Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
Hey, what’s up guys? It’s Jordan with the Laundromat Resource podcast. This is show 211 and I am mega pumped today for two reasons, really. Number one is I’ve got a good buddy of mine, Ryan Borneman, coming on the show today, very first time on the podcast marketing whiz. He won’t tell you this, but he is doing marketing for some of the big boys in the industry. Kind of quietly behind the scenes, but here he is busting onto the scene and he’s bringing a ton of knowledge in this episode. So I’m super pumped about that. But here’s the other reason I’m mega, mega pumped about that. He, like me, is in Hawaii right now and we’ve been hanging out a little bit and we’ve been talking and we both love this industry.

Jordan Berry [00:00:52]:
We both have this page passion to see people achieve their goals through Laundromat ownership, if that is the right vehicle for you. And as we were kind of talking about that stuff, we decided that we are going to put together together a, an event here in Hawaii for Laundromat owners. Now, I gotta preface all of this by saying this, this event is not going to be for everybody. It’s just, it’s not going to be for everybody. Number one, it’s on a rock in the middle of the ocean, so you got to be able to get here. This is a live and in person event. So that’s number one. Number two, it’s mega limited on spots.

Jordan Berry [00:01:30]:
We’re only doing 20 people for this event and if it goes well, who knows, maybe we’ll do some more. But for this event, we’re only doing 12 people or 20 people. But the other thing about it is, listen, this is specifically designed for people who are trying to get serious about their business. You don’t necessarily have to have a laundromat yet. However, if you have one, this is going to be for you. If you have multiple, this is going to be for you. We’ve got a ton of really great things in store, including some surprises that will kind of get revealed between now and the event that’s coming up November 21st to 24th of 2025, November 21st, 24th, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. And it’s listen, this thing is going to be designed towards action.

Jordan Berry [00:02:27]:
This is not a we sit in a room and listen to people speak at us saying there is going to be some of that, yes, but that is going to be used to initiate action based things to help you build a better business while you’re here in paradise. And guess what, we’re also going to have a ton of fun stuff going on. So again, I say this is not for everybody. This event is if you’re serious about your business and about growing your business, you want to scale your business and you want to be around other people who want to take some time. Yes, in paradise. And yes, we’re going to have some like mega fun things. We’re doing a fireworks cruise to kick the whole event off and we’re going to wrap it up at Kualo Ranch and Secret island and, and spend some time out doing that too and some other stuff kind of in between and obviously really good food. But if you want to spend some time with people who are serious about building their businesses and you want to dig into your business with us, again, this is going to be hands on, very practical, tangible.

Jordan Berry [00:03:34]:
The reason we want to keep it small is because we want to make sure that everybody is walking away with far more value than their investment here. And we are committed to making that happen. So anyways, this event’s coming up again November 21st to 24th, 2025 and again, very limited spots. So we’ve reserved Coconut Club to do this. Well, check out laundry resource.com hawaii that’s going to send you to the right page to get some more details about it. We’ve got an incredible venue, an incredible spot on W Key that we’re going to do this thing overlooking W Key with a view of Diamond Head. And yeah, I mean just I can go on and on about how cool this thing’s going to be, but really all of that is secondary to building a business. And, and not only that, I’m just going to slip this in here, talk to your cpa.

Jordan Berry [00:04:29]:
But this is a, this is a business event. This is a tax write offable trip to Hawaii and we purposely scheduled it the weekend before Thanksgiving just in case you guys kind of want to extend your trip out. Maybe bring some family along and have a good time along the way. So anyways, go check out laundrymanresource.com Hawaii Again, this is a first come, first serve. And. And what? Again, like this event is not for everybody. It’s not going to be for everybody. It’s only going to be for the people who are just serious about building their businesses and who want to scale and who want to be in the room with other people who are committed to scaling their businesses.

Jordan Berry [00:05:14]:
That’s what this is all about. And if that’s you, check out lawnmoweresource.com hawaii and come have a really good time with us. And just in case you’re out there and you’re one of my consulting clients or you’re in the pro community.

Jordan Berry [00:05:29]:
Wait.

Jordan Berry [00:05:30]:
For a special email there for you if you’re interested in this trip that’ll be coming out today, the day this, this episode comes out. So if you’re listening to this down the line, hopefully this was a smashing success and we’ll have more of these events and maybe have an opportunity there. But for this very first inaugural event here in Hawaii, we’re calling it the Laundromat Accelerator Hawaii or Hawaiian, I think Laundromat Accelerator Hawaii, I think, is what we settled on. Automatic Accelerator Hawaii. If you want to be in that inaugural one, check out laundromatresource.com Hawaii. That’ll get you to the right spot and reserve your spot. Again, we’re only bringing out 20 people here to do this thing, and we’re gonna have a great time doing it. All right.

Jordan Berry [00:06:09]:
All right. Without further ado, I’m excited for you to hear the other half of the mastermind of this event, Ryan Bornaman here. We’re going to get real deep into some practical tips on how you can get the word out about your Laundromat to bring in new customers and convert those customers to dollars into your pocket. All right? All right. Let’s get into it with Ryan.

Jordan Berry [00:06:35]:
Ryan, welcome to the show, man.

Jordan Berry [00:06:37]:
How you doing?

Ryan Bornemann [00:06:38]:
Good. Jordan, what’s going on, man?

Jordan Berry [00:06:40]:
Not a whole lot. Here’s the thing, though. I just feel like people need to know this right off the bat is that we both are located right now and for the foreseeable future on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. However, this past weekend, we have struck up in east side versus west side rivalry. So I just want people to know that things might get heated today.

Ryan Bornemann [00:07:03]:
I don’t know.

Jordan Berry [00:07:04]:
Are you flashing west side? Because that looks like the west side.

Jordan Berry [00:07:07]:
No, that’s.

Ryan Bornemann [00:07:08]:
That’s the East.

Jordan Berry [00:07:09]:
But, hey, super psyched about today. Super psyched you’re coming on the show and we’re talking marketing today. So why don’t you give us a quick background on you and then listen, I know both of our. We talked about this already. Our goal is to give a ton of good information whether you’re using a marketing company, you’re doing it yourself, or you’re not sure what you’re doing yet. You should get something useful out of this. But before we jump into all that, who are you? And give us a little Background.

Ryan Bornemann [00:07:36]:
Yeah. Thanks, man. So my name is Ryan Borderman. I’ve been doing digital marketing for about 15 years now and been in Hawaii for 17 actually. So going to be a lifer out here.

Jordan Berry [00:07:46]:
Love it.

Ryan Bornemann [00:07:46]:
It’s. It’s an amazing place. But really we started focusing on the tourism and hospitality space. So we were doing a lot in there for a while, and then I got introduced to the Laundromat space and was really kind of intrigued with. With what I saw when I came in. So we started working with a good friend of ours, Brandon from Best Watch Laundromats, and really it’s kind of got into the space and it’s been amazing ever since. We do kind of an array of different services and now we’ve narrowed it down to a few things really specialize in. But yeah, that’s.

Ryan Bornemann [00:08:13]:
That’s kind of where we’re at now.

Jordan Berry [00:08:15]:
Yeah. And just, I mean, he. He casually name dropped Brandon. But I just want to point out that is Brandon. He is a. He is a podcast. Former podcast guest from Single Digit podcast. We’re over 200 episodes now.

Jordan Berry [00:08:29]:
He was in the first. He’s like six, seven, eight, something like that. Nine, maybe somewhere in there. Podcast guest. And I am angry to get him back on because he is blown up with. I don’t know, he’s got like 20 or more locations now. He’s like crushing.

Ryan Bornemann [00:08:45]:
Pushing 30.

Jordan Berry [00:08:46]:
Yeah, he’s pushing 30.

Jordan Berry [00:08:48]:
I will.

Jordan Berry [00:08:49]:
I know for a fact that you will not take any credit for that, but it’s not a coincidence that he is crushing it right now and he’s using it. So I just wanted to promote that for you. Oh, I appreciate that you won’t say that for yourself, but.

Jordan Berry [00:09:05]:
Yeah, go ahead.

Ryan Bornemann [00:09:06]:
No, I was gonna say. I mean, I can’t say enough good things about Brandon. He’s. He’s an awesome guy, a super smart. I mean, working with him has been amazing because he’s really open to new ideas, but, man, they’ve been growing fast because that dude works hard. And then he’s got some team members that came on board that. That are really some smart guys and really know what they’re doing. So, yeah, yeah, it’s exciting to be a part of it and hopefully we can work for them for a long time.

Jordan Berry [00:09:26]:
Yeah, I feel like we’re building Branded up a little too much. So let’s move on from that. I don’t want him getting a big head on that. All right, so enough of Brandon. Let’s jump into digital advertising first. I mean, this is a Subject number one, a little bit controversial in our industry. There’s a lot of people who think that you don’t need to do any digital marketing. There’s a growing number of people who believe in digital marketing marketing, and then there’s a whole bunch of people in the middle who are just not sure, you know, if they should be marketing online, how they should be marketing online, where they should be marketing online, all these kinds of questions.

Jordan Berry [00:10:05]:
So I thought you would be a great one to ping to let us know, like, hey, should we be advertising online? And if so, give us some details about that, what we should be doing.

