have a lot more than we have. Right. So there’s something to be said about, you know, coming together and saying, okay, what, what data can we share anonymized to help us benchmark and to make better business decisions? And what’s the, what’s the forum to do that? How do we, how do we do that together? So, yeah, it’s interesting. There’s a lot of interesting stuff happening right now in our business.

Ben Higginbotham [00:59:12]:
Yeah. And I am all about the data and I think you are as well. But like there is so much, if you can figure out how to ask the right question, there is so much you can learn. My favorite story on this. So the first laundromat that I did is in a, it’s in a small kind of shotgun space. Right. All the washers are on the right hand side, all the dryers are on the left hand side. Conventional wisdom says, where do you put your biggest washing machine? Right front of the store front.

Jordan Berry [00:59:42]:
Yep.

Ben Higginbotham [00:59:43]:
So that store has three 80 pound machines and they actually come within a foot or so of the front wall of the store. Right. Like the equipment’s pretty well packed in there. So I have realized since I built that store and I look at the data that I get. If you imagine walking through the front door and making a turn towards these washing machines, nobody goes to the first machine. I mean, it gets used, but the turn is too tight. People won’t make a 90 degree turn. They go to the second machine.

Ben Higginbotham [01:00:19]:
The second and third machine do almost double the amount of turns as the first machine. How would you ever know that? If you weren’t tracking any data, like, yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah. So, of course, I’m in the back of my mind going, hey, if I ever retool this store, I’m putting a 40 pound machine up there. Because the 40 pound machine costs $8,000 and gets fewer turns. And the 80,000 machine, you know, the 80 pound machine is a $20,000 machine. I’ll move it one space back, I’ll have a 40 and then three 80s and everybody will be happier and I’ll make more money. Like, yeah.

Ben Higginbotham [01:00:57]:
How on earth would you know that if you didn’t track things?

Jordan Berry [01:01:00]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s an awesome story. I love that. And, you know, it’s like, in hindsight, that makes a ton of sense. Right. Nobody’s doing like a military turn when they walk in the door. Right. But like, to be able to think about that foresight is like, yeah, it’s.

Ben Higginbotham [01:01:18]:
The crazy things you learn once you get into it. And like, that’s the other thing that, you know, I. I have my way of doing things. I’m sure you have your way of doing things, but I always tell people, like, you’re never going to learn how to do it till you do it. If you want to buy a laundromat, just buy a laundromat. You make mistakes, it’ll be okay. Just go for it.

Jordan Berry [01:01:37]:
I love it. Well, hey, I feel like we sort of tease this, so maybe we should just jump into a little bit of this free laundromat. How did you. How did you find it? What do you mean by free? And what was the process like of putting this thing and turn it into. Back into a real laundromat?

Ben Higginbotham [01:01:54]:
Yeah. So this was actually a store that I had been in. It was. It’s been a laundromat since, I don’t know, probably the 80s, I think is when it was built. So not ancient, but, you know, old. And I was in there during COVID so probably 2020. So I knew it existed. I knew it was around, it wasn’t for sale.

Ben Higginbotham [01:02:21]:
And like, probably most other people in the laundromat world, I go in a lot of laundromats. I kind of keep a file of, hey, there’s a laundromat around here. If I’m in the area, I cruise by and see what’s up. So anyway, last year I was out running around and drove by that space, and it had a big for lease sign on it. It’s in a strip mall, so it’s under a property management Group and all this. So of course I called over there and I said, hey, what’s the deal with the old laundromat? And they had taken all the equipment out of it. So there was no washers, dryers, there were old bulkheads. Basically it was just as you imagine, a closed down laundromat with no equipment to be.

Jordan Berry [01:03:02]:
Right.

Ben Higginbotham [01:03:04]:
So I negotiated back and forth with the landlord. We ended up signing a good lease. I think that one is 10 years with two 5 year options on it. So we’ve got a long Runway there. I did go ahead and get a little bit of TI money back. It was actually very advantageous because I don’t think that, like I got free rent and I got TI money and I don’t think that’s very common right now.

Jordan Berry [01:03:29]:
It’s not happening a whole lot. Right. Right now. Yeah. And real quick, can you just, can you just define ti? Like, explain what that is?

Ben Higginbotham [01:03:37]:
Yeah. So basically, TI money is a landlord contribution to some sort of usually infrastructure improvement onto their building. Typically it’s stuff that stays with the building. Sometimes you can get, I think in years past you used to be able to get a little bit extra to work on your stuff. That’s not how it is right now. But so the, the situation with this one was I kind of gave the landlord a list of stuff that I wanted done. I said, hey, I want you to fix some doors, I want you to peel up the tile floor that was in there, et cetera, et cetera, because they had offered it to me in a white box state. And I said, I don’t really want you to.

