It’s CORE to Our Business But NOBODY is Talking About It with Rick Rome

Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
I’ve never done an episode where we’re talking about detergent. I’ve never done an episode where we’ve kind of dove deep into this. But it’s something that’s so integral to our businesses. Right. Whether it’s what our customers are using or what we’re using on the service side of. Of the business.

Rick Rome [00:00:15]:
Yeah, it’s as important as the water, the washers, and the dryers. Right? I mean, those four things. I can’t think of anything more important in the laundry than those four things. So why are we only focused always on the washer and the dry fire? That’s no good. I almost lost my biggest customer because of that. What I learned about barrels generally is about 20% of your of your soap that you buy gets wasted. I then moved to injections. I still bought my barrels, and I was using injections.

Rick Rome [00:00:48]:
And now injections, from a scientific perspective, is the most optimal way to clean something, because in theory, the machine is supposed to know when to inject the optimal amount of soap and cleaning agent to maximize the efficiency of cleaning whatever it is you’re cleaning. Okay, now, very important. The problem is.

Jordan Berry [00:01:11]:
Hey, what’s up, guys? It’s Jordan with the Laundromat Resource podcast. This is show 198. 198. Who’d ever thunk it? That is a lot of podcast episodes. And we’re here with sort of a double header for you, because just recently on the podcast, maybe a week or so ago, it was Rick Rome. We were talking AI and today we’re going to talk something that is so integral, so core to our businesses, and yet is never discussed, never been discussed on this podcast, rarely discussed outside of this podcast. And let’s just face it, is there anything even worth discussing that’s not discussed on this podcast? I can’t think of anything. But today, Rick Roman, I are going to tackle it, and hopefully you’re going to get some good insights into the business of laundry in a little bit of a unique perspective.

Jordan Berry [00:02:01]:
So check it out and listen. You know, when Rick Rome’s on the show, there’s going to be some fireworks and excitement, a lot of enthusiasm and passion. He does not disappoint, as always. Let’s jump into it with Rick Rome. Rick Rome, back on the show. Legend, how you doing, man?

Rick Rome [00:02:20]:
What’s up? Jordan Berry. How are you, man? Good to see you again.

Jordan Berry [00:02:24]:
I’m doing excellent. Awesome to see you. Awesome to have you back on and. And chatting. There are probably a few people who’s been living under a Rock or something like that. Who haven’t listened to one of the previous times you’ve been on this podcast, who haven’t listened to our, our old podcast that we used to have together, Laundry Shop Talk or who don’t know who you are. And for those people, first of all, let me just say shame on you guys for not knowing who Rick Rome is. But for those people, let’s catch them up, let’s bless them with the knowledge of who you are.

Jordan Berry [00:02:59]:
Why don’t you give us a little background on you and, and how you got into this business.

Rick Rome [00:03:03]:
Absolutely. Hey Jordan, great to see you again, man. Appreciate everything. I got into this business because actually I had a dry cleaner that kept ruining my buttons and it’s in one of those old podcasts I was like, this is ridicul. But I got into this business because I felt like there was some great opportunity to service the community I live in. And quite honestly, it started with self service and drop off service. And then what I quickly learned is that you can extend your storefront 20 miles in every direction via pickup and delivery. And contrary to what all the, you know, the laundry manufacturer, equipment manufacturers would tell you, it’s certainly much more affordable to extend your storefront virtually 20 miles in every direction than it is to build and risk capital, further capital to buy another store, we’ll say, you know, across town, so to say.

Rick Rome [00:04:03]:
So I, I firmly believed in optimizing what I do. And if you look at the trajectory of my business and what I’ve done over all these years, I always build something, I review it, I optimize it, I go to the next level, I reinvest, do it again, do it again, do it again. And that’s what I do. I invest in myself, I believe in myself. I believe in this business. I believe in what I’m trying to accomplish. I’ve made plenty of mistakes. Believe me, you lose.