Ryan Bornemann [00:10:18]:
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I gotta say, no matter what business you are, even if you’re not in the laundromat space, you should always be marketing and advertising whether or not the market’s up or down. If you’re not advertising and promoting your business to the audience that you’re trying to attract, then you’re relying on the old school, just word of mouth, which, which can work great, right? But it’s, it’s with marketing, you don’t want to focus on one thing. Like I, I would even go to a laundromat and say, hey, if you just run ads, you’ll be good to go. Right? There’s a, there’s an array of things you should be doing to really improve your marketing overall. It’s a multifaceted type situation where especially now with, you have social media platforms, you have ads platforms, you try to track customers through different platforms that run it there, like Facebook, Google, TikTok, Instagram, and then also you have the side of email and SMS marketing. You got, you know, flyers you can go put on people’s doors or mailers, you can do all kinds of different promotions. I’m an advocate for testing everything and just seeing what works.

Ryan Bornemann [00:11:17]:
Because what works for one company in a small rural town might not work for another company that’s located in a very dense kind of city area. So that’s, that’s kind of my approach to each person that we talk with is, is, hey, you know, what are you guys currently doing, what’s working, what’s not? And sometimes I’ll go talk to them and they don’t know. They’re like, hey, we’re spending this and, and we’re not really sure what’s coming in. We, we just, you know, we see a little bit business coming in, but we’re not sure where it came from. So they don’t know if it’s, you know, if it’s not trackable then, you know, you really can’t decide if you allocate more funds to it or if you kind of go with a different path. So really being able to track that marketing, I think it’s important to kind of decide what’s best for you as far as marketing’s concerned.

Jordan Berry [00:11:59]:
I love that because I’ve been harping on for a long time that we need to be tracking all our stuff more. Right. I think the marketing is for sure one of those things that we need to track a little bit better to give us more detailed information on how we should be reinvesting in our business. Right. And then also tracking performance of the laundromat in various different ways. It, I mean, that’s just going to help us make better business decisions, Right? Like that’s what we’re talking about when we’re talking about tracking data is helping us make better business decisions. Run better business.

Ryan Bornemann [00:12:36]:
Yeah. Because, you know, I’ve talked to clients that, that have tried, you know, Facebook before and they tell me, hey, Facebook doesn’t work. And I’m like, well, I can assure you it does if you do the right kind of campaigns, right. And, and this is where it comes with trial and error. What they call AB testing is you got to try different media, you got to try different creative. And when I say creative, you know, everything from the image you use in the video you use to the ad copy, which is the text on the ad, to kind of figure out what is attractive to your audience. Right. If it’s a Hispanic speaking audience, if it’s, you know, you know, city people that, you know, maybe are more single, younger people who are higher income or people in a small rural town that have families.

Ryan Bornemann [00:13:15]:
You want to really kind of find out what messaging works best. And most of these tools give you a good idea of the metrics, right? You know, obviously there’s some additional tracking metrics you could add on there with Google Analytics, things like that. But when it comes to like Google Ads, right. Very simple tracking metrics of store visits, get directions, website visits, calls. You know, we typically like to focus on the higher intent conversion goals. So those are store visits and get directions. Because that’ll give you a good idea of, hey, these people more likely actually came into the store, right. We’re trusting Google with this data, of course.

Ryan Bornemann [00:13:50]:
But when we see store visits from Google, it says, hey, these people actually they were tracked and they came into our store location. Get directions is a little bit different. So this is just people who clicked on that get directions action button on your Google business profile. So there is a chance that maybe they were just trying to test how far away you were as far as a distance from their home. But most of the time if they’re trying to get directions, they have high intent to visit your store. So that’s, you know, on Google, that’s a really good way to track it. And then of course, Facebook adding things like a pixel to your site, adding lead forms so you can actually grab that data when people interact with the ad. These are all important ways to kind of track the success from the ads.

Ryan Bornemann [00:14:28]:
Just so you know that your money’s being well spent.

Jordan Berry [00:14:31]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you can see like how quickly, I mean, I know, you know, but you can see how quickly you can start to get more and more sophisticated in how you’re actually targeting people and what you’re doing with them once they engage with you and how you create. Yeah, one of the tricks, one of the hardest things to do, I think, I mean it’s, I don’t want to say it’s easy, but it’s relatively easy to get somebody to click on an ad. It’s harder to get somebody to click on an ad and then convert to an actual sale. Right. And there’s a process that goes through that, which. Let’s, let’s talk about that. But before we do, can we talk about a couple specific ad platforms and like, where, what, what would I do? Like you mentioned Facebook and Google.

Jordan Berry [00:15:17]:
Right.

Jordan Berry [00:15:17]:
So let’s talk about Facebook. Like where, like what would be the purpose of running ads on Facebook? When would I decide? Okay, Facebook is a good platform for me to start running ads on.

Ryan Bornemann [00:15:29]:
Absolutely. So yeah, we kind of break it down where different platforms are beneficial for different purposes. Right. So we have Facebook specifically. We usually only run promotional ads on Facebook and Instagram. Right. Because we kind of call that interruption marketing. Most people are on their phones, you know, sometimes on their desktop, scrolling through social media, looking at funny videos, political stuff, whatever’s popping up on their feed, trying to be entertained.

Ryan Bornemann [00:15:54]:
Laundromat resource. Exactly, exactly. But as they’re scrolling through, you know, if it’s just a general awareness ad or some slow paced video where it’s, you know, featuring the Laundromat and the logo, it doesn’t grab their attention. Right. You really have, I mean, two seconds to, maybe three seconds to really put the hook in there to grab their attention when they’re quickly scrolling through Instagram or Facebook. So the reason we say that we kind of focus on promotional marketing on Facebook, Instagram is because things like a free $10 laundry credit. If you’re using a system like LaunchWorks or Sense that allows for that kind of promo code tracking, right. We can add a promo code in there and have them engage with the ad to leave comments, to fill out a lead form, or we can send them a follow up email and text message campaign.

Ryan Bornemann [00:16:37]:
This is what’s going to get someone to stop where they’re scrolling because oh, free $10 laundry credit, perfect. They see your logo, they see the offer, a double your money promotion, you know, free dry Wednesdays, things like that are going to grab someone’s attention. Whereas Google, right. Google’s a little bit different on how we approach that because on Google people are actively searching for your service. So someone goes, picks up their phone and says, hey, Laundromat near me Lavenderia, that they’re searching for washing, full pickup, whatever it is, we can actually bid for those search terms and have your ad show up in front of that customer right when they’re looking for the service. So that’s where you kind of look at, okay, what, what kind of marketing do I want to do here? What do I want to kind of what, what platform is best for what marketing initiative that we’re trying to do? You know something we don’t do that that is, is works for some clients that we have really well is the, the door hangers, right? Sending out the mass door hangers and they go around and put in people’s apartments or homes. Now that people are asking, well how could you track that? You could do a number of ways. You could have a QR code they could scan on there.

Ryan Bornemann [00:17:40]:
You could have a specific phone number that they can call or track that phone number separately than your normal line so you can see what calls came in from that. Or the old tried true method is just a promo code, right? Use the promo code, put it on there and have an easy tracking metric on your back end POS software to kind of find out, okay, where did this, you know, we use one promo code campaign for this marketing initiative and then one for this one and then see how many produce from both. That’s the best way to kind of narrow it down to what’s working, what’s not.

Jordan Berry [00:18:10]:
Yeah, yeah. And you know, it’s interesting because you.

Jordan Berry [00:18:13]:
Know, if you’re not in the sort.

Jordan Berry [00:18:14]:
Of the marketing world, you may not think different platforms having a different purpose in different usage, right. But like it’s, it’s very nuanced, right? It’s like very different audiences, very different ways you engage with them even between like Facebook and Instagram or if you’re, you know what like TikTok is different. Like you’re going to create different content for TikTok consumers and you will for YouTube conserver consumers or Facebook consumers. So absolutely, it is all in and same with door hangers even, right? Like, yeah, it’s just you got to understand the nuances between all of them. Are you seeing like, any as you like, as you’re running ads for laundromats and seeing different marketing initiatives, are there any like common threads of like mistakes people are making or ways people are leaking money or anything like that?

Ryan Bornemann [00:19:10]:
Yeah, yeah. So you know, the ad nowadays you can go online and learn and learn a lot of this stuff yourself, but you gotta be very specific when you’re, when you’re trying to do certain targeting or running certain campaigns that you do it correctly. Because you know, Facebook and Google, they want your money. They’ll, they’ll encourage you to spend as much as you can through those platforms as much as possible. So you know, one big thing is on Google specifically they’re always offering these recommendations in your ads, right? So if you’re a person out there that wants to run your own ads or is currently running your own ads, Google likes to recommend all these different things that, that you should add to your campaign or your ad set to, you know, quote unquote, get that score up that they give you that rating. Now some of those sometimes can be really beneficial, but you really want to dive into what’s the goal of that campaign that you’re running and what’s necessary and what’s not. Because sometimes the more stuff you add on there, especially with the target. Nowadays, both Facebook and Google are hiding a lot of the settings.

Ryan Bornemann [00:20:07]:
So the average user who doesn’t know how to really get in there and kind of customize things to their specifics just goes along with it. So like the, you know, Facebook, the advantage campaign budgets, they’ll just throw that in there and they’ll do mass targeting all across. All of Facebook or Google will throw in some sort of recognition where they open it up to this broad audience or even your targeting right People in or likely in locate or interested in location. That’s going to really open up a broad targeting and it helps them because you’re spending more of your budget trying to get in front of those customers. But it’s not necessarily the customers they’re going to convert the most. So that’s kind of what’s important to, to remind yourself of when you’re putting these campaigns together is Google and Facebook and Instagram are amazing platforms to advertise. I mean they’re some of the biggest in the world and it’s really effective, it’s done properly. But you have to be very careful because although they’re, they’re going to help you grow your business, they’re also not your friend.