Ben Higginbotham [01:04:23]:
Okay, so white box in commercial industry is, or commercial real estate is a shopping mall space that’s got the four exterior walls in primed drywall. So they, they take care of ripping out anything that’s there. They paint over everything and go back to white. Hence the term white box. Landlords are not really great construction people. I said, basically, I want the infrastructure. Don’t touch it, don’t rip anything out. Just leave it alone.

Ben Higginbotham [01:04:57]:
And so I negotiated with them and I said, instead of you guys white boxing it, I want you to do these, whatever it was, four or five things. And they said, well, instead of doing that, we’ll just write you a check for X amount of money and you take the space as is. Which actually worked out really well for me. We got, I think the only thing they did do was they took out the old flooring, which is a really good trip tip if you’re ever leasing a space and you don’t want the flooring. A lot of times the landlords will go ahead and take that out for you. And that saves you probably a dollar a square foot that you’d have to pay somebody to rip it out. So. But yeah, we worked out a deal on that and then we did a tiered rent scale.

Ben Higginbotham [01:05:39]:
So I think there were a couple of months of no rent where I just paid the triple net cam fees, and then there was maybe three months of half rent and then we rolled into the full rent thing. So I do think that it’s really good. And everybody says this, but like leverage that long lease, like if you’re telling a landlord you’re going to be here for 15 years, they can cough up a little bit of, you know, some money or some assistance or something to get you in there because it’s just a, on the real estate side of things, having a lease like that is extremely valuable.

Jordan Berry [01:06:20]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and just, I mean, I want to keep rolling with your story, but just so people kind of understand where that’s going. You know, we, we value laundromats based on a multiple, right? Maybe it’s like 5x or whatever on a multiple. Commercial real estate’s valued on a cap rate, capitalization rate, and it’s basically the inverse of a multiple, right? It’s a percentage. So our, our cap rate basically would be like a 20 cap. Like 5x is like a 20 cap. Right. So.

Jordan Berry [01:06:50]:
But a lot of commercial real estate, you know, is going to be somewhere in the 5 to 10 cap, depending on kind of your location and how in the property and all that stuff. Right. But at a, at a 5 cap, that’s a 20x multiple. So for every dollar in net income they get from you for rent, and if you’re on a triple net lease, essentially your base rent amount is their net income because you’re paying most of their expenses. So for every dollar of net income that they’re getting from you, that’s worth $20 in equity on their property to them. Right? So if you’re paying a $4,000 a month, you know, for rent, listen. Times, times 12. Right.

Jordan Berry [01:07:32]:
I should have picked a way easier number. If you’re paying a hundred thousand dollars of, of rent over the year, whatever that works out to be per month, seven, seven or eight grand. Right. You know, 20x, that is the value at a 5 cap for that laundromat or a 10 cap, it’s 10x that. Right. So, so it’s super valuable to a commercial real estate landlord to get a long term stable tenant, it’s not going to default on their payments. It’s going to be around for a long time. There’s a lot of value in that.

Jordan Berry [01:08:06]:
So that’s, I think what you’re getting at of like, hey, try to recoup some of that value.

Ben Higginbotham [01:08:11]:
Yeah. And I think just to tag on what you were saying about the cap rate a little bit. So like what’s the difference between, you know, a 5 cap rate and a 6 cap rate or whatever? A lot of times in commercial real estate when those transfer between people, what the buyer is looking for is the lease mix. And so this comes to mind because we’re, we’re doing this the middle of July here. But like fireworks stores, I don’t know if you guys get fireworks stores out where you’re at, but they pop up like in June, they’re there for two months, they’re on a lease, but they’re gone by the middle of July.

Jordan Berry [01:08:48]:
Yeah.

Ben Higginbotham [01:08:49]:
Like never to be seen again until next year. If you had a whole building list of those, it would be not worth very much. Right. Because there’s no stability. What a lot of times you’re looking for when you’re trying to purchase a commercial real estate is like, I want some spaces that turn over, but mostly I want spaces that I don’t have to have a lot of stability. Right. Like if you can get a shopping center that’s got a big ticket national brand in it, those don’t move. Right.

