Nicholas Gomez [00:00:00]:
Hey.

Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
Hey, what’s up, guys? It’s Jordan with the Laundromat Resource podcast. This is episode 215 and I’m pumped to hear today because today we have Nicholas Gomez on the show today. And you know what? I received a message from him and I said, and he said to me, hey, I would love to share on the podcast how AI turned my Laundromat business around. And I was like, color me intrigued. I’ve got to hear this story. And that is the story that we’re going to hear today from Nicholas. Listen, I get it. If you’re kind of like, oh man, another AI thing, I get it.

Jordan Berry [00:00:35]:
You might be tired of it. This is not only AI stuff, there’s a lot of really great stuff, Laundromat related in here. But you shouldn’t be tired of AI stuff because there’s a lot going on with AI. It’s changing really quickly all the time right now. So we’re going to jump into with Nicholas here in a second. You’re going to have your mind blown away by what he’s got going on. However, real quick, before we jump into that, I just want to take a second to invite you to come hang out with me in Hawaii. Once again, I am putting on an event, the Laundromat accelerator Hawaii.

Jordan Berry [00:01:08]:
It’s November 21st to 24th. It’s going to be on the sandy beaches and sun shining waters. I don’t know. The water’s on sunshine, reflections on the water. I don’t know. We’re going to be in Waikiki beach putting on a small Laundromat event here where the focus of it is we’re bringing in high level people to help you specifically improve your specific business. That is the focus of this is an action based event here. We’re intentionally capping it at 20.

Jordan Berry [00:01:44]:
No more than 20 people are coming to this thing and Laundromat specific. This is an opportunity for you to get in the room with people who are Laundromat nerds just like you, just like me. And we’re going to talk all things Laundromats and you’re going to walk away from this thing with a 90 day plan to increase the revenue of your Laundromat. And in fact, I mentioned on the news episode last week, I’m so confident that you will get bare minimum, bare minimum, three times the value of your investment of buying a ticket to this thing that I will give you money back guarantee if you don’t feel like you’re walking away with at least three times your investment in this ticket. I will out personally, I will refund you your money personally out of my personal paycheck that I don’t really get. But I will refund you. I’m that confident. And listen, not only are you going to get great stuff, it’s going to be in Hawaii, in paradise here.

Jordan Berry [00:02:43]:
And while we’re going to be networking hard, we’re going to be working hard on your business is going to be, this is going to be a working thing. We’re going to be actually working on your business. But let’s just be real. We’re going to be in Hawaii. We’re going to be on W K. So we’re going to kick this thing off with a cruise off of W Kiki beach to watch the fireworks over WI beach on Friday night and doing some, you know, hanging out and enjoying time together before we roll into the weekend where we’re going to hit it hard with some incredible people coming to help you specifically with your business. We’ve got some different things planned that you don’t really get at any of these other events that have more people at them. Like hot seats where we’re gonna have a panel of people that are gonna help you with your business, tackle your business’s biggest problems, whether that’s getting into the business or probably more likely how can you fix existing problems in your business or how can you scale your business right.

Jordan Berry [00:03:44]:
And we’re gonna have some hot seats where you’re gonna get input from some real pros on how to, how to do that in your business. And obviously there’s going to be a lot of good information, a lot of good tools and resources. We are Laundromat resource after all. So you’re going to get some resources and we’re going to wrap this thing up with a little bit lighter on the work side. Still some work, but a little bit lighter on the work side. On the last day on Monday, we’re going to all cruise over the other side of the island to Kualoa Ranch where they filmed Jurassic Park, Lost and a bunch of other movies. And we’re heading over to Secret island where we’re going to spend the day doing a little bit of work but a whole lot of playing on the water. We’ve got kayaks, we’ve got stand up paddle boards, there’s turtles swimming around over there.

Jordan Berry [00:04:28]:
You can go out to the sandbar, play some volleyball or you know, there’s a whole bunch of stuff going on over there. It’s gonna be a good time or you just kind of hang out too. We’ll, we’ll have food galore all weekend. I mean, it’s gonna be great. I’m just excited about it. I’m excited for some of you guys to come out and hang out with me and some other high level people that are going to be there. And listen, you’re going to leave here with a better business. That’s a personal guarantee.

Jordan Berry [00:04:54]:
So listen, come on out to Hawaii. Check out laundromatresource.com Hawaii if you’re interested. And feel free to reach out if you have any questions. Okay. Without further ado, let’s jump into it with Nicholas and talk about how AI turned his Laundromat around. Nicholas, thank you for coming on the show, man. How are you doing today?

Nicholas Gomez [00:05:15]:
Doing fabulous. It’s, it’s a beautiful humid day here in Northern Michigan, so it’s unlike the weather I hear that’s going on in Hawaii. I’m a little jealous that you’re there. Yeah, no, it’s, it’s a beautiful day and things are jiving really well, so couldn’t be any happier.

Jordan Berry [00:05:35]:
Awesome. Yeah, well, you are, you’re safe from the recent tsunami threat that we had out there in Michigan and it turns out we also were safe from that. But, you know, a little chaos ensued leading up to it. But listen, man, I am super excited to get into it with you today. We just had a little chat before we hit record and it got me super jazzed up. We’re going to hit some topics that are near and dear to my heart and I’m super excited about in the industry as well. So as we jump into that, tell us a little bit about you and maybe how you got into the business and, and when you got into the business and then we’ll go from there.

Nicholas Gomez [00:06:18]:
Yeah. So in, in general, I have a wife, a partner. She would be here, but she does have a day job and she’s doing.

Jordan Berry [00:06:28]:
For now. For now.

Nicholas Gomez [00:06:29]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:06:30]:
Yeah.

Nicholas Gomez [00:06:30]:
She is a little jealous. Not little, but a lot. And, but she’s the reason why I’m here. So let me give you the timeline. Four and a half years ago, we’re like a December, just a random December. We’ll just call it Tuesday. Right. And she, her and I, she was in the kitchen with me and I said, hey, if there’s ever a business that you want to own, what would it be? And she said, a Laundromat.

Nicholas Gomez [00:06:58]:
Now, Jordan, I’ve been with that woman for 20 plus years. I can’t Really, I don’t want to do the math and embarrass myself.

Jordan Berry [00:07:04]:
Yeah, yeah.

Nicholas Gomez [00:07:05]:
And I’m like, laundry mat. Like, where’d that come from?

Jordan Berry [00:07:10]:
There’s a lot of, like, I’m having flashbacks the same. Because that’s how it worked out for me as well. Yeah.

Nicholas Gomez [00:07:19]:
So we just went through a whole conversation about that. Now, that being said, I’ve been in the fishing bait business, fishing sporting goods bait business, since 2002. And it’s about 15 years ago I invested in live bait and tackle vending machines. So she’s been on a roller coaster ride with me as far as unique entrepreneurship and making money other ways in business. So for her to say laundromat, that kind of was a different thing for me because it actually sounded normal, you know, like, not counting.

Jordan Berry [00:07:59]:
That’s funny. Yeah, that’s funny. Normally people are like, that’s weird. But you’re like, like, oh, that sounds like more normal.

Nicholas Gomez [00:08:06]:
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, there’s a little more normal than that. So I just said, hey, you know, that’s a unique thing. Let’s start. Let’s check it out. You know, we hopped on the old YouTubes, discovered, discovered you and started going through your resources on YouTube and the blog posting and, you know, other, you know, media, social medias and, you know, content creators that are out there that are creating great content about this thing that everybody calls passive income. Huge air quotes. And Becky’s.

Nicholas Gomez [00:08:41]:
Becky was fortunate enough to grow up next to a husband and a wife that owned a laundromat in the town that we live in. And I said, hey, why don’t you give them a call, like, you know, you’re good friends with them and blah, blah. And come to find out, well, the husband had passed away at that time or whatever. And so she made a connection with the daughter and she says, actually, I’m taking care of the laundromat. Got this, you know, mom isn’t doing this. You know, she. She’s retired and blah, blah. So she took over that.

Nicholas Gomez [00:09:16]:
So she had a lot of questions and went through the whole discovery phase, you know, asking questions. So I would say if you’re looking at getting in this industry, find somebody, ask a lot of questions. Go, go with a piece of paper and some questions ahead of time, you know, make it worth their time, add value to their time, and then get those questions asked or answered. You know, ask them and get them answered. Or, you know, come to good resources like, like you have Jordan and jump in a community. You know, I think Community is important when you want to make a big investment of either your time or other resources. And long story short, in that we discovered you don’t need to own a laundromat to be in the laundry business. So we sat down, her and I sat down and we said things we won’t do if we’re going to get in this business.

Nicholas Gomez [00:10:06]:
One we weren’t going to do like, well, you don’t need to. Let me back up. You don’t need to own a laundromat to be in the laundry business. So that meant that we could do pickup and delivery. Okay, so then pick up a delivery is an option. Use other laundromats. There’s other people that were doing that. Where are we positioned in the market in Northern Michigan? Well, that’s unique.

