Matthew Simmons from Curbside Laundries flexes his MBA in marketing in today’s show! An obviously brilliant marketer, Matt gives tip after practical tip on how to market your laundromat, wash and fold services, and pickup and delivery services.

If you own a laundromat, take out a pencil and paper and takes furious notes as Matt covers everything from laundromat websites to digital marketing, business operations to intentional mentorship. Plus he simplifies the pickup and delivery process and describes each step, step by step. Matt truly has a gem for you around every corner in this episode!

Throughout this show he gives hard numbers and practical tips. He explains why 2 is a magic number in the laundry business. He discloses what it costs him per click to advertise his pickup and delivery business on Google. He talks about how many new customers he gets just by having a free Yelp account. He recommends an ideal starting pickup and delivery radius. He gives you a bullet-proof tip on getting free PR. And on and on.

If you don’t yet own a laundromat, you need to be taking furious notes. This episode alone will help you jump to the front of the line and make you a top performer in the laundromat industry if you follow Matt’s advice!

This episode is truly a must-listen, beginning to end!

Be sure to reach out to Matt and ask about Curbside Laundries and their pickup and delivery POS system! The link is below.

Listen To The Podcast Here

Watch The Podcast Here

Curbside's Laundry Pickup & Delivery Performance

Pickup & Delivery Process From Beginning to End

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    Episode Transcript

    hey hey what’s up everybody it’s jordan
    with the laundromat
    resource podcast this is show number 22
    and you are in for a treat today i’m
    super excited for you
    because today we’re getting a marketing
    master class with curbside laundry’s
    matt simmons it’s killer
    literally every ounce of this
    every second of this podcast is just
    jam-packed with
    useful things for laundry bed owners and
    those of you who are looking to buy your
    first laundromat
    make sure you get out a notepad and a
    pencil
    or your notes on your phone or whatever
    you use to take notes
    because you’re going to need to take
    notes in this one he just brings the
    heat today
    it’s i was taking notes throughout the
    whole thing so it’s an incredible
    episode you’re gonna really love it
    we’re gonna jump into it in just a
    second uh but first
    uh i wanted to highlight a couple of
    questions on the forum because i know
    uh a lot of you guys are heading over
    there you’re asking questions you’re
    answering questions you should be doing
    that every week
    answer a question ask a question over on
    the forum laundromat resource.com
    forums the link is in the description
    uh or in the show notes you can find
    those at laudermattenresource.comshow22
    all the links from today will be in
    on that page a lot of my resource.com
    show22
    make sure you check it out because again
    this one is jam-packed
    full of stuff so you’re going to want to
    go check that out but
    real quick on the forums i wanted to
    highlight a couple of uh just things
    that came up
    dan commented on the forums and he
    was talking about how to determine the
    true value of a laundromat
    but the thing that really struck me that
    i thought was a really interesting
    question that i think a lot of you guys
    could
    help dan out with and each other out
    with is how to structure your
    offer and he was wondering what’s the
    best way to structure an offer is it
    okay
    to give multiple offers with different
    structure options for the seller
    i thought that was a really great
    question i think a lot of you guys have
    something to say about that so head over
    to laundromat resource.com
    forums and go help dan out with that one
    also ron uh had a question about
    partnerships and your opinions on
    partnerships uh and man there’s got to
    be
    lots of opinions and a lot of people
    have strong opinions on partnerships
    so go over there and talk to ron about
    how to do a partnership or if you even
    should do a partnership uh because
    that’s just a hot question and i think
    that uh everybody’s input
    would be useful to run and to everyone
    else over there and real quick while
    we’re talking about forums
    i know i’m just going to come out and
    say it because you know they did it so
    i know i’ve seen the coin laundry
    association
    has decided to charge for their forum
    over there
    and i don’t have anything against
    a company or organization trying to make
    money
    what i don’t like about this move is
    that
    they are essentially charging for
    you guys to you know help each other
    they’re not providing anything but the
    space for that forum and so
    i don’t love that move by them and i
    just wanted to point out i’m not trying
    to make a play for their
    traffic or anything like that but i just
    want to point out that our forum will
    always be free
    uh because you know w we’re laundry
    owner
    first and i think that it’s i say this
    all the time like it’s so important that
    we are helping each other out because
    we’re all better together
    and uh i don’t think you should have to
    charge for that so
    anyways i just wanted to present that as
