
We’re diving deep into the world of building laundromats from scratch with our fabulous guests, Jean and Paola from Spin King Laundromats. They share their journey from the challenges of securing a location to the triumphs of opening day and beyond. Whether you’re contemplating your first laundromat or looking for tips to improve your existing business, this episode is packed with invaluable insights.
Key Takeaways:
The Laundromat Build-Out Process:
Jean and Paola walked us through their entire journey, from their real estate backgrounds to diving into the laundromat business. They discussed the multiple hurdles they faced in finding and securing a location, negotiating leases, and managing build-out delays.
Choosing the Right Equipment:
The duo explored their decision-making process regarding equipment, including why they opted for certain machines and the crucial decision between coin vs. card-operated systems.
Marketing Strategies That Work:
We learned about the effectiveness of promotional strategies like the “Double Your Money” offer, which significantly drove foot traffic to their laundromat. Jean and Paola emphasized the importance of being transparent with end dates for promotions to manage customer expectations.
Competing with Nearby Laundromats:
Paola and Jean faced a significant challenge as a large chain competitor moved in nearby shortly after their opening. They discussed their strategies in maintaining and growing their customer base despite the fierce competition.
Financial Planning and Management:
Real talk about the financial pressures and planning involved in opening a large laundromat. With looming rent and loan payments, they shed light on the realities of managing finances and the importance of aggressive customer acquisition strategies.
Listen to the full episode and get inspired by Jean and Paola’s journey!
Learn More: We also shared some pivotal fast-lane tips for budding laundromat owners:
Visit past episodes of the podcast to hear more success stories and tips from experienced laundromat operators.
Utilize resources like consultants to help navigate the complexities of building a laundromat.
Don’t forget to check out our service at laundromatresource.com/build if you’re planning to build a laundromat.
Giveaways Galore: The Business Marketing Resource Giveaway is in full swing! Don’t miss your chance to win a FREE custom website and a full branding package for your laundromat. It’s easy to enter, so head over to buildwithbmr.com/win and make it happen!
Here’s to your laundromat success!
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Episode Transcript
Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
Hey. Hey. What’s up, guys? It’s Jordan with the Laundromat Resource Podcast. This is show 180, and I’m pumped you’re here today because today we have Jean and Paula on the show. I hope I didn’t butcher that, on the show today, and we’re gonna talk about building out a laundromat. And these guys, built their laundromat from scratch, and, you’re gonna hear the ins and outs of that. And I just wanted to take this opportunity for a Fastlane tip. And if you’re thinking about building out a laundromat, if you go back to all the different episodes, of this podcast and other podcasts probably too, and listen to the people who’ve built out laundromats, even even experienced people who’ve built out laundromats, it’s it’s not for the faint of heart.
Jordan Berry [00:00:47]:
There are a lot of things to coordinate. There’s a lot of things that can go wrong. There’s a lot of things to manage during that process, and it can be a little bit intimidating. However, if you’re out there and you are interested in building out a laundromat from either from the ground up or from what we call a white box. Right? Something a space that was not previously a laundromat. You wanna turn it into a laundromat. If you’re out there and you’re in that category, it’s something that you’re interested in doing, and you you want help with somebody to kind of manage that process with you and for you. We’ve we put together a team here at Laundromat Resource, and it is a killer team that we can help you do exactly the just that everywhere from doing the research to find locations to actually put that laundromat, in and finding, doing all the demographics, and pro form a research in order to figure out which locations are going to perform the best.
Jordan Berry [00:01:47]:
And we have a general contractor that we can introduce you to who’s licensed in all 50 states that’s built out laundromats before. We’ve got connections with equipment manufacturers now as well, as well as we’ve got a project manager that can help that can help you oversee the build out process, make sure things are going smoothly and according to plan, and then we also can help out with branding and the rest of build out machine, equipment mix, layout, all of that stuff is, is included in this service that we offer. So if that’s something that you’re interested in or you wanna learn a little bit more about, go to lawnmattresource.com/build, and, get some more information. And if that’s something you’re interested in, you wanna talk more about that, fill out the form there, and we’ll get in contact with you to schedule a meeting. Alright. Alright. All that that sounded like a big commercial. Sorry about that.
Jordan Berry [00:02:44]:
But I thought that that was super relevant today’s episode. There is a ton to take away from the Spin King team here, on the show today. So I hope you enjoy it, and we’re gonna get to it right after this message from our sponsors. Alright. The business marketing resource giveaway is heating up even as the nation is cooling down, I’ve been hearing crazy low temperatures all around the country right now. There’s still time for you to win a custom free free custom website and a full branding package for your laundromat. Imagine your laundromat with a sleek new website and brand sleek new look and feel, and it’s working for you 247 to bring you new customers. That’s what’s on tap here.
Jordan Berry [00:03:29]:
So don’t wait. Head over to build with bmr.com/win for your chance to win, and, listen. All you gotta do is fill out the form on there. It’s quick. It’s easy. It’s a no brainer. You can win a free site. However, there’s also secondary prizes.
Jordan Berry [00:03:46]:
So, listen. It’s a no brainer. If you’re in the market for a new website or you’re even just thinking about getting a new website or a brand redesign, this is the contest for you. So build with bmr.com/win, and the grand prize winner will be announced right here on the podcast, February 18th. Don’t miss this opportunity. Like, this is, this is golden. Head over to build with bmr.com/win, and let’s make 2025 the year your laundromat is revolutionized and shines. Alright.
Jordan Berry [00:04:18]:
What is going on? Thank you for coming on the show, Gene and Paola. How’s it going?
Jean [00:04:24]:
Good. Good. Good. Yeah.
Jordan Berry [00:04:26]:
How I’m good. How bad did I butcher your name?
Paola [00:04:29]:
No. You did good. That was better than a lot of people.
Jordan Berry [00:04:33]:
Adequate. Adequate, at least. Awesome. Hey. I’m super excited to jump into your story. I think you guys have taken a pretty cool path, that we’re gonna talk about here in a second. But real quick, can you give us a little bit of background on who you guys are, maybe where you’re located, and then why Laundromats? Why you decided to go the Laundromat route?
Jean [00:04:53]:
Yeah. So I’m Jean. This is my wife, Paola. We kind of came well, we came from a real estate background. So I own, multifamilies. She owned multifamilies. And alongside that, I mean, the multi family was kinda a side hustle for both of us actually. So she has a background in physical therapy.
Jean [00:05:13]:
I just come from regular corporate America working as a compensation consultant. So as you know, a couple years back, market kinda went crazy. So I was kinda looking for, you know, how to reinvest or how to, you know, how to grow my portfolio, grab more multifamilies. Numbers didn’t really make any sense. So at that time, actually well, so we actually actually started selling. Actually sold my house because we were expecting. So I sold my house, moved down to Providence, Rhode Island, where where my wife is from, and she sold her house as well. I mean, again, still looking for how to reinvest that money.
Jean [00:05:49]:
And then, you know, the world kind of stops because, you know, the pandemic happened. And then at that time, you know, we’re just looking around and I’m just looking at other businesses of, you know, what is still open and making money right now. So as you know, you know, one of the 3 businesses that were open were like grocery stores, hardware stores, you know, and laundromats. So taking that into consideration, you know, again, we we had this, you know, lump sum of money sitting there from the from the sale of all our homes and just kinda looking at how to reinvest that. So dabbled and dabbled a little bit in, in stocks, stocks, bonds, you know, CDs, savings accounts. But was kinda looking for something with a stronger return. So we started looking at it into into franchises. And then we actually stumbled across a, a laundromat franchise.
Jean [00:06:38]:
So we went there, went that route, we did the meet and greet, met with the operators, actually went to their store, did a whole discovery day, kinda ran through the numbers and everything. After sitting back and taking a look at it, we kinda just sat there and was like, this isn’t so complex that we can’t do it ourselves. I don’t think we need to go the route of a franchise. So after that visit, we kinda just came back home, did some research of my own, looking up on, you know, from looking up just really YouTube University. Just doing your own research and kinda
Paola [00:07:17]:
And scrolling on TikTok.
Jean [00:07:19]:
Yeah.
Jordan Berry [00:07:19]:
Scrolling. Yeah. I can
Jean [00:07:20]:
hear you. So found a bunch of different
Jordan Berry [00:07:22]:
For science. For science. Yeah. Research. Yeah.
Jean [00:07:25]:
Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah. And then, stumbled across, you know, a number of different podcasts, about, you know, how to kinda get the process started, you know, looked into the free, the whole free laundromat thing. Wasn’t a big fan of that. But, so, yeah, I stumbled across Speed Queen, got in con, us in contact with a distributor and then, the guy kinda got the ball rolling from there. And it’s it’s been it’s been a journey. It took us a while.
Jean [00:07:53]:
Took us a little over little over a year to actually find a location. And once we found a location, it took us about I want to say about 6 to 7 months to actually lock down lock down the lease and close on the lease. And then and then another 7 or 8 months for build out. Now we’re here. 3 months ago, we opened up our laundromats.
Jordan Berry [00:08:18]:
Awesome. Awesome. So okay. That I mean
Jean [00:08:23]:
That was a lot.
Jordan Berry [00:08:24]:
That no. That was great. That was great. That was a good overview. So now I’m gonna back us up and we’re gonna, you know, dig into there a little bit because, first of all, I I mean, I think your your story of being a real estate investor and then seeing those returns starting to dwindle and the equity starting to build and trying to figure out how to cash in some of that equity and and some better return somewhere. I think that’s a pretty common path that’s taken to businesses like a laundromat sometimes. Mhmm. So that’s cool to hear.
Jordan Berry [00:08:52]:
I think a lot of people will relate to that. I’m curious, you know, after you, you know, did all the scientific research on TikTok, what were you how did how did you go about finding a location and, you know, for for a laundromat? And were you looking for existing laundromats or spaces that you could build out or both? And how did that all play out?
Jean [00:09:18]:
Yeah. I think well, so initially, I didn’t wanna go the route of of looking for an existing laundromat primarily because, you know, everyone talks about the zombie mat and so I was thinking, you know, I’m gonna have to pay this person for the business. Either the land or just pay them for the business or the lease. And then on top of that I don’t wanna inherit all the problems that they have with old machines and whatnot. So I’m gonna have to pay for the business and then I’m going to also have to pay the lender for brand new machines. So at first our strategy was to look for was to look for build out. And also mind you as we were doing our research we also found that you know, you know everyone sees the you know the the the stat that’s, you know, nice and sexy where it’s, you know, 93 93% of laundromats are, you know, are successful. That kinda caused a lot of market saturation.