Rick Rome [00:04:34]:
You know, not everybody hits a home run or even a single. But you must learn from that which I’ve done. And fast forward to today and I have no longer any self self service business. I haven’t done it for quite some time. Probably 10 years at least. No, not that. Yeah, maybe 10 years. Yeah, something like that.

Rick Rome [00:04:56]:
And I’ve been doing pickup and delivery. Before the cla was talking about pickup and delivery, wash, dry, fold, pickup and delivery. Um, so I believe in that. I believe in customers and what their status, what the cultural trend is, is going towards, which is I don’t want to do shit, come do it for me. And I’M happy to do it for you.

Jordan Berry [00:05:19]:
Yeah. Well, real quick, speaking of happy to do it for people, can we just mention how much of it are you doing per day for people?

Rick Rome [00:05:30]:
I do for people’s, you know, for their personal laundry and businesses and I don’t do hotels, I don’t do nursing homes and I don’t do hospitals. Okay. I process between 20 and 25,000 pounds a day.

Jordan Berry [00:05:46]:
A day?

Rick Rome [00:05:47]:
Yes, sir. A day.

Jordan Berry [00:05:49]:
You’re ridiculous, man. You’re ridiculous. That is insanity. That is a lot of dirty laundry that you have got going through your stuff. Real quick mention to how many trucks do you have right now?

Rick Rome [00:06:02]:
24, but coming down well, working maybe 21. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:06:12]:
At any point in time. Yeah, yeah, 24.

Rick Rome [00:06:16]:
I think those. That’s the highest number on one of my trucks. So that’s how, that’s how I remember, frankly, at this point.

Jordan Berry [00:06:21]:
Yeah.

Rick Rome [00:06:21]:
But honestly, I am moving a little bit. I’m playing around with the third party delivery arms with Uber doordash instacart. I have started to utilize that for pick up and deliver it from people’s homes. So I probably will. It’s been pretty successful, to be really honest. So I will probably scale back as a lot of those trucks were for residential and now that I have other means of transportation, I will probably be cutting that down to 15 to 20. Somewhere in that range.

Jordan Berry [00:06:59]:
You’re always tinkering, always trying to find more efficiencies, looking for better ways to do things. Like you’re saying, like that’s what it’s all about. And this, I mean, what we were talking about today is kind of along those, I mean it’s definitely along those same lines. And this, this episode reminds me a lot more about, of our Laundry Shop Talk podcast that we had with all those episodes. We go, we go deep into specific operational or business topics a lot in those episodes. And this one is kind of. No, no different than that. I want to talk about detergent.

Jordan Berry [00:07:41]:
Like, I’ve, I’ve never done an episode where we’re talking about detergent. I’ve never done an episode where we’ve kind of dove deep into this. Once again, a first with you here on the podcast. But it’s something that’s so integral to our businesses. Right. Whether it’s what our customers are using or what we’re using. I mean, on the service side of, of the business. Yeah, I mean it’s like the thing that we use.

Jordan Berry [00:08:05]:
So let’s talk detergent.

Rick Rome [00:08:07]:
Yeah, yeah, let’s do that. Let’s definitely do that. So I started a company called Laundry Labs and I built it, frankly out of necessity. We have two products. One is called Power Mix, which is in partnership with Aura. I’ve been working with Aura from pretty much day one of my laundry life. Amazing guys, great family, amazing products. Love them to death.

Rick Rome [00:08:39]:
They’re really, really great people, people that I enjoy doing business with. And basically what that is, is it’s, it’s a concentrate. What most people don’t realize is that 85% of soap you buy wherever you buy it is water. And we have developed formulas, concentrates that will allow us to ship our high quality products or as high quality products with my help of course, to anywhere you are in America. So if you are a, what we like to call barrel user, 15, 3055 gallon barrel users and you want to use some incredible soap support family, family run business that’s been in the industry for gazillion years. And frankly it’s the best product out there that I know of. Power Mixes is a great way to go. We ship you in, you know, five gallon containers or two and a half gallon containers.