Ben Higginbotham [01:09:17]:
Those are a higher cap rate than, you know, a nail salon and a restaurant and things. So that’s where not only can you add that dollar of rent is $5 for what I’m paying the landlord, but if that landlord can get the right mix, he can actually take his whole building from a five cap to a six cap. And that’s where huge money comes in. Is like stabilizing. Commercial property is a whole industry of itself. Right. Of like you buy a property, you fix it up, you get stable tenants in it and the leverage there is insane. Or value add or whatever you want to call it.

Ben Higginbotham [01:09:54]:
I love real estate, if you hadn’t noticed.

Jordan Berry [01:09:56]:
I know, yeah, yeah, yeah. And just I think you said it backwards. But it goes the other way, right. Like the lower the cap rate, the more valuable it is. So six to a five. But I mean the point is the same there. And you know, so it’s that, it’s that stability but also risk. Right.

Jordan Berry [01:10:12]:
Like reducing risk. That’s why those like national chains are so valuable too. They’re going to be around a long time. But they’re also corporate backed. Right. The corporate will guarantee. So I have a client right now. We’re looking for a location to buy a laundromat and one of the.

Jordan Berry [01:10:25]:
Or to build a laundromat out. And one of the spaces, he wants to buy the real estate. Right. So one of the spaces is an old Dollar General. Right. Went out of business, but it’s still got six more years of lease where they’re paying 140 grand a year of rent because it’s corporate backed. Right. So it’s a very secure.

Jordan Berry [01:10:42]:
And laundromats, again, look around in Covid restaurants, less secure because something happens. Restaurants get hit. Restaurants go in and out of business all the time. You know, nail salon probably a little more stable. But laundromats are super stable tenants. Right. Maybe not quite as stable as a national tenant, a national chain, but they’re pretty stable businesses. So it actually also increases the value or decreases the cap rate of.

Jordan Berry [01:11:07]:
Of a store by having it in there. So awesome points there.

Ben Higginbotham [01:11:11]:
Yeah. I think there’s something like I am a big fan of understanding the people you work with in business. I think that like, if you want to lease property, you should really understand how property leasing works. Maybe you don’t need to do a deep dive. You don’t necessarily have to own real estate or all that, but like spend a little bit of time investigating that. Or you know, we work with all sorts of vendors. If you’re going to be building something, think a little bit about like, how does contracting work? How does construction work? Talk to your plumber a little bit beyond just, hey, something’s overflowing again. Right.

Ben Higginbotham [01:11:51]:
Like, understand all the people that you work around a little bit. Makes your life a lot easier.

Jordan Berry [01:11:56]:
Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Okay, so going back to the free laundromat, so you’ve negotiated this lease, you got a little ti or tenant improvements going on. You’ve got this sort of tiered lease happening. Talk to us about the build out. How was that? I mean, you already had some of the infrastructure. Do you have to change a lot of that or what did that look like?

Ben Higginbotham [01:12:14]:
So essentially we built everything new. We went so far for two reasons. First of all, we did shift that store. As I mentioned, we kind of turned all the washing machines, so we had to move the drains a little bit. But then additionally, the plumbing under the floor was cracked. There was a couple places where it separated. So we ended up cutting through the concrete, redoing drain lines and Water lines and then built back up from there, which I am actually a big proponent of. Like build 20 year laundromats.

Ben Higginbotham [01:12:52]:
Think about what you’re putting in and like is this going to last for a long time? Because I see a lot of people that kind of do band aid fixes. And if you’re going to, you’re going to invest the money. Because it’s a lot of money. If you’re going to invest the money to do these things, like do them right, don’t just like do it right the first time and it will save you so many headaches on the backside that it’s, it’s well worth. Even if you end up spending a little bit more money, it’s definitely well worth the upfront expense. So yeah, we ended up redoing all the water lines. The only thing we didn’t really redo was the gas. The gas infrastructure was pretty solid.

Ben Higginbotham [01:13:45]:
So did the plumbing, did the water lines, did the redid the layout. So we moved some drywall and stuff around. Obviously new flooring. What else is in there, we redid it. Had a really quite large office in the front that was glass windowed and set up to do like a small wash and fold service. I actually ripped all of that out. I use payment system, launder works. And so we went to basically a secure closed office.

Ben Higginbotham [01:14:23]:
There’s no windows or steel doors, all that. Stuck the kiosks in the wall there and basically got it all straightened out.

Jordan Berry [01:14:34]:
Like that sounded like a lot of work and a lot of expense for a free laundromat there.

Ben Higginbotham [01:14:39]:
Yeah, yeah. So I’d say my free laundromat probably cost 150 grand on top of the equipment.