Jean [00:10:14]:
So more times than not, you go and ask somebody for go and ask somebody to buy their laundromat, they’re gonna give you some astronomical numbers. So I didn’t think that was, you know, the best route for us to go. Yeah. Primarily, we were looking at, you know, places that we could do a build out. What we found pretty early on when we were looking, the number one thing we ran into is people either didn’t want a laundromat there because they had poor operators before, caused a lot of, you know, riffraff. And number 2, they didn’t want somebody that was a brand new investor. Because the question that we always got was, you know, do you have other laundromats? Do you have other businesses? And outside of us being, you know, landlords and Young. Yeah, and young property managers, they kinda didn’t wanna deal with that.
Jean [00:10:59]:
So that’s kinda the number one thing that we ran into when looking for a location. And I kinda touched on the story about how we found our location because, we actually found an old Advanced Auto Parts store. So we had initially made contact to them, I wanna say January of 20 the 23 or 22. But it was either I believe it was like, January. And then, it was a huge space, 65 100, which is a little bit more than we wanted. So we’d reached out to see if they’d be able to subdivide, you know, maybe half of that. You know, I thought, you know, 3,000 square feet would be perfect for us. Turns out, you know, the guy really wasn’t interested.
Jean [00:11:40]:
He kind of blew us off and said he wasn’t able to, you know, to subdivide. And then you know, we went on our way with looking for other places. You know, we again kinda just bounced around either getting denied for, you know, being new business owners or not wanting laundromats. So that again, took us a good significant amount of time, about, you know, 10 or 11 months. And then fast forward to almost a year later that our property that we have now that we initially reached out to in January, that, listing agent came back and reached out to our to our distributor. Once we contacted the distributor they kinda assigned you somewhat like a real estate agent for Laundromat. So that was helping us, do the search for locations. So he reached out to him about, you know, almost a year later saying, hey, I have a empty space.
Jean [00:12:28]:
Do you have anybody that wants to use it? And then, it’s kinda history from there. Needless to say, after his property sitting there for well over a year, he was more more willing to work with us.
Paola [00:12:41]:
That’s right. For 2 years, I believe.
Jean [00:12:42]:
I’ve come to find out it’s been vacant for over 2 years and enough time went by, so he’s willing to work with us. Yeah.
Jordan Berry [00:12:48]:
You you gotta you gotta squeeze him, you know, at that point. Really, man? We were here a year ago, and you could have been collecting rent already. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So so you went to build out route. I mean, I like I like that. I think it’s I think that what I what I like about you guys already is I think that that route feels very scary to a lot of people to go the build out route.
Jean [00:13:11]:
Yeah.
Jordan Berry [00:13:12]:
You know, frankly, probably a little bit for good reason. I we’ll get into what your build out experience was like, but it can be stressful and time consuming and expensive and a whole lot of unknowns. You know? And and there’s a lot of, like, details you gotta get right on a build out. And so for sure, it could be a stressful experience. So, but kudos to you guys for for building out. And, you know, you found this spot. What did you like originally about this location when you first the first time you saw it? What did you like about it?
Jean [00:13:45]:
I think I think initially, what I
Jordan Berry [00:13:47]:
It was empty? Is that the main thing? It was
Jean [00:13:49]:
empty, and they were willing to rent to us. It’s a
Paola [00:13:51]:
it’s a great spot though.
Jean [00:13:52]:
But yeah. No. Yeah. So what I originally liked was, one, that it was that it was big. Even though we thought that it was a little too big for us, but I did like other space. It was right in, it’s right in the middle of the of the Stop and Shop Plaza. Now Stop and Shop, you know, they’re going through a, you know, a reduction so they’re closing some of their stores. However, what I liked was this was like one of the top Stop and Shops in the state.
Jean [00:14:15]:
And on top of that, that Stop and Shop just went through like a $5,000,000 renovation. So like they were dumping money into there to, you know, have have that be one of their top performing stores. So I like that. And they have Wendy’s in there. They have the Dunkin Donuts in there. So there’s a pretty heavy traffic road.
Paola [00:14:33]:
And they have a Sally’s in there. So women, right, we do laundry, we go to Sally’s, we grocery shop, we buy coffee. It just works. Yep. It was great.
Jordan Berry [00:14:43]:
Yeah. Market.
Jean [00:14:45]:
Yeah. So, that’s initially what, you know, what attracted us there. And, although, like you said, you know, the the build out is a little is a little daunting, but, the numbers look great for that area. So, you know, we were kinda and not to mention it was also fairly close to home as well because, you know, everything that I read or I hear in podcasts are saying, you know, you wanna be within 30 minutes of of your first store.
Jordan Berry [00:15:09]:
So that was a big plus for us. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think those are all, like, great indicators that it’s a good location. Now I know we’re gonna get into this a little more. So aside from what happened about a month or 2 after you opened, competition wise, was there Yeah. Competition around the area? What was that like?
Jean [00:15:31]:
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. I forgot to mention that. So, there was also another big competitor that’s been there that have that has a chain of laundromats in the Rhode Island area. So it’s a, you know, it’s a immigrant family that came over, you know, decades ago. They built they kinda built their staple as being, you know, the top laundromat in the state and they have like 6 or 7 different locations around the area. However, they’re old, they don’t change anything.
Jean [00:15:57]:
It is what it is. Like, we’re the biggest, we’re the cheapest, and you’re not gonna go anywhere else because there weren’t really any other laundromats competing in the area. However, that didn’t really scare me because, you know, our location is, you know, just as big and we’re new. So, you know, people are gonna go to where they wanna go to. So that was that was kind of our biggest competitor. So but as you know, a month or 2 after we opened, another competitor that’s fairly well known opened up around the corner from us. And they they have just as big brand recognition as, you know, the other competitor that we first had. So now we have to compete with them.
Jean [00:16:30]:
But, you know, we have our own little niche being. We have huge aisles. We have Oh, also we have Santa Wash which we’re the only laundromat in the area that has that. So that’s a big perk. So we’re we’re fighting.
Jordan Berry [00:16:44]:
Yeah. Awesome. Well, yeah. That I mean, it’s hey, man. You guys jumped straight into the deep end. Not only did you do a build out, but you did a big build out and you did it, you know, ready to ready to fight with some people who were ready to fight back. So
Jean [00:17:00]:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a
Jordan Berry [00:17:01]:
good one. Good on you guys, though. Okay. So you found this location. When you were speaking with the manager or the landlord, whoever you’re talking to about that location the first time, was that you guys talking to them or did you have an agent or the distributor or somebody talking to them? Who was talking
Paola [00:17:15]:
to them?
Jean [00:17:15]:
No. That no. That was us. I reached out to him directly, you know, set up the meeting, went to go went to go look at it, and they seemed pretty receptive to to wanna work with us initially, but I guess the listing agent went back to the went back to the landlord after we asked to subdivide it and I guess we never really heard an answer back. Yeah, it kinda kinda just died from there. But yeah, once, I mean the second time around, we were dealing directly with with the landlord and getting everything, locked in. The distributor kind of helped with that, I guess, in their own way. But yeah, it was primarily us and then we also hired an attorney to, you know, do the lease negotiations and things of that nature.
Jordan Berry [00:17:56]:
Yeah. Okay. Okay. So you you found the location. It was kind of a no go. You guys kept looking. You were you just struggling to find another spot, or why did it take a year and this one to come back around before you pulled the trigger?
Jean [00:18:13]:
Yeah. I mean, I think I mean, it wasn’t it didn’t take that long. It wasn’t for lack of trying on our end. I mean, I think I mean, this was the closest we we kinda got because everywhere everywhere else either was rejection from the get go once we said laundromat or after we after we had the conversation, we went to go see the property. Then they started to ask for financials, which we were good on, but they also wanted to see, you know, what does our other laundromats do and if we had other laundromats and, you know, the question was no, so then that’s kinda when communication died. Yeah. So that’s we we ran into that time after time after time.
Jordan Berry [00:18:50]:
Yeah. I’ve seen that, I’ve seen that a lot too. I think that’s a pretty common struggle, not just when you’re doing a build out, but also buying locations. I’m starting to see that more and more as I do, you know, consulting all over. Landlords are looking for people with experience. I think it’s exactly what you’re saying, that they’ve had bad experiences with poor operators that have let the place slide, and it’s kinda bringing down the whole center. Or they, you know, they’re letting homeless people hang out or whatever it is. They’re just causing problems.
Jordan Berry [00:19:19]:
And, 1 you know, just if anybody’s out there dealing with that situation and struggling with that, one thing that I’ve found effective, it’s multiple times, is to get with a consultant. You know, obviously, we have consult I’m not trying to promote our consulting or consultants over here. There’s lots of other ones probably less good than me and my team, but, you know, they’re out there. I’m just kidding. But, you know, grab grab a consultant and come up with a game plan of what you wanna exactly what you wanna do and how it’s gonna be different when you take over. And and say, hey, listen. I’ve hired this well known consultant. They own Laundromats.
Jordan Berry [00:19:59]:
They know the industry. Here’s a way to do that, to check out all that stuff. And we put together this plan, and here’s what it looks like. And every time that I’ve done that with somebody, the landlord or the property manager has not batted an eye, after that. So it’s just something to, you know, for you guys it won’t be a problem going forward. But anybody listening who’s struggling with that, that’s something to consider if you’re in the midst of that frustration.
Jean [00:20:26]:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good thing.
Jordan Berry [00:20:28]:
And again, if if you want if you want recommendations on consultants that are not me, I would be happy to also give those to you. So, again, not trying to sell our stuff. Okay. So going back to it, that that’s a real that’s a real struggle. What what do you think changed? Do you think it was just the time that that property was sitting there vacant that changed that made them say, okay. Let’s play ball with these guys?
Paola [00:20:51]:
Yeah. I we think so. Yeah.
Jean [00:20:53]:
Yeah. I’m pretty sure.
Paola [00:20:54]:
Yeah. Because the first time, it kinda felt like Yeah.
Jean [00:20:56]:
Because at because at the at the initial time we made contact, it had only been vacant for about a year or a little bit over a year. And I told you, we kinda went our way, and then fast forward another year. So at that time, it was 2 years. So I I think that he started to sweat a little bit, and it’s like, alright, it’s been 2 years, so let’s, let’s get going.
Jordan Berry [00:21:14]:
Yeah. Okay. So then when you negotiated or you had you said you hired a lawyer to help you negotiate that lease? Yeah. Absolutely. Were you able to, you know, so they still didn’t subdivide it. Right? So your your space is 65 100 square feet?
Jean [00:21:31]:
Yep. Correct.
Jordan Berry [00:21:33]:
And then were you able to negotiate did they play ball with you a little bit? Did they come down on rent or give you, you know, anything like that?
Jean [00:21:42]:
They did. They did. So, yeah. I will we were we were happy about, you know, them being flexible with coming down on the rent. So we were we were able to negotiate 10 year with 2 5 year options and we were able to negotiate that rent. So I mean that was good. Also, we were able to negotiate 6 month rent abatement. And also, it was a brand new build also.