Rick Rome [00:09:53]:
You won’t even need a drum anymore. We give you a little mixer, a little one gallon jugs basically that allow you to add the concentrate in with the soap, the water, excuse me. At that point we’re probably saving people 30, 30% who buy, who buy the drums now. So it’s, it’s incredible and you don’t have to worry about taking up space in your laundry for it. So that’s one of our products. Our second and very popular product is, is, is called Power Packs. To the, to the, to the normal person, I guess they might call them pods. There’s a small company out of Cincinnati, Ohio that does not allow us to use the word pods.

Rick Rome [00:10:36]:
So we call them capsules. And. Hey guys, news flash. Why would you buy Tide products when they’re building laundromats right down the street from you? So directly, not indirectly directly, you are helping finance them to take business away from yourself. Just, just put that out there. That’s facts. Tell me anything else and I would love to hear the counter argument to that, please.

Jordan Berry [00:11:07]:
And they’re, they’re doing it in bunches right now too, almost. I have a news episode that comes out every Friday, right? And over the last couple months at least half the weeks has been tied franchise coming out with, you know, selling 50 or 60 at a time to these big money private equity people who are coming to our backyard. And I mean, it’s why I Think branding is becoming more important for us now. Customer service is becoming more important for us now. All this stuff, right? Staying on top of making sure our, our laundromats are operating at full capacity, full functionality, super clean. All that stuff is going to be more and more important for us independent laundry owners right now because Tight tight’s coming after us.

Rick Rome [00:11:54]:
Oh, it’s not just Tide, brother. I mean the same guys who you buy your as well.

Jordan Berry [00:11:59]:
Yeah, right.

Rick Rome [00:12:00]:
So let’s just, let’s call a spade a spade, guys and girls, right? So complete 100 transparency. I have zero stock ownership in Procter and Gamble and or Tide and I want to kick their asses. Okay. So let’s just say that right off the bat. With that being said, our next product, our other products, power packs, capsules we call them. We have a five in one which is a 10x soap, okay. Anti bacterial softener scent and a booster and like an, like an oxy. Okay.

Rick Rome [00:12:41]:
It’s absolutely lights out. We have a lavender linen fresh and a free and clear. Okay. We also have what we call our single chamber or all in one which is a smaller capsule that has the scent as well as the 10x concentrated soap. Okay. With the 5 and ones you do not use Downy you do not need. Oxy you do not need. I don’t know if anyone else uses antibacterial like us, but we do.

Rick Rome [00:13:14]:
So you don’t need that. And Obviously you have 10x soap, right? So it’s all in one one in place. We currently sell both of them in, in buckets of 425 pieces per bucket. In the next, I’m going to say 30 to 60 days, we will have what we call our over the counter stuff, 32 pack and a 78 pack. And as well, drum roll. We will have a ven. Right, A ven pack. Two in a box.

Rick Rome [00:13:50]:
It’s absolutely beautiful. It’s no more of those people opening it up and the shit flies all over the place and it’s all over your machines. No more dripping. It’s just throw it in place. Will look cleaner and better. Less, less stress on your staff from that perspective. So we’re very, very excited. The company is about two, maybe three months at this point, not quite three months old and it’s been amazing and I’m.

Rick Rome [00:14:21]:
And I wanted to say really honestly thank you for everybody who is ordering because it’s been amazing and it really is endearing to myself and I am so happy that people are loving them and using them and reordering Jordan, it’s like a 45% reorder rate. I mean, it’s crazy. It’s absolutely crazy. Crazy good. Of course. Please keep coming, guys. It’s amazing because I will continue to invest into this industry to help us all, because I said this in many of many, many podcasts, High tide raises all boats. I am a collaborator.