Jordan Berry [01:14:49]:
So how much of that did you finance versus pay cash for?

Ben Higginbotham [01:14:53]:
Do you know, I am a terrible example of this. I don’t pay for anything.

Jordan Berry [01:14:59]:
So that’s great.

Ben Higginbotham [01:15:00]:
Yeah, I know a lot of people like struggle sometimes with doing that. But basically I negotiated enough ti money out of the landlord to cash, finance or like cover the expenses I need to get through to the financing and I 100% finance the build out and the equipment.

Jordan Berry [01:15:21]:
So Nice.

Ben Higginbotham [01:15:22]:
Which is the easy way to build things. But sometimes that payment is a hard pill to swallow. So I do not necessarily suggest that to everybody. But it like keep in mind too that I am doing that from a basis of four profitable laundromats.

Jordan Berry [01:15:41]:
So like, and the knowledge that comes behind all of that, there is a.

Ben Higginbotham [01:15:46]:
There is a good platform to like cash flow that in the future, whether this one kind of what we talked about before of that ramp up period. If this one ramps up in four months or 12 months, I am aware that I can float what I need to.

Jordan Berry [01:16:02]:
Yeah, yeah. Well. And you know, I, I mentioned before, like, I get asked about free laundromats nonstop, constantly. And here’s, here’s what I don’t like about the concept of free laundromats. Number one, the concept itself tends to prey on people who are already at the most risk. They don’t have a lot of capital to get involved. And that’s not to say that it’s a bad way to go. I know plenty of people who’ve got into the business because they got a quote unquote free laundromat and they just gutted it out until they made it successful, which you can do.

Jordan Berry [01:16:36]:
But the thing that I try to communicate a lot is that this is the riskiest way to get into this business. Right. This laundromat has already failed. Whether it’s due to bad management or they just didn’t reinvest in the business or a new competitor came in or whatever the case is, this laundromat has already failed. It’s already shown that it’s not, it wasn’t successful, at least at the end of its life there. So you’ve got to have a very clear plan on what you’re doing to make it succeed when it already has shown that at least for a period of time there, it didn’t succeed. It was not suc. The previous owner couldn’t sell it.

Jordan Berry [01:17:13]:
Right. They just had to walk away from it for whatever reason. So this is the riskiest way to get in the business. And I’m glad you made the point of like. And again, I’m not, I’m not saying that you can’t or shouldn’t necessarily get in this way, but I think you need to be aware of the risks here because even though it’s quote, unquote free, it’s not free. There’s a lot of money that goes into it that you’re going to be responsible for. Even if you don’t have to come up with it up front like you were able to pull off, you’re still responsible for this big loan payment. And if it doesn’t ramp up right away and cover its costs for 6, 12, 18 months, you’re responsible for covering those costs.

Jordan Berry [01:17:52]:
Right. So it ends up not being free that way as well. So I just want people to be aware of that because again, I get asked this free laundromat question all the time and again, like, you can kind of do it that way, but it’s a lot less risky for someone like Ben, who already had four laundromats, has gone through the ringer, knows all these weird little things that you learn when you own laundromats that you don’t necessarily think of beforehand and because of that, has been able to have a successful launch at least, you know, well, it’s too soon to tell whether you’re going to make it or not here, dude.

Ben Higginbotham [01:18:28]:
Yeah, we’ll see. It’s always open here. So my. My thoughts on free laundromats are this. Like, I think that I’m a big believer in words are important. Right. Like, the framework that we kind of look at the world through greatly affects what we do. Right.

Ben Higginbotham [01:18:50]:
So if you approach business in general, but specifically laundromats with the framework of I am trying to accomplish this the cheapest way possible, I don’t think that you ever succeed, really. Like, that is not remotely the most important thing to be thinking about realistically. I think that you have to approach business and say, I want to provide the best service for my customer, and it doesn’t really matter what that costs, because if I’m providing the best service, the customer will support that at a price that will support being the best. So if we look at this example, and I’m really good at kind of glossing over the nitty gritty, but. So I found this laundromat for lease. I did not immediately lease this laundromat out. First of all, I’m already in that town. I know.

Ben Higginbotham [01:19:53]:
I know every laundromat in that town. I’ve been in every laundromat in that town. I know what the competition looks like. The only competition to this store is actually probably a block and a half away. Super close. Right. But this laundromat is so outdated. I don’t know what the date is.

Ben Higginbotham [01:20:17]:
But the dryers they have in there still have dime drops. Like, I don’t know when the last time you could buy a dryer with a dime quarter combo drop was.