Jean [00:22:08]:
We had to, you know, do an electrical service upgrade. So we actually ended up getting 13 months of rent because they gave us a credit for, the electrical upgrades that we were gonna do. So we had a, we had over a full year of, of free rent which helped out tremendously.
Jordan Berry [00:22:26]:
Yeah. That’s a that’s a huge I’ve I’ve heard, you know, other and then there’s been guests on here also, but I’ve heard quite a few times people doing build outs where they get rent abatement, but it’s not enough. And so they have to start paying rent before they’re open. And that’s just
Jean [00:22:42]:
That was that I was gonna say that’s actually our story too because, I mean, initially, we only did the 6 months, and then we had to find out that we had to upgrade the electrical so they give us an additional 6 months. And build out took 8 months, so we would have been that, rainbow.
Jordan Berry [00:22:54]:
Yeah. And that’s that’s rough and and pretty discouraging to have to be paying money for something you can’t utilize yet.
Jean [00:23:02]:
For sure.
Jordan Berry [00:23:03]:
It’s already it’s already stressful enough having to, you know, we we’re kinda talking like you guys, you created something out of thin air. There wasn’t a laundromat there before, and you created it. And now you gotta create that revenue out of thin air. And it takes time, for the build up and the ramp up, so you’ve gotta be ready for that. And it but it’s just all, life is so much more I don’t know if this is your experience. Maybe you guys are you guys seem pretty calm and cool and collected over there.
Paola [00:23:29]:
No. No. Not at all.
Jordan Berry [00:23:31]:
But but, you know, when that was happening for me, when money’s going out and you’re like, what is happening? Even if you know, like, it’s going out and we’re gonna get there, but it’s just everything else in life is so much more stressful, when that money is going out.
Paola [00:23:47]:
Yeah. I think he mentioned that because I’ve always felt like we we’ve always felt like inadequate to be in this process, and we kinda did our research. But then when you’re in it
Jordan Berry [00:23:56]:
Yeah.
Paola [00:23:56]:
You’re kind of like, are we doing this correctly? Are we having the right conversations? Are we no. Are we talking to the GC the right way? Like, are we planning official we didn’t we didn’t know what we were doing really.
Jordan Berry [00:24:05]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jean [00:24:06]:
And and kinda piggybacking off of that, I think I saw the interview with Jason Dunn. She said I’m building a laundromat with, on unemployment. That was actually my story too, except I wasn’t on unemployment. So I actually got laid off during the build out process. So build out was that was a battle all in it in and of itself when we were that was that was pretty stressful. So we had, so actually let’s let’s back up. So we after we got the we got the property, we got the lease locked down. It was then time to get financing.
Jean [00:24:36]:
We tried to get financing through through Alliance. However, was only looking they were only willing to finance a portion of it. We had roughly about, I wanna say just under $900,000 in equipment alone. Alliance was only willing to finance about 600,000 of that. And then the build out and the remainder of the equipment would have been on us. So we would have needed something crazy like, you know, $400,000 liquid to just give. We didn’t have that. So thanks to you and your platform, we actually found our, we found a broker, Bo Eksteen, that kinda put us in touch with a SBA lender that was able to finance the entirety of the project.
Jean [00:25:24]:
The reason I said that was such a stressor was because we had allotted $250 for build out. Needless to say, hindsight is $2,270 wasn’t going to be able to build out a store of 6,500 square feet. So that was a challenge in and of itself. So in the beginning, looking for we’re looking for different GCs. So we’re going through SBA, lender. Everything is on the up and up. They need papers. They need documentation.
Jean [00:25:51]:
They need everything. Whereas with Alliance, you’re you’re taking care of the build out yourself. They don’t need all that stuff. So our sales rep from the equipment distributor, they put us in touch with, you know, a friend of his, I guess. Needless to say, he didn’t have any of his papers. So SBA, they were looking for taxes. They were looking for bank statements. They were looking for, well, financial statements, things of that nature of references.
Jean [00:26:15]:
They’re looking for the whole nine. This guy didn’t have any of that. And we were struggling to find any other reputable GC in the area. So we’re coming down to it. It’s like, yo, we just signed we just signed this lease. We’re locked into this lease. We can’t even secure financing because we don’t have a legitimate GC. Fast forward, the GC actually reached out to one of his buddies that, you know, has a contracted company and actually ran everything through his buddy’s company.
Jean [00:26:46]:
We were able to get it done through there but it was kind of a nightmare dealing with the whole process. Reason being because, you know, I had one of those GCs that was like, oh, yeah. Don’t worry about it. You know, we’ll make everything work. We’ll make everything fit. We don’t need plans. We don’t need any of this. And because I’m sitting in the beginning like, oh, I want a meeting.
Jean [00:27:03]:
I want x, y, and z. I want it to look like this. He’s like, oh, don’t worry about it. Well, don’t worry about it. We’ll make it fit.
Paola [00:27:07]:
And we were inexperienced, so we’re we, you know, we’re kinda taking his word. Right.
Jean [00:27:12]:
Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Berry [00:27:14]:
I’m I’m getting anxiety just hearing this story.
Paola [00:27:17]:
I’m my skin is like just thinking that. It
Jean [00:27:20]:
was it was it was
Jordan Berry [00:27:21]:
a nightmare.
Jean [00:27:23]:
It was an accident.
Paola [00:27:24]:
And that caused
Jean [00:27:25]:
So like she’s
Paola [00:27:25]:
turmoil at home because we’re like, are we doing this right? You get me? The communicate lines of communications were crazy.
Jordan Berry [00:27:31]:
I get you. Yeah.
Jean [00:27:32]:
Yeah. So, like, so like, so like she said, I mean, that that was that was pretty stressful because in the beginning, he was, you know, promising us the world that he’s gonna get everything done. And then fast forward, that that thing I wanna say, like, it wasn’t even a full 3 months, but almost 3 months later, he’s like, oh, yeah. I don’t know. We don’t have any more money. And I’m like, what What do you mean? What do you mean you don’t have any more money? Like, did you know what the budget is? He was like, well, I didn’t know you had 250. And I’m like, you signed a document from the bank that says you know what the budget is. And mind you, this is the time that I’m getting laid off, so I don’t have any more money to pay out of pocket for all this other stuff.
Jean [00:28:03]:
So I had to basically, I had to essentially wipe out my savings to get the project done because, you know, we had a terrible GC. But, yeah, that that was that was kind of a a nightmare to deal with. And mind you, instead of 6 months, which was promised in the beginning, the build up took 8 months to to complete, so. Sweet.
Jordan Berry [00:28:21]:
Okay. Well, I I wanna
Paola [00:28:22]:
You put it really nicely. That was my real set.
Jordan Berry [00:28:25]:
I’m I’m catching that I’m catching that drift. And, I mean, listen, building out is just it’s tough. And like I said, you’re going in the deep end. And, this is not gonna help you whatsoever at this point in time. However, I I wanna again, not to be a commercial over here, but I wanna just put a tool out there. So we have a whole team over here that helps you with the whole build out process. It helps you find locations, analyzes those locations. It will help you negotiate leases and and write letters of intent for the landlords to try to negotiate leases with you.
Jordan Berry [00:29:02]:
Once we get the location secured, we’ll help you with the machine mix and the layout of the store. We have a GC that’s licensed in all 50 states that builds out laundromats that we can connect you with. And then we have a project manager that oversees all of that. Again, none of that helps you whatsoever, but there’s anybody else out there who’s looking. Yeah. Who’s looking to do that? I mean, because every almost everybody we’ve had on this on the podcast who’s done a build out has had stories like that. And listen, part of it is just that’s just how it goes. Right? You’re
Jean [00:29:36]:
Yeah.
Jordan Berry [00:29:37]:
You’re building something that doesn’t exist before. Stuff comes up. Projects get extended. You know, stuff like that happens. But, you know, one of the things that I hear you say, and I’ve heard it over and over and over again, people who built out was, like, are we doing the right thing? Are we asking the right questions? Are we on the right path? Are we trusting the right people? You know, and it’s just hard to know that when you’ve never done it before. And so, yeah. So anyways, if anybody’s out there, you know, [email protected] or go to lawnametresource.com/playbook and you can book a free strategy call. We can at least just talk about that option out there.
Jordan Berry [00:30:14]:
Okay. So that’s all of that. I just wanna put that tool out there. Back to your story, though. Now going back let’s say going back day 1. Now knowing everything that you know, having the experience that you’ve experienced, is there anything that you feel like you could or would do different on the build out side?
Jean [00:30:35]:
I would I would have hired Yeah. A g I would I would have used your resources in terms of the consultant.
Jordan Berry [00:30:40]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jean [00:30:42]:
Your GCs because that would have saved us saved us a lot of headaches, a lot of money. But no. So I I keep saying this. This was like kind of like the Ryan intervention. Like we were supposed to go through this because literally, like we’ve went through a number of different GCs and either of them didn’t have their paperwork together. Or we just couldn’t find we couldn’t find a we couldn’t find a legitimate GC. So it was kinda we were we were stuck with this guy. And mind you, this is the guy that the that the equipment distributor recommended us to.
Jean [00:31:10]:
So I know you, I mean, you just mentioned all the resources that you guys provide. I mean, I was of the understanding that the that the that the equipment distributor does all this for you. I mean, which they did. However, it’s not to the level of what we thought we would’ve Yeah. That we thought we would’ve gotten. What
Jordan Berry [00:31:26]:
you needed, really. Exactly. I mean, because the distributor and again, distributors can be a great resource, especially if you get a good one. But distributor gets paid to sell equipment. So, you know, if they’re if they’re helping you build out, they’re doing it to sell the equipment. But if somebody else comes around who has a laundromat and all they’re doing is swapping equipment in and out, guess what? They make the same amount of money and it’s a lot less work. You know what I mean? So it’s, you know, it’s it’s tough. It’s it’s tricky.
Jordan Berry [00:31:54]:
Distributors can be great resources again, but sometimes you need somebody to go to bat for you there.
Jean [00:32:01]:
For sure. For sure. And I mean, that’s kinda why I mean, it is it is kind of a difficult question to answer because I mean, looking in hindsight, I’m not sure that there was much else that we could have done other than, you know, hiring like a consultant or something like that, you know, but at, you know, at that time money was, you know, fairly, you know, fairly thin. So I didn’t know that that was, you know, that was, that was it in the books.
Jordan Berry [00:32:24]:
Yeah. You
Paola [00:32:24]:
know, I was going to add, after we finished our construction, we actually spoke to a few buddies of, our distributor. He was building out a couple other stores and, they came out to see our store. Our our distributor was telling us that, you know, it cost way more money to build their store and their store was a fraction of ours. You know, we were just like, wait, what? Like, that’s insanity. Obviously, it seems like, you know, our distributor hooked us up with his buddy. They had their own little thing behind, you know, and they wanted the deal to work, so they kind of fit everything in as much as he could until he told Gene, I can’t do anything more for you. Yeah. But that was in the talk originally.