Rick Rome [00:15:02]:
I want everyone to win, okay? And everyone can win. They really can. That’s my belief. So that’s. That’s what I got going on with Soap. And, you know, there’s, you know, I’m sure you have questions, and I’m happy to answer them all about whatever it may pertain to.

Jordan Berry [00:15:19]:
Yeah, okay, well, listen, we’re all, we’re all glad that you’re endeared, but listen, none of us care about you or that. What we want to know is why.

Rick Rome [00:15:30]:
What.

Jordan Berry [00:15:31]:
I mean, you said this kind of came out of necessity, right? Like, why? What? I. I genuinely, I’m curious, like, why. Why this? Why did you decide to go this route? This is something that, you know, you feel like the industry needs and you’re seeing that, right? Like, endearing or not, we don’t care. Like, but the reorder rate, I’m assuming it’s not just like, your mom ordering over and over and over. It’s. It’s people who actually need this stuff and who are using it, and it’s benefiting them, so they’re ordering again. So, like, what’s the draw here? Like, what’s. Why.

Jordan Berry [00:16:01]:
Why this where. What. What was missing? Or what does this have that that others don’t?

Rick Rome [00:16:07]:
Sure. So there’s. There’s a number of reasons, frankly. Let’s go back to. Running a business is a pain in the ass. It’s hard. You wear a thousand hats and, you know, running to Costco or Sam’s Club or order on Amazon is. Is.

Rick Rome [00:16:26]:
Is. Is nice. Right. Whatever it is. But reality is, is with laundry labs, you can do the exact same thing. You’re going to get a. The ingredients are a higher quality. Okay.

Rick Rome [00:16:41]:
The deliverables are faster, the results are better, and it’s less time you have to spend on a task that is 100% instrumental in your success of your business. Right. So, you know, when. When your staff. Well, let me go backwards. I started with barrels. I’ve been using barrels a long time, and from barrels directly, where I pump it out and put it in a one gallon drum and then pour it into the machines and then go back and do this, make a mess, blah, blah. Okay.

Rick Rome [00:17:20]:
When you buy Barrel soap, it is generally the biggest bang for your buck. No doubt about it. Problem, as I said, is that 85% of what you’re ordering on a finished product is water. So it, it’s not conducive for my partners and I, or in this scenario to ship a 500 pound, 55 gallon barrel of soap to California because it just, the, the, the, the shipping eats up everything. Okay? So I started doing that and, or not doing that. So I’ve been ordering barrels. What I learned about barrels generally is about 20% of your, of your soap that you buy gets wasted. Whether that’s over, well, I’m not even getting to overpouring yet.

Rick Rome [00:18:12]:
Okay? But from the spillage, from the stuff on the bottom of the barrel to where the, you know, to storage space of a drum in your, in your laundry, people taking it and using it on their own without you looking, things like that runs around 20%. So that’s, that’s bad right off the bat. Then I move to injections. Well, sorry, before I get to injections, then I, you know what, you take out the cleaning mess and the spillage all over the place and how your machines get all cookie and blah, blah, blah. You know, I don’t have time for that. I don’t want to deal with that again. It’s another colossal waste of your time. And frankly, your staff doesn’t want to deal with it either.

Rick Rome [00:18:55]:
But it’s part of their job. But now they’re spending time making your machines look nice when they should be spending time talking to customers and improving your customer service and all that other jazz, by the way, now with power packs, they have more time to do this. I then moved to injections. I still bought my barrels and I was using injections. And now injections, from a scientific perspective is the most optimal way to clean something because in theory, the machine is supposed to know when to inject the optimal amount of soap and cleaning agent to maximize the efficiency of cleaning whatever it is you’re cleaning. Okay? Now very important. The problem is how many good washer and dryer, how many good washing laundry mat mechanics do you have floating around?

Jordan Berry [00:19:40]:
Ah, dude, I don’t know. If anybody has a list of them, give them to me because I can never find laundry mechanics.