Jordan Berry [01:20:26]:
So it’s dryers. And my first one when I bought.

Ben Higginbotham [01:20:29]:
Them, the, like, beige, almost yellow colored ones.

Jordan Berry [01:20:32]:
Yep. Yeah. The beige ones with the quarter and the dime drop, which people would still. I’d like try to block those things. People would still find ways to get dimes in there somehow.

Ben Higginbotham [01:20:41]:
Yeah. And just to be clear, that was what, close to 15 years ago now, right?

Jordan Berry [01:20:46]:
Yeah, that was. Yeah, that was like 11 years ago or 12 years ago now. That I bought that laundromat. So that was a long time ago, even now. Yeah, I never outdated then. Exactly.

Ben Higginbotham [01:20:57]:
So I knew what the competition was like. I know what. What the atmosphere of that store is like. I know what’s going on down there. Then I pulled demographics through my dealer, right? I looked around and I said, hey, what’s the demographics look like? Do they support a laundromat here? And then I built out a plan of, you know, hey, what kind of machine layout? What’s all this look like? Build a business plan and say, can I justify this expense? And I say all that because I know. I know where there’s another free laundromat. I know there’s an empty laundromat. It’s still got equipment in it.

Ben Higginbotham [01:21:34]:
It’s probably got a hundred thousand dollars worth of Dexter stuff sitting in there. Of no interest to me. It’s in a different town. It’s in an old gas station. Nobody wants old gas station property. First of all, it’s a. Like, they didn’t rebuild it. They just stuck them in a gas station.

Ben Higginbotham [01:21:49]:
So the building itself is weird, right? And who knows if the land’s contaminated and it’s in a place like it’s the next road over from the main drag, so there’s no traffic over there. It’s a corner lot, but it’s a terrible place. So to me, that there is no value to that free laundromat, because if you put. I mean, it’s going to cost you five to seven hundred thousand dollars to rehab a free laundromat if you put new equipment in it. And it has to justify, like, the location has to justify doing that, and this one doesn’t in my justification, who knows, somebody maybe will do it. But I counter that by saying for what I did for this free laundromat that I got, that I spent probably $150,000 over equipment cost on. I could have gone and bought any $150,000 laundromat, which is on the low end of laundromats, right? There’s a lot of them that are asking more money than that. But I could have certainly found an old rundown laundromat that was currently operating with a customer base like that is invaluable that people already come in your front door.

Ben Higginbotham [01:23:04]:
It may be rough, it may be bad equipment. It may be whatever. But, like, people are already spending money here. They will be back, you know, already has an online presence, already has all these things. I could have paid $150,000 for that store functioning, put new equipment in it, and be in the same place that I am today. Probably in a better place, honestly, than going and hunting and spending all this time trying to find one that is quote, unquote, free. So I like the free loaner meds. It’s nice if you can do that.

Ben Higginbotham [01:23:39]:
I do not by any means think it is the easiest way to get where you’re going. Like, it is a tough thing to do.

Jordan Berry [01:23:48]:
Yeah. If you’re looking for an easy button, it’s definitely not the easy button.

Ben Higginbotham [01:23:51]:
No, not at all. I tell people all the time, like, I talk to a fair number of people that are interested in laundry. I’m part of some online groups and all this. And I always tell people, go bigger than you think you should. Like, if you think you should buy a $300,000 laundromat, should probably buy a $500,000 laundromat. If you think you should buy 500, you should probably buy a million. Because, like, it is so much easier to do things at scale than it is to grow from zero. And I don’t think that’s talked about enough.

Ben Higginbotham [01:24:23]:
Like, having the cash flow to do the things you need to do is so much better than trying to bootstrap.

Jordan Berry [01:24:30]:
Yep. Yeah. I mean, that’s why I tell people all the time, like, ironically, the more expensive the laundromat, as a general rule, ironically, the less risky it is, and as you go down in price, the more risky it is because you have less cash flow, less margin there to work with, the lower you get. And. And the easier it is to scale, the higher. Now, obviously, there’s limits to. Like, most people can’t just go out and build or buy a million plus dollar laundromat. Some can, but most can’t.

Jordan Berry [01:25:01]:
And so you’ve got to work with what you got. But as a general rule, it’s not always the case. But as a general rule, the more expensive the laundromat, the less risky it is and the easier it’ll be to scale from there. So I love that. I wrote down that quote, go bigger than you think you need to. Yeah. Which I wrote it down the first time I saw it in the Mastermind that were in the Action Academy. Mastermind that were in there real quick.