    another option i know some of you guys
    are still there some of you guys are
    on different facebook groups which is
    all
    very cool and you know whatever you do
    make sure you’re communicating with each
    other because you are all better
    together
    but i just wanted to point out uh that
    you know our forum is free and will
    always
    be free uh you can you know hold me
    accountable to that if i try to charge
    for it someday down the line say hey you
    said
    in show 22 it will always be free and it
    will be
    so just wanted to say that um and real
    quick while we’re on the forums i just
    wanted to say a huge welcome
    to joe toner uh who’s up there by the
    way joe if you’re listening to this
    you uh man you’re like one of my faves
    right now if you go over there
    he’s raving about the podcast and you
    know maybe blush a little bit
    actually so head over to the uh
    introductions form london resource dot
    com forums
    click on the introductions forum go say
    hi to joe and then maybe bring me down a
    notch because you know i’m just dwelling
    with pride right now thanks joe
    and welcome to the community i also
    wanted to say
    welcome to jahara cabral welcome welcome
    he went over there and said what’s up to
    everybody
    so go welcome somebody in the new
    introductions forum
    and uh go introduce yourself if you
    haven’t done that yet because it’s
    again a great place to meet each other
    and to do start doing some networking uh
    find deals together partner together
    if you think that’s a good idea go tell
    ron um
    if you think that’s a good idea um and
    i mean that’s all i wanted to say on the
    on the podcast but welcome to everybody
    who’s new we’re growing like
    insane right now like
    a lot of people every day are just
    coming and joining our free membership
    so if you’re interested in doing that
    you haven’t done it yet lot of
    myresource.com
    join join our growing community it’s
    pretty cool to see
    that happening uh over there and i just
    i feel very humbled
    by it um with that i
    i just wanted to say hey there’s
    something really cool coming up
    that that’s gonna be new like you know
    we’re still
    nailing down some of the details but
    there’s a interesting partnership that
    is
    uh kind of forming out of a lot of your
    guys’s questions and out of a lot of
    uh just feedback that we’ve gotten and
    so there’s something coming up in the
    next few weeks
    uh so look forward to that um i’ll
    be telling you more about it over the
    next couple of episodes so make sure if
    you haven’t yet subscribe
    um wherever you’re listening to this on
    a podcast player we’re on pretty much
    all of them
    if you’re on youtube make sure you
    subscribe you’re not going to want to
    miss
    this upcoming announcement but also
    every episode is jam-packed full of
    useful uh helpful stuff and cool stories
    so
    make sure you’re subscribing and then um
    you know what i’m i’m so pumped about
    matt
    um today and everything that he’s
    bringing we’re not gonna run
    our normal uh ad on building websites
    and in fact
    we’re busy building you guys websites
    right now we’ve got a few on the docket
    if you’re interested in getting a
    website for your
    laundromat or updating your website uh
    lottermanresource.com
    get online we’ve been doing websites
    john
    who is building all these websites is uh
    happily busy working away on on websites
    for you guys so
    uh we’re not going to run that ad we’re
    going to jump right into it with matt
    simmons from curbside laundry who’s
    giving you a marketing master class
    today welcome matt thanks for coming on
    the show
    yeah yeah thank you for for having me so
    man thank you for coming on the show i’m
    super glad that you’re here
    great thank you yeah yeah i’m looking
    forward to this because i know that you
    guys have a killer
    uh operation going on uh here in socal
    you’re local next to me so i
    i’m looking forward to that but before
    we get into your
    uh what you’re doing right now and what
    life looks like for you tell us a little
    bit about you
    about who you are and about your
    background a little bit
    yeah so let’s let’s see i’m
    helping out with super suds um with with
    the marketing with the
    uh pickup and delivery and and then now
    moved into yeah i’ll get into a little
    bit later but as far as
    on the softer side just that’s turned
    into its full-time thing um
    that helps on the pickup and delivery
    and then
    yes so i earned my mba from usc
    in in marketing and and entrepreneurship
    and then and i was right out out of
    there
    so i was also working for a a startup
    company
    or to doing helping out with staffing
    agencies and
    in a way it’s kind of a similar
    we’re providing software as a service to
    staffing agencies with and it just
    revolutionized them so basically
    if they’re looking for 10 pick up 10
    pick and packers or
    forklift drivers or warehouse workers
    they can make 100 phone calls at once
    if the person was interested they press
    one
    and and now that a recruiter had a list
    of all the people
    interested in the job and before that
    would take the whole day to
    fill those positions because you have to