Nicholas Gomez [00:10:33]:
You know, let’s be a pioneer if we can. And then. So we wouldn’t do laundry at our home. That was off the table. Check. Not going to do that. The other part is because I am passionate about technology. I said we have to implement some sort of technology.

Nicholas Gomez [00:10:48]:
We’re not going to do a paper and pen, phone calls, text messages. And so we went on a discovery doing pickup and delivery concept using technology. And then we start out and we are still with clean cloud as a POS system. We start out with them, they’re more affordable at that time for our pickup and delivery and they still are. You know, it’s a good system. Yeah. And then we just went, went to running with it, acquired some clients and then two years ago, as of today, I was telling you, just before we hit record, we decided to take that cash we stacked and allocate some resources to personal laundromat and we did. And so this is our two year anniversary as of today and it’s been, it’s been a fun, fun opportunity.

Nicholas Gomez [00:11:47]:
So that’s how I got into the business with Becky. She was, she’s a pioneer and really she, she’s got a heart with the business. It’s just, I think it’s fortunate but unfortunate she also has her day job where she touches the community in different ways. So it’s kind of hard to give up that good pay and benefits because she is the insurance holder.

Jordan Berry [00:12:16]:
Yeah, yeah.

Nicholas Gomez [00:12:17]:
The retirement, you know, not a lot.

Jordan Berry [00:12:19]:
Of insurance benefits and bait and tackle offending. Is that.

Nicholas Gomez [00:12:24]:
No. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:12:27]:
There’s no like bait and tackle vending union or association or anything?

Nicholas Gomez [00:12:32]:
No, no, it’s.

Jordan Berry [00:12:34]:
Yeah.

Nicholas Gomez [00:12:34]:
Oh yeah, yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:12:37]:
Well, you know, that’s, that’s one vending machine I haven’t seen In a laundromat. Did you put one of them in.

Nicholas Gomez [00:12:41]:
Your laundromat last year? I had one. I took off location. I put it out front here. It did quite well, really. But takes away from the brand that we’re trying to.

Jordan Berry [00:12:58]:
Yeah.

Nicholas Gomez [00:12:58]:
Establish, you know, we don’t want to be like, you know, a bait tackle shop slash candy shop, slash, you know, changed, you know, any type of.

Jordan Berry [00:13:12]:
Exactly, exactly.

Nicholas Gomez [00:13:13]:
You just want to focus on laundry and. Yeah. So just to recap too, about the bait tackle. So as of this year, I am 100 out of the live bait tackle vending business. And I pulled my last machine just shortly after a memorial weekend. And it’s just. It’s focusing on laundry now. That’s all.

Nicholas Gomez [00:13:32]:
All awesome. We’re doing, you know, or I’m doing, you know, alongside Becky. So.

Jordan Berry [00:13:39]:
But yeah, trading in the worms for the turns.

Nicholas Gomez [00:13:42]:
I love it.

Jordan Berry [00:13:43]:
I love it, I love it. Yeah.

Nicholas Gomez [00:13:45]:
Worms to turn. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:13:46]:
Okay, so let’s. Let’s rewind it here a little bit and maybe dig in a little bit more. First of all, very cool that you are sort of. Sort of pioneered this pickup and delivery without owning a laundromat early on. How did that go? I mean, you casually mentioned that you decided to start this business and picked up a couple clients like it. They just fell in your lap or something. How did. How did you actually launch? Because I get asked this a lot like how actually launch pickup and delivery without owning a location of a brick and mortar location.

Nicholas Gomez [00:14:21]:
So stemming from my experience being in the business, I was and trying to identify locations for vending machines. And I took a lot of that knowledge and I said, okay, need to find my anchor. I need to find a set of anchor clients. And even if it’s making less profit than what I want, this is just me talking for us, you know, Becky and I, that if I can. My goal was. And strategy was find 10 that I could see us establishing $35 a stop times 10 per week as 350 per week. Right. You’re going to have some come and go.

Nicholas Gomez [00:15:08]:
But that was the ultimate goal and we achieved that. We, you know, we went through our friend list, we went through church people, you know, like we went to senior organizations and just trying to identify the market that that would be a good fit the pickup delivery for asking and just doing different things on that. But it was. The whole strategy was to find a set of core people that would help us one, establish our processes, our outreach as far as finding and acquiring more customers. Because if you’re Doing well for them, they’re going to talk about you. Right. And then also see how much of a demand it would be accepted in the community. Like, are they, are there more people calling or are they asking for other services? Hey, do you do dry cleaning? Well, I don’t do dry cleaning and.

Nicholas Gomez [00:16:00]:
Okay. But I do know a place I could take it to. Is that something you’d be interested in? You know, so it’s just kind of those type of things I will say is a logistical. The pickup delivery without owning a facility can be a logistical nightmare. And my experience from the vending and knowing and understanding routing and making, making money at each stop, like I had it calculated in my head that every time that I rolled my truck to go to a machine diminishing machine, I was dumping $20. It didn’t matter if it was from this location to 15 miles away or a mile away, it was a $20 stop. So I had to take that strategy and apply it to the pickup and delivery as well. Every time I went to a stop, I had to allocate.

Nicholas Gomez [00:16:49]:
I think we allocated like $7 per stop. And what it cost us now at times it didn’t. It cost much less. At times it costs a little bit more. But on the average it was a certain percentage. So we, we did that and solving our logistical of it. And then I will say the hard part for us to understand if, if we didn’t have the experience in business, like, best way I can describe it, is understanding how to make money when you’re buying something. Taking an analogy that I.

Nicholas Gomez [00:17:26]:
I’ve heard from the restaurant industry. The restaurant industry buys at a pound and sells at an ounce. So if I was to take and apply that to laundry, it was understanding how to be financially aware of how you’re going to break down how much it costs per pound, how much laundry you’re weighing versus sizing to the machine, to the cost of the machine. And that’s where, Jordan, a lot of your resources that we gleaned from and others that are out there in the industry is if you, if you dive into that, you, you guys teach that stuff. And so it was, it was a great way to understand that. And again, taking that analogy that I said about the restaurant business, they buy at a pound and sell it an ounce. That’s what we’re doing really in the, in the laundry business when you’re doing, especially in the pickup delivery, how we started out, if you don’t have that, it’s tough. If you don’t have that knowledge it’s tough.

Nicholas Gomez [00:18:27]:
You can lose money really, really quick. That’s my statement.

Jordan Berry [00:18:32]:
Yeah, no, no, that’s, that’s 100% true. And that’s, I mean, I think a lot of people struggle with that. Getting into the pickup and delivery, whether you own a location or not, is, you know, getting a hold of those numbers and figuring out how they all shake out and how much you should be pricing and how to streamline your expenses and your routes. And like, efficiency is huge when it comes to the pickup and delivery side of the business. And you’ve got to be proactive about both sides on the, on the revenue side and how much you’re charging, but also on the expense side, how much it’s costing. You actually drive around and stop, which I love, by the way. I haven’t really heard anybody talk about, like, how much it costs per stop. I was like, taking notes.

Jordan Berry [00:19:20]:
I was like, oh, that’s a really good way to think about it. I like that.

Nicholas Gomez [00:19:22]:
Yeah, yeah. Cost per stop. That was, that was one thing that we, you know, calculated out. The other part, though, that I bring to the table in that early stages of the pickup and delivery is what’s the opportunity cost? Yeah, you might lose. Lose a little bit in those stops, but how much more exposure is it going to be if you have a van that’s plastered with your logo or your, or your car, or you can drop a flyer off someplace or you know, that type of thing that it puts you in those locations and you’re not. Might be not making as much money or. I guess what I’m saying is sometimes it’s probably not wise to just focus on the initial. Like this stop makes me this much money because.

Nicholas Gomez [00:20:12]:
Or I’m going to be losing it, so I don’t want to take it. What other side benefit are you going to get? What other opportunities are you going to get? So you have to kind of evaluate that. So that’s one thing that I definitely would like to share with the community is be aware, have an open mind of what opportunities are out there and around and we can go into a little bit more of that.

Jordan Berry [00:20:33]:
Yeah, I was going to ask you that. Like what? I mean, I love, like, obviously, like the vehicle wrap stuff is a big deal. I, you know, I know, I know some people wrap vehicles and just park them on busy intersections when they don’t have routes going or. I mean, I’ve heard people do all kinds of stuff with wrapped vehicles, which is great. Any other things that you’ve tried that you felt like, have Been successful. Yeah.

Nicholas Gomez [00:21:02]:
So one of the things that I needed to do was to identify customers. Right. Because there was different markets, different ideas. That’s one thing too. I will say is if you get in the pickup delivery, you’re gonna go, this is what we did. You’re gonna go like a shotgun approach. You’re gonna say, well, we’re gonna try and sell the pickup delivery to the people that go to the laundromat, or you’re gonna sell to a family. Like, I guess what I’m saying is ident that we definitely would have fast tracked and not had as many mistakes early on if we just identified our avatar, our ideal salesperson, or not our ideal salesperson, our ideal customer.