Ryan Bornemann [00:21:00]:
They want your money. So you got to be very particular about on how you go about those campaigns. So that’s why, you know, always ask somebody that that’s done it before, speak with an expert or some, some marketing company that may know or even do a lot of research on yourself to find out what those nuances are. So you’re not wasting money on ads.

Jordan Berry [00:21:18]:
Yeah, super good advice. Because you know, marketing is sort of that double edged sword, right? Like you can make, you can grow your business, you can make money. And, and that’s the goal of marketing, right? Is to make more money than you’re spending. You can grow your business and make money by marketing. Like that’s the whole point of it. But you can also flush a whole lot of money. And especially like I’ve learned the hard way, like doing stuff like marketing, diy again, you can totally do it. But you just have to know that there’s a, there’s a price to pay for that too.

Jordan Berry [00:21:50]:
Because like you said, you got to do a lot of ab testing, you got to test a lot of stuff. You’re going to mess up on a lot of stuff. And those are a lot of times lessons that you’re going to have to learn that other people who do this for a living have already learned.

Ryan Bornemann [00:22:03]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:22:04]:
For you. So it’s a double edged sword. But listen, like you mentioned before, like.

Jordan Berry [00:22:11]:
You for sure should be doing some.

Jordan Berry [00:22:13]:
Form of marketing for your 100.

Ryan Bornemann [00:22:16]:
Yeah. And this is something that I think even if your numbers are starting to go down and you’re doing marketing yourself and your numbers are going down, that doesn’t mean you should stop your market. Even if you’re not working with an agency, this just means you need to look at the advertising that you’re doing and adjust pivot, find something that’s working. There’s always, always, always going to be something that works for your business. You just have to figure out what it is that works for your specific, you know, laundromat or location to find out what’s worth the money that you’re spending. Because of course you don’t want to go out and spend $2000 a month, $5000 a month if you’re getting minimal results. Right. You want to get a good return for your investment.

Ryan Bornemann [00:22:52]:
And there’s a lot of ways you can waste as choice, Jordan said. So just really kind of dive into what’s working. But you should always be spending money on advertising in some way to promote your business. That should never stop because there’s always ways. With new platforms coming out now, AI is a front and everyone’s talking about AI. There’s so many ways to promote your business. Social media. So it’s important to kind of keep, keep stabbing at it consistently.

Jordan Berry [00:23:15]:
All right, we can talk about advertising, marketing or advertising all day long, which by the way, I just want to drop a quick. I know I mentioned in the intro, but just a quick reminder that we’re going to be doing a Q and A coming up in second week of August. So make sure you come to that. You can ask Ryan your questions in, in person and he’ll be answering all kinds of marketing advertising questions about things that we’re bringing up today and anything else you got in mind there. So I wanted to bring that up. So if you’ve got more advertising questions, bring them because Ryan is there for it. But let’s switch gears to email and text messaging, which again, man, I, I think having like having this capability as a small business to, to be in front of, like to build your own list of customers, right? If we’re utilizing Google or Facebook, we’re borrowing their list of customers. When we’re doing text message and email marketing, we’re building our own list of customers and leads and also especially text message marketing that allows us to get in front like the con, the, the open rate of a text message is insane.

Jordan Berry [00:24:23]:
Right. And so we have the ability to get in front of people, but it’s also a little nuanced on how you have to use text message because it’s a little more finicky. People are more often are more likely to get out of there and opt out if you use that text messaging. But let’s, let’s start with this. Can we talk about the difference between getting a new customer and bringing one back?

Ryan Bornemann [00:24:48]:
Yeah, yeah. So going back to the ads marketing, right? We’re spending money to get customers in the door, right? So the main focus is, hey, we’re spending ad dollars on Google, on Meta with Facebook and Instagram, trying to attract new customers into the Laundromat. And that’s great, that’s what you want to be doing. But it’s then important to think about that. Second stage, right? Once, once you get them in the door, what are you doing to keep that customer coming back? So this is, you know, one of the biggest things that I kind of have deep conversations with a lot with laundromat owners about, you know, how to get those customers repeatedly coming back in and feeling like they’re part of your brand, right? Feeling like you care and you’re engaging with them regularly. So a lot of, you know, times I ask Laundromats, hey, do you know what your retention rate is? And a lot of them don’t, which is understandable because you know, at the current moment, most laundromat owners don’t have a CRM system in place. And this is a CRM tool, is basically a customer relationship management tool tool. This is a system that can pull in, for instance, if you’re existing POS software where customers register their cards.

Ryan Bornemann [00:25:53]:
If that system does doesn’t have a built in email marketing because a lot of them have a database of customer information, how much a customer spent the last time they visited, things like that. You’ll need to transfer that over into a CRM, which gives you a little bit more flexibility and customization with how you manage that data, right? So because we can understand the customer journey and say, okay, how many customers have it been back in 30 days or more? Because maybe. So let’s say we have 5,000 customers in our database, right? If you add it to a CRM and you can start looking through that data and say, okay, out of that 5000, you know, 2300 of them haven’t been back in the past 30 days. Well, why haven’t these customers been back? Normally if you didn’t have a way to send emails or text, you’re just hoping that customers come back in the door, right? Or you’re always spending money on ads to get new customers and then some customers don’t come back and you’re just constantly trying to fill that churn. So it’s important to spend the money to get customers in the door. But then once they’re in the door, to regularly get them on some sort of email or SMS campaign, you know, part of a rewards program, essentially sending them special offers, promotions, free laundry credits to get them coming back in. So something that, that we do, which if anybody listening has their own CRM and they do their own email marketing currently, I highly advise you to do this. Figure out off that last use date or the last purchase date that the customer came in and try to put together a specific list of customers that haven’t been back in 30 days, 45 days, 60 days, and put together a custom email campaign to invite them back.

Ryan Bornemann [00:27:25]:
You know, you don’t have to say like, hey Jordan, we noticed you haven’t been back 30 days. That’s kind of creepy. But just sending them a general email say, hey, we really appreciate your business as we’re a family owned business in this area. You know, we’d love to see you back at the laundromat. Here’s a free $10 laundry credit to use on your next visit. That might be just enough to get them to come back in the door and come to your laundromat because you don’t know if when they left did they go to a competitor’s laundromat that offered them some sort of deal when they saw through an ad or is has some sort of rewards program, did they just decide to. They didn’t like your laundromat for some reason. But being able to engage with them can really kind of close that barrier and make them feel more like you care, you’re reaching out, you’re trying to keep them as a customer.

Ryan Bornemann [00:28:06]:
So yeah, it’s super to kind of utilize that returning customer just as much as getting new customers because as everyone knows, it’s a lot cheaper to retain your current customers than it is to try to spend money always getting new ones.

Jordan Berry [00:28:18]:
Yeah, yeah. And the longer you keep them. Right. The higher the lifetime value of those customers and the higher the lifetime value, the more you can spend to acquire new ones and, and on and on and on. Right. So it’s like compounding, compounding thing you got going on there. I mean, do you have any, do you have any tips on like re engagement campaigns that actually are effective or actually work? Like if I, if I go into my CRM and I look and I see this list of people who haven’t been here in a month. You got any tips on how I can get these guys back into the fold?

Ryan Bornemann [00:28:52]:
Yeah, you know, depending on how big your list is, you want to look at email versus SMS because obviously SMS is much more expensive. Most CRM systems, you’re looking around one penny per text. You know, there are some systems out there that, that, that cover the cost for you for a little bit if you’re on certain plans. But you know, just kind of explore what systems are out there that offer these, these tools. But if it’s a smaller list, you could utilize something like SMS to directly get in front of them and make sure they’re showing up on their Phone. Right. If you want to use email, email is still super powerful. I mean for a lot of clients who work with, they have open rates of upwards of 30 to 50% for some clients.

Ryan Bornemann [00:29:27]:
So it can still be super powerful and of course much cheaper. You’re talking about 0.0006 cents per email going out so you can reach a large audience much more effectively. But yeah, just find out who those customers are. Put together some sort of nicely drafted email, whether you use ChatGPT or you’re a good writer yourself and speak to those customers on what you think they would want to hear to come back into the launch map. What is it that I could send them that’s going to get them to come back in and try us again and give us another chance? Because that’s really at the end of the day, what you know, you know your customers best, you know your area and your demographic. So speak to that demographic and, and give them an incentive to come back into your laundromat to continue spending money with you. Because it’s again, it’s, as a business owner, it’s our job to earn their business because in some markets they have other options. There’s a lot of other laundromats around, most of us as, as laundromat owners.

Ryan Bornemann [00:30:17]:
So you gotta really kind of earn that business and engage with that customer via email and sms. So I always think laundry credits do best. If your system allows it a free $10 laundry credit, free 15 dol launch of credit, you know, offering them free dry on certain days or even having certain employees at the store reach out to customers directly can be really nice as well.