Rick Rome [00:19:46]:
Well, if you think that list is short, try injection soap mechanics. Okay. Yeah, it’s a nightmare. It’s a bleeping nightmare. And so when the little gear winds down the rubber gear and it becomes like numb and it’s not pumping out the right amount of soap, so it’s supposed to pump out, call it four ounces of soap, let’s say. And it’s only pumping out one ounce. And now you’re not getting the cleaning you want and that’s no good. I almost lost my biggest customer because of that.

Rick Rome [00:20:21]:
All right? They’re like, Rick, two weeks went by, I had no idea that it was only pumping out one ounce of soap when it should have been pumping out, you know, three or four. Right. There’s just so much at risk. And unless you have a full time engineer, AKA someone’s going to fix your washers, dryers, folding machines if you have them, your ironers if you have them, your injection systems if you have them. I think you’re getting the point here. It adds up. Okay? So the risk reward to me at that point wasn’t there. So then I came across, you know, power my capsules.

Rick Rome [00:21:00]:
75% of what I do is now done with my power packs. Okay. And I think we mentioned I do 20. Let’s just do these 20. It’s an easier number from a math perspective. 20,000 pounds a day of laundry.

Jordan Berry [00:21:21]:
It’s a lot of laundry.

Rick Rome [00:21:22]:
It’s a lot of laundry. Okay? So 75% of that is being completed by my capsules. My staff is happier because no more measuring, no more injection mishaps or not noticing. Right. My managers are happier. It’s just easier, less cleaning to do of the equipment because you just throw them in the machine. Right. You use one capsule.

Rick Rome [00:21:50]:
The big the 501s is one for every £20 and the little ones are one for every £15. And if you, let’s say you buy the lavender and it’s a 30 pound order, you could use a five in one lavender and the regular lavender. And then you get the cleaning power necessary because it’s £30 versus 20. But if you want to double up and use two packs, it’s fine, no problem. And I’m saving money because there’s no more overpouring. Okay, I didn’t even talk about that. That’s not part of that 20%. I mean, my staff is no different than anyone else’s staff.

Rick Rome [00:22:27]:
I swear to God, they drink this stuff. I don’t quite get it, but it just goes down and down and down. So now you have a measurable way, an ROI on one of your most important, I don’t know what you call stove. I can’t call it equipment, but I mean, it’s as important for sure. Yeah, it’s as important as the water, the washers, and the dryers, right? I mean, those four things. I can’t think of anything more important in the laundry than those four things. So why are we only focused always on the washer or the dryer, right? I mean, water. You better make sure you got a good PH balance.

Rick Rome [00:23:08]:
Of course. Right. But at the end of the day, soap is. I would put soap right there too. So I have saved money, I’ve improved on my cleaning efficacy, and my staff is so, so happy, which makes my life happy because I’m not getting complaints about, oh, I didn’t have enough soap. Oh, shit. I got to run out to the supermarket and go buy, you know, the thing of tide. That’s $15.

Rick Rome [00:23:36]:
That’s going to last for half a second in my place, right? So, yeah, it’s just been great. It’s easy. We have subscription basis, so every time you order, if you’re on subscription, which means at least once a month. No, once every six weeks. Excuse me. You’ll save 10% on every order and on any order, over 400 bucks. It’s free shipping and none of that. And the cost, it’s less than Costco, less than Walmart, less than Amazon.

Rick Rome [00:24:05]:
And by the way, it’s a five in one. Okay, I don’t see anything over there that is even remotely close to a five in one. And the 10x soap versus 3x, I think I’ve seen once or twice. Okay, no more Oxy, no more Downy. It’s all built in. You tell me.

Jordan Berry [00:24:24]:
Super convenient, dude. I mean, I do love it because it has the things that you need. It’s super convenient. And as long as your attendance knows. Goes in the machine, not in the little tray on the top.

Rick Rome [00:24:39]:
Yes.