Nicholas Gomez [00:21:46]:
So once we did that, and of course this is shortly after post Covid type of thing, I actually Jordan started doing doordashing and instacarting. It put me in different neighborhoods. It made me aware of different markets within our community. That would be more ideal with the concept of. That would be more accepting, I guess. Not ideal, but more accepting of the concept of, well, I can get my laundry done too. I already pay somebody to come cut my grass. I’m already getting somebody deliver my groceries for.

Nicholas Gomez [00:22:25]:
Somebody will do our laundry for us too. And that really helped out Becky and I by doing it, because then we were able to not necessarily probably develop a customer list, but a customer area that we could target. And now there are some tactics of, you know, like, hey, you drop a postcard off, you know, that type of thing. Oh, well, I just delivered groceries to this house. It’s a 300 order. They must have six kids. I see a suburban. I bet you they’d be a good customer for laundry.

Nicholas Gomez [00:23:03]:
Let’s drop them off a postcard, you know, that type of thing. So we did some of that early on. We didn’t do it too long until, you know, we just find other methods and means of like, okay, we got our ideal customer, we got our ideal target markets, different areas within our community.

Jordan Berry [00:23:22]:
So, yeah, I think that’s genius. Like doing the door. I know some people probably listen to this and be like, I would never do doordash or instacart or whatever. But listen, I think it’s genius and I. I think you cannot. My question is going to be like, how did you determine who your avatar was and what they look like? And that’s kind of what you’re explaining, right? Yeah, I think you cannot overemphasize how important it is to know who your customer is. Is. And.

Jordan Berry [00:23:52]:
And what their needs Are and how you can meet those needs, you know, through your business. And so, you know, I. I think it’s genius. I think, you know, whatever means necessary to figure that out, that’s just gonna set you up for success long term doing that. So I love that. I love it.

Nicholas Gomez [00:24:10]:
One of the other things, too, is, you know, put us in areas where now, like, it’s intuitive. If you. I think maybe it happens in other parts of the country. At least here in Northern Michigan, when there’s a graduating senior, you know, from high school, they stick a yard sign. Well, what do they just tell you? They have a kid, they have a child that’s going to college. Well, at Christmas time, would that be an address that you could maybe send a postcard to to say, hey, we got this, you know, laundry service. We got. We can do your child’s.

Nicholas Gomez [00:24:44]:
You know. So those type of opportunities really has helped us early on to identify that. And just simple things, like I said a yard sign or, you know, and not. I don’t want to get too involved in, like, creepy thoughts, but, you know, like, kids, swing sets in the backyard. Well, they’re a family, you know, maybe. Maybe knock on their door, like, hey, you know.

Jordan Berry [00:25:04]:
Yeah, well, listen, we all know kids are filthy, disgusting creatures. And so you see a swing set back there, and you’re like, oh, there’s some gremlins living at this house for sure. Let’s. Let’s help these people out and wash these gremlins clothes because they probably got to peel them off these kids. I know how it goes.

Nicholas Gomez [00:25:22]:
Yeah, exactly. That’s just some of the things. And like I said, I can’t emphasize. And you said to identify your market. What we thought was going to be our market, we burned through so much time.

Jordan Berry [00:25:37]:
Yeah, well, dude, you know what? I love the instacart doordash thing because you’re right. That’s like a very similar demographic of who’s going to do pickup and delivery laundry a lot of times. But you’re. I mean, what you did, whether you were like, thinking of it this way or not, but what you did was you got paid to do market research, right? For your own business, which I don’t know, dude. I’m like, this is.

Nicholas Gomez [00:26:03]:
The other part of it is. The other part is too. I want to say this is. It helped me develop as we started to scale. It helped me, me being Becky and I develop relationships. Now that we can tap into those people that we know that do those doordashes and those instacarts and then we can ask them to step in as a contractor for us because we’ve already qualified them.

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

Nicholas Gomez [00:26:29]:
You know, yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:26:31]:
Dang, man, that makes sense. Yeah, I. It makes a lot of sense. I. I just. I love it. Like I said, there’s going to be people out there. It’s not for you, and I get that.

Jordan Berry [00:26:40]:
It’s not going to be for everybody, but getting paid to do some market research to learn sort of how the logistics works, too. I mean, if you’re going around driving from here and there and stuff, you’re learning a little bit of logistics and you’re able to connect with potential drivers that you can tap, you know, either to employ or. And. Or to use as contractors when needed. Like that is all kinds of wins stacking up on top of each other for, you know, very little, very little effort, really.

Nicholas Gomez [00:27:11]:
Now, I will say Walid talked about. About that concept. So in one of his YouTube videos that we have followed, and I was like, holy cow. Yeah, I don’t want to say that. I thought of it 100. It has been talked about by a couple other people. So we did.

Jordan Berry [00:27:28]:
I’m give you credit for it, Waleed. You get no credit, buddy. I’m just kidding. Hey, everybody, while we’re talking about everybody, go sign up for the Laundry CEO conference in Dallas in October. So there you go, Waleed. You’re getting credit, buddy. It was. It genuinely.

Jordan Berry [00:27:42]:
I went to the last one and it was like the best laundromat conference I’ve ever been to. So really sign up for it. Yeah, do. Do as Nicholas did and set yourself a benchmark. And when you hit it and exceed it, buy yourself a ticket for the Laundry CEO conference.

Nicholas Gomez [00:27:58]:
Yeah, definitely. And then with your wife, you know, because that’s.

Jordan Berry [00:28:01]:
That’s right.

Nicholas Gomez [00:28:02]:
I got it, you know.

Jordan Berry [00:28:03]:
Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. I love that. Okay, so you guys started that pickup and delivery, and then how long were you doing it before you decided, hey, let’s try to get a location?

Nicholas Gomez [00:28:14]:
Well, so the laundry mat friendship that Becky had had from early on in the childhood and then had asked those questions to the daughter and husband and then the mom, they said, hey, you know, we actually have been for sale. Is that something you want to pursue? So that was the first store that we were looking, and that’s when we discovered that not all laundromats are. Not all laundromat owners own the real estate. Didn’t know that because they’ve always rented. The laundromat building was built to be a laundromat, but the businesses that have gone through there through the last 40 years have always rented. So that was a new thought. Like I didn’t know that. Crazy.

Nicholas Gomez [00:29:07]:
So we went through that discovery, we were looking to purchase it and then we hired an attorney and paid him a little bit of money, right. And he said, gomez family, I think you may want to reevaluate this. And we said, why? He says you’re evaluating this as a laundromat. It is actually needing to be evaluated as a dry cleaner because it has a dry cleaner in it. And we’re like, okay. Really? He said, yeah. So he went on this whole story. He had a client the year before that had purchased a dry cleaner laundromat.

Nicholas Gomez [00:29:50]:
And it sends triggers. He went through this whole thing, sends triggers to the environmental. You know, we call it the Eagle or DEQ here in Michigan. Then they settled at sixty five thousand dollar remediation, which we were like, okay, what’s that? You know, that’s craziness. And it was all because of the chemical and the dry cleaners called perc. So we just, we learned a ton about that. Like it was, it could have been so disastrous and us doing it if we would have went and pulled the trigger. And so we backed out of that and then we kept shopping around and we were actually going to buy our warehouse and set up shop that way.

Nicholas Gomez [00:30:35]:
And then we came to Super Clean Laundry and had a realtor approached and, and approached the owner. They had owned it for 29 years, I think 28, 29 years before we bought it. And he said, hey, I like that common them zeros. Yeah, we’ll do that. It worked out to be a better deal because we actually bought the real estate and for us. And it then we also acquired a tenant because there’s attached hair salon next, next door to us. So it was like a win. It was a lot of wins.

Nicholas Gomez [00:31:13]:
That being said, we’re on a well. So that was a new discovery.

Jordan Berry [00:31:18]:
Okay.

Nicholas Gomez [00:31:19]:
It’s a good, it’s a positive. We’re on a, we’re on a well with city sewer and a township tax. So that’s great. But it’s not free like people think because we have water softener. I mean we go through two bags, we go through 80 pounds of salt a day at times in our peak. So what we don’t pay in quote unquote city water bill, we actually pay out treatment.

Jordan Berry [00:31:46]:
Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. I mean a lot to unpack there. Just, you know, very high level. Just in case anybody doesn’t know what he’s talking about. So laundromats and dry cleaners are. They’re different businesses. I know they’re both in the business of cleaning clothes.