Jordan Berry [00:30:37]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I’ll just, I’ll interject, I know we’re talking on the marketing side but you know, the other thing, like if you, if you look at your, you know, if you’ve got like a list that tells you when the last time somebody buys. Like all this is obviously like dependent on you having a system that allows you to track that. If you’re an all coin store, it’s going to be really difficult for you to know, you know, when the last time a customer was in or something like that. But if you have that ability to do that and you look at your list and you’ve got a whole bunch of people that you know, haven’t been in a month, maybe you’re in like a touristy area and that would make a lot of sense. But if not, it might be worth taking a, taking a beat and, and taking a look at your Store and your operations and stuff to see. Is there something about our business that’s bleeding customers? Right. It may just be that’s the natural cycle in your market for whatever reason, but it may be that there’s something about your business where people come and then they don’t come back because they, they go to the store down the street or something like that.

Jordan Berry [00:31:36]:
Right.

Jordan Berry [00:31:37]:
And one, one just tip that we utilize in our, in our laundromat playbook that you can steal and utilize kind of no matter what. Actually, I might recommend you doing. This is what we call an outside eyes audit. And that’s where you get somebody who’s maybe in your target demographic. Maybe it’s a mom with young kids or you know, whatever your college student, whatever your call, your target demographic is and have them come in and just tell you what they see, how they feel, let them be brutally honest and see. Because a lot of times we get blind to our own businesses. We’re in there all the time. We’re seeing things, we see problems that our customers don’t see.

Jordan Berry [00:32:15]:
So it can be useful to have other customers or, or people who are in that demographic give us feedback and, or other owners. Now maybe not the, the owner down the street, but maybe somebody who’s a little farther away to come in and actually give you some input on the operation side. So the probably the worst thing you can do is re engage people, get them to come back and then they still have a horrible experience and now they’re never coming back. Right. So make sure they have a good experience when they come.

Ryan Bornemann [00:32:45]:
Yeah, even try sending out a survey campaign. Right? If again, if you’re, if you have a CRM, you can send emails, send an email out to everybody and say, hey, we’re giving away $5 to everyone who, who fills out the survey and then have multiple questions, hey, how, you know, on a scale from 1 to 5, how was the cleanliness? How was the staff? How was our pricing? How was parking? How are the machines? Because then the customers will literally tell you what they like and don’t like. And you can make it anonymous. You can have them, you know, not put in their information. They just fill out the form. But in order to get the credit, you kind of do have to have an email. So typically you want to, you would have something there, but at least as an owner, it gives you a chance, as Jordan was saying, to find out what, what they like and don’t like. And then you can make those adjustments on your end of maybe lowering your prices on certain days or having the staff be a little bit more engaging with the customers when they’re in store, things like that.

Ryan Bornemann [00:33:30]:
So yeah, super important for that, that customer relationship.

Jordan Berry [00:33:33]:
Yeah, I mean, do you have any tips on collecting customer data at the store or online?

Ryan Bornemann [00:33:39]:
Yeah, absolutely. So we do it in a number of different ways. A couple of things I’d recommend. So for Coin Laundromats, right, if you don’t have any sort of POS that’s grabbing that information, you can still utilize things like QR codes. So put some, some nice posters in the store, stickers on the machines where they can scan a QR code, go to a little landing page and fill out a lead form there with their name, email, phone number. And then again, if you have a CRM, even if the POS system doesn’t grab that data for you, you may not have the last use date or how much they spent, but you still have your customer’s email and phone number. So you can still regularly send them updates about your laundromats. If you got a new, you know, new washer and dryers in store, if you hired a new team member, you want to promote it to that, to everybody of your, of your store.

Ryan Bornemann [00:34:20]:
Just really that brand recognition of at least once a month an email going out to let the customers know that hey, you care about, you know, updating them on what’s happening in your laundromat. So that’s a good way to do it is if you don’t have that system, but definitely through your social media, having links on your social media to the landing pages on your website, having a lead form directly on your website, or having some sort of verbiage that you have a rewards program that people can sign up for. These are all great ways to kind of grab that information. So even for instance, if you’re running an ad, people are going to come to your website. So before they’re even a customer, if we can get them on that list to give their information because they’re like, oh, I’ll join the rewards program, see what we can get and we can send them an offer right away, then now we got somebody’s information before they even became a customer. So it’s super powerful because again, they may not become a customer right away, but after 3, 4, 5 emails of sending out follow ups and reminders about the promotion, it might slowly start to entice them. You know what, I’ll go in there and check out that launch map. So that’s why you want to kind of consistently engage these Customers.

Ryan Bornemann [00:35:19]:
Over and over.

Jordan Berry [00:35:21]:
Yeah. And I’ll just say too, like, listen, we, you know, for the most part, we sort of live and breathe our businesses. They are a big deal to us. We’re thinking about them all the time. Our customers aren’t thinking about our laundromats all the time. They only think about it when they have to come and do their laundry. And usually they don’t really want to do that. Right.

Jordan Berry [00:35:39]:
And so having their email address and just reaching out helps keep us, you know, in front of our customers, keep us front of mind and yeah, you know, there’s lots of different creative things you can do even if you have a coin store, you know, you can do, you know, randomized, you know, half price laundry days where you got to be on the email list to know that it’s coming. Or you could do randomized raffle days or, or scheduled raffle days or whatever and use the raffles as a way to collect leads. Right. There’s lots of different ways you can still do this. So just having a coin store is not an excuse just because you won’t have maybe last time they spent money and stuff like that. You can still know something about your customer base and have an, an avenue to, to get in their inbox or in, in their pocket in the case of a text message.

Jordan Berry [00:36:29]:
Right. So get after.

Jordan Berry [00:36:31]:
It’s a huge opportunity for us small business owners to be able to utilize tools that really we couldn’t use not that long ago. Only the big boys could use it.

Jordan Berry [00:36:42]:
But now we can.

Jordan Berry [00:36:43]:
So no excuses.

Ryan Bornemann [00:36:45]:
That’s right. That’s right.

Jordan Berry [00:36:47]:
That’s right. Well, listen, one of the. Switching gears a little bit. One of the biggest tips that podcast guests have had on how to improve your business is to claim and optimize your Google business profile. Right. And so I thought we could maybe talk a little bit about that. What are some ways that we can optimize our Google business profiles?

Ryan Bornemann [00:37:18]:
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, there’s a number of things that are important to regularly keep up with your. A lot of people think, oh, if I just have a Google business profile and just keep it listed there, I’m fine. But you know, really, for even organic SEO type attraction like Google’s looking at that as like, hey, how often are you responding to customer reviews? Which you should be doing it the same day if you can. I mean, within hours, if you could. Sooner’s better. Yeah, sooner’s better. Yeah.

Ryan Bornemann [00:37:44]:
We use AI for our clients to automatically respond within 10 minutes because that’s, I mean, now the tools at hand. It’s like, because the customers, if you, if you respond quickly again, it shows your customer that you care. It shows that you’re not just leaving reviews unanswered, which especially, especially the bad reviews, you want to get ahead of those and you know, because people are going to complain. But even if you have a one star review, but you as the owner go on there personally and you address that review and you say, hey, we’re sorry that you had a bad experience, this is certainly not what we want to give any of our customers. If you reach out to us at this email, we’d love to dive deeper into what happened and figure out how we can make this right. Even if that customer never comes back again and they don’t want to reach out to you, you just showed every other person that was vetting you that looked on Google and saw that one star review. Because most people go to Google reviews and they filter by one star, they want to see the worst first. Right? Everyone likes drama train wrecks.

Ryan Bornemann [00:38:31]:
Yeah, that’s right, that’s right. So they’re going to look at that and say, okay, hey, at least the owner reached out and tried to fix that situation. Right. They didn’t just ignore it or they didn’t say, you know what, you’re a piece of crap, you did this at our Laundromat and throw it back at the customer. It’s like, hey, we took responsibility. We want to make it right. We want to find out what happened. So responding to Google Reviews is imperative.

Ryan Bornemann [00:38:52]:
Everybody should be doing that. It takes you a few minutes, even if you just have a simple, hey, thanks for leaving the review. We really appreciate your business. That goes a long way with the customers. And then Google likes to see that as well. So that’s really important to do.

Jordan Berry [00:39:04]:
Real quick on that one. Just real quick. I mean, we used to give the advice like, hey, if you need a cooling off period before you respond to bad review, that’s really frustrating to you. Like, that’s the exception, right? And that used to be our advice. Now I would say just copy that bad review, throw it into chat GPT and say, hey, I’m the best laundromat owner in the world. Please respond, you know, the best way possible to this bad review and make me look good as a business owner. Right. And, and so even if you’re fum.

Jordan Berry [00:39:36]:
Let chat. ChatGPT doesn’t have emotions, right? So let’s chat GPT, filter out the emotions and now you can respond really quickly even if you’re Heated by the, by the bad review that you feel like you didn’t deserve, which we’ve all gotten.

Ryan Bornemann [00:39:49]:
So that’s right. And if you want to prompt GPT to be a little sassy, you can. I wouldn’t recommend it, but yeah, yeah, sure. But yeah, I mean aside from reviews, update those photos regularly, right? People are going to judge you very quick on the quality of your reviews. So you know, I always say if you have 4.5 or higher, you’re in the clear. Anything under 4.5, you really want to try to bump that up. Ask your family and friends, you know, really actively engage your customers. Send them an email, send them sms, you know, incentivize them to leave a review.