Jordan Berry [01:25:24]:
I mean, you know, I’ve shared a lot. I’m a huge believer in mastermind groups, and we have some here. Like, if you want to connect with other owners, we connect our consulting clients with each other. And then we also have the pro community where you can connect with other owners or people who are looking to buy a laundromat. So if you’re out there and you want to join a mastermind group, there’s an opportunity to do that there. But, you know, one of the mastermind groups that I’m in and one that you’re in is Action Academy. You want to. Can you just talk a little bit about what that is and in case there’s people out there that want to join that.

Ben Higginbotham [01:25:58]:
Yeah, for sure. I am a big believer in like the. And it’s a quote that everybody says. Right. But like, your network is your network. You got to be around people that are doing either what you’re doing or what you want to be doing. There’s so much to be said for that. There is so much to be said for the energy that you can get from being around just people that have a positive outlook on business.

Ben Higginbotham [01:26:26]:
I think it’s crazy, and I’m not a political person. I don’t know nothing about that. Don’t care to. But like, the. I feel like the society we’re in right now is almost like negative against all business growth. Like, everybody wants to talk about self development and all this, but if you kind of say, hey, I want to do this crazy wild business thing, it’s hard to get encouragement to do that. And so you kind of have to go out and find the people that understand what you’re trying to do. And I think that there’s a lot to be said for doing that within your industry with, you know, your group is great.

Ben Higginbotham [01:27:05]:
There’s Facebook groups. There’s all this support in the laundromat industry that is really good. I am also a big believer in get outside your industry. There are so many things that you can learn from people that are doing some other kind of business and things that never, like, are never discussed in industry. Right. That outside of industry viewpoint for any industry you’re in is just in value that ties into the Action Academy Mastermind group is not industry specific. There’s people in there doing all sorts of stuff. There’s real estate, there’s business.

Ben Higginbotham [01:27:49]:
There’s people doing residential elder care. There’s people doing. Pretty much, if you can think of it, there’s somebody doing it. Right. Yeah, yeah, I’ve really enjoyed that group just because it gives you an opportunity to network and connect with those people. Kind of their mission is helping people buy their first business and exit a corporate job or, you know, some sort of employment situation. So, yeah, if. If that’s what you’re looking to do.

Ben Higginbotham [01:28:17]:
If you’re trying to buy a business, whether it’s laundromats or anything else, and you’re looking for a group of very diverse people who are, you know, moving rapidly to get what they want, definitely reach out. There’s a great podcast and then there’s kind of the inner circle group that you can join. If you do call them, I don’t know, you can mention my name. They might tell you you can’t join or they might give me a little kickback. So that’s up to you. Like, hey, my saying. Or Jordan, you can always tell. Probably has better.

Jordan Berry [01:28:52]:
Don’t tell me know me. Don’t tell him you know, Ben and that he sent you there also, you know, just, you know, Brian Lubin’s the one who started Action Academy, the Action Academy podcast. Go check it out. It’s a super good podcast, really popular. And Brian Lubin was on episode 105 as well. So you can go listen to his episode here on my resource podcast as well. But definitely mention if you, if you go, just do a discovery call with those guys. Here’s what I’ve noticed.

Jordan Berry [01:29:20]:
Being a part of that group, I’m like genuinely like, I am blown away by some of the people who come into this thing that are like, yeah, like a lot of times people come into this with like an idea and like a dream of what they want to do. But you kind of get the sense of like, I don’t really know exactly what to do. I don’t really know exactly how to do it. I’m a little bit nervous. And then like, the next thing you know, some of these guys are like, oh yeah, I just bought this hotel. And you’re like, what? Like a couple months ago you were like this little mouse that was nervous. Like, I don’t know, there’s just people in there doing some really cool stuff. And I think it’s does lend credence to the power of your network is your net net worth.

Jordan Berry [01:30:00]:
Like, and just the power of getting around the right people to help give you the knowledge. And really, I think probably even more than the not. Like, knowledge is easy now. Like, knowledge is everywhere. You can learn anything on YouTube or whatever, right? Like a blog, but really like giving you the confidence to get after it, right? And like, I, you know, I watched, like I said, I watched you in Action Academy just posting about what you had going on and like stuff you’re doing. I was just like, dude, he is like crushing it right now. I know one of your Forays that you’re starting to dip your toe into is pick up a delivery as well. We didn’t even, like, talk about that.