Jordan Berry [00:24:39]:
That was like the bane of my existence. You know, whenever people put them in the trays, like, dude, the pods go in the machines, right? And obviously your attendants will know that. But as long as they go in the machines, like, man, the ease of the. I’ll call them capsules as well. The ease of the capsules is. It’s incredible, right? Like, you just. You chuck them in. There’s no measuring.

Jordan Berry [00:24:59]:
There’s no. You just chuck them in there. And I’d say maybe slightly less efficient in terms of time and labor as injection, but when you factor in all the stuff you just talked about, I mean, it.

Rick Rome [00:25:15]:
It’s equal.

Jordan Berry [00:25:16]:
Compelling. Yeah, it’s a compelling, compelling option there for sure. And even, even the, the concentrate option, right? Like, if you’re not sold on the, on the capsules for whatever reason, the, the Concentrate option is also compelling because like you said, you know, if you mix it yourself, you’re saving a huge chunk of money there, which is big time.

Rick Rome [00:25:39]:
I mean there’s big deal. No phosphates, no phase, no dyes. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s biodegradable. It’s, it’s, it’s incredible stuff. It really works great. So it, it meets the, you know, the green standard for sure and it cleans the heck out of stuff, which is fantastic. I mean, let me ask you this question from a self service and I’m going to put you on the spot for a second. If you were to buy, you know, when you buy, I don’t know, a 10 ounce Tide bottle or gain or whatever it is, what’s the percentage that a store owner would make? So for example, if it costs you $5 from the wholesaler, what do you sell it for usually? What’s the markup?

Jordan Berry [00:26:25]:
I try to double it if, if I can. And then you know, depending on the product, sometimes I’ll eat the, eat the taxes on it. So I’ll subtract out taxes. Sure. But sometimes I’ll double it and then add the taxes to it.

Rick Rome [00:26:41]:
So double. So I was in a, I was in one of our custom, a custom. Well, a soap customer and he had the old school gumball machine. But inside the gumball machine were the plastic things that you would, the little.

Jordan Berry [00:26:59]:
Balls like the toy inside it.

Rick Rome [00:27:02]:
Right?

Jordan Berry [00:27:02]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rick Rome [00:27:03]:
He puts our capsule, one capsule in $50 a buck. A buck. I mean he’s making almost 150% margin. Right. So there are even more economical reasons. You can resell it if you have to for whatever reason because people love them. The smell is great. So there’s so many options.

Rick Rome [00:27:29]:
The Ven Pack is coming. It’s just people are going crazy about these things. It’s really great because it makes life easier. You know they say happy wife makes happy life, happy employee makes happy, happy business.

Jordan Berry [00:27:43]:
That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. I mean I think of like Southwest Airlines, right. Like they built their business on that philosophy right there of like how do we make things better for our employees?

Rick Rome [00:27:56]:
Yeah, yeah. It’s all important. Labor turnover is high. It’s hard. Finding good people is even harder. I mean we have another customer who was, she was telling me, and you know what, maybe I’ll send this audio in for you or her staff. And she does monster business. Her staff loves it so much that they asked her if they could buy a bucket each themselves.

Jordan Berry [00:28:26]:
Yeah.

Rick Rome [00:28:27]:
Out of two. And these are, you know, you can understand who the staff is. Right. We all have the same staff type of person. These are, you know, over $100 buckets they’re spending over $100 for. I mean it’s 425 count. So it’s a lot of soap. But nonetheless that’s a lot of money for, for a laundry attendant to be spending on soap.

Rick Rome [00:28:48]:
And they’re, they’re, they’re loving it. I mean, if that’s not a testimonial in its own right. Someone who does more law, you know, does laundry day in and day out as that’s their job. Literally washing stuff and drying it and bowling it all day long. And the smells, the, you know, the scents that come out of it that are just incredible. They want, they bought buckets. It’s crazy.