Ryan Bornemann [00:40:20]:
What also really works is if you have team members in store, incentivize your team members to go and, and be personable with people and ask them for a review, ask them for feedback and, and have them, you know, say, hey, we’ll offer you guys, I saw your washing your clothes. We’ll offer you a free dry cycle if you wouldn’t mind, you know, leave us a quick review or a small family owned business and we really appreciate your support. Things like that really go a long way. Or you could just try to incentivize the. I have one client that does this that they’re absolutely destroying it. They have a team member, I won’t mention who it is, but she is a star. She’s getting them like four or five, five star reviews a day, which is amazing. And everybody references her in the review and they give her, you know, a kickback for being, for being polite, for being friendly and engaging with customers and everybod, everybody loves her.

Ryan Bornemann [00:41:03]:
So you’re improving customer support. You’re, you’re getting more positive reviews for yourself online and people are going to see that. And, and when you’re searching, even let’s get away from laundromats. Let’s say you and your family are looking for a laundromat. When you open the Google Maps and you’re scrolling through restaurants to choose from and you see a, you know, a location with 3.9 or 4.2 versus other ones with 4.5 and higher, you’re immediately judging that restaurant. Like there’s probably a reason to have low reviews. So if you have lower reviews currently, it’s not the end of the world. Just truly focus on getting that review.

Ryan Bornemann [00:41:35]:
Count out up by, you know, incentivizing your existing customers, getting friends and family who have done business with you, you know, or not to leave A review to kind of get that score up. That’s something really important to focus on. And then of course, the photos on your Google business profile, make sure you’re uploading HD photography. Don’t put blurry photos on there. Don’t leave it just to the customers. And they’re in their kind of janky phones taking sideways photos. Take the photos yourselves. IPhones.

Jordan Berry [00:42:01]:
Everyone has dryer sheets on your floor. That’s what they’re going to take photos of.

Ryan Bornemann [00:42:05]:
Exactly.

Jordan Berry [00:42:05]:
Not of how beautiful your laundromat looks. You know, dryer sheets on the floor, the dirty paper on the bathroom floor. Yeah. Like, yeah, you take charge of what people are seeing about your business. Like, don’t, don’t leave it up to other people. Yeah.

Ryan Bornemann [00:42:20]:
100. And regularly update that. And you know, that’s, that’s really important because again, people are gonna click on those photos and they’re going to quickly judge you on the quality of those photos. So if you have old photos, after you’ve done a renovation, please update your photos and show your customers the newest, you know, look of the launchpad itself to give them an idea of what they’re coming in for. And then lastly. Oh, sorry, Jordan, I think you might have cut off. I don’t know if I cut you off there. Lastly, there’s like a little, not a blog section, but there’s a post section on your Google business profile regularly, if you can, once or twice a month at minimum, post something on there.

Ryan Bornemann [00:42:54]:
It’s almost like a social media post update, but post update, hey, you know, today is free dry Tuesday or, you know, hey, come in this weekend for our Easter Sunday special. You know, post on there because again, it shows Google that you’re actively involved in your Google business profile and they’re going to help you with your ranking on that. It’s going to look good too.

Jordan Berry [00:43:12]:
Yeah, and same with like, hours, right? Like update your hours. You have holiday hours. If you’re going to, your hours are going to change or confirm that your hours are going to not change during holiday. Like, Google wants to see that you are paying attention to your business. That’s how you’re going to rank higher on Google. That’s how you’re going to rank higher on Google Maps, all of that stuff. Right. And so keeping those, keeping those high reviews is probably one of the best ROIs that you can get in the business.

Jordan Berry [00:43:39]:
And also, you know, the number of reviews matters too. Right. If you’ve got, you know, 4.6 stars, but you’ve got eight reviews and the laundromat down the street has 4.5 stars, but they’ve got 323 reviews. It just lends more credibility to that other laundromat. Even though your review is higher, you kind of trust it a little less because it’s a smaller sample size. Right? So exactly. Getting good reviews and as many as you can is. It’s a big deal.

Jordan Berry [00:44:10]:
It translates to the bottom line. We’ve talked about that here before, for sure. Can we, can we talk about something that I have kind of been talking about a lot, but I’m just super excited about AI here. AI and Laundromats. It’s so funny because if you go back and listen to like early episodes, I’m like, our, our industry, we have no technology. We haven’t changed at all. Now AI is busting on the seams. And you know, we’ve had some, some people on, you know, talking about, like Pablo and Rick Rome and some people talking about AI and some different ways to utilize it, but I want to kind of get your take on it.

Jordan Berry [00:44:56]:
And it’s just such a funny business to even talk about AI like Laundromats, not techie, I don’t know. But AI really is changing the game in a lot of ways. And we even just talked about, right, like use AI to help you write reviews. Use AI to help you write descriptions about your laundry mat. Use AI to create those posts that you need to update regularly or at least help you create the posts. Right. There’s a lot of ways we can utilize AI but let’s talk. I.

Jordan Berry [00:45:25]:
One thing I don’t think we’ve really talked too much about is chatbots, like on, on our websites and stuff. You got any insight on. On chatbots? Should we be using them? If so, how?

Ryan Bornemann [00:45:36]:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think luckily we’re at a point now where it’s become so cost effective to do this right. Years ago, and when we used to build for the tour space, the tours and activities, I mean, a good quality chatbot could cost you thousands of dollars nowadays. I mean, you can get them for under a hundred dollars a month. And, and it can answer 98, 99% of the questions that come through, which is, you know, I think a lot of people have a bad rep with chat bots on websites because a lot of times past couple of years, you’ve gone on sites and either dealt with a really poorly built AI chatbot or you built with the ones where it’s not necessarily a chatbot, it’s just a chat experience. You click on a, on a button, it gives you the next prompt. You click on a button and it’s like the same thing with the phone. Press one for this.

Ryan Bornemann [00:46:16]:
You’re going through this sequence and it’s really annoying, right? It’s. People want speed. Especially nowadays, people want to get their question answered right away. So what we tell clients is, hey, when, when someone’s, you know, reaching out to your business to say someone stumbles upon your website and they have a question like, hey, what services do you offer? If it’s not readily apparent on your website or your pricing, or they want to know if you have parking, what time you’re open to, what time’s the last wash before you close. If they have to pick up the phone, wait for it to ring, wait for somebody to pick up. You know, God forbid somebody picks up. Nowadays a lot of people don’t pick up their phones. If that happens, then, and no one answers, you just lost a customer, they’re going to go to the next business and pick up it for somebody else and see if that.

Ryan Bornemann [00:46:55]:
They get the question answered. So being able to answer that question immediately is really important. Now for the people who call a voice bot’s phenomenal, right? They’re really good nowadays. You know, a lot of people have talked about this before in your podcast and it’s a, it’s a good thing to have if you, if you get a lot of questions coming through. Chatbots on your website, I think are crucial as well because a lot of people will vet you on your website to see your services, to see your pricing, to see who you are, where you’re located, all of that. And if they just have one question before they decide to come and do business with you, you want to make sure they can get the answer to that immediately. And with a little chat widget in the corner where they click on it says, hey, how can I help you? And they simply ask their question, hey, do you guys have parking? Or hey, how much is it to wash a comforter? And they’re like, oh, you can use our 100 pound machines, which, you know, can take a comforter. And it starts at, you know, 575 to wash.

Ryan Bornemann [00:47:44]:
Then they got the answer right away. And that’s going to help them be able to make a decision if they.

Jordan Berry [00:47:48]:
Want to come in bargain right there.

Ryan Bornemann [00:47:50]:
Yeah, yeah, just throwing out random prices there. Not saying that’s a standard in the industry.

Jordan Berry [00:47:54]:
Yeah, yeah, that is, that is a bargain. 575 for the 100 pounders. Yeah, people, yeah. I’m just giving you a hard time. Yeah. Nope. I mean, it’s super powerful, Right. To be able to have people get their questions.

Jordan Berry [00:48:08]:
Like you said, speed is paramount right now.

Ryan Bornemann [00:48:10]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:48:11]:
And everything we do. I think that’s why the voice AI chat and the chatbots on your website are such a big deal. But I would say even, you know, the chatbots are so powerful because, you know, even. Even if you know you’re going to talk to an AI, I think people a lot of times, especially the younger you get, would prefer to just get a quick answer on a website or something like that. And even, like, when I have, when I have, like, customer service, things that I have to do for whatever, for getting a loan or, I don’t know, whatever, I will go to the chat support. Even if it’s, if it’s a live person or a chatbot or whatever, I will go to the chat support first. Unless I’m super frustrated, then I will opt for the call.

Ryan Bornemann [00:49:00]:
I want to talk to them.

Jordan Berry [00:49:01]:
Yeah. Or I’ve gone through the chat bot already and it’s like what you were describing earlier, it’s like a sequence of events and like, did this solve your problem? I’m like, no, we didn’t even close. Like, give me somebody now.

Ryan Bornemann [00:49:12]:
Like, exactly.

Jordan Berry [00:49:13]:
Right. So if I can get my question answered real quick, that chatbot is going to be super powerful. And not only that, but when somebody’s engaging with that chatbot, they’re. They’re primed to take action. Right. They’re a hot lead at that point in time. So if you can serve them well, give them the answer to their question and get them to the next phase, which hopefully is coming to do their laundry at your laundromat. That is that.

Jordan Berry [00:49:39]:
That’s money in your pocket.

Ryan Bornemann [00:49:42]:
And 90% of the time, they don’t even know if there’s a chatbot. 90% of the time, they’re just thinking of chat with a real human who’s responding quickly and, and, you know, you don’t want to lie to a customer, but there’s no reason to mention that, hey, I’m an AI chatbot, because, like, hey, how are you doing today? How can I help you? Or you can give an identity to your. To your chatbot based on your brand and it’s something fun.