Jordan Berry [01:30:34]:
But, you know, I. I just. I know I rave all the time about get in a mastermind group of some sort. I spend a lot of money every single year in mastermind groups that I am in. I’m in a few different ones, including the Action Academy. That’s something that’s up your alley. Definitely go check out Action Academy. And when.

Jordan Berry [01:30:55]:
When you. When you get in there, which, by the way, they don’t accept everybody because it’s so important. You know, again, on the. On the flip side of, like, who you spend your time with, they want to protect who’s coming in there. They want to make sure you’ve got good energy and that you’re. You’re aligned with what they got going on. But definitely mention Ben if you end up doing that.

Ben Higginbotham [01:31:13]:
I think two thoughts come to mind. Like, one, I think that part of the appeal of a mastermind, kind of any mastermind, and I’m curious if you agree with this across all the ones that you’re in. But, like, there’s kind of a barrier to entry. And I don’t even think that the. It’s not so much about what it costs or. I mean, obviously that’s concerning and stuff, but it’s to. We all know that when you actually pay for something, you value it more. And so, like, if you make the effort to go join any group, I think that that kind of sets you apart from probably like 90% of the population, really.

Ben Higginbotham [01:31:58]:
Of like. And that gets you into a frame of mind where it’s like, I’ve already done the thing. I’ve already committed that I’m spending this money to join this group to accomplish whatever it is that, you know, if it’s buying a laundromat, whatever your goal is. And then also I think that there’s a lot to be said for like, adjusting what is normal. Right. Like, when you’re in a group of. Especially when it’s a diverse group, like, it is not at all uncommon, like you mentioned, for people to be buying major real estate things almost weekly, certainly monthly, somebody is buying some huge thing. And like, I don’t know about everybody else.

Ben Higginbotham [01:32:43]:
That’s not exactly what happens in my hometown.

Jordan Berry [01:32:46]:
Right.

Ben Higginbotham [01:32:46]:
Like, it’s just hard to find a group that’s doing that on a local basis. Yeah, I’m a big fan.

Jordan Berry [01:32:53]:
I. No, I. I usually. I think that adjusting the normal. So one of the groups I’M in is called Go Abundance, right? And the collective net worth of Go Bundle survey is something like $5.9 billion in the 900 people that are in it. And I’m like, okay. Like, I’m not even contributing to. I don’t even make the decimal right.

Jordan Berry [01:33:12]:
Like, I’m not even contributing to the collective net worth, really. Right. And so I’m in this group that is doing crazy stuff. Like, they’re doing crazy stuff. And now I’m like, oh, dude, you know, like, you know, a lot of people are like, I want to try to make, you know, I love a job that makes a hundred thousand or $150,000 or $200,000 a year. And now I’m like, I. I hear that. And I’m like, oh, dude, like, a lot of the guys I’m hanging out with are making a million dollars a year or they’re doing deals and building equity that are multiple millions dollars.

Jordan Berry [01:33:46]:
Like a million dollars a year does not sound out of the realm of reasonable to me anymore, but I better. You better believe it did before I joined some of these groups, right? Like, adjusting that new normal is real because you start to, like, think differently, right? You start to live up to these new normals. It’s. It’s powerful.

Ben Higginbotham [01:34:05]:
And I think it also makes you think. Like, so you had mentioned the pickup and delivery thing. Like, where I’m thinking right now is like, okay, I’ve hit, you know, this income goal, and that’s really cool, but, like, how do I do five times what I’m doing now? How do I do 10 times what I’m doing now? Because I don’t think, you know, like, what you’re doing changes over time, right? And, like, the way you do it, like, I’ll be honest. So I bought four laundromats. The first four. And I basically did everything myself. I collected all the money, I did all the deposits, I did all the purchasing, and I bought that fourth one and I hit a slump. Like, I couldn’t keep up.

Ben Higginbotham [01:34:52]:
I had. Everything was like, slipping and slipping and you slip a little bit, and all of a sudden you’re way behind. And so I said, this is not going to scale. So I hired. I don’t know, I probably hired three people to fix that problem. You know, I hired an administrator, I hired some managers. I offloaded. Now my thing right now is like, how much stuff can I offload? How much can I push to somebody else? Because for me to double my business again, I can’t do it.

Ben Higginbotham [01:35:19]:
There’s no way. I don’t have enough time in the day. So, yeah, it just puts everything in a different perspective when you think about it that way.