Jordan Berry [00:32:03]:
They’re very different. And I get asked a lot about, you know, their environmental concerns or anything about laundromats. Typically there’s not environmental concerns when you’re buying or selling a laundromat or a real estate with the laundromat. But dry cleaners, however, there are implications to that environmentally. And sometimes the remediation he was talking about is where they basically have to go in and clean out the soil and, you know, everything, get all the chemicals out of the soil that leach into it from the dry cleaner. And so that can get very, very expensive. And if you don’t know about it before you buy it, which you should, but if you don’t, I mean, that could be a punch to the gut for sure.

Nicholas Gomez [00:32:45]:
I mean, we learned. We learned terms like vapor intrusion. What’s that? You know, just different. Different things in that call to the attorney. The other part that we learned is we thought our lender was kind of dragging their feet. We didn’t know why. So we went to the bank that we go through and we just threw the same thing. And they said we would never finance that.

Nicholas Gomez [00:33:10]:
So just in the financing part of it. And the reason why they wouldn’t finance it is because it was a dry cleaner.

Jordan Berry [00:33:15]:
Yeah.

Nicholas Gomez [00:33:16]:
So that was a new discovery. So, you know, that’s. That’s now as we look to, to I will share, I mean, in that discovery too. Let me back up here. Becky’s goal is to own seven laundromats. And so that’s one of the first questions we ask if we get approached, like, hey, do you want to buy a laundromat? Or hey, we know there’s a lot of like, do you know if it’s a dry cleaner? Has it ever been a dry cleaner? That’s the first question we ask. Yeah, because that. We don’t want to get involved in any of the.

Nicholas Gomez [00:33:44]:
Let me take that. We would. Now, we have better risk tolerance now just, just from the resources we’ve acquired through ownership and laundry. But. And the questions to ask. But we, we wouldn’t have done it, you know, two years ago, so.

Jordan Berry [00:34:00]:
Yeah, yeah. Well, and that’s part of, like, evolving in the business. Right. Like, you know, so many people I talk to are, you know, it. It can get very overwhelming, like, oh my gosh, like a dry cleaner. And what is remediated? What is vapor intrusion? Like, what is all this stuff and the learning curve just feels really steep a lot of times. And people just give up. It’s easy to give up.

Jordan Berry [00:34:24]:
And it doesn’t have to be like that. Right. It’s like take steps until you can’t take any steps further and then look to see if there’s anybody else who can take, help you take more steps. Like you’ve guys found a lawyer who helped you figure out like you’re taking steps, but they’re going down the wrong path. Here’s a better path and you found the better path and were able to take it to completion. Right. Like that’s what the process of buying a business, building a business, having any kind of success in life looks like. It’s not a, like, hey, I know all the stuff now, and now I find the perfect thing or I build the perfect thing.

Jordan Berry [00:35:00]:
It never looks like that. It’s always just people taking steps and then pivoting or turning around and starting over or whatever. That’s what it looks like to do it. And then you’ve got this skill set and this confidence and this network that can help you go to the next bigger thing, Whether it’s more locations, another business model, delving into dry cleaners, whatever the case may be. But that’s what it looks like in that process.

Nicholas Gomez [00:35:29]:
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. So with, with that. Well, you know, touching the base where we’re at with it now, like I said, two years, officially two years as of today.

Jordan Berry [00:35:40]:
Happy anniversary, by the way, to you and your wife. Yeah, actually just to you, because your wife didn’t even show up for this, so. I’m just kidding.

Nicholas Gomez [00:35:48]:
Yeah, it’s all good. But what I, I, if I could just press upon what I’ve learned from good resources like, like the laundromat resource and other out there is identify what your mission is. So anytime that Becky and I are talking about things to do with the laundromat, to scale it in different ways, I always come back and I say this to her, you sold me. I’m buying this laundromat under the concept of building pickup and delivery business. That’s it. I don’t want to hear anymore. I don’t want to hear about campers may come. I don’t want to hear about this and that.

Nicholas Gomez [00:36:28]:
You know, we get asked questions like, hey, you know, got you guys are pretty busy because the camper is going to be here. You know, seasonality is. Guess what I’m saying? Or we, we have a lot of migrant workers as some places in different countries. And I’m not going to get into the politics of it, but that can hurt businesses. And so when you have a clear focus, like what I keep coming back to and it’s helped ground Becky and I as we’ve gone through this path is we identified. We’re here to build a pickup and delivery business. That’s it, you know. Yep.

Nicholas Gomez [00:37:02]:
And. And focus on it. It’s. It’s.

Jordan Berry [00:37:04]:
I love it.

Nicholas Gomez [00:37:04]:
It’s more stable for us anyway.

Jordan Berry [00:37:06]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So. So then the goal behind buying a location, buying an actual laundromat was the goal just to kind of bring things in house to solve the logistical nightmare you reference or what was the goal behind buying a location?

Nicholas Gomez [00:37:24]:
To control the environment. Yeah, yeah. To. To set our own hours, control the environment, retirement investment. You know, we own the real estate. The income from the laundromat, you know, gives us income. And Becky’s gonna listen to this at some point. She gets mad at me every time I say it.

Nicholas Gomez [00:37:48]:
I think it was so that way she could buy me a job.

Jordan Berry [00:37:53]:
Get this guy busy. He’s. The vending machines aren’t cutting it.

Nicholas Gomez [00:38:00]:
So I say that just in fun. But yeah, that’s really what it was. Is to build the pickup delivery. But there’s other things that come out. Have come out of that too though. Jordan is. And we touched, we talked a little bit before you hit record is the community aspect. I can’t tell you how many moving stories that.

Nicholas Gomez [00:38:24]:
And it’s hard for me not to get emotional on it. Of people that have come into this, into these doors for years. And we. And I was sharing with you a lady, she had a lot of odor to her, you know, animal odor and that. She was labeled the cat pee lady. You know, I, I got, I. I gotta say it. That’s what it was.

Nicholas Gomez [00:38:47]:
And before we came in, you know, bought the place. Well, just getting to know her name, she’s so awesome, you know. So yeah, the focus has been on the pickup and delivery. But the. Maybe I’m going to say it wrong. The residual effect of it is like the people that come in. The self serve side of it has been so heartwarming. It’s been humbling.

Nicholas Gomez [00:39:12]:
There are, there are champions. When we don’t feel like we’re making it. We. We say, well if, if we can’t make it, then if it goes away, it’s going to affect Veronica, it’s going to affect their family. It’s going to affect. So we have to try and figure it out. We have to be the leaders here, we have to be strong and do it for the people of the community. So that’s one thing that I could say is if you end up going a path and identifying what you want to do, just be open minded.

Nicholas Gomez [00:39:45]:
If I could just depress on people. Be open minded to what the other effects, I think is correct. I say it right, the other effects or the other supports that you’re going to be giving or getting. And it’s just, it’s a beautiful thing. Yeah, I can’t say enough positive about it, you know.

Jordan Berry [00:40:05]:
So, yeah, that, that story is.

Nicholas Gomez [00:40:10]:
You.

Jordan Berry [00:40:10]:
Know, it’s, it’s funny. Like, I talk a lot about here. Like, I really, really trying to push, you know, whether through these interviews, podcast interviews or the news episodes or whatever. Like, I’m trying to push, like we have the ability to really make a tangible, real difference in our communities and not just our communities. And maybe I focus too much on like the big picture community, but we have the ability to make a big difference in someone’s life. You know, like, she’s not cat pee lady anymore, right? Like, like that she’s a person and just learning her name and having conversations with her and getting to know her in, you know, in the, in the goods and the bads and stuff like that brings value to a person. We have that ability to do that in our communities and, and on a larger scale also. And it’s one of the beautiful things about our, our industry is that we can make a big difference in individualized, but also in sort of the overall picture.

Jordan Berry [00:41:18]:
So I, I like love that you shared that story because it’s just like a, just a highlight on the impact that we can have in people’s lives as, as laundromator. It’s just, you know, it’s this boring business, right? Like, quote, unquote. I don’t know how boring it always is, but it’s a boring business. But like, it’s a, it’s a meaningful business. And you, you talked about it in the sense of like, hey, here’s who we’re thinking about when stuff is tough. And I know you guys have had some ups and downs too. Maybe we can talk about that in a second because I’ve shared mine. But having that, why that, like driving why behind what you’re doing is huge.

Jordan Berry [00:42:02]:
Right? And just pulling motivation from that is huge. And it does keep you going when things get tough, because they do get tough.

Nicholas Gomez [00:42:10]:
Well, I’d like to, if I was to give it a, a label, I guess more properly we call, at least I call it, I call it my weight. Weight and measure evaluation. Right. Basically I, I’m weighing and measuring where that is. And I use example where you think you’re having a bad day just talking to, let’s say my brother or, you know, a family member, like, or a co worker if you’re working, you know, nine to five, like Becky’s working, you know, her nine to five. And, and I know at times she probably has go through her mind like, you have a bad day, you’re having a bad day. Well, let me tell you about the, Let me tell you about the lady that lives in a camper that comes to the laundromat, rides a moped seven miles, and then when she gets here, it takes everything she can just to collect quarters. And then she’s watering down her detergent just to make it through.