Jordan Berry [00:50:01]:
Yeah.

Ryan Bornemann [00:50:01]:
But then they just think they’re speaking to a human or customer service representative. So that always works really well.

Jordan Berry [00:50:05]:
Yeah. Feel free to utilize Jordan as your chatbot name. Just saying anybody is welcome to do that. I give permission okay, sweet. Well, listen, I mean, it’s, it’s obvious, right? Like having some of these automation tools, AI chat boss, AI phone systems, like that’s going to save time, improve customer experience, you know, kind of all that. And like, the way that I like to think about it is that as entrepreneurs, like, our main goal, I think as entrepreneurs is to level up the tasks that we spend our time on. Right. So we don’t, we don’t want to be spending our time mopping the floor any longer than we have to.

Jordan Berry [00:50:48]:
Sometimes we have to start off there, no big deal. But our goal is to level off or level up this, you know, this hierarchy of roles and responsibilities in our businesses. And original, you know, initially, a lot of times we are playing all the roles, right. And then we bring on attendance and we bring on other people. Right. To do that. And utilizing AI or some of these other automation tools that we have available in our industry now is just a way for us to level up what it is we’re working on. And ultimately what we want to be doing is spending our time on the highest value things possible.

Jordan Berry [00:51:23]:
Right. Whether that’s looking for a new deal, gaining new commercial pickup and delivery clients, or, you know, whatever that looks like in your business. That’s what we’re trying to do. And I think that really is the power of, of the AI. Yes. I mean, it removes sort of the, the human emotion from, you know, interactions that can happen on the phone or, you know, things like that, which can be a plus and can be a minus. Right. Like, if you have a rock star who everybody loves, maybe you want her answering the phone, not an AI.

Jordan Berry [00:51:55]:
Right.

Jordan Berry [00:51:56]:
I don’t know. But, but the, the ultimate aim here is to help you build a better business in a way that gives you the ability to spend your time on what you value the most, whatever that looks like for you, so.

Ryan Bornemann [00:52:10]:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Jordan Berry [00:52:14]:
Is that, is that something that you guys, you know, I haven’t really even asked you a whole lot about what you guys do. Is that something you guys work with, chatbots, AI voice stuff? You guys do that at Fresh Leads?

Ryan Bornemann [00:52:26]:
Yeah. I mean, Jordan, you’ve been on. You’ve been on the dot there with everything pretty much. So everything we’ve kind of talked about is stuff that we, you know, within our agency, work with Laundromats on. So we kind of either do it. We’re kind of like a done for you service. We handle everything for you. The idea is if you come and decide to work with us, we’re your marketing arm, you’re just like, okay, Ryan, then they have everything taken care of on all these aspects.

Ryan Bornemann [00:52:46]:
I can focus on running my Laundromat. My team can focus on helping customers in store. So, yeah, we offer chatbots. We’re doing the voice AI bots just for Stateside though we’ve been approached by some customers overseas. And as much as we would love to help them, you know, we’re really focused on the US market now, just as far as. But you know, there’s a lot of laws that go into that too. That’s something that you have to be careful about with sending automated text messages or even the voice AI letting them know you’re recording, things like that. But it’s, you know, the AI’s gotten so good that it is really, it’s kind of insane how quickly we’re moving with this.

Ryan Bornemann [00:53:17]:
So if it’s, you know, if you’re somebody out there who’s, who’s kind of like on the fence about doing it, you know, check it. You can reach out to me, you know, Jordan can give you my information, you can reach out to us and kind of look for a demo and see what this kind of looks like, or jump on a call and talk about it. But it’s really something that, you know, I think you should try to experience for yourself to see if this is something that makes sense for you. Because again, as Jordan said, maybe you have a rock star that picks up the phone and that person, everybody in the community knows and they love talking to that person. Right. That’s powerful. You don’t want to replace that. But if you have team members who are busy or maybe not as bilingual as they should be, and you have a Spanish speaking audience that wants that, that customer support in Spanish.

Ryan Bornemann [00:53:53]:
I mean, these AI phone systems can switch back and forth between English and Spanish instantaneously. And that’s really important for a customer that, that wants to feel heard. And so these systems are getting so good at what they do. And yeah, we do offer the AI voice, AI chat, email and SMS marketing. We specialize in ads and stuff like that. So if you have any questions, you can always reach out. I’m happy to do a free audit of stuff of your account with you and kind of go over any questions you have to kind of just see if you’re down the right path, if you want to continue doing it yourself or if you’re interested in working with an agency like us to kind of help you along that path and along that marketing journey.

Jordan Berry [00:54:27]:
So, yeah, awesome. This is sounding a lot like you’re trying to wrap this thing up. And I am not done wrapping it up yet, but we’ll have all your contact information. You know, if you’re on YouTube, it’ll be down below in the description so you can get a hold of Ryan.

Ryan Bornemann [00:54:39]:
There’s.

Jordan Berry [00:54:41]:
And if you’re listening on the podcast, it’s on the Show Notes page. So go check it out on the Show Notes page. And if, I mean, I don’t know why you wouldn’t. Make sure you join us on the Q A so you can connect with Ryan there, too. And also, again, I’m not wrapping this up. I have a couple more things I want to talk about.

Ryan Bornemann [00:54:56]:
But okay, no worries.

Jordan Berry [00:54:57]:
Since we’re on. Since we’re on the subject, you’re also gonna be a clean show coming up. So if you’re listening to this before August 24th. 20. 24th. Right. 23rd.

Ryan Bornemann [00:55:07]:
23Rd to the 26th.

Jordan Berry [00:55:09]:
23Rd.

Jordan Berry [00:55:10]:
Okay.

Ryan Bornemann [00:55:10]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:55:10]:
All the dates except for the one Y, the 23rd. This is before August 23rd, 2025. And you’re going to be at Clean Show. Make sure you check out Ryan, too. What booth are you going to be at, do you know?

Ryan Bornemann [00:55:20]:
652. Yeah, be over 652. So, yeah, reach out to me ahead of time if you want to. Email me if you want to get together, grab cocktails or meet at the event and talk stories. So happy to chat with anybody. But, yeah, stop by the booth and say hi.

Jordan Berry [00:55:33]:
Yeah, and I’ll probably be over there, too, hanging out every now and then. I’m through there. Hanging out. Yeah, for sure. And, and plus, I’ll just kind of tease this as well. We’ve got something cool going on that we’ve been cooking up.

Ryan Bornemann [00:55:46]:
Yes, sir.

Jordan Berry [00:55:46]:
That’ll. That’ll play into the Clean show, too. But before we get to all that and to unwrap it all now, I wanted to talk a little bit about branding. We’ve been talking about this, you know, kind of a lot lately. We’ve been seeing some, you know, some bigger brands coming in. Like Tide Laundry is coming in and starting to build franchise locations by the bunches. I see more owners building larger portfolios because the technology is allowing us to do that now. And I am of the firm belief that your Laundromat brand is going to be more important going forward than ever before.

Jordan Berry [00:56:29]:
And in fact, I will, I will call it mission critical. So if you haven’t branded your Laundromat yet, now’s a good time to start working through that. But can you talk about your, that’s my, that’s my opinion. I’m speaking for myself here. But can you talk about your opinion of, of branding and what exactly kind of we mean by branding even?

Ryan Bornemann [00:56:49]:
Dude, you’re spot on. I mean, I’m a big, big advocate for this. I know, you know, a lot of laundromat owners I talk with are, are saying, hey, you know, we’re Laundromat. Like, you know, people are going to just find us. We don’t need a website, we have a Google business profile. Or, you know, they, they don’t think they need a social media presence. Ah, no one cares about the laundromat, you know, social media posts. And, and while it may not be something like an E commerce brand where you need to sit out there and kind of really put out crazy good content, your online reputation is imperative.

Ryan Bornemann [00:57:22]:
As Jordan said, with these big companies coming in, private equity coming to the space and really just scaling out, it’s going to be more important than ever. I mean, if, if somebody is coming to you as a regular business, whether you’re a restaurant, a laundromat or whatever, they’re choosing you over other businesses for a reason. Whether it’s price, whether it’s the, the staff members that you have on board that they just love, when they’re sitting there for an hour waiting for their laundry, they feel good about being in the store because of the attendant or it’s super clean, or the amenities that you have and the features that you offer. This is really important. And when we speak about online branding, you, you want to have a good presence online because nowadays that’s how everybody finds you. Whether or not you think people just go and tell their neighbor while they’re cutting the grass about the laundromat they go to, that’s typically not the case. Right. They’re gonna, they’re gonna find you online and if they tell their friend about it, that person’s gonna look you up online before they come in.

Ryan Bornemann [00:58:09]:
So if you don’t have a good online presence, you know, you risk losing business. Now, number one thing, you gotta have a website. You know, I, I talked to laundry owners about this and I’m just like trying to push this all the way home. Even if you have a one pager, even if you, you know, you don’t necessarily need to use an agency to build your website. Like, for instance, we don’t, we don’t build websites. It’s something where you contemplating helping laundromats do because it’s, it’s it’s so important that you have one, especially for us. Running ads and sending traffic to your brand. Like you need to have a nice landing page or a website so people have the information that they’re looking for.