Jordan Berry [01:35:27]:
Yeah. Crushing it. Two books I’ll recommend that speak exactly those two points is, number one, 10x is easier than 2x, which is a killer book by Ben Hardy and strategic coach Dan Sullivan. And then that, that book was a huge mind shift for me, which basically says, hey, it’s easier to 10x your business than it is to double your business. You just have to think differently. Right? And then the other one that I’ll mention is buy back your time, which I just did. I’ve been sort of kicking around this, like, just mostly for me, but I’ve been going live on. On Facebook and YouTube and stuff and taking these business and personal development books that I’ve been reading and contextualizing them for laundromat owners, and they just did buy back your time.

Jordan Berry [01:36:17]:
So I’ll try to put a link to that if anybody’s interested in checking that out. But went through the main principles of buy back your time, which a lot of it is just exactly what you’re saying, right? And saying, how do we apply this as laundromat owners? So, dude, I love the way that you’re thinking. I love what you got going on right now and the ambition you have and the way you’re approaching stuff and the way that you’re thinking about stuff. You know, I mentioned before, like, successful business owners and successful laundromat owners more specifically, there’s a lot of common mindsets, qualities, things that they’re doing. And you, you just rattled off like a whole bunch of them over this podcast episode. Like, you know, building for. Think in the long term, right? Building for 20 years. Like, if you’re going to do stuff, do it right.

Jordan Berry [01:37:04]:
Like, don’t be afraid to invest in your business. I mean, like, over and over. Like, just so many gold nuggets that are characteristics of somebody who’s successful and who’s going to continue to be successful that you’re embodying right now, dude. So I appreciate you just as. As a friend, but also as a podcast guest coming on, sharing these things so the rest of us can learn how we can run our businesses better and grow our businesses. Dude, you are a rock star. I appreciate you, man.

Ben Higginbotham [01:37:32]:
Yeah, for sure. I got one last quote for you. Or maybe it’s a saying, I don’t know, but I love this one. It’s. I saw a video online by Alex Hermosi. He’s doing the circuit of, you know, speaking and whatnot. But he says, do as much as you can, and when you can’t do any more, stop and do better. And when you can’t do any better, do more.

Ben Higginbotham [01:37:58]:
And when you can’t do any more, do better. And it’s just a cycle of that. And if you keep doing that over and over, you’ll get where you’re trying to be.

Jordan Berry [01:38:07]:
I love it. By the way, his two books that are already. He’s got another one coming out soon, but his two books that are already $100 million offers and 100 million dollar leads are on the list of books that I want to contextualize for laundromat owners. So I’m excited about that. Even if nobody watches them for me. It’s been a really fun.

Ben Higginbotham [01:38:23]:
I’ll watch one for you.

Jordan Berry [01:38:24]:
I’ll give you a view. I appreciate that, dude. I appreciate you coming on again. It sounded like to me you’ve just been setting us up for another episode so that we can get an update on this existing or this, like, newest venture that you’ve got going on. Maybe delve into pickup and delivery. And I’m feeling like the next one maybe should be live here in Hawaii.

Ben Higginbotham [01:38:45]:
I’m just saying that’s a great plan. I think we’ll. We’ll just schedule that out. Maybe sometime this winter when it’s gray and cloudy here in Indiana. I’ll come out.

Jordan Berry [01:38:53]:
I love it.

Ben Higginbotham [01:38:54]:
Party in Hawaii.

Jordan Berry [01:38:55]:
You know what I got to throw out to you and, you know, anybody else who wants to do guests, I think I’m pretty sure, you know, talk to your cpa. But if you come out here to do a podcast episode, it makes it a business write off. So I don’t know.

Ben Higginbotham [01:39:09]:
Probably right on that. I definitely think that I’m going to investigate this.

Jordan Berry [01:39:13]:
Yeah, I’m just saying we should do it. So, dude, I appreciate you and as like, you’re welcome here anytime, anytime you want to do anything or come back on or whatever, you have an open invitation. Keep crushing it and can’t wait for the next one.

Ben Higginbotham [01:39:27]:
All righty.

Jordan Berry [01:39:28]:
Hope you love that episode with Ben Higelbothen. Listen. So much good stuff in there. Lots of very practical things on how to measure the profitability of your business, how to actually operate, how to scale. Like, so much good stuff. Here’s the thing. I know with episodes like this, there’s so much good stuff, it can get so overwhelming. Here’s what you got to do.

Jordan Berry [01:39:50]:
You got to pick one thing, put it into practice today if possible. If you can’t absolutely do it today, do it this week. That’s what’s going to stack those wins for you so you can achieve your goals. All right? So pick something, just one thing, and put it into action. And we’ll see you here next week. Peace.