Jordan Berry [00:29:09]:
Well, and you know, it’s funny, like I can vouch for that because you picked up the phone right before we hit record here to talk to her and that she said that while I was on the call with you here right before we hit record. So that just happened where she said that. So I, I vouched for that. Which is, it’s pretty cool though. I mean like, that’s a pretty cool testimonial to get from like an employee of a customer.

Rick Rome [00:29:36]:
Yeah. I mean look on the blogs. I mean, I tell you, we get emails from people and again, I wasn’t blowing smoke up your end. I am truly, truly grateful. Like it’s amazing and I’m so happy that so many people are loving it to date, like really loving it and repeat ordering. It’s just really, really great. People want to buy it for, they want to sell it in the store. Their walking customers just want to buy the single ones or where to buy it, you know, hopefully will be with a little bit of luck.

Rick Rome [00:30:08]:
Make that with a lot of bit of luck. You know, we’ll be selling in supermarkets and, and, and you know, some bigger, big box retailers soon. You know, it’s just, it’s just, it’s, it’s really good stuff. It really is incredible. And we have two new purpose scents coming out. One is going to be for like athletic wear, like Lululemon and yoga pants and things like that. So that’ll be great. And then we’re also creating one for.

Rick Rome [00:30:38]:
So horse blankets, dog beds, cat stuff like that. That will be lights out as well.

Jordan Berry [00:30:45]:
Yeah, that better be extra strength. That’s like the bane of our existence. You know, people come in and wash their horse blankets yeah. The one benefit of being in la, New York is not a whole lot of horse blankets.

Rick Rome [00:30:58]:
Very true. Actually there’s quite a few in Orange County. There’s like those horse stables down there. Definitely not too many outside of the guys that pull you through their Central park. Those holes.

Jordan Berry [00:31:08]:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Well, listen, first of all, thank you for coming on to talk about detergent. I know it’s not the like, sexiest topic out there, but it’s one. Like I said, it’s nothing that I’ve, we’ve ever hit, I don’t think on the podcast before, but it’s such an integral piece of what we do. I thought it’d be awesome to just kind of come on and I figured there is nobody better to talk about a boring laundry topic with than you that can make it interesting. If anybody can do it, it’s you, man. So.

Jordan Berry [00:31:41]:
And delivered for sure. Here’s the thing is I, I actually, I actually threatened Rick and he started crying and got scared and agreed that if you’re here listening to this podcast, you could get actually a little discount here. So you want to tell them about that? Try to do it without, without crying.

Rick Rome [00:32:02]:
I promise I won’t cry.

Jordan Berry [00:32:04]:
It was ugly, ugly crying, ugly tears.

Rick Rome [00:32:08]:
It’ll be in your, in your show notes and on the screen here in a moment. Anyone, first time customer who will use the code will get 15% off their first order. No problem. If you forget, okay, you still get 10% off every first. Your first order. And also subscriptions, as I said, you’ll get 10 off every, on every order. And if you order anytime over $400, which our average order is about 550 bucks, pays no shipping. So it’s free shipping.

Rick Rome [00:32:46]:
So yeah, it’s, it’s amazing. Ship time is like one to three days, depending on where you are. Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s what we got going on, man. And we’re looking forward to doing more of it.

Jordan Berry [00:32:58]:
Got a, I got a personal question here for me. Do you ship to Hawaii?

Rick Rome [00:33:06]:
Yeah. In fact, I didn’t want to tell you this prior to getting on this call. We already sent you a bucket.

Jordan Berry [00:33:13]:
Oh, dude, that’s what I’m talking about. That’s what I’m talking about. I’m gonna be smelling fresh and clean.

Rick Rome [00:33:19]:
Listen, you will be. Those flowers will have nothing on that compared to that smell of shirt.

Jordan Berry [00:33:28]:
Dude, that’s awesome. I love it. Thank you, man. Appreciate it.

Rick Rome [00:33:31]:
Thank you.