Paola [00:33:05]:
So, he got it done.
Jean [00:33:08]:
But yeah, I mean, I guess in in short, you know, anything that I would’ve done different, I, yeah, I probably would’ve hired a probably would’ve hired a consultant and, you know, a professional GC to, you know, to have everything mapped out. Because, I mean, we we went into this without without any plans, really. We didn’t have any mechanical drawings. We didn’t have anything like that. And we kinda just was doing everything by the off the cuff. Like
Jordan Berry [00:33:28]:
Yeah. Winging it there. Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, I’ve I’ve got similar experiences with, like, real estate stuff, and, I have had contractors who are not licensed, but they use somebody else’s license and they, you know, like that whole scenario. And I just never see that playing out well. Like, they’re most times they’re licensed for a reason and they’re not licensed for a reason.
Jean [00:33:56]:
That’s funny because our lender, our SBA lender said that. He was like, you know what? If this guy doesn’t have any taxes for the past few years, I’m not sure you wanna use that guy.
Jordan Berry [00:34:05]:
Yeah.
Jean [00:34:05]:
And then he went to reach out to one of his resource that he had in the area, and they weren’t they weren’t they weren’t available either. So I’m like, alright. We’re stuck with this guy. Like, no. Nobody has, you know Yeah. Anybody for us.
Jordan Berry [00:34:16]:
Yeah. Well, okay. But, hey, listen. This is this is the thing. Right? It’s like we go through these things. We make the best decisions that we can with the resources and the knowledge that we have, and we learn a ton along the way. Right? And so you guys learned a ton, I’m sure, and will continue to learn a ton as you go forward. That’s that’s what it is.
Jordan Berry [00:34:38]:
Right? You’re learning learning lessons, and you guys are, you know, you’re already capable, successful investors, and you’re gonna make it work. So I’m not I’m not worried about that. But in the meantime, like, when you’re in the middle of it, it’s it’s stressful. It’s stressful. Yeah.
Jean [00:34:52]:
For sure.
Jordan Berry [00:34:52]:
Okay. So you, you were going through this this build out. The, you know, there I mean, there’s so many decisions to to make. Was the distributor kind of helping you guide you with decisions? I mean, there’s a ton of stuff, but like just, you know, some of the big stuff, like what machines, like, equipment mix and, you know, card versus coin versus,
Jean [00:35:17]:
you
Jordan Berry [00:35:18]:
know, all that stuff. Like, how are you making those decisions?
Jean [00:35:21]:
Yeah. We we were pretty adamant going into this that we wanted, like, a a card store. We kinda didn’t wanna deal with coins, you know, especially, you know, with the pandemic and, you know, coin shortage and all the other stuff. And more so just for, you know, ease of use where, you know, you’re not in there collecting coins. So we were set on doing a card machine and the distributor, they did help with, you know, setting up the equipment mix based off the demographics and our local competitors. Because actually we had the consultant call with, Andrew from your team. He He was saying, he was like never do a 100 pound washers. Never do a 100 pound washers.
Jean [00:35:57]:
That’s just a selling point for for the distributors. However, our that big competitor that was next to us, they had a few, like, they had like a 130 pound washers. So we were like, you know what? We’re gonna throw we’re gonna throw a few in there. But the distributor did help in that where they set the layout of the store and they set the equipment mix. So we were grateful in that aspect. And we added a few machines along the line. Other than that, they kind of gave us a gist of, you know, how the store should be laid out. But then from there, it was kind of all all us.
Jean [00:36:30]:
We kind of took it on, designed a store in terms of like, how we want the attendance center to be with, you know, some inspiration from another, from other, you know, top performers or operators, in the industry, and, you know, designing the store. Yeah. If you ever look up our store, Spinking Laundromat in, Kentucky, you’ll see we got some inspiration from, from Dave Benz, the men’s store.
Paola [00:36:55]:
Jason Dodge.
Jean [00:36:56]:
Jason Dodge. Yeah. So and a lot of laundry genius too. So we took some inspiration from a lot of those guys. Kinda made our store our own thing.
Jordan Berry [00:37:07]:
Yeah, awesome. Well, and we’ll drop a link to it in the show notes or if you’re on YouTube, we’ll put it down below in the description. That way you can go check it out. Okay, I mean, listen, you can’t just drop this this little conflict in here and and not tell us how it’s playing out. So Andrew Cunningham says, mhmm, 100 pounders. I don’t know. You went with them anyways. I I mean, are people using them? How are they how are they performing? Yeah.
Jean [00:37:33]:
I’m actually glad. No. Andrew Andrew gave us a lot a lot of great jobs. Yeah.
Jordan Berry [00:37:37]:
Oh, yeah. Totally. Totally. That guy knows the business super well. Yeah.
Paola [00:37:40]:
Yeah. No. And if you like how he was straight to the point Yeah. No
Jean [00:37:45]:
BS. You know?
Jordan Berry [00:37:46]:
Yes. Yes.
Paola [00:37:46]:
Yeah. Which was very we needed that.
Jean [00:37:48]:
Yeah. Yeah. But no. No. I’m I’m actually glad that we did go with him. I I do agree with him. Like, you don’t need a ton. So we don’t we only have 2 £100.
Jean [00:37:57]:
I mean, if it was up to me. I mean, and if we had the funds to do it, I probably would’ve put, like, just 2 more in there at the most. We get a lot of people that, you know, wanna wash big come throughs. The the big doggy beds that people wanna use, and they like those big 100 pounders. People people do use them. No. I I definitely think it it it kinda panned out. Yeah.
Jean [00:38:20]:
So, I mean, it’s it’s working out it’s working out pretty pretty well for us now.
Jordan Berry [00:38:24]:
Yeah. Yeah. I like I like the 100 pounders, personally, but I’m just curious if they, they’re performing. And, you know, a lot of it depends on the demographics of the area and Yeah. Like you said, the competitors and the rest of the equipment mix, all that stuff. But I I you know, a store the size of your guys’ store, I think it just makes sense to have Yeah. Have a couple in there at least. Okay.
Jordan Berry [00:38:49]:
I just, you know, I wanna put Andrew on the spot. I I like, I like when he’s wrong. He’s not wrong much, and I’m gonna I’m gonna rub this one in his face. I won’t tell him it’s because of you, but I’m gonna get him. No. I’m just kidding. Okay. So so you’ve got that that equipment mix.
Jordan Berry [00:39:05]:
You’ve got the design stuff out, you know, based a lot on inspiration that that you found kind of around the industry, which I think is is cool. And and what I like about that is that you guys are on the you guys are you guys are driving change here. You’re you’re on the train that’s driving change in this industry. Right? Like, these bigger stores, not necessarily that they have to be bigger, but nice. You’re doing them. You’re designing them well, and just up in up in the game here for our industry. And our industry has had such a bad reputation for so long
Jean [00:39:39]:
Yeah.
Jordan Berry [00:39:40]:
That I’m I’m just loving everybody like you guys who’s deciding to invest in in these communities, invest in these stores, and, you know, instill some value in the communities there. So love that. Okay. Alright. So you you did this build out not too long ago. Just a few months ago, you you flung open the doors. Before we talk about that, do you did you do anything I mean, obviously, besides building out the place, did you do anything to promote this opening for you guys or anything on the front end to let people know that you were coming?
Jean [00:40:13]:
Just Well, the front we weren’t able to do much on the front end because as we mentioned, build out was supposed to be 6 months. And, you know, we kept hearing, alright, another week, another week. So every time we were getting ready to push out a promotion, there was no date. We actually we actually had a we actually contacted, our local FASTSIGNS and had them create a banner. And they’re like, alright. So when’s the date? And we’re like, we’ll get back to you on that. So they actually created a banner that says grand opening, and we left a space for the date. Okay.
Jean [00:40:44]:
So that that banner was up with no date for at least a month. And then we finally just took it down and said, you know what? We’ll just we’ll just do a a grand opening sale and then does it because after the 1st week that went by, the 2nd week went by, and everyone’s because we we because we had the coming soon banner up for a while. And as we said, it was a pretty busy plaza, so we had people walking in like, oh, when do you guys open it? When do you guys open it? So we put the banner up. No date yet. Put the banner up. No date yet. People kept coming in and asking. So finally, we were just like, you know, we’re just gonna take it down.
Jean [00:41:15]:
And then we did double your money for, like, the first 6 weeks just to drive traffic to the store. So, yeah, we didn’t really have much advertising on the front end.
Jordan Berry [00:41:25]:
Yeah. That’s frustrating, when you don’t know and you can’t really prep for it. That’s and that kinda goes back to that whole GC decision or not decision, but just situation, where you didn’t have probably probably the right guy in there. Okay. So leading up to it, I mean, you’re maybe because you didn’t know when you were gonna open, it might change things. But, like, how are you guys feeling as it was getting closer to flinging open the doors? Were you feeling frustration because you couldn’t open them? Were you feeling nervous because you weren’t sure how they’re gonna play out? Like, how were you feeling?
Jean [00:41:59]:
I have the frustration, like, just flat out frustration. Because one, like I said, I I got laid off, didn’t have money. And on top of that, our GC was saying you needed more money. So I’m I’m just literally, like, just bleeding money. Yeah. So I’m like, listen. We need to open up, like, yeah. But I really wasn’t worried about anything else.
Jean [00:42:16]:
I didn’t care about I didn’t care about laundromats coming around the corner. I wasn’t worried about the competitor. I was like, I just we just need to open. Because people are sitting there, like, begging, like, oh, well, this is so this is so nice. Our community needs this. We haven’t seen this. We haven’t seen a laundromat. Because the store was pretty much done.
Jean [00:42:31]:
They saw the decorations. They were able to look through the window. Like, can’t tell you how many times we pulled up when we saw people in there looking in the glass, like, so, yeah. We definitely just just we were just eager to get it open.
Paola [00:42:41]:
But also anxious, you know, for the actual opening. Scared. Because we didn’t have we didn’t have employees. Yeah.
Jean [00:42:47]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I completely forgot I completely forgot about that. We didn’t have employees, but I I didn’t care. I was gonna work. Every hour
Jordan Berry [00:42:54]:
of that week.
Paola [00:42:55]:
Yeah. And actually, I ended up getting a job. Let me say this. Like, what? 3?
Jean [00:43:00]:
3 months in advance.
Paola [00:43:01]:
3 months in advance. I won’t say the name of where.
Jean [00:43:04]:
I had another I had another laundromat.
Paola [00:43:05]:
A competitor. Yeah. And I ended up working there for 3 months just to kind of, you know, get some ideas and all.
Jordan Berry [00:43:11]:
Learn. Yeah.