    call it make it you have to make a whole
    bunch of phone calls just to get in
    touch with somebody
    so that’s kind of what got me into
    thinking about automation and software
    and
    kind of gave me experience on that side
    of the coin
    and meanwhile my brother was working at
    super subs so it’s my it’s a family
    laundromat
    and the business was on autopilot so my
    parents were running it
    and it it was doing well they were doing
    between like six and eight thousand
    dollars of wash and fold per month
    and and then and now it’s just on
    autopilot
    and then my parents so my brother got
    involved around 2008 2010
    and since then the revenue just went
    bananas
    so he just brought more of the digital
    and tech into the laundromat and
    especially back then
    most people didn’t even have websites
    for their laundromat back in 2010
    yeah and and so
    the our first website for super subs was
    a single page
    and i’ll have to send over a photo of it
    i mean it’s humbling
    it’s just it just said super sets across
    the top of the big
    you know promotion to like print out and
    cut out
    and that simple website especially
    because nobody else had one back then
    it was it just transformed our business
    people
    found us online they found us on google
    they found us on all these different
    places
    because we had a website and our
    business just started growing every
    single month
    and and that was
    and and so within about a certain number
    of time
    period of time between i’d say between
    2010
    2020 you know one from about it started
    going up like a hockey
    stick you know in terms of revenue and
    so we’re now we’re doing like about like
    60 you know close to about 70
    000 per month just in washing fold and
    at the time most laundromats
    i’d say we’re doing wash and folders a
    different mindset
    because if you didn’t have a website who
    were you marketing to
    you know you’re marketing to the people
    who
    go into the laundromat and that’s
    actually a different market yeah because
    the guys putting in quarters or you know
    just paying
    you know like about nine cents a pound
    they’re probably not going to be paying
    a buck 50 per pound
    so it’s a different market you have to
    reach them and they’re not necessarily
    going into the laundromat they’re
    finding you online
    right and what i found is most
    laundromats if they don’t have a strong
    website
    presence they’re doing between 500 to
    2500
    in wash and fold and they probably have
    zero to two commercial accounts
    so one thing i just wanted to kind of
    let everybody know
    is probably one of the most important
    things is
    work on your web presence you know take
    a look at do searches for yourself do
    searches see how easy or hard it is to
    find you
    what competition is coming up because
    it’s kind of like you’ve got your
    laundromat and i also come from a real
    estate background as well
    and my least favorite one was the open
    house
    because you’re just waiting for somebody
    to come in the door
    and and i’d much prefer knocking on
    doors because then you could get to the
    next door
    and and you don’t have to wait and but
    in a way
    you want to be as busy as possible
    because you’re paying the mortgage
    you’re paying the lease you’re paying on
    the machines and
    and so in a way i see your online
    presence is sort of like a mousetrap in
    a sense where
    the more you know uh
    ways people can find you the better and
    then because you’re open anyways you got
    your open house you want people coming
    in
    and and especially now one of my
    favorite parts about
    pickup and delivery is
    it’s you’ve got somebody 24 7 to take
    orders
    where you’ve got your website so i think
    the part i didn’t like about the open
    house was i had to sit there
    and wait for the person to come in but
    if you could have a robot
    you know like you know where people
    could schedule their own online pickups
    from home from their cell phone and you
    don’t have to pay somebody to sit and
    wait for the phone to ring that’s pretty
    cool
    so that’s one of my favorite parts about
    the business is there’s just a lot of
    automation and a lot of behind the
    scenes stuff you can do to help drive
    traffic yeah it’s kind of the difference
    between do sitting at it open
    i mean i do real estate too i’ve come
    from that background
    okay you know difference between sitting
    at an open house and now that
    you know that huge trend of doing the
    virtual
    tours online now where anybody can go
    basically
    tour a house online uh any time
    of the day and get a good feel in fact
    we bought our
    uh our most recent house based off a
    virtual tour wow that’s amazing
    see it yeah so it’s totally that so i
    can tell this is gonna be
    uh you know not only super beneficial a
    lot of otherwise this is going to be a
    marketing master class and i’m looking
    forward to that
    but let me back you up for just one
    second sure okay so
    your parents bought uh bought the
    business right the laundromat is is that
    right they bought it
    yeah interesting story on on that okay
    the
    the and kind of going back one step and