Jordan Berry [00:33:32]:
I’ll even, I’ll even maybe shoot a little video or something of this thing and let you know what I really think, dude. And then I’ll tell everybody if you’re blowing smoke up off our butts or not.

Rick Rome [00:33:44]:
I would love it. I love it. There was a couple guys have made videos about it and they are thoroughly, thoroughly impressed. They love it, they’re using it more and more and people really appreciate it. Sweet.

Jordan Berry [00:34:00]:
You know, I’m going to do. Actually, I’m going to take it. I’m going to take my laundry and those power packs down the street to the outdoor laundromat that I’m trying to buy down the street from my house over here and use them over there and use as an excuse to try to talk to that owner to give them to sell me his laundromat.

Rick Rome [00:34:15]:
Tell them you can give them free capsules.

Jordan Berry [00:34:17]:
That’s right. I love it. Awesome, man. Well, thank you for coming on, dude. And again, check out that link in the, in the description down below on YouTube or on the show notes page. Hopefully it’ll be up on the screen here too at some point during this interview. Tristan, make it happen. And dude, I appreciate you coming on to tackle a boring but like necessary and actually not all that boring topic with me.

Jordan Berry [00:34:43]:
Hard, hard to talk about, but so good, man. I appreciate it.

Rick Rome [00:34:47]:
Me too, brother. I appreciate it. And you know, listen, it’s one of those pillars in the space and it’s, it needs to be discussed and, and you know, it’s, it’s hard to find quality and service and, and choice. And now, you know what? Again, I, I just say don’t, don’t feed the beast that’s going to put you out of business or take business away from you.

Jordan Berry [00:35:09]:
Yeah. And I mean, I think that that is, dude, that’s, that is something that I think that us independent owner operators are going to need to start taking more seriously. Not just with Tide, but like you said, some of the manufacturers alliance I know has got franchises going out and some other stuff going on. And you know, there’s. There are things happening right now that especially things that we are funding to our own detriment. Right. And we have got to start taking some of these things into our own hands and taking control of our businesses and our industry here because there’s nobody else. There’s nobody else doing it for us.

Jordan Berry [00:35:51]:
The cla is not doing it for us. Nobody’s going to come to your rescue. Like, we’ve got to defend our own businesses here. And this is one part of, part of doing that, man.

Rick Rome [00:36:04]:
This is why we talk, Jordan, because, you know, we. We’re in the trenches like everyone, El, and we’re happy to share our. Our successes and our failures to ensure that other people don’t, you know, don’t fall into the pitfalls of our failures and can and probably would take our. Our wins to greater levels than we could. Right?

Jordan Berry [00:36:23]:
Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Awesome, man. Well, I appreciate you all you do for this, this industry. I’ve. I’ve told you over all the other podcasts, like, you are doing awesome stuff.

Rick Rome [00:36:33]:
Thanks, brother.

Jordan Berry [00:36:33]:
I really appreciate. And I appreciate you taking the time to. Come on, man. Let’s do it again soon.

Rick Rome [00:36:39]:
I hope so, brother. Have a great one. And aloha.

Jordan Berry [00:36:43]:
Aloha. I like it. See you, man.

Rick Rome [00:36:46]:
See it. All right.

Jordan Berry [00:36:47]:
I hope you enjoyed that show with Rick Rome. I know you did. He’s always a good time to chat with about laundry and talking about detergent. Man, who would have thunk it? A whole episode on detergent. Now we’ve done it all, 198 episodes in, we can check the box that we have now spoken about everything that’s ever worth talking about on the podcast.

Rick Rome [00:37:07]:
Just kidding.

Jordan Berry [00:37:08]:
But listen, huge shout out to Rick for. For jumping on and try to tackle a kind of a boring topic with me, but one again, that is so integral to our business, our businesses. So listen, get after it. As always, action is what paves the way to success. You’re going to accomplish your goals by taking action. So make sure you’re taking some action today, if possible. If not, this week, and we’ll see you next time. Peace.