Ryan Bornemann [00:58:43]:
But there’s a lot of platforms online Now, Squarespace and Wix.com and these other ones where you can build your own website for really cheap. They’ll give you a template, you can customize that template and have a beautiful, professional, modern looking website that’s mobile friendly. You can optimize it for SEO by changing the meta headline and descriptions. These are things that you can do very cost effective nowadays. So it doesn’t cost you 1,000, $2,000 to build a website to get your brand out there. And then in regards to social media, look, I know that a lot of people hate social media, including myself. It’s a lot of work and it changes consistently. But it’s one of those things where if you have a good team member or if you have a family member that enjoys making content, I think it’s a huge bonus for you to put yourself out there and make it, make your brand personal.

Ryan Bornemann [00:59:32]:
Let them know who you are. As an owner, I have some clients do this very well that they’re on there. Even if you just have an iPhone video, you’re sitting there talking to your audience, hey guys, today we’re doing half off wash and dry. You know, whatever it may be. You’re suddenly bringing a personal presence to the, to the community of who you are and that you are the business owner and you’re not some big tide brand that just some corporate brand coming into the local community and trying to, to, you know, shut down other local businesses. You’re telling the community who you are, what you care about and you’re making it fun. You can interview customers on social media, give them a free dry right there in the laundromat to say, hey, do you mind jumping on a quick video and you have your attendance do this again. It’s another thing for your attendance to do.

Ryan Bornemann [01:00:10]:
So they’re not just standing around not being productive. Right? They can engage with customers, record a quick video and give a customer a $5 credit or something like that, or do giveaways. And then now suddenly you have this personality behind your brand on social media. And, and if you do have really good videos, what I always like to tell clients is like, hey, we’ll run.

Jordan Berry [01:00:27]:
That as an ad.

Ryan Bornemann [01:00:28]:
That’s a really powerful ad of a clip of a couple customers saying how much they love the Laundromat, why they chose your Laundromat. And then we run an ad on that versus just some sort of photo that we put out there talking about a promotion. You have, everything works. But you know, there’s some that work better than others and video is king. You know, you can see that, the personality. I mean, if Jordan was never on video, we never see this beautiful face and his personality that he has, you know, so. Gotta get that.

Jordan Berry [01:00:51]:
Man, I would have blown up by now. Yeah, I don’t know. The camera probably is not loving me, but I think the point stands. Besides that fact. Yeah, yeah, no, dude, I, I, I think that that’s huge. Right? I love the idea of like, just incentivize a customer to jump on a quick video. Like, obviously not every customer is going to want to do that. Not everybody likes camera.

Jordan Berry [01:01:15]:
Not everybody do you want on camera either. But yeah, if you can find the right person, the right fit, like that’s money and that I see that as an ad like performing really well because you’re, it’s like in the laundromat and somebody’s just telling you, hey, I’m doing my laundry right now. This place is awesome. Always clean. You know, Maria’s super nice, you know, whatever. Yes, that is, that’s worth a hundred reviews in my, in my like 100. Just, just seeing that. So that’s awesome.

Jordan Berry [01:01:48]:
Real quick, touching on social media. What’s, what’s your view of social media? I mean, you kind of mentioned like, hey, we need to be, need to be posting, like, how, how important is it? How often do you think we need to be engaging in social media?

Ryan Bornemann [01:02:03]:
Like, I think, I think as much as possible. I mean, obviously different platforms have different age groups. You know, Facebook is starting to age up. You’re starting to get the, the 30 to, you know, 30 plus, you know, 50 year olds, 60 year olds that are on Facebook, Instagram, even then they’re starting to get some older crowd on there as well. A lot of younger kids are moving to TikTok. But you want to look at the platform and look at what you’re trying to do. One, one piece of content may not work for all platforms, but again, look at what you’re capable of doing. If you’re like, look, my staff isn’t going to do this, maybe I can get them to grab one video, then that’s fine.

Ryan Bornemann [01:02:37]:
Take that video and post across all platforms. The point is you, you want to, you want to show the community that you’re engaging with your customers. Even if you did something like randomly, just off the top of my head, I just came up with this doing something like a fun, random game day where once a week you go in there, you have your staff go in there and you do a random game of like, you know, running around the machines and the first one to touch something or you know, whatever, hot potato, whatever you want to do. And you video record as a fun thing that everyone’s, while they’re waiting for their laundry is participating this five minute game and then you give a winner a 20 gift card. Now everyone got to have fun in the store. They’re going to tell people about that because everyone’s just sitting around on their phone, you know, and everyone’s like doing their own thing. If you can have an attendant get in there and engage your customers and then record it and post it online, it looks fun. It looks like you guys care about your audience and that you’re, you’re bringing something exciting to them.

Ryan Bornemann [01:03:24]:
And then posting that is going to get you exposure. It’s going to get you in front of people and, and show kind of that personality behind the brand. So it’s, do it as much as you feel comfortable doing it. But I think it’s, it’s definitely important for you to be on there and engage with customers.

Jordan Berry [01:03:38]:
Yeah, I love that. And here I’m about to showcase the power of the Mastermind which by the way, if you’re not in a mastermind group, come join us on in the pro community. You can get involved in a, in a mastermind group of other owners and, and people looking in the business. But here’s the power of the mastermind group. Are you ready for this? I love that idea. Don’t do one where you’re running around the machines doing anything. That’s an insurance nightmare. But this is, I know, but this is what I’m talking about.

Jordan Berry [01:04:06]:
This is the power to mastermind. But check this out. You can go on YouTube, go on YouTube and search minute to win it games. They’ve got instructions. Minute to win it games. They take a minute. They use everyday household items. They’re super easy to do.

Jordan Berry [01:04:21]:
They’re not like going to require, you know, extra insurance, safety certifications and you to like pad all the corners in your laundromat. Yeah, but, and also they’re not going to, you know, require a whole lot of effort. They’re just kind of fun, easy to set up, super cheap to do, super fun to do. I do Minute to win it games and they have, they have videos online that give the Instructions on how to do it. Exactly. So you can just put it up on your tv, pause your atmosphere tv, put the minute to win it video on there and say, hey, we’re giving away a free washer or crediting $5 on your card or $10 or whatever on your card if you want to play this game. And I love that, dude. That’s so fun.

Jordan Berry [01:05:02]:
That’s so fun. That’s a way to like bring a.

Ryan Bornemann [01:05:04]:
Little fun to laundry.

Jordan Berry [01:05:05]:
Yeah, that’s our idea. That’s the, that’s the power of the Mastermind. Right? Like you throw out an idea and I’m like, oh yeah, how about this? Like, right? And like that’s the power of the Mastermind. That’s why I love the Mastermind group. So go to learnmyresource.com pro and join a master or join the pro community and get in a mastermind group right there. But that’s, that’s money, dude. Right. And that’s a great example of some fun, light hearted content.

Jordan Berry [01:05:27]:
It’s not, you know, necessarily saying come to our business, but it’s showcasing like, here’s what we value in our business. We value, we know laundry is a chore, but it doesn’t have to be the worst day of the week for you, right?

Ryan Bornemann [01:05:40]:
Like, exactly.

Jordan Berry [01:05:41]:
We got a little fun happening around here every now and then. Exactly. You know, come join us. Which I, I love, I love that. Okay, I got one more question. Anything else on brand that you want to throw in there before I move on for?

Ryan Bornemann [01:05:55]:
So for social media, something that is really underlooked is Facebook groups. So in your local community, go to look at the local groups that are there and find a way for you or your team members to engage in those Facebook groups. Now don’t be super spammy and always promoting your business, but find out how you can engage, how you can let people know about the events. I mean, sometimes some of these groups and areas will have 50,000 members with like 1720 posts a day of people sharing random things in the community. So if you can get in there as the owner or as the manager of the laundromat and kind of again, let people know about special events you have going on, an Easter promotion, Father’s Day special, whatever it may be, it helps people find out again about your business and they might ask questions, you can engage with them directly. It’s just a great way. Again, you want to show people that it’s not just another laundry day. You guys are doing a little bit different and you care about your Customers.

Ryan Bornemann [01:06:43]:
That’s, that’s what you’re trying to portray at the end of the day and hopefully achieve. So.

Jordan Berry [01:06:47]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. Okay, so last thing I wanted to ask you about is, you know, kind of going back to, to, to marketing, advertising and you know, knowing your numbers. Right. Can we, can we talk about like what in your opinion, like what numbers should we be tracking? What numbers should I know, you know, for my own business when it comes to marketing.

Ryan Bornemann [01:07:17]:
Yeah, I mean it really depends on what you’re doing. Right. So in relation to ads, depends on the platform. So for, let’s, let’s break it down. So for Google, you’re running Google Ads, you want to set up tracking depending on what you’re trying to do. If you’re in a pickup and delivery ad, right, you want to track how many people are doing a pickup and delivery orders. You could just track things like store business and get directions or website clicks. But we want to maybe even go a step further.

Ryan Bornemann [01:07:40]:
If you can get to that, that thank you page after they make the booking and then track how many people actually made the booking from the ad, that can show you a metric of how well the ad’s performing with people’s store visits.

Jordan Berry [01:07:51]:
Right.