    i’ll get to that in just a sec
    okay but the just that story you’re
    telling about that open house and how
    you found your house
    yeah that really illustrates how
    important it is
    that you set up a good web presence or a
    good online presence
    because that was your interaction with
    the home right and so if people are
    scheduling to pick up and do
    so a lot of people spend tens of
    thousands of dollars or hundreds of
    thousands of dollars in their stores
    appearance to have
    nice curb appeal or nice view inside but
    then they’re like
    they got kind of go a little chipsy on
    their online presents yeah
    so so i just want to let you know or not
    you but like
    the audience for a lot of people their
    only experience with your laundromat
    is your website and the ordering process
    so you want to
    pay attention to that you know that’s
    super important yeah
    and we definitely got to get more into
    that yeah for sure i want to hear a
    little bit more about that and
    what you guys did because i know that
    your business exploded
    and it’s still exploding you guys are
    still growing it’s still growing fast
    yeah just scratching the surface yeah so
    we definitely have
    got to get into that and uh looking
    forward to that but i want to hear the
    story how did
    you get how did your parents get into
    the industry and then
    and your brother and then how did you
    get sucked in with them
    yeah that’s pretty much what happened
    so my parents were heavily invested in
    real estate
    okay and and so they actually got like
    single family homes before they counted
    the woman’s income for
    mortgages you know things were a little
    bit different back then yeah and so they
    buy a single family house they’d move
    into it then they’d rent out their old
    one and you know
    and the values didn’t really go up too
    much but then they changed the law they
    said hey that’s a little bit sexist you
    know of course
    and so what happened almost overnight as
    the result of that policy change was
    home prices doubled and so my parents
    were thinking wow
    people are willing to pay this for the
    home that we paid that for
    and so they just unloaded everything
    because and then they bought
    investment properties you know because
    they’re quote cheaper by the dozen
    and you’re able to get better return on
    investment with multi-units
    so they got into that then in the early
    90s the real estate crash because just
    like everything things
    go in cycles and so that was
    a tough time a lot of vacancies and
    things like that
    and so my dad was driving around and
    saying how do we get
    how do we do we protect ourselves you
    know from these
    you know cycles and he drove past the
    laundromat
    and he goes you know that’s something
    that everybody will always need
    and and so he specifically bought or
    actually
    they already had the property and they
    got really lucky or fortunate that
    it was already a laundromat a hundred
    years ago
    and so they’re able to get a
    grandfathered in without paying
    ridiculous
    views yeah because that can be you know
    bank breaking to do that around here
    yeah
    yeah the city is oftentimes because
    we’re not paying sales tax
    on wash and fall not washing yeah that
    too or
    laundry so the cities really get you on
    the when you build your
    place out yeah for all those fees so
    they’re able to avoid that
    but is driving past the laundromat and
    saying that’s something that people will
    always need
    and how it’s just the foresight on that
    i mean nobody could predict it but i
    mean look what happened you know with
    with just terrible you know with culvert
    and all that and
    and we were one of the essential
    businesses along with banks
    i mean and you know medicine and
    so it really was we
    were just i’m very thankful because i
    also know a lot of business owners and
    other industries that
    man it’s just brutal like if you have a
    restaurant or a hotel
    so yeah it’s been rough for sure so it’s
    um
    so that’s kind of how we got into the
    laundry business then because
    my dad’s really good at setting things
    up on autopilot
    so that’s and and so he’s very good at
    delegating his good he likes the type of
    businesses that kind of run themselves
    and that’s
    and and so one way of doing that was
    they outsourced the wash and fold to
    husband and wife
    and they basically got free rent and my
    parents were happy because they just fed
    the machines
    and then one day my mom was emptying out
    the quarters
    and now we have tokens but
    so she’s emptying out the quarters and
    she sees that the couple is doing wash
    and fold
    just throw a load in the dryer so she
    goes to empty that out again because
    just so that way it’s at reset at zero
    right there’s no money in there and
    she’s like hey there there’s no money in
    there you know what happened
    and it turned out and they you know
    initially denied it she goes no i’m
    really sure i
    emptied out that machine so it turns out
    they figured out how to start the
    machines for free
    and here they’re getting free rent and
    all they had to do was feed the machines
    that was their form of paying rent
    so they so it turned out to be the best