Nicholas Gomez [00:43:04]:
And then, oh, by the way, her kids can’t go to school, so now she’s facing truancy. And she feels safe coming to the laundromat because she can see whatever it is on her phone, whether it is in the four walls, whatever the sanctuary that this laundromat built for. And there’s a lot of those out there in the community that we’ve discovered. And I always encourage it. But the weight measure is in. That is like you’re, I just asked, like, oh, you think your day is bad? I say that to myself, you think your day’s bad. And then I, I put identifiers of people that have come in through these doors or just in the laundry business in itself. Yeah, we don’t have it that bad.

Nicholas Gomez [00:43:46]:
I, I don’t have it that bad. Yeah, so. But they feel, they feel great. Like they’re normal to them. That’s normal to live in a camper 365 days a year when the snow’s piling on, you know, that’s. I couldn’t survive that way, but now I know somebody can. So I have a resource, right. And I have a reason to reach out and see, seek those people because we, we have caring hearts, you know, for that.

Nicholas Gomez [00:44:14]:
So.

Jordan Berry [00:44:14]:
Yeah, yeah, it’s pretty cool, man. Very cool. Listen, so you guys started this pickup and delivery service and then you ended up buying a location two year anniversary of owning that location today, which, congratulations again, by the way. And it’s been like totally smooth sailing, right? Is that, I mean, has that been the case or. No, I know I said jokingly because I know that’s not been the case. Even if we hadn’ talk beforehand I would know that’s not the case. But, I mean, talk to. Talk to me a little bit about the journey that it’s been for you guys and what that’s been like.

Nicholas Gomez [00:44:52]:
So when. How do I. How do I feel like I want to start this? The journey is. Is I. I will just start out with saying this. If this is a path that you feel like you want to serve the community, serve your community. And you. You got an entrepreneurship bug or whatever, and.

Nicholas Gomez [00:45:10]:
And we talked about this before you hit record. Let’s say you’re married or you have a partner, you know, you have a significant other that you answer to. Right. Make sure that you’re grounded really well. Because when you take this behemoth of a business on whether it’s a store of five machines or 500 machines, it. It can weigh on you financially, emotionally. And Becky and I, we’ve been through all that, and it’s been tough at times. We burned a lot of resources, not just in financials, but in time.

Nicholas Gomez [00:45:47]:
Like date nights. Day night. Date nights involve folding sheets on a.

Jordan Berry [00:45:57]:
Friday, sheets that’ll test your marriage. Folding fitted sheets together. Yeah.

Nicholas Gomez [00:46:03]:
And going next door to the pizza shop and saying, hey, Marty, it’s date night. And he’s like, ah, we got personal pizzas today. You want pepperoni and she wants ham. Yeah, okay. You know, so it’s kind of. We sacrifice that because it’s a business, but we know at some point in time, and that’s one thing that I. We could talk about even later, is we work in the business, but it’s not. Our end goal is not to do that all the time.

Nicholas Gomez [00:46:32]:
Like, and that’s one thing that we have to do that way. Measure again, like, okay, we hit these benchmarks now. Let’s start working ourselves out of it. And I know that when we start focusing on that, okay, how are we going to transition ourselves out that our marriage, our relationship together will come, become stronger and then. Which, I mean, it is, but. Yeah. Back to what your original question is. It’s been smooth sailing.

Nicholas Gomez [00:46:59]:
No, it hasn’t. In fact, I’ll go ahead and start sharing a story which we’re, you know, talking about. With AI embracing technology, that is one way that has really helped us as a business and as well as Becky and I’s relationship is because we’ve invested in technology to help us get through that. Now, Becky, God bless her, she’s probably gonna get upset. She’s. She’ll be 52 this year. I’ll be 50. So it seems probably scary Technology, you know, scary.

Nicholas Gomez [00:47:31]:
Like, this whole AI thing that’s out there. I don’t.

Jordan Berry [00:47:35]:
I don’t think AI is going to help you get out of trouble for sharing her age with the world here.

Nicholas Gomez [00:47:40]:
So.

Jordan Berry [00:47:40]:
Yeah, no, sorry. It’s been really good knowing you, though. There’s anything else you want to leave for the world here, you should do it now.

Nicholas Gomez [00:47:50]:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But so I would like to say keep an open mind to it because it really has transformed. When we started implementing the technology and the AI back in February, and I’ll go into a deeper personal story in that here in a minute. It really. It catapulted our business, Jordan. It is just so crazy. So, so crazy. And.

Jordan Berry [00:48:17]:
Well, real quick, because I don’t want to interrupt your story here, but one of the things, when I was looking for, you know, podcast guests and stuff, you. You reached out to me and you’re like, hey, you know, I had done a live Q A, live webinar or whatever with rick Rome on YouTube. You can go find it on YouTube. They’re talking about AI for laundromats and stuff. And he specifically shouted you out. And you’re like, hey, I’m the guy that Rick Rome shouted out. And I was like, dude, we’ve got to talk here. So that’s.

Jordan Berry [00:48:46]:
I mean, that’s how we got connected. Is. Is AI.

Nicholas Gomez [00:48:50]:
Yeah, yeah. And. And it’s scary, you know, being. Being at this point in our lives, like. But we had to embrace it.

Jordan Berry [00:48:59]:
So I’ll.

Nicholas Gomez [00:48:59]:
I’ll just start sharing that little bit brief story, and that will tie into, like, our journey to our journey. Part of it. Now, I’m going to apologize if I get emotional, because it is pretty emotional. So back in December, because of being owners a year, you know, a year ago, right, we were. We being me, was making business decisions that was going to financially impact us in a major way. I was. I was hiring people. I was growing the business.

Nicholas Gomez [00:49:33]:
Becky was working her 9 to 5, and I. I grew it too fast with too many resources to. When it came to December, I thought that we were okay financially. See the money coming in, see the money coming out Again, you got to have really strong, open communication. If you do this with a partner, if you do this with your wife or husband, however, that is because that communication can save a big disaster. And we were headed that way. So in February, I watched this little YouTube video from a guy by the name of Joe Dan, Jodan, Reed, Kelly Reed, splash them out, and they were like, showing this whole AI like this phone thing. I’m like, ah, shiny object.

Nicholas Gomez [00:50:24]:
Like, Beck, can we. What do you want to do? Think about this. You know, she’s. I don’t know. That’s 200 bucks a month. I’ll put it on my credit card. If it’s a shiny object, I paid for it. But let me backtrack.

Nicholas Gomez [00:50:37]:
I didn’t know the financial side of how impacting we were at that point in February, right? And so. But I invested in it. Like, I gotta try it. Because I knew we had to trim. Like, I knew there was something up. I knew we had to trim employees. And we were actually hiring people last summer to just man the phone basically to ex, you know, greet people, to answer the phone, to trust in and consistency in our product. And I would go out and do pickup and deliveries as we were doing, because again, that’s what we bought the business for, was to build this whole chaotic mess, right? And so I invested in, took a couple weeks.

Nicholas Gomez [00:51:25]:
It was new. It was frustrating. Sorry, Rick. It was frustrating at first, but I looked at it like this. So is hiring a new employee, like, you’re gonna. You’re gonna go through bumps, and you’re gonna go through bumps not just with the technology, but with the customer acceptance of it. And you have to learn to navigate that. At times it has been hard.

Nicholas Gomez [00:51:48]:
But on the same token, so is. So is a new customer walking through the door. So is hiring a new employee. So this is one of the things that, you know, has really been beneficial to us is we, we have spider wash. We, when we purchased the laundromat, we have spider wash, it came with it. And I really did a push on doing loyalty cards. And it’s been a huge, huge benefit to the community as well as us too, as business owners, because it’s like a gift card. I mean, everybody talks about the float, right? Like, you know, that type of thing.

Nicholas Gomez [00:52:30]:
So back in February, I invested in. In that, put it on my credit card. I gave it three months. I’m like, hey, I’ll pay for it back. She’s like, nick, money’s tight. I’m like, yeah, but if we can build it now, build this digital employee, then we will be okay in the summer. Because look at how many phone calls we took. And like, nothing got answered correctly.

Nicholas Gomez [00:52:53]:
It’s just, it was, it was, it was hurting us more. So I did it. I invested in it. Now, let me, let me just share this a little personal. And you’re going to be the first one I’ve done. I actually shared it with Rick and A Rick Roman. A text message last week just kind of prepped them a little bit. And this is where I get emotional in.

Nicholas Gomez [00:53:13]:
It is I didn’t know how. How hard things were financially. So we invest. I invested in Laundromat for AI and didn’t know. I put it on my credit card, get my pay me paying for it with my business resources and all that stuff. And we get a knock on the door at the Laundromat. It’s the power company. He says, I need to collect $330 or I shut your power off.