Ryan Bornemann [01:07:51]:
Tracking promo code usage is a great one. If again, if your POS system allows it, that’s a great way to track, hey, did somebody actually come in and use this promo code and what campaign did it come from? That’s a great way to do it. We provide our clients with a full on analytics dashboard of everything. So their cost per click, their cost per conversion, how much they spent, how many customers came in the door, how many lead forms on Facebook were filled out, how many promotional code redemptions there were. So that kind of goes into really being detailed in, but depending on what you’re doing for that campaign, that tracking is going to look differently. But you should always be finding the best way to track those conversions to ensure that again, the money you’re spending is being used effectively because again, it’s very easy to waste it. So yeah, those are a couple ways to track it. I mean with email and SMS messages you have your open rate, your delivery rate.

Ryan Bornemann [01:08:41]:
Again, if you tie certain tracking links in there with UTM parameters, you can track when people clicked on certain links and things like that. So depending on how, how detailed and granular you want to get with it, you can really kind of be specific. But if not just it’s just the top tier, you know, the top level metrics can be really effective. As well, depending on what you’re trying to achieve.

Jordan Berry [01:09:00]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And again, I mean, we kind of hit on this a little bit, but the reason that that’s so important is to help you make better business decisions, like knowing how much you can spend to acquire a new customer. Right, Exactly. You’re your cac, Right. The cost to acquire a customer is a. It’s an important number to know. Right. And if you know, hey, I’m gonna make fifteen hundred dollars of the lifetime of my average customer, you know, you can spend more than if you don’t know how much money you’re gonna make over the lifetime of customer.

Jordan Berry [01:09:30]:
Right. So, yeah, customer lifetime value. Again, easier to track when you have digital payment systems and stuff like that, but also not impossible if you have a coin laundry. Right. So these are. Yeah, these are some of the numbers that, you know, you should be tracking. And we’ve got a whole. We’ve got a whole list of them.

Jordan Berry [01:09:49]:
So if you’re interested in that, reach out. And we’ve got a whole list of what we think you should be tracking, both on the marketing front, but also on the operations front, because there’s a whole lot that most of us are not tracking that would probably revolutionize our businesses and. And consequently our lives if we were paying attention to these numbers. And I say that kind of as a joke, but actually kind of.

Jordan Berry [01:10:12]:
Seriously.

Ryan Bornemann [01:10:13]:
Yeah. Because you can look at. I mean, even on the ad side, right. You can look at what that cost to acquire a new customer was, right. The cost per conversion of getting that store visit, if it’s at, you know, if it starts off around $3, $4 to get a new customer in the door. And we’re running that ad, we’re optimizing it. It gets down to A$50, and you can see that it says limited by budget. Like, we’re running.

Ryan Bornemann [01:10:31]:
We’re getting too many clicks, and we’re running out of budget before the end of the day. But we’re getting a really good cost per conversion. We’re spending A$50.50 or A$ to get a new customer in the door. I mean, you want to look at that and say, hey, let’s pump some money into this. Like, this is. This is working really well. Let’s. Let’s pump some money into this campaign and increase that so we can utilize those clicks, and we’re not losing out on new business.

Ryan Bornemann [01:10:51]:
So, yeah, they’re really important. All those really important metrics. And then on the back end, pos side, join Jordan’s Group, you could probably do a deep dive on all that of really how to analyze that data and go further in that.

Jordan Berry [01:11:00]:
So yeah, dude, killer stuff again. Can you, can you just give us a quick rundown? Fresh leads marketing people want to get in contact. I mean obviously we’ll have all that information there. What’s your website?

Ryan Bornemann [01:11:13]:
Yeah, if you go to Fresh leads marketing dot com, that’s our website where you kind of get a look at over our services. You know, we handle everything from Google and Facebook ads to email and SMS marketing. We have a custom CRM system where we import all of your customer data in there and organize it accordingly, add specific tags so we can run targeted marketing campaigns to re engage customers and help you continue, you know, to get customers coming back. And then we have a whole AI side of things too with the chat bots, the voice bots and a lot of AI automation for responding to reviews, to help you draft content, to really kind of handle all your marketing for you. So yeah, if you’re interested in that or you’re looking for someone to audit what you’re currently doing or you’re interested in just learning more about what you may be doing wrong, feel free to reach out. I’m happy to jump on a call and talk more of you about it.

Jordan Berry [01:12:01]:
Killer stuff. I just want to give, you know, probably a lot of you have the question right now in your mind, listen, if you’re both on Oahu, why are you not doing this together in person? I just wanted to say that the original plan was to do that, but then we started up this east side, west side rivalry and nobody’s willing to cross the border. So you know, the next shot over here. The next one, yeah.

Ryan Bornemann [01:12:27]:
Couch on the beach. We’ll get a couch on the beach or on top of the mountain.

Jordan Berry [01:12:33]:
Yeah. But I did want to say this, listen, we’ve been scheming together for a couple months now actually and we’re, we’re super pumped like we’ve got, we’ve been, you know, on the laundromat resource side, we’ve been working with a lot of, a lot of people right now who own laundromats, trying to optimize laundromats who are trying to buy their first laundromat. A lot of our clients are trying to scale right now by growing their pickup and delivery and drop off services and by buying new businesses and, and obviously Ryan’s been working with a lot of people trying to help them improve their marketing. And as we’ve just sort of been talking about this and synergies here and us being on the island. We decided, hey, why don’t we put together a little event here in Hawaii and invite people on out to come out and hang out with us. And so we sort of started envisioning like, hey, what could this look like? And I think we’re both sold on the idea of this. Yes, having some informational, obviously, like we want, you know, we want you to learn something new here. But, but really with the goal of this being a results oriented little retreat.

Jordan Berry [01:13:42]:
I don’t know, I don’t, I don’t know what to call it.

Ryan Bornemann [01:13:44]:
Full on implementation, like getting things done while you’re here, like us holding your hand and literally doing it for you and getting things set up. So yeah, I think I’m excited about it. I think it’s going to be something that, that you get to be in Hawaii. And, and we got some, you know, fun things that we’re never trying to put together of, you know, now it’s like time management. Like what can we, what can we squeeze into this?

Jordan Berry [01:14:04]:
We’re trying to like get. Yeah, we’re trying to remove stuff. No, you know, and, and having obviously like both of us there to, you know, to kind of, you know, give some, give some information and actually help with the businesses, but also having some other people that you would probably know in the business here that would come out and, and also contribute a lot of value to that business or to that conference or retreat or whatever you want to call it. And dude, I, I’m, I’m so psyched about that idea.

Ryan Bornemann [01:14:38]:
Me too.

Jordan Berry [01:14:38]:
Here’s, here’s where. I mean we’re going to give you more information kind of coming out as we nail down some stuff. But if this is out, we should have the landing page up with at least some preliminary information. We’re recording this before we got it up, but, but should be up now. So check out freshleadsmarketing.com Hawaii if that’s something that’s interesting to you.

Ryan Bornemann [01:14:59]:
We’re.

Jordan Berry [01:15:00]:
Our goal here is again to make it super practical, super tangible and also, you know, not blow the bank. And mind you, like, listen, we’re gonna be working over here. So that makes it a straight up tax write off there. So you know, knock off 30% or whatever the cost of it is, you know, for saving the taxes right there. Money. Anything you want to, to that?

Ryan Bornemann [01:15:25]:
No, man, it’s been awesome. I’m glad we could finally jump on and do this. We got to get together for an hour with another Pal. Hana, they call happy hour out here to get together and brainstorm a little bit more on this because, yeah, I think this, the event out here would be awesome. Super stoked on that and excited to tell you guys more about it once we get it all finalized.

Jordan Berry [01:15:41]:
Yeah, yeah, we’ve already got some stuff lined up that I’m super psyched about and I think it would be really fun to just come out and talk laundry in paradise. And then also, we don’t want it to only be talking laundry. We want to do some have some.

Jordan Berry [01:15:53]:
Fun that we got.

Ryan Bornemann [01:15:53]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:15:54]:
Got up our sleeve there. So. Yeah. So anyways, if you’re interested in that, check out how does it say a lot of my research? Check out fresh thingsmarketing.com hawaii and again, last little reminder, we got a Q A coming up in a couple weeks. If you’re listening to this when it comes out, you check the events [email protected] events and then we’ll be sending out emails and stuff about it too. And if you’re at the clean show, check out ryan at booth number 652 Fresh Lease Marketing. 65 2. Awesome.

Jordan Berry [01:16:27]:
Ryan, dude, you are a rock star. So much good stuff in here. Whether you’re utilizing a marketing company or doing it yourself, like, there was just so much good stuff in here. So I appreciate you coming on and sharing that. And dude, seriously, thanks for being a good dude. I love, love, love doing business with good people who are trying to help other people achieve their goals and their dreams and especially in the Laundromat space.

Jordan Berry [01:16:52]:
Which is what you’re doing.

Jordan Berry [01:16:53]:
So appreciate you, brother. And I can’t wait for the Q and A. All right, that’s it with Ryan. Hope you enjoyed that episode and picked something out of it to put into practice in your business today or this week at the very latest. And maybe, just maybe for some of you, a lucky 20 of you, that practical thing is to go to laundromatresource.com Hawaii and book your tickets for the Laundromat Accelerator Hawaii that we’ve got coming up November 21st to 24th. Check it out there. If you’ve got any questions about it, shoot me an email. Jordanmartresource.com I’d love to answer that.

Jordan Berry [01:17:32]:
And we’ll see most of you guys next week or some of you. I mean, obviously we’ll see next week or maybe at the clean show or we’ll see you at the Laundromat accelerator Hawaii coming up in November.

Jordan Berry [01:17:48]:
Peace.