Paola [00:43:12]:
And I learned a lot. I we we wouldn’t have survived, I think, the first couple months if we didn’t if I didn’t get that job. And it helped us tremendously. But obviously, we’re very still super anxious opening the doors. And I was asking him, like, are you sure?
Jean [00:43:26]:
Are you
Paola [00:43:26]:
sure you won’t open this week? And he’s looking at me like, are you insane? Like, do you not know we need money?
Jean [00:43:30]:
After we have some money coming
Jordan Berry [00:43:31]:
in. Yeah. Yeah. Like, well, that that’s tough, man. I mean, you don’t have employees. You’re opening up maybe opening up, maybe not opening it up. You’re trying to figure out what exactly to be doing, how to run the business. You got laid out, like, oh my gosh, man.
Jordan Berry [00:43:47]:
This is.
Paola [00:43:48]:
While raising 2 toddlers.
Jordan Berry [00:43:49]:
No. You’re still not. Thrown in the toddlers yet. That’s Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay.
Jordan Berry [00:43:56]:
But you made it. You survived. You had the doors open. Talk about what was it like when you when you did finally open the doors.
Jean [00:44:03]:
It was good. So we did we actually did a soft opening. We did a soft opening for the first, I wanna say, 2 weeks or so. Yeah. Yeah. We did a soft opening for the 1st 2 weeks and, we got a fair amount of traffic Mhmm. Just off of that. And, a lot of it was just, you know, word-of-mouth with the Double Your Money.
Jean [00:44:21]:
And a lot of people knew that we were coming, just from being in that plaza. But, yeah. No. Double Your Money drove a lot of traffic to our store and just how nice and how big and how spacious. Like, our smallest our smallest aisle in there is like 9 feet. Whereas
Jordan Berry [00:44:37]:
Yeah.
Paola [00:44:37]:
It’s a
Jean [00:44:37]:
big piece. That’s our smallest aisle. So like, whereas, you know, some of our competitors, their biggest aisle is like 8 feet. Yeah. Needless to say, people in that community didn’t haven’t really seen a laundromat that size or that nice. So we got a lot of traffic just off of that. So it was pretty good. We were actually fairly we were just under break even our 1st month.
Jordan Berry [00:45:04]:
So Oh, man.
Jean [00:45:05]:
So, yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Paola [00:45:07]:
Towards the price.
Jordan Berry [00:45:08]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I know there’s that ominous thing hanging over, so I’m sure that affected things too. But, hey, that’s pretty good. And, you know, one thing one thing that I see, and this is kinda what I tell people, is if you’re gonna build out something new, just plan on 6 to 18 months until you kinda hit that that break even point. Now, obviously, it can happen a lot faster than that, and sometimes it happens where you’re break even or even making money that 1st month. And part of it depends on, you know, your ramp up process. And the thing that was surprising to me about you guys being close to breakeven that 1st month is you didn’t really have time to promote the opening beforehand, and you did 2 2 weeks of that soft opening and, you know, like, that’s, you know, that’s a that’s good all good signs.
Jordan Berry [00:45:55]:
Yeah. But like but like I said, there’s more more to the story coming. But so when you guys opened, were you guys manning the shop, or did have you guys hired employees yet? Or is are you guys still running the same? Yeah. What’s that looking like right now?
Jean [00:46:09]:
Yeah. So we’ve hired we’ve had employees now. Primarily that those first two months, it was kinda just us, like, pulling 16 hour shifts back to back. So, like, I would do I mean, so as we mentioned, we have 2 small toddler boys, 3 and 2, so they’re a handful in and of itself. She’d be at home all day with the boys and I’d be at the laundromat and then we kinda just change off interchangeably. And then I wanted when did we hire, Christine? I think it was our within within our first within our first month, we had, like, one solid employee that was opening the store for us. So that I mean, that that was a big that was a big help.
Jordan Berry [00:46:48]:
Yeah.
Jean [00:46:50]:
But then we weren’t able to utilize her, you know, throughout the week just because, you know, the store was still pretty wasn’t as heavy as traffic as we had liked. You know, wash, dry, and fold wasn’t really there. So it kinda felt bad paying somebody to be there when there’s really no nothing going on in the store. So it was primarily us. So but I wanna say end of I wanna say end of October probably because we we opened up mid September. So I wanna say end of October, probably November is when we started hiring more staff. I mean, we’re still in the store ourselves because, you know, we just like to be in the store. And some of those, drier days like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we’re in there.
Jean [00:47:29]:
And we’re popping here and there in the weekends when it’s busy. But, yeah, no. We’re fortunate enough to have about we have 4 we have 4 employees right now. So, yeah, that was that was that was a help.
Jordan Berry [00:47:43]:
Yeah. So you guys are doing wash, dry fold. Are you doing pickup, delivery, or no?
Jean [00:47:46]:
Yeah. Yeah. We, well, we’re through through the gig economy, through Sense, we don’t have a we don’t have our own van or anything. But in in the future, you know, it’s in the works in the future where, you know, we get our own van and, go around and do, paint delivery ourselves.
Jordan Berry [00:48:02]:
Yeah. Cool. And for the for the wash, dry fold, are you guys promoting that? Is it growing? Is are you focusing more on self serve right now? What’s that looking like?
Jean [00:48:13]:
Yeah. WashDry Fold has grown pretty, pretty well in the past month that we did. We just did a we just wrapped up a a promotion where we did 87¢ a pound just to bring traffic in. We were gonna do 99¢, but, you know, our competitor around the corner was doing 99. So I was like, alright. Well,
Jordan Berry [00:48:30]:
we gotta
Jean [00:48:31]:
go run. Gotta get that. Yeah. We just wrapped that up. So, yeah. We brought in, I wanna say, I mean to go back and look at the numbers, but we brought in about 200 new customers in the past in the past 6 weeks or so that we ran back from.
Jordan Berry [00:48:47]:
Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Okay. Cool. You know, it sounds like a fairly strong start. You know, one thing I wanna one thing I wanna say that I think you guys did well, right, is I think a lot of times when people are buying a laundromat or building a laundromat, you know, the whole there’s the whole, you know, passive income, you know, dream and goal. And, you know, if you go on, like, forums or the Facebook groups, you’ll see laundromat owners who, you know, own laundromats joking about the passive income, quote, unquote, passive income stuff that happens.
Jordan Berry [00:49:29]:
And, you know, here you guys are investing a lot of money, time, effort, stress, blood, sweat, and tears into building this thing out, getting it open. And, you know, you’re in there work in the store. Right? And, you know, I I think there’s like a, you know, there’s a a contingency of people that are like, woah. What’s, you know, what are you doing right here? But I love, you know, going back to to to Daniel Logan’s episode a while back, and he talked about how he started driving. He was working, and he they did pick up and delivery, and he he was the driver. And he talked about it, you know, standing in the gap where basically it’s like, well, listen, you know, when you start up, you can either pay money to hire people to work. And if you’re not making money, it’s just money going out until you are making money. Or you can stand in the gap.
Jordan Berry [00:50:20]:
Work those midweek shifts and hire people when you can and build up to when you’re profitable, then you can hire out your role and and it will become more passive. Right? So I just I wanted to mention that because I I like the way that you guys did that and are progressing towards, you know, making it the investment that you wanted to make it even if it’s not there quite yet. I’m sure you guys don’t always wanna be working in the laundromat midweek if you don’t have to. But I think that that is an awesome way to go. I just wanted to say that because I think a lot of people listening think laundromats and they think passive income. And while it can be fairly passive, if that’s how you wanna set it up, it doesn’t always start that way. Right? Yeah. You either have to buy that passivity or you’ve gotta build it.
Jordan Berry [00:51:05]:
And there’s nothing wrong with either one. So love that you guys are doing that and crushing it over there. And it works out that your, you know, your schedules and stuff are you’re able to do that. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, I mean, I I feel like so real quick, I wanted to just briefly talk about the double your money thing. So do you feel like that was successful? That’s that’s sort of been my recommended promotion and stuff, But I wanted to hear, like, how did that go for you guys? Would you guys recommend it also or would you not recommend it? Would you learn based off doing that?
Jean [00:51:41]:
Absolutely. I I would recommend it. The only caveat is I would make sure that you’re transparent on a cutoff date because we we reran it just for a limited time. We didn’t know when we were gonna end it. So people loved it, brought a lot of traffic. You know, I can’t tell you how many times that, you know, we had people in the store like, Brian, get over here. Like, you know, they’re giving away money. Like, you need to get over here.
Jean [00:52:01]:
Like, and then
Jordan Berry [00:52:02]:
Free money.
Jean [00:52:03]:
Yeah. Like, free money. Like, people are calling up relatives, like, yo, get over here. The new laundromat and everything. So that was pretty beneficial. But on the downside is, like, when we ended, they’re like, wait. What? There’s no more there’s no more free money? Like, no more they’ll be like They
Paola [00:52:17]:
were disappointed.
Jean [00:52:18]:
It was like, so now I have to pay for my entire wash? You know? Like Yes. I mean, well yeah. I mean That’s how it works. It was it was a promotion. So Yeah. Isn’t gonna be there forever. But, yeah. I mean, I think had we promoted a end date, a a rock solid date that people knew, even though we did promote that, we just didn’t promote it from the beginning.
Jean [00:52:37]:
So towards the end of it, we started promoting the date and then people were like, oh man, I didn’t know. And it’s like, well, the sign’s been up for the past 2 weeks. Yeah. But, yeah. I mean, I’d I’d say that’s the only caveat. And I feel like once you do that for too long, people get too comfortable and expect it all the time. So I’d I’d say, you know, out the gate, do it do it for, you know, 2 weeks. Make sure that everyone knows it’s 2 weeks.
Jean [00:52:59]:
That’s about it.
Paola [00:53:00]:
We did end up bringing it back though.
Jean [00:53:01]:
Yeah, we did, we did, we did. Oh, we we brought it back for Black Friday, especially because a lot of that competitor opened up around the corner. We didn’t wanna
Paola [00:53:09]:
And we did announce it. We did announce it. Yeah. People actually came in and just loaded their car.
Jean [00:53:14]:
Yeah.
Paola [00:53:15]:
So
Jordan Berry [00:53:16]:
it worked. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s it’s really good because people do get excited about it. They do see it as free money. That money that you’re doubling, you’re not really giving away. So if somebody puts $20 in and you give them another 20, you’re not really giving them 20. You’re giving them your cost of the wash, which is a much smaller percentage of that 20.