Nicholas Gomez [00:53:52]:
Like, what? I get on the phone, I’m calling Becky. What’s up? She’s like, I don’t know. Like, I paid it. You didn’t tell me this. She says, nick has been so tight. Like, what? You got to be kidding me. She says, I. I got.

Nicholas Gomez [00:54:11]:
I gotta get to work. Like. So she’s. She’s frustrated. She’s breaking down. I’m breaking down. We can’t have this. Shut us down.

Nicholas Gomez [00:54:20]:
We can’t. So I asked the guy, like, hey, man, what do I gotta do? Can I get the account number? I can’t get it. Like, I’ll pay it. And he’s like, yeah. He says, I’ll tell you what, this is what the account number is. I can’t. I’m not supposed to give it to you, but this is what it is. This is a phone number.

Nicholas Gomez [00:54:38]:
I got another job I’m gonna go do. I’ll be back. If it is, I’ll get a notification. If it isn’t paid, I’ll have to shut it off. And I’m upset. I’m. I’m breaking down. Sad, right? And pay it.

Nicholas Gomez [00:54:55]:
Things are good. The beauty of the AI and why I’m such a huge advocate for it is then first part of March came like a week. Week and a half later, there’s this thing that happened called a storm, like an ice storm problem. I don’t. It was just huge, kind of like a tsunami, you know, like, it devastated northern Michigan. And because I got the background with the live Bait Tackle, you know, selling stuff on the Internet, technology and all that, and building a business online also with, you know, vending machines and stuff, I knew that it was important to always try and be in a good position on the Internet. And the storm happened, and the power company that was coming to shut us off found us as one of the only ones that would do pickup and delivery, laundry service. And that call Jordan, it would not have hit.

Nicholas Gomez [00:56:06]:
It would not have come with. We Wouldn’t have gotten that call if we had an employee taking the call. I don’t mean to be disrespectful. We have good employees, good staff, but they wouldn’t known how to answer. That call came in. Bella took the call. She’s in her infancy.

Jordan Berry [00:56:33]:
She just. Everybody knows Bella’s the AI.

Nicholas Gomez [00:56:36]:
Yeah, yeah, Bella’s AI AI, you know, and. And she routed that. And it. I just trusted a system. And I see this transcript, you know, I get the call and Bill’s on the other end. He’s like, hey, my name is Bill and I understand you guys do pickup and delivery in northern Michigan. There’s been this ice storm. Yeah, okay, Bill and I just want to know.

Nicholas Gomez [00:57:04]:
I got, I got 80 crews, yes, 80 crews out there, and they. They’ve been pounding, pounding hard, working in the ice storms up in northern Michigan. Is that something you guys could do? Help them with their laundry? What do you need, Bill? That’s all it was. What do you need? He’s like, well, would you do it? I’m like, whatever it’s going to take, just let me know. So, okay, I’ll pass you off to Kim. So Kim calls, Bella, routes it through the AI, the digital employee. Right. Routes it through, take it.

Nicholas Gomez [00:57:42]:
And that’s what started that journey, that belief of AI technology. We needed that call. We had to have that call. But with that came a lot of sacrifice because we learned that when the linemen are working those storm duties, they’re working 16 on, 8 off. 16 hours on, 8 off. And I literally had to find out where they were, what hotels. And I’m showing up there at 11 o’ clock when they’re getting off shift at night, 5 o’ clock in the morning, delivering back. Hey, when do you need this back? Well, we go.

Nicholas Gomez [00:58:26]:
We go back on shift at 7:00am can you be here at 6:30? Absolutely. And it’s jumping through that hoops of making sure that happened. Now that extended outer reach that also extended our reach, extended out our opportunities to the north. It was dangerous because we were still having those ice storms and stuff and got to see that a lot, a lot of that firsthand, like down trees that everybody talks about and, you know, devastation, power lines all over the place. But then it also helped us get back to the roots of what we started out with because I was taking and helping linemen because one, we needed the money, two, they needed. They needed their laundry done. And I’m two hours away to the north from our store. I can’t bring it back to the store because I’m burning time.

Nicholas Gomez [00:59:18]:
And so I’m like, how do we do this? But yet still, again, make money, be helpful and get the job done. Well, we’ll just go back to our roots. So I reached out to some laundromat owners that were out there in the north that I know and built some relationships with, said, hey, this is what I got going on. I got, you know, 16 lineman outfits here, you know, lineman laundry. Can I come in and use your facility? Are you open? Yep, not a problem. What do you need, Nick? Just open door. So that’s the beauty of this community, of this industry is a lot of times if you, if you just say, hey, what you need, most of the time they, another owner knows and respects you. They may not want to do the work, but they’re going to offer some sort of resource to you.

Nicholas Gomez [01:00:06]:
And so that was the beauty of it. The community helped and, and so I stopped at different laundromats and was doing laundry at, you know, 2 o’ clock in the morning for it to, you know, what we call turn and burn, get it back to them. And so what that, that phone call was the, that the AI took. I broke it down, Jordan. It’s 28 cents an hour. So how I calculated it was like $200 a month for the service, divide by, you know, 30.4, you know, days in a month, then divided by, you know, 24 hours a day, ends up being like 28 cents an hour. Right? That translated into just as a round figure was a little less than translated into $3,000. And a statement that you guys have an open credit card, you know, if you want to take and keep doing laundry for these linemen, do it because they need it.

Nicholas Gomez [01:01:04]:
And that built a whole new passion for that type of community, that type of worker. And then also made some other innovative thoughts is like, well, while I’m here, why don’t I just stop at a hotel, give a flyer? And I did that a couple times. And then I said, hey, I’m here. Laundry is my profession. That’s what we do. Oh, by the way, I’m trained to take your laundry and to wash it at our facility. And we have staff that’s trained for FR clothing, which is what? Fire retardant clothing. And so be having that extra knowledge is like, hey, they trust you.

Nicholas Gomez [01:01:43]:
You know, you don’t use fabric softener in the clothes form because it’s a safety concern. Right. And that, that really helped one, keep them safe, one, get us business. And then two, just keeping everything Flowing. So maybe you can touch a little bit on that about maybe you know more about FR clothing than I do, Jordan, for these, for safety stuff. But. But yeah, yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:02:08]:
So, yeah, no, what, what an awesome story. You know, we go into the weeds of, you know, fire resistant clothing some other time. Because the story is really like the, the crux of this thing, man. I mean, it’s a business is hard, right? It’s like it doesn’t matter if it’s a boring business or an easy business or whatever. Like if you’re, especially when you’re in the service side of things, you know, you’ve got responsibilities, you’ve got costs that have to be paid, you’ve got routes that need to be like, there’s a lot that goes into it. And so it’s difficult. And you know, what’s really cool about what’s happening in our industry right now is that we’re starting to get tools. And you’ve mentioned a few, you mentioned Spiderwash, you mentioned Bellow, the AI for Laundromats, right? You’re starting to get access to tools that can really make a big difference in the way that we run our businesses.

Jordan Berry [01:03:10]:
And you know, I don’t know that any of this technology yet is making our jobs easier, per se. Other than maybe Clean Cloud, which is the software that you said you’re using, right. For pigment delivery. A lot of this technology is allowing us to make better decisions and to move faster and to lock down sales quicker. You know, that kind of stuff. Like it’s, it’s giving us the capability to serve better and to serve faster. And those are two huge variables when it comes to the value that provide you provide your, your clients. Right? And if you provide more value, better service, faster service to your clients, you can charge more, which means there’s more margin in there for you, more profitability for your business, which means you can serve your customers better, which means you can provide more value and on and on and on.

Jordan Berry [01:04:13]:
Right? Like there’s a, there’s a virtuous cycle there in, in business to be able to do that and to hear your story of like, hey, we were in a bad spot and I didn’t even realize how bad of a spot we are. And this technology gave us the ability to start to turn that around, to give us the breath that we needed, the capacity that we needed to keep moving this business forward. That’s a huge, huge deal. That’s a huge deal.

Nicholas Gomez [01:04:41]:
Yeah. No, true. I mean, and it hasn’t stopped. We have now because of using AI as our phone service. You know, of course it has other features built into it. You know, text messaging and all that stuff where we just pick up hotels, like hotels are calling us now and asking, hey, do you have the bandwidth to do this? Well, what do you need? You know, that’s pretty much what my. My go to is. What do you need? You know, But I can tell you.

Nicholas Gomez [01:05:11]:
Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, our bottleneck is, you know, because I may ask, well, what’s your bottleneck? You know, or a bottleneck is, is we have 225 rooms. I said rooms, not bed. And we have washers and dryers. And I have somebody on there for 10 hours at a time. And it’s only. Our infrastructure in our hotel is only built for 25 rooms per day. Well, we can turn £900 in 25 minutes in the washer because we have the facility and that just opens up the doors.