    thing ever because
    if we didn’t take over wash and fold it
    just we wouldn’t be here today
    you know yeah makes more than the
    laundromat itself
    yeah yeah okay so but tell me how you
    got sucked in because i mean you’re
    coming from a software
    you know sales and your software is a
    service and
    you know you i mean there can’t
    possibly be two industries that are
    typically further apart
    you know software as a service and like
    the dinosaur
    laundromat industry so how did how did
    you come into play
    and you know because you talked about
    your dad having you know
    foresight and and getting that
    laundromat and you know
    proved to be true but i think you know
    kind of merging
    software you know with laundromats also
    is
    incredible you know foresight too so how
    did
    how did that happen how did you get how
    did that black hole the laundry match
    so that was actually my brother aaron
    and
    what had so he started growing the
    business a lot and at first so
    the washington fold was making between
    six and eight thousand bucks a month
    and it was just flat for about ten years
    and that’s just what it made so we’re
    a real good location with you know
    different apartments nearby
    without longer without laundry rooms and
    and then he started doing tons of
    advertising because
    you know if you got all this revenue
    coming in you feel like you got to you
    know pay the piper you know or do
    something right so
    so he started doing door knockers or you
    know the door hangers
    no response any saver ads no response
    yellow pages no response
    we even he even did direct mail
    through the so we paid a lot of money
    because we got these high-rise apartment
    buildings
    and then we found out that the instead
    of putting inside the mailboxes the post
    office for well
    maybe i shouldn’t be saying this but the
    stack got put on top of the mailbox
    didn’t even get put inside
    and nobody’s gonna grab junk mail and
    say oh let me add that to my
    yeah today’s uh delivery yeah you know
    what you call the post office out come
    on post office
    so that’s so we we tried a whole bunch
    of stuff
    nothing worked it and the reason being
    is
    yeah and promoting your self-serve is
    different but wash and fold is there
    that was what we’re trying to promote
    and and it’s just they’re fewer and far
    farther between you know the it’s not
    necessarily the people
    it’s like it’s just very difficult to
    find those people so our first positive
    response was yelp
    and and but we found even greater
    response when you just do google adwords
    and we’ll get into that a little bit
    later but
    yelp kind of tipped us off that hey
    people are looking online for this
    and keep in mind the mindset back then
    was you know our customers aren’t using
    the internet
    you know so but how wrong is that you
    know
    um so he was growing my brother was
    growing the business to
    a ridiculous amount and we were bursting
    at the seams
    customers had to find their own clothes
    in the back room
    and because we couldn’t find it we had
    no way of organizing it
    you know the point of sales is we’re
    using paper tickets the triplicates
    if a customer came in and had an issue
    good luck finding that old ticket of
    theirs
    so we started so we went to the coin
    laundry forum to find
    um recommendations because certainly we
    can’t be the only laundromat with this
    issue
    and almost all the point of sales were
    made for other industries
    and just yeah and and our
    sys you know our industry is just
    different you know a regular point of
    sale
    you’re buying like a hamburger and the
    transaction is done
    you pay for it you get the service with
    wash and fold people can
    pay a pickup they can pay when they drop
    it off they could they have special
    preferences you actually need a rolodex
    with their info
    everybody wants it done different and
    then you need to track who’s washing it
    where the order is at every time
    there’s just a lot of moving parts and a
    regular point of sale just doesn’t do
    that and that’s what we needed
    is actually when we first launched
    curbside laundry software
    we actually held off on using the term
    pos because
    we saw that as almost like degrading
    yeah yeah
    we were looking at like a business
    process management solution but
    it turns out nobody on google was
    looking for a business solution
    so so we finally caved and called it a
    pos but
    it’s it really manages the washing fold
    orders from beginning to end and that’s
    what we were looking for and we tried
    different systems
    returned them it didn’t work for us and
    and
    and then at about the same time we
    realized pickup and delivery was
    becoming a thing and that you definitely
    do need software
    because you have a lot more moving parts
    yeah right you’re adding people
    and processes and volume all at the same
    time yeah yeah we were using a white
    board and then the drivers were going
    out
    miss pickups driver gets back and and
    then the customer’s upset we didn’t pick
    it up
    and and then it turns out they left a
    memo the closer by the chimney
    and and the attendant answering the