Jordan Berry [00:53:36]:
So it’s not an expensive promotion, relatively speaking, for you. But now they’ve got money on the card and they’ve got to come back and not go to that brand new competitor, which I want to talk about here in a second. But that double your money can be super effective. I think you’re dead on for any promotion, but especially when it’s drumming up a lot of excitement. You’ve got to be transparent on the end date. And like you were saying, I think a lot of times it makes the most sense to do it tied to an easy end date. So it’s like, you know, the end of a month or Black Friday sale, you know, we’re gonna end on, you know, Monday or what you know, whatever the the thing is or, you know, mother’s day, double your money, you know, ends on mother’s day or whatever. You know, having that from the beginning, that that end date there to just curb that disappointment because the last thing you wanna do is make people feel super excited about it, thinking they’re gonna get all these free washes for the rest of their lives.
Jordan Berry [00:54:38]:
And then once you’ve got them all excited, crushing their hopes and dreams, right, and now they have you’re leaving them kinda like with a bad feeling. We wanna leave them with good feelings. So I think it’s super wise advice, there. And, you know, you mentioned, like, bringing it back. That’s that’s kind of the beauty of this thing is that now you know it works. You can bring it back kinda, you know, whenever you want to if you need, like, a little bump or or whatever.
Jean [00:55:03]:
Sure.
Jordan Berry [00:55:04]:
That’s awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Okay. I mean, I’ve been dancing around it, but can we talk about this competitor here coming in? That’s gotta be crushing. I had that happen. I was mentioning to you before we hit record. It happened to me in one of my locations.
Jordan Berry [00:55:17]:
They actually opened up the day I took over, and it was felt like getting the wind knocked out of me. And, I don’t know. So tell us about that a little bit. What was that like? Did you know they were coming in, or what was that whole process like?
Jean [00:55:33]:
So we heard so we heard rumblings of them coming. However, we didn’t see they didn’t put a sign up or anything like that. Funny enough, while we were doing a build out, we kept seeing some guy coming over to our store, like, oh, you guys are open up soon. How many machines are you doing pickup and delivery? What operating system do you use? And I’m like
Paola [00:55:51]:
Who is this guy?
Jean [00:55:52]:
Why is he asking so many questions? Like, because, like, regular customers are just like, oh, yeah. We have a new laundromat. When do you guys open? Funny enough, he was the regional manager for that chain, Laundromatx, and he was kinda checking us out. But I will say, I mean it was a little, you know, it was a little bit disappointing because like, you know, the regional manager, actually one of the owners came over to our store and he was like, you know, it’s a little close for comfort but you know, you know, we can cohabitate. But the one thing that, you know, I take pride in is that, you know, how big our store is and how nice it is. And also, the owners are actually in the store. So you’re not getting, you know,
Jordan Berry [00:56:31]:
you’re
Jean [00:56:31]:
actually meeting a welcoming, friendly face when you walk in. And it’s the owner of somebody that actually, that owns the business and that actually cares as well. So I mean, that’s kinda why we like being in the store. We like talking to, you know, the people in the community, hearing those stories, because, you know, a lot of times, I mean, you don’t I mean, you don’t get that walking into, you know, other laundromats, especially especially for a big chain like that. You’re you’re you’re not gonna come across the owner and sit down and have a conversation
Jordan Berry [00:56:56]:
with that.
Paola [00:56:56]:
Yeah. People appreciate that. Yeah. Appreciate that. Yeah.
Jean [00:56:59]:
So, yeah. I mean it I mean it it is it is a little scary, but, you know, I mean, we’re we’re we’re children of God. We have faith, you know. God has been, you know, fortunate enough to bless us and put us in this situation. So, you know, we’re we’re we’re staying faithful and, and we’re we’re we’re we’re doing pretty well even with them with them opening.
Paola [00:57:19]:
I was gonna say, I feel like you’re talking about the fear a little bit because we were a little nervous, but you were also very I felt like he felt very if anything, makes me feel good that they’re checking us out.
Jean [00:57:28]:
Yeah. Because they they were nervous as well. So That’s what I’m trying to do. Yeah. Funny enough, our our plumber that worked on our laundromat was working on their laundromat as well. And our plumber came back and he was like, yeah. They’ve been checking you guys out for a while. I was like, oh, sounds like they’re nervous.
Jean [00:57:41]:
He was like, yeah. They are. They are nervous.
Jordan Berry [00:57:44]:
Yeah.
Jean [00:57:45]:
I I I said to her one night, and I’m like, listen. If you’re this big chain, you know, building laundromats all over the northeast, You’re not going to a you’re not going to look at, another laundromat to check them out if you aren’t scared. They personally came into our store and wanted to see what we were doing. So they’re they’re definitely nervous.
Paola [00:58:07]:
And I was going to add I don’t know if you were gonna mention this, but, they usually set up their store, like, they usually have Oh, yeah. Yeah. They usually set up their store to be, you know, jam packed ton of machines. Their aisles aren’t that big, you know. They just want people in. They want people out. So they’re not providing any type of comfort in our
Jean [00:58:24]:
No seating.
Paola [00:58:25]:
With no seating. They don’t want people to get too comfortable. Our model was we wanted some comfortability, not too too much, but we also wanted them to enjoy because laundry day is I don’t know about anyone else, but, like, laundry day isn’t really that fun. But when you have a designated like kids zone that we took from obviously Dave Men’s, which is a great idea. People love it and they appreciate it. Kids have their own section. It works, you know. Mhmm.
Paola [00:58:49]:
And then we have a lot of seating areas. People come, they drink their coffee, they sit down, they use our Wi Fi, they
Jean [00:58:54]:
eat food. I’ve seen people have, like, whole family dinners in there.
Paola [00:58:58]:
Which is not something we like. However, it is okay because we want them to be comfortable. They tend to leave and they pick up after themselves, so that’s nice. They appreciate it. But, yeah. They don’t usually do that and they put couches in their stores
Jean [00:59:11]:
Because of us.
Paola [00:59:12]:
Because of us. Tables and they jam packed it even more. So it’s even tighter.
Jordan Berry [00:59:16]:
Mhmm.
Paola [00:59:17]:
You know? So it was interesting to watch that.
Jordan Berry [00:59:21]:
I love that. And I you know, again, it’s just this whole the bar keeps getting raised in our industry, and I love that. I mean, I love love love that. And, you know, as as you’re, you know, designing things, taking things from other great operators, and then mixing in your own good ideas, as we all are kinda doing that, we’re all getting better. We’re all serving our communities better. They’re happier. We’re making more money, you know, all that. And, you know, in terms of the the competitor, yeah, I would be super scared to be near you guys too because I’m sure they ran all their numbers without your laundromat there too, you know, besides even besides all the the other things.
Jordan Berry [01:00:00]:
And your laundromat is larger than theirs. Right? Yeah. Almost yours is, like, double their size. Right? Yeah.
Jean [01:00:07]:
Almost double their size. So, I mean, that’s kinda that’s kind of a tip that I’d tell anybody looking to get in a game right now too. Like, don’t be don’t be afraid to go big. Because I know initially when we were so when we had went to the discovery day for the laundromat franchise, we were initially looking at a spot about, like, 2,000, 3000 square feet. And I’m so glad we didn’t do that because in my situation and your situation as well, you could be set to open up and another guy comes and opens up. At least if you’re a big guy and they’re a big guy, people can have the choice. But if you have a 2,000 square foot store, they have a 5,000 square foot store, they’re more likely gonna go to the 5,000 square foot foot store. So I’m so glad, in hindsight, I’m so glad that we didn’t subdivide because we would have been smaller than them.
Jean [01:00:45]:
We would have been smaller than them and they would have more machines than us. Yeah. But at least now, we’re bigger than them. They have more machines, but we have more space and we can offer customers something that they can.
Paola [01:00:55]:
And we put the game on on Sundays, and we got guys coming in to do laundry too.
Jordan Berry [01:01:00]:
Yeah. Yeah. They love
Jean [01:01:01]:
it. Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Berry [01:01:03]:
That’s what I’m talking about. Maybe I’ll come do laundry. I mean, it’s a long way for me to get over there, but I’d be working alright. I don’t know. You don’t have to share specifics or anything necessarily, but in terms of when they opened, you were a couple months in. Right? Did you see, like, a big hit in numbers at all, or what was that like? It
Jean [01:01:21]:
wasn’t it wasn’t a big hit. We did see A big hit though. Yeah. We did we did see a dip. I think that was mostly just curiosity. And they they were running a, they were running a free, you know, $20, $20 card promotion. Yeah. We did we did see a little dip in their opening week.
Jean [01:01:37]:
Again, for the longest time, for decades, there’s really just been one big laundromat in that area. We hear stories all the time about people fighting for dryers, people fighting for washers, people getting their clothes stolen over there. And that was kinda the only option in the area. So, I feel like people in the community are waiting for, like, another, like, viable laundromat to come in the area. So, when we opened up, we had a, we kinda had an influx of people. And then when they opened up, again, just that same curiosity of, you know, a new laundromat opened up in the community. But, since they’ve opened, we’ve kinda seen it like taper off and kinda, kinda gone back to our steady growth trend. So it’s been it’s been good.
Paola [01:02:16]:
So we’re good. Yeah. We we feel okay. Yeah.
Jordan Berry [01:02:20]:
That was super convincing. That was that was super convincing. You feel good. You feel alright. I’m cure I mean, you may not even know, but I’m curious, like, that original larger laundromat that was there, any sense on how this is impacting them at all or no?
Jean [01:02:37]:
I don’t know. Yeah. I’m actually I’m actually not sure. I mean, every time we drive by, there’s minimum 20, 20 cars in their in their in their lot. I I mean, I try not to, I mean, try not to focus on it. On the only time only reason I drive by is because, like, they’re on a main road and it’s by the highway. If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t care to drive by there. But, we’ve we’ve we’ve got a ton of their customers, you know.
Jean [01:02:59]:
You often hear like, oh, you guys are too expensive, so like I come here and I try it out, but you know, I can’t continue to And they were just ridiculously cheap. So like, there’s no way we were gonna match them. Because, you know, we had almost a $1,000,000 in equipment. We had to pay for that somehow. But, yeah.
Jordan Berry [01:03:21]:
Yeah. Yeah. Curious. I I mean, if they’re still humming over there, it means there’s more business to be had. I I mean Sure. If I was you and I you know, listen. This is in my view, this is this is business, but some people might not be comfortable with this. But if I was you, I would probably geofence that laundromat and run ads to people who are going to that laundromat with some sort of promotion
Jean [01:03:48]:
Yeah.
Jordan Berry [01:03:49]:
To them to get them, at least to come check yours out.
Jean [01:03:54]:
Yeah. We put a we put a double your money sign across the street from from their laundromat. We’ll probably we’ll probably do more of that in the future.
Jordan Berry [01:04:02]:
Yeah. I I think, I think that geofencing campaign could be, you know, pretty pretty effective, especially if they’re still humming and and you’ve got a significantly better experience at your laundromat. Sometimes it’s just about getting people in there and getting them to experience your laundromat to understand what is what they’re missing out on, really. So when we are when we’re talking new competitor coming into the business or coming into the area, I’m curious from you guys, you know, going going forward, have you, like, adjusted numbers at all and made new projections, or has your distributor kinda helped you with that? No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You’re just head down running running the show.