Nicholas Gomez [01:05:41]:
But it all comes from the fact that we. I’m going to say we because Becky did have to embrace it, even though I fronted it. And now let me fast forward to say this now. Now the business pays for Bella AI, you know, the. That we wouldn’t have been able to have an opportunity had we not taken that, because it’s just, it opened up the doors for that technology because it’s just been a beautiful, beautiful roller coaster. And I don’t see an end to it, Jordan. I really don’t. I.

Nicholas Gomez [01:06:14]:
I don’t say that to, to be, you know, like, oh, yeah, go out and invest. You know, everybody’s got to get AI, identify what your weight and measure is, if it’s worth it to you or not. I just took a risk and it worked out. And sometimes I think that’s what we really need to do in this business is to identify what our risk tolerances are and then make sure I double check it and then know when you need to axe it. Because I gave a timeline. I think, I think, I don’t know what it is now, but I think Rick AI for laundromats, Rick Rome was giving certain percentage off. And I said, okay, if we don’t. If we don’t make $200 to pay for this in three months, then we’re axing it like it’s not gonna happen, you know, so that’s one thing I just say.

Nicholas Gomez [01:07:04]:
Now let me back up and say the first bills that we pay, the electric bill, the gas bill, and AI for laundromats, I mean, plus, you know, our insurance. But. But AI. AI or phone service, is the top five that we pay first thing every month before we take a paycheck. So it’s because we just, we believe in the technology. And, and I, I just want to make sure I, I follow up in saying that if you’re in that. Well, is this something I should invest or not invest? Make sure you do the numbers. Make sure you get into your numbers and if you have a spouse or a partner do the checks and balances with them to make sure that you can afford it or set up a strategic plan to help guide you to that point because it will definitely be something of value.

Nicholas Gomez [01:07:59]:
Yeah, AI for laundromats, any type of AI technology, I embrace it. Like I said, I do the measure of like, what time frame, you know, is it going to be worth it? And evaluate if it’s a good fit for the business and if it isn’t, there’s no question we ax it because it really, you have to, you have to make sure that it’s good for the business and good for your bottom line. So.

Jordan Berry [01:08:27]:
Yeah. Well, what’s interesting, what got me excited about having you on to kind of talk about this from just an operator, real world perspective here. You know, I don’t know exactly how big your business is, but I’m assuming it’s Not Rick Rome £25,000 a day Size business. And I think one of the questions I hear asked a lot is like, well, if I only have one location or I don’t have a massive location, like is it still worth it? And I mean, I think just hearing you say, like, hey, we pay our utility bills and then we pay our AI for long ramp bills, like that’s pretty ringing endorsement therefore. And I would trade $2 for $3,000 every single month. I’m sure you would too.

Nicholas Gomez [01:09:12]:
Oh yeah, yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:09:14]:
So, yeah, so yeah, man, it’s, it’s pretty crazy that we have the ability to have access to something like that at a relatively inexpensive price point. You know, you were saying you, you had people who are basically just there to answer phones and stuff. Well, if you can replace just one, I mean, you’re saving money there already, you know, at 200 bucks a month. So I think, dude, I think what.

Nicholas Gomez [01:09:42]:
Sometimes, and I apologize for interrupting you. I think sometimes. No, no, it was easy for me to do like 200amonth, you know, like that’s a lot of money. You know, I know how many quarters that’s going to be and just go through the negative path of that. Right?

Jordan Berry [01:09:53]:
Yeah.

Nicholas Gomez [01:09:54]:
But then what I talked to Rick a little bit about it. And I, you know, we want to have some different discoveries with different people. And then I had to come back to that analogy. Just like a restaurant, you buy at a pound and sell for an ounce. Okay. This is no different. We’re buying in bulk of time of a technology at 200amonth. What’s that end up being? 28 cents an hour? Now I can identify like, okay, well, 20, 28 cents an hour versus 18 an hour that we’re paying an employee, you know, with workman’s comp and all that stuff.

Nicholas Gomez [01:10:27]:
Which one do you want to do to answer the phone? Yeah, it was just a no brainer for us.

Jordan Berry [01:10:34]:
Yeah. But yeah, one, especially as it’s like converting sales for you. And listen, dude, it is a pretty incredible technology. It’s pretty crazy that our humble little industry here has access to something like that. An AI for laundromats is, is, is one of those options. There’s other people who have those options as well. And if, you know, feel free to reach out to me if you’re, if you want like a couple other options that you want to look into. Multiple.

Jordan Berry [01:11:05]:
I’m glad to share that. But man, just the chance that, you know, a Northern Michigan laundromat and pickup and delivery business has an AI answering service that can basically answer almost any question or at least get a caller to the right place. Not, not to mention, you know, some of These companies have AIs that’s integrated. I don’t know if yours is integrated into your software yet or if you’re able to do that, but some of them are integrated, can actually place orders into your software and route them on the back end there to where it needs to go so that these orders can just be, they can just happen, you know, like, it’s, it’s crazy. It’s crazy what we can do here.

Nicholas Gomez [01:11:53]:
Now one of the things too is like, I’m thinking outside the box. What else can, what else can this AI agent do? And one of the things that I started to do is that’s how we screen, you know, people that want to come in and work for us here at the Laundromat. I say, let me back up and just say this when we, before you hit record, I said, I said the keywords. Like I was afraid to give out our phone number. Our Phone number is 231-839-2000. Like I, I, I. Somebody might call me at 2 in the morning. Somebody might call the business at 2 in the morning.

Nicholas Gomez [01:12:30]:
Now I don’t care. I Want you to call, you know, like, yeah, obviously there’s going to be checks and balance on that. But the point that I’m getting at is, is now I’ve set up with, through the technology that I’m using Bella to screen our applicants, you know, like, though, because we. That was one of the most frequent questions that we get here. Are you guys hiring? That’s what. Who. We’re paying employees to answer the phone. Like, are you guys hiring? Well, no, that’s what they’re going to tell.

Nicholas Gomez [01:13:01]:
Because they don’t want to give up their hours. Right, Right. Like, yeah, you don’t want to work here. You know, that type of thing. Well, now when somebody calls in and talks to Bella, like, are you guys hiring? Yes. What position would you like to apply to? We have contract positions. We have laundry processor. We have.

Nicholas Gomez [01:13:16]:
Did you want to know what the. The job description is for that? Well, yeah. Okay. And then we have a program to where she’ll send you a text message of that if you ask her to.

Jordan Berry [01:13:28]:
Pretty good.

Nicholas Gomez [01:13:28]:
So, Jordan, I even uploaded our employee handbook to Bella, which is crazy. I don’t know how I’m going to use it yet, but she’s just a tool, you know?

Jordan Berry [01:13:40]:
Yeah. Well, in a super powerful tool at that, right? Yeah. Yeah, that’ll be interesting. You’ll have to let me know what you come up with. Like, hey, if you got a question, call. Call Bella, like, from the store. If you’re an employee, you’re not sure, you know, what. Did you guys.

Jordan Berry [01:13:58]:
Yeah. Hey, Bella, do we get paid time off? Then Bella can break the bad news that you don’t give any paid time. I’m just kidding. Yeah, no, it’s pretty cool. It’s pretty powerful. And what I loved about how you framed all of this, number one, you said it exactly right. It’s a tool, right? There’s a lot of questions about AI. Good, bad.

Jordan Berry [01:14:22]:
Is it good for business? Bad for business, good for employees, bad for employees. It’s a tool and can be a super powerful tool. But I also love the way that you framed it in the sense of these tools. It’s really easy to, like, think of them as like, hey, this AI tool. And, you know, but it has real world impact, right? Like, you told a very emotional story about, you know, struggling financially and how this tool is helping you turn that whole story around. Right. And thriving. And so, like, this is like, it’s.

Nicholas Gomez [01:15:05]:
It.

Jordan Berry [01:15:05]:
It’s tough, right? Like, you can think about it the way that you were started off thinking about it the way that my natural tendency to think about these things is same, right? Is like, man, another 200amonth going out, right? But, but if you can kind of switch that mindset and say, hey, this is an investment that might pay off, it might not be very neutral about it and give it a shot. Like you don’t know until you give it a shot. Put it on the credit card. If you got to go drive again for doordash, if you gotta raise two bucks a month, whatever you got to do, right? Like find something to help propel that business to that next level because it’s worth it long run. And it’s not just about a one time $3,000 bonus that you got from this business you probably wouldn’t have had otherwise. It’s the ongoing benefits of that. And when you show up for somebody in that way, you better believe that next time they hear somebody looking for similar type of service, they’re going to refer you guys because you showed up for them in the middle of an ice storm. That’s a big deal.

Nicholas Gomez [01:16:02]:
Yeah, yeah, it is. I mean, yeah, you’re always, you know, we’ve been at the top of mind for a lot of situations because that, because somebody’s there to answer the phone. And now she doesn’t get it always. Right. You know, but that’s, neither does a regular human employee.

Jordan Berry [01:16:20]:
Right?