Jean [01:04:49]:
Yeah. No. Yeah. We’ve just kinda been, yeah. We’ve just kinda been plugging away in terms of just building the business. Yeah. We kinda haven’t readjusted our numbers or anything like that or ran projections. But, yeah.
Jean [01:05:03]:
Yeah. I mean, we’ve had spend, you know, plugging away and growing the business, really.
Jordan Berry [01:05:07]:
Yeah. That’s well, which is fine, which is good. The other question I had was machine wise, you guys you said you had the Speed Queen Touch. Is that what you said?
Jean [01:05:16]:
Yep. Yep.
Jordan Berry [01:05:18]:
Yeah. The the other new competitor, what do they have? Do they also have the same or do they have something different?
Jean [01:05:24]:
Yeah. Yeah. The exact same machines. The exact same machines. They have Laundromax. I mean, they have Laundromax, we have Laundromax. They use SENSE. We use SENSE.
Jean [01:05:33]:
So, like, they literally copied us to the team.
Jordan Berry [01:05:36]:
That’s right. I mean, here’s I don’t know. Okay. So did did your distributor tell you that they were coming in at all?
Jean [01:05:46]:
He told us that they’re so apparently, they he told us that he heard some, you know, words or heard something from the in the grapevine that, you know, they may be coming. But then he was like, oh, well, I heard they backed out because you were coming. Because, so, mind you, yeah, we have the same equipment. So, I thought that they were getting it from the distributor, so I thought the distributor would let us know. But come to find out, they say they buy directly from Alliance. They don’t go through a distributor. So, but like, yeah, our distributor did hear about it. And then he kinda never said anything about it again because he was kinda scared for us.
Jean [01:06:18]:
But, but yeah.
Jordan Berry [01:06:20]:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I’m like he had to, like, he had to know. Come on. Like Yeah. He had to know, and I I just feel like I don’t know. Yeah.
Jordan Berry [01:06:34]:
I just feel like he shoulda helped you out a little more on that one. But, anyways okay. So, you know, you’re you’re a few months into it now, and you’re still, I mean, you’re still in that growth phase. Right? Which is still maybe you’re out of it. Maybe you’re feeling good about things right now. But it you know, a lot of times, this is still that phase where you’re a little nervous and you’re like, is it gonna grow fast enough? You know, that that rent abatement’s probably coming up here pretty quick.
Jean [01:07:03]:
Yeah.
Jordan Berry [01:07:03]:
You know, I don’t know about loan terms and stuff like that, but that might be kicking in here pretty quick.
Jean [01:07:09]:
Yep.
Jordan Berry [01:07:09]:
If they’re not here yet. So that’s that point where it’s a little or a lot scary. How are you guys how are you guys feeling right now? Like, where are you at with all that?
Jean [01:07:20]:
A lot scary. However, I will say that, you kinda mentioned if they’re still chugging along, then there’s a lot of business to be had, which is true. So they’re, we’re still finding out that people are still finding out about us. So like there’s, there’s a large population of people that still don’t know that we’re open. And so that, that gives me a little bit of, you know, a little bit of comfort. But all in all, it is fairly scary. I mean, I’ll say the numbers. Like our loan payment is $14,000 that’s coming up in January.
Jean [01:07:47]:
And our rent payment is $15,000 and that’s coming up in February. So that’s pretty scary,
Jordan Berry [01:07:53]:
but Big numbers. Yeah. Big numbers.
Jean [01:07:55]:
Those are huge numbers. Oh, and we forgot about this. We just got slapped with the $1 gas bill. So for for utilities, we that wasn’t in our projections. We were projecting about, like, you know, half that. So, you know, the bills are creeping up, but I mean, like I said, we’ve seen a steady growth. So, like, we really can’t complain because the growth that we have seen has been has been great and really above average from what I’m hearing. Because, like, we I was talking to my account rep from Sense the other day, and he’s like, you you guys are getting really good numbers.
Jean [01:08:23]:
And I’m like, really?
Paola [01:08:24]:
Yeah. Like, really?
Jean [01:08:26]:
I’m like, I don’t know.
Paola [01:08:27]:
He was
Jean [01:08:27]:
like, he was like, I don’t offer
Jordan Berry [01:08:28]:
you if
Jean [01:08:28]:
you don’t do this in, like, their first three months. And I’m like, that’s good to know. But Yeah. We have a $15,000 rent payment coming up. So I need I need that to be more. And he’s like, yeah. It’ll get there. That’s why I say we really can’t complain because the growth is there.
Jean [01:08:42]:
It’s just, you know, those are
Paola [01:08:44]:
It’s gradual. Yeah.
Jean [01:08:45]:
Pretty big numbers.
Jordan Berry [01:08:46]:
Yeah. Those are big numbers. How long do you know how long your loan is amortized for? Is it 10 year? Yeah. 10 years? Okay.
Jean [01:08:54]:
10 years.
Jordan Berry [01:08:55]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those are those are big numbers. And that’s I mean, that’s the kind of the push pull of a big store like this. Right? It’s like you can do a lot of a lot more business. And like you said, if people have a choice to go to a 2,000 versus a 6,000, more than likely, they’re gonna go to the 6,000 unless it’s just super convenient to go to the 2,000. Mhmm.
Jordan Berry [01:09:17]:
But the flip side of that is your bills are higher. You’ve got more equipment. You’ve got, you know, more space that you gotta pay rent for. The pressure’s there.
Jean [01:09:28]:
Yeah.
Jordan Berry [01:09:30]:
You know, I think you’re in that phase right now where any time that you can dedicate to drumming like drumming up new business, finding new sources of revenue, gaining new wash, dry, fold customers, getting more awareness for self serve customers, pedal to the floor, throttle full out for the, you know, acquisition of of customer bases. Right? And, you know, you can you can kinda project some numbers based off some assumptions, and, eventually, you’ll hopefully have these numbers of, like, lifetime values of customers or annual value of customers, you know, both both on the self serve and the, you know, the the wash, dry, fold side and the pickup and delivery too. But once you kinda have those numbers, you’ll know, like, hey. You know, every, you know, wash, dry, fold customer we get is worth $1200 to us a year or whatever it is. Right?
Jean [01:10:30]:
Mhmm.
Jordan Berry [01:10:30]:
Then you’ll know, like, okay. Listen. Let’s go out and let’s go out and get wash dry full customers. Right? Let’s let’s go find them.
Jean [01:10:39]:
Yeah. That kinda leads question for you too because I was gonna ask, you know, what what kind of promotions have you seen has have worked for you? Have you heard from other operators that kinda really helped to to grow their business in those kinda like early stages of opening?
Jordan Berry [01:10:54]:
Yeah. So, you know, different ones for the different kinda aspects of the business, like that self serve customer. You know, I I think the double your money is great in terms of promotion wise. Even, and I believe you can set this up with Laundry Works too, but even having a, you know, one time only double your money, so, like, your first visit, we double your money, can be super effective. And especially, I think, combining that if you can set that up, combining that with, like, geofencing your competitor and just say, you know, running an ad. Anybody who goes into that laundromat, you run an ad to them that says, hey. You know, come check out our place. We’re gonna double your money their first visit.
Jordan Berry [01:11:39]:
So you put a $100 on, we’ll double it. $200 a laundry right there. Right? And now they’re more intrigued to come try your your your business out. But then they also got money on the cards, so they gotta come back again and maybe even again. And, you know, if you can set it up to where when they come that first time and load, they’ll be your money. Maybe you do an automated if they register like, tell them to register. If they register, maybe you have an automated email that goes out to them then and sends them another promotion that says, hey. You know, you’ve got whatever it is, 5 bonus dollars if you come back again or, you know, whatever it is.
Jordan Berry [01:12:16]:
Like, your second load, you get, you know, 50%. Not double your money, but we’ll add another you know, whatever it is. Some other promotion to to get them to load one more time. And if you get them to load twice, I mean, they’re probably your customer at that point. So on the sell side, it’s really and especially for you guys, I mean, I think it’s really gonna be about getting customers in the door to experience your experience, you know, your your business’ experience there. You’ve got the nice store. You’ve got the the the wide aisles, the seating, all that stuff. Hopefully, you’re you’re on top of your employees to be super friendly and helpful and all that stuff.
Jordan Berry [01:12:57]:
Like, if customer service should be like a full on blitz right now, just wow people with that customer service, and really just get people in the store and then knock their socks off once they’re in there and and get them to come back. You know, on a on a high level, that’s that’s the game plan for self serve, especially in your situation where you got the new large store, go on in terms of like wash, dry fold. One thing to consider. I mean, there’s there’s a whole lot of different ways you can go here, but one thing to consider. Is to, to look into, you know, small small businesses, you know, and looking for some recurring bulk orders. And maybe even, maybe this is an opportunity as you’ve been able to hire some people for some of the off hours. If you’re still, if you still have the, the, the energy and the determination, maybe just use your car and just say, you know, massage parlor, you know, give us a shot. Let let us do a load, you know, for you and, you know, see how you like it.
Jordan Berry [01:14:09]:
That way you guys can focus on here’s our rate, you know, whatever it is, and have that high touch. And maybe you just go pick it up in your own vehicle and Yeah. Throw it in the back there. Or you can order, like, a magnet with your, you know, spend king logo and all that stuff and just slap it on the side of your car when you pull up and, you know, and and get some commercial clients because, you know, the the small commercial clients because the benefit of those is those are typically pretty steady and recurring, and you’re gonna get some kind of bulk. And a lot of times, it’s easier laundry. You’re getting towels or sheets or something like that as opposed to baby clothes mixed with mom’s clothes, mixed with dad’s clothes, mixed with, you know, all the stuff that ends up on toddler clothes
Jean [01:14:52]:
Yeah.
Jordan Berry [01:14:53]:
As you guys know. So kind of creating a a base for that drop off or pickup and delivery for these small businesses sometimes can be a great way to go. You know, and there’s promotions you can run, you know, for residential stuff too. But that’s, you know, that’d be an interesting route, I think, to pursue and especially because you guys have the space and capacity to be able to do some of that commercial stuff.
Jean [01:15:17]:
Yeah. Sure.
Jordan Berry [01:15:20]:
Yeah. I don’t know. Those are some things to try. I mean, we can we we can talk more about some other, some other but I think those are some things to try. And like I said, I think right now you’re in that phase where it’s like pedal to the metal on acquisition because really it’s going to be like a little bit of a footrace here. You got this new competitor that’s open. And if you can just full throttle, go after self serve and wash and fold customers, like you have, you have the ability because your store is so large to just really win a lot of market share really quickly. Yeah, really quickly.
Jordan Berry [01:15:55]:
And it’ll be hard to lose it. I think once you gain it, if you guys are focusing on that good customer service, you
Jean [01:16:03]:
know? Yeah. For sure. For sure. No. Thank you for that, though.
Jordan Berry [01:16:06]:
Yeah. I think you guys have set yourself up to do really well here. I know you’re in that phase where you’re like, There’s a lot of money come and do here really fast, so I’m not minimizing that at all. But but all the more reason why I would just be blitzing this thing. I would spend all the time I possibly could just drumming up different ways for, you know, to get business coming in the door. And now is the time. This is one of the mistakes I made. And, you know, we kind of talked about this before hitting record.
Jordan Berry [01:16:38]:
But one of one of the mistakes I made in my first laundromat was when I was losing money. There wasn’t enough money coming in. I was losing money. I turtled up. Right. And I was like, I can’t put more money into marketing or, you know, whatever it is because there’s so much money going out. I don’t know if it’s coming back. But with a good, and I didn’t know, like, I just, I didn’t know anything back then, about anything really, in the world, let alone laundromats.
Jordan Berry [01:17:08]:
But, you know, if you cut that part off, that’s the part that can save your business and grow your business. Right? But I cut that part off because I had to pay my rent, my loan, my utilities, you know, you gotta pay that stuff. But if you stop with the marketing, it’s, I’m just telling you, it’s gonna be a it’s gonna be a slow spiral downwards or maybe a quick spiral downwards depending. So so I would say focus on that, but there’s also a lot of free things that you could do. Like, you could just show up to salons, massage parlors, yada yada or cold call them or send them email. You know, you can do a lot of free stuff to try to drum up business, but I’d be doing all the things possible.
Jean [01:17:52]:
Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Something to think about in a year.
Jordan Berry [01:17:57]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, hammer down. I know you guys have, like, already you probably feel like I’ve yeah. We’ve been, we’ve been going through with the with the property right now, but I got to the point where I’m like, we’re ready to to do the thing, and I was already out of energy. You know, I was like, we have already gone through the wringer, you know, all the problems that come up, you know, on the build out and all that opening and all that stuff.
Jean [01:18:23]:
They still come up now, even even after all your years of experience?
Jordan Berry [01:18:27]:
Oh, yeah, man. There’s there’s listen, man. I one thing I say all the time is, like, listen, whenever you’re dealing with people or machines, you’re gonna have problems and laundromats have a whole bunch of both. Right? So problems come up, but guess what? Like when we deal with problems, you know, because you guys have gone through what you’ve gone through, you’ve you’ve developed new skill sets to to deal with the problems that come up in the problems that felt big early on will not feel big later, but you’ll have other problems. And as you solve those problems, your skill set yeah. Your skill set gets bigger though and better. You get better at doing it. You get more efficient.
Jordan Berry [01:19:05]:
You get quicker. And coming on a podcast and kinda putting your story out there, your network is gonna be so much bigger. Right? And, you know, you’re gonna have more resources to help you solve those problems faster, and not have to rely on a semi shady g c and one single distributor to kinda help you.
Paola [01:19:26]:
That’s funny you mentioned that, Jordan, because when we were close to being done with construction and remember we were taking a look at the store and we just couldn’t believe it, you know, we were in disbelief. I remember telling Jean, I was like, do you think that, you know, these, like, podcast people wanna see our store or like speed queen or something?
Jean [01:19:42]:
And he
Paola [01:19:43]:
was like, yeah, probably. And I remember telling you, like, I don’t have energy for that. And who has energy for that after going through a process like this? You know? But, anyways, it’s part of growing your business and, you know, getting your brand out there.
Jordan Berry [01:19:54]:
Yeah. Well and listen. The the the energy for that stuff will come later, I would say, for you guys. Like, you you need to focus on growing the business right now. You’re in that growth phase. So, you know, once things are are smooth sailing and you’re, you know, you’re grossing 80 to a $100,000 a month, which you’ll probably get to, you know, then sure. Like, you know, show other people your store. Let people see how you designed it.
Jordan Berry [01:20:20]:
Let people see how you’re operating. But until you’re at that point, focus on growing that thing. And like I said, I get, like, the energy you’ve put into getting to this point has been, like, a huge amount. Not even mentioning the energy suck that well, I don’t wanna say this is gonna sound negative. I don’t mean this in a super negative way, but having toddlers is energy depleted. But they’re also energy giving and life giving. I wouldn’t say that, you know, and then getting laid off sucks energy and, you know, all this stuff is like an energy suck, but you’ve got more, like, dig deep and go out there and, like, build this thing into something great. Because if you can do that, if you can manage to do that, you’re not gonna regret it.
Jordan Berry [01:21:01]:
Like, you will not regret it. And it will give you that freedom that you originally got interested in the business for. Yeah. But you guys are crushing it, man. I know that it may not feel like that right now because you’re so early on and the situation got messy for you because you’re crushing it. You’re gonna get there for sure.
Jean [01:21:19]:
Thank you. Thank you.
Jordan Berry [01:21:20]:
Listen. Last question I have for you guys, if if you want to, if people are like, hey, You know, we’d love to connect with you or we’d love to kinda brainstorm some stuff or shoot some ideas over to you or something that’s worked for us. And if you’re listening out there and you’ve got something that you feel like can help these guys just take their business to the next level, what’s the best way they can connect with you guys?
Jean [01:21:45]:
Yeah. So either email or, our Instagram. Email is, [email protected], and, you can follow us on Instagram at, spin king laundry. So, yeah, that’d probably be the best way to get in touch with us.
Jordan Berry [01:22:03]:
Yeah. We’ll have all that in the show notes too. That way, you can connect up with these guys. And, again, I mean, I think this is gonna open a whole new network to you and get you kinda, you know, connected with some some great people who are, you know, I’ve I say this all the time is, like, we can go farther, faster when we’re working together. And Sure. Huge part of that is having the right community around you. People who are willing to share their ideas, share what’s worked for them, share their struggles and resources, which is why I really appreciate you guys taking the time despite our early, technical difficulties, taking the time to come on here and share your story and how you got to this point because you’re at a point right now that a lot of people listen to this want to get to, and you’re there. So, appreciate you guys for coming on.
Jordan Berry [01:22:52]:
So much, so much really good information, but also just your story is so, so good. And Thank you for having me. Well, we’re gonna we’re gonna have to have you on again when you’re rushing. Are we
Paola [01:23:05]:
gonna do it again, like,
Jean [01:23:06]:
2 to
Paola [01:23:06]:
3 years when Sping King really takes off?
Jordan Berry [01:23:09]:
Yeah. I don’t think it’s gonna take that long, honestly.
Jean [01:23:12]:
Thank you. Thank you.
Jordan Berry [01:23:14]:
Yeah. But, but, yeah, for sure. You I mean, if you’re willing to, I, for sure, will have you anytime, actually. You’re welcome anytime. We wanna do one every week. We’ll just open a whole another segment. We can just do one every week with
Jean [01:23:25]:
you guys. Yeah. Yeah. I’m here for you.
Jordan Berry [01:23:27]:
Yeah. But, maybe you should focus on growing your business though first. Yeah. But yeah. No. Appreciate you guys, and coming on to sharing. And, again, if you guys wanna connect up with these guys, shoot me an email, spinkingllc@gmail or, check out their Instagram. Again, we’ll have all that in the show notes.
Jordan Berry [01:23:43]:
And guys, I cannot wait to hear the crushin’ it story here probably in less than 2 years, maybe in, like, a year or so where you guys are really just hitting on all cylinders. It’s gonna be great.
Jean [01:23:56]:
Yeah. Thank you.
Jordan Berry [01:23:57]:
Hang tough and, you know, take some energy from this interview and some encouragement and, and believe that you’re gonna get there because you are and and get after it. Go out there and get some new business. And if you want to shoot me an email after this, because I’m gonna forget because I just say things all the time that are just gone. But shoot me an email after this, and I’ll shoot you a list of some of those small commercial businesses that you can hit up. I have a whole list of a bunch of different ones that you can hit up. And that way you can start reaching out to those guys if you want.
Jean [01:24:28]:
Cool. Cool.
Jordan Berry [01:24:29]:
That goes for anybody out there. If you want that list, shoot me an email. [email protected].
Paola [01:24:34]:
Thank you so
Jordan Berry [01:24:34]:
much. Guys. Yep. Appreciate it. We’ll talk soon. Bye. What an awesome episode. So much good stuff in there.
Jordan Berry [01:24:41]:
Man, talk about learning a whole bunch of lessons, the the great way. Those are lessons that they are gonna take with them on the rest of their journey there. So lots of good stuff in there. Hopefully, you got some good stuff, whether you’re looking to build out a laundromat, you’re looking to buy a laundromat, or you already own laundromats. There was something for everybody in there, so make sure that you take some good notes. And as always, you gotta take some action. That is what it comes down to. And maybe for you, the action is if you’re looking to build out a laundromat, go to laundromatresource.com/build, fill out that form there and set up a call with us to see if that is something that we can help you with this year, next year, whenever you’re listening to this episode.
Jordan Berry [01:25:26]:
Alright. Go out there and take some action, whatever it is, and we’ll see you next week on the Loan About Resource Podcast. Peace.
Resumen en español
En este episodio del podcast Laundromat Resource, episodio 180, el anfitrión Jordan Berry entrevista a Jean y Paola, quienes construyeron su lavandería desde cero. A lo largo del episodio, comparten su camino desde tener una base en bienes raíces hasta decidir invertir en una lavandería debido a las buenas perspectivas del negocio durante la pandemia.
Jean y Paola relatan las dificultades que enfrentaron al buscar una ubicación adecuada para su lavandería y cómo finalmente encontraron un antiguo local de Advanced Auto Parts. Una vez asegurada la ubicación, lidiaron con la construcción que se prologó más de lo esperado y tuvo varios contratiempos, incluyendo problemas con el contratista general y un presupuesto que no alcanzaba.
A pesar de estos desafíos, finalmente abrieron su lavandería y han visto un crecimiento constante. La pareja ha implementado promociones como “duplica tu dinero” para atraer clientes y han introducido servicios de lavado y plegado a domicilio. Sin embargo, han enfrentado la competencia de una cadena grande que abrió otra lavandería cerca, lo cual ha añadido presión adicional sobre su negocio.
Jordan también comparte sus propias experiencias y brinda sugerencias sobre cómo promover y hacer crecer el negocio, tales como la geolocalización de anuncios publicitarios y generar asociaciones comerciales. A lo largo del episodio, destaca la importancia del esfuerzo continuo y la adaptación para superar los desafíos iniciales en el negocio de las lavanderías.
En resumen, el episodio proporciona una mirada detallada a los retos y éxitos de Jean y Paola en la construcción y operación de su lavandería y ofrece valiosos consejos para otros interesados en el negocio.
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