Nicholas Gomez [01:16:21]:
But yeah, she’s trainable and she, you know, I, I mean, I think metaphorically given her human qualities. Right. It keeps referred to her as she. But this AI agent doesn’t get hurt feelings. I’ll tell a real quick story in that. Like we had a lady that was trying to apply to work for us, match the numbers because we get all that information from the AI agent. Match the numbers from when she called, when she stopped in, when she filled out application. And because of the way that the AI agent processes a transcript and all that she actually was cussing at a robot on the phone.

Nicholas Gomez [01:17:06]:
Right. Would you, would you want that type of person to represent your company, your customers coming in? So that really, I mean, that saved us. Right. I don’t, I don’t even know how to put a value on that. That’s more than $200 a month. Right. You know, because that’s, I’ll tell you.

Jordan Berry [01:17:24]:
There’S nothing that’s going to cost you more than a bad employee. I can tell you that from, from experience.

Nicholas Gomez [01:17:28]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:17:29]:
Yeah.

Nicholas Gomez [01:17:30]:
So. But yeah, that’s the, that’s the key takeaway. I’d like to have said and known as we go through this journey with these new technologies and new tools. You know, I’m not as seasoned as some of the other people that I follow and want to put myself next to at some point in time and successes and leadership and stuff in the industry. You know, it’s, you know, technology’s there and it’s coming, and I think it’s, it’s a good opportunity to start thinking about embracing it, no matter where you’re at and starting or your season 30, 40 year store and going to pass it on to somebody or, you know, family. Well, however, you know, if you start setting it up, because this is how I, I started to evaluate it too, Jordan. And you have more knowledge and experience in evaluating businesses, but this is a tool that is an asset that gets created, that adds value to the business. Then you can command a price when you go to sell it.

Nicholas Gomez [01:18:27]:
Would that be fair to say?

Jordan Berry [01:18:30]:
Well, let me ask you this question. If you were looking at two otherwise identical businesses and one of them had an employee that worked 24, 7, never got tired, and was 28 cents an hour and could answer 95% of everybody’s questions who called in and one didn’t have that and paid $18 an hour after workers comp and everything for somebody, like, which one’s more attractive to you? Which one would you be willing to pay more for?

Nicholas Gomez [01:18:58]:
Right.

Jordan Berry [01:18:58]:
Like, that’s a great. If you don’t know, like, that’s a great rubric to look through. Like, if there’s two businesses, one has it, one doesn’t.

Nicholas Gomez [01:19:04]:
Right.

Jordan Berry [01:19:05]:
Which one would you prefer and how much would that be worth to you to have that?

Nicholas Gomez [01:19:09]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:19:10]:
Right.

Nicholas Gomez [01:19:10]:
And not paying for headaches.

Jordan Berry [01:19:13]:
Yeah. And, you know, like, systems, processes is more valuable. Right. If a business depends on you specifically or, you know, something that’s someone or something that’s not reliable, it’s going to be less valuable than a business that has systems in place and, you know, and processes in place to deal with issues when they come up or to process orders. And that’s what this AI technology is. Right. It’s a system for you to handle questions, deal with problems, get customer reviews. Like, I mean, Bella can do all that.

Jordan Berry [01:19:51]:
Like, give directions, like all that stuff. Right. So this is a system and a process to help you automate a part of your business. And is that more valuable than not having it? Absolutely, absolutely. Absolutely.

Nicholas Gomez [01:20:04]:
Absolutely. I mean, look at it from a standpoint. If, I mean, when we were looking at different laundromats, of course, you know, the two, you know, obviously went through the process. One of the things is, I would ask is what’s your customer list? Well, we don’t have a customer list. Okay, well, do you have an employee handbook? What are we buying here? You know, all that stuff to fast track. So tie that into an AI agent or the technology we have now. I mean, when we bought, bought this place, it had a handbook, it had all those resources and assets that was more value because then we didn’t have to create the, recreate the wheel. While I look at the AI technology and the technology in general, it’s there.

Nicholas Gomez [01:20:45]:
We don’t have to recreate the wheel. We just have to take the time to learn it and then implement it into our business. So. And not be afraid to, to do that.

Jordan Berry [01:20:54]:
Yeah, yeah, it’s huge. It’s hugely more valuable. Right. If you have those tools, those resources already in place, it makes your business hugely more valuable, you know, and, and if you’re someone out there who’s looking for a value add laundromat, you know, find one that doesn’t have the these things in place and implement them, right? That’s work that needs to be done that can add value to the business and you know, drive more revenue for you or more net profit for you and build some equity in your business. But if you’re somebody who’s, you know, listening to this, who’s looking for, you know, something more on the turnkey side of things, like having these things in place is, you know, it, it’s hugely valuable for that person, which there’s a lot of people, I mean, I work with a lot of people who are looking for something more on the turnkey side. And so they would, I’ll say we, we would love businesses like this, you know, that has implemented already.

Nicholas Gomez [01:21:52]:
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure.

Jordan Berry [01:21:55]:
Hey man, this has been incredible. I, I appreciate you coming on and sharing your story. Not just like the wins, but the, the, the ups, the downs, the all arounds. You know, you, you shared some like very personal, emotional stories and you shared some emotional customer journey stories. And you know, I can tell it just, it like it comes through that you’re excited about this business comes through that you are trying different things, which I, I almost respect that more than anything else that someone, you know, says somebody who’s willing to try out different things to go do doordash, to learn who the customer is, where they’re located, how to reach them, what they’re thinking, you know, somebody who’s willing to try, like feeling uncomfortable about using AI because you’re not really sure about the technology and how to work it and if you’re going to be able to figure it out, but doing it anyways. Like, you know somebody who’s like, I get a call about doing laundry in an ice storm two hours away, and you’re like, I don’t really know how to do it, but we’ll get it figured out. Like, that is probably the quality that I respect the most in somebody. So you showed all that today and you shared it, and I really appreciate it.

Jordan Berry [01:23:07]:
And intermingled with all these stories is just so much good, tangible, practical things that we can all implement in our businesses to help us, you know, improve, take our businesses to the next level. So I really appreciate you taking the time to come on. I am sad that your wife wasn’t able to join us, so we’ll just have to set up another episode so she can be on with us next time. But I appreciate you, man. Thank you for taking the time to do this well.

Nicholas Gomez [01:23:37]:
Thank you. It’s been fun. And like I say, it’s. It’s a journey, you know, and I can’t echo it enough, having resources like what you put out, Jordan and others in the industry, there’s people out there listen and you’re making an impact, you know, it’s been great.

Jordan Berry [01:23:55]:
So I appreciate that. I get a lot of the credit, but it’s really you guys coming on, sharing your stories, that’s the big impact. So I appreciate that and I will take a small bit of credit and give the rest of it to you and your fellow guests. Last question I have for you before we wrap this thing up, which I’m excited about this question. If somebody wants to connect with you, what’s the best way that they can do that?

Nicholas Gomez [01:24:16]:
Yeah, the best way is, you know, I may give you a couple of them. But call us, man. Call us. 231-839-2000. Super clean laundry. You’re going to talk to Bella. We call her Bella Clean. Like, super clean.

Nicholas Gomez [01:24:34]:
Right. And, you know, that’s probably one of the ways, you know, to test what we do here. But if you really want to get on the interwebs and find me, I would say probably the easiest way is to find me on Facebook, send me a friend request private message, and then, yeah, you know, look up Nicholas Gomez or Super Clean Laundry in Lake City, Michigan. Just a little place here in Lake City, Michigan, and you connect with me there. Love to share more ideas and thoughts that we’ve done. And if it. If you can glean some positive in your journey. It’s great to help, you know.

Nicholas Gomez [01:25:13]:
So love it.

Jordan Berry [01:25:15]:
I love it. Well, thank you again, man. Appreciate it. And look forward to having you and your wife back on the show at some point in the near future here.

Nicholas Gomez [01:25:23]:
Awesome. Thank you.

Jordan Berry [01:25:25]:
I hope you love that episode. It was so invigorating for me. However, once again, as always, you will have wasted your entire time listening to that whole episode if you don’t pick at least one thing and put it into action today, if possible, or at least this week. Those actions that we stack on top of each other, that’s what’s going to help you achieve your goals and get to where you want to go in life, build the life that you want to build. So with that said, pick something. Maybe it has something to do with AI. Maybe it’s something, you know, a little more tangible for your business. Or maybe, just maybe, that one action step you need to take right now is to head to laundromatresource.com hawaii.

Jordan Berry [01:26:10]:
Click that button that says enroll now or sign up or whatever the button says. I don’t even know off top of my head, but click that button and book yourself a tax write offable trip to Hawaii to geek out on laundromats with me, Ryan Borneman from Fresh Leads Marketing, and a whole bunch of other Laundromat nerds. All right, we’ll see some of you guys there out here in paradise.

Nicholas Gomez [01:26:34]:
Peace.