    phone didn’t write that on the note
    and so imagine the cost of that you know
    your driver’s
    your most expensive employee and they
    drive all the way out there and they
    can’t find the clothes because
    it’s so big and then people reschedule
    and good luck communicating
    i mean even today kind of fast forward a
    little bit
    we’re doing about like 60 pickup and
    deliveries a day
    and there’s one order and i didn’t run
    it through the software because we’re in
    the middle of a software update and all
    and i just wanted to just hand it over
    i’m like make sure the driver gets this
    it has to get delivered
    and okay no problem i figured we’re
    doing 60 70 orders a day
    and it didn’t happen and i could have
    babysitted it the whole way
    but it’s just you know it just kind of
    shows you you need
    you know that type of automation yeah so
    so my brother was looking for
    for so he so he realized the software
    wasn’t out there
    and he he i remember him telling me like
    if we don’t figure out a way of doing
    this we’re going to start losing more
    customers than we’re gaining
    and our reputation is going to go so far
    down where we’re going gonna have to
    spend a zillion dollars to
    overcome the low yelp review so we’re
    gonna
    we just have to if we want to continue
    growing we need a way to manage it
    and at the same time pickup and delivery
    was starting to grow
    um at the time there’s just one company
    doing it
    and they wanted five percent of her
    gross and
    we said no you know we’re already
    established it’s gonna cost us like over
    a thousand fifteen hundred bucks a month
    and so so we started developing our own
    software
    and it took about two years
    and my brother’s like matt you gotta
    join you gotta join you know this is
    gonna be big
    because like everybody’s gonna be having
    the same problem we’re having especially
    on the pickup and delivery side
    and and so it was like this race and it
    took like two years and we couldn’t see
    anything getting done
    because it took a long time to get the
    foundation now we do updates and we see
    the results pretty quick
    right yeah so that that was kind of how
    i got involved was he go
    you know my brother’s like keeps telling
    me about this opportunity
    and you know he’s on the laundry forums
    and all this stuff everybody’s talking
    about the same problems
    and he just he wanted to post about what
    we’re working on but you know just kept
    his mouth
    you know shut because we didn’t have it
    yet yeah and and then at the clean show
    2017 in las vegas that’s the first time
    we
    you know showed revealed it and you know
    start offering it to other people
    yeah man crazy uh you know it’s just
    it’s funny how
    it’s just i always say this man it’s
    funny how life takes you like you’re in
    one
    industry and you get pulled into a
    completely different industry but
    somehow it you know it’s still related
    and you
    and you create something that you know
    there isn’t really a whole lot of
    out there and it’s something that’s
    super valuable not only for your own
    personal business but for
    tons of other people around the country
    so it’s a very cool uh
    you know just a very cool story about
    how you kind of you know took a windy
    path
    into the laundromat industry and now
    here you are man
    pretty good yeah yeah so it’s a lot of
    fun and
    probably the thing that’s happening now
    is just talking to a lot of different
    laundry owners and it just learned so
    much
    you know where i see what you’re doing
    is the future because
    this is like the long-form joe rogan
    type show you know where it’s
    you’re able to kind of dive deeper into
    stuff and i think especially in this
    industry
    you know there’s people are looking for
    information
    and and so and i’ve learned so much
    from our clients because it’s put me in
    a position where i’m talking to
    different people who like how do you
    price commercial accounts how do you do
    this how do you
    what do you recommend for that and i cut
    you know a lot of
    what i do is basically propagate stuff
    that other people have told me and then
    i
    you know just i’m just in a situation
    where i’m talking to a lot of laundry
    owners and that’s been
    super super valuable yeah you have this
    cool unique perspective where you guys
    own a laundromat you’re owning and
    operating a laundromat
    and not only that you’re doing you know
    this pickup and delivery that’s
    high volume pickup and delivery you guys
    are doing a ton of
    you know business every single day and
    but at the same time you know i think a
    lot of
    myself included like we get you know
    obviously i mean we’re stuck on our own
    businesses and what we’re doing and what
    you know what’s working for us what’s
    not working for us we’re trying to
    figure out our own
    you know stuff we’re trying to set up
    our own you know automated systems and
    stuff like that
    but you’re also talking to all these
    other owners and able to kind of compile
    all of this you know information best
    practices stuff that’s working
    all that and we’re going to get to that
    because i want to hear i definitely want
    to pick your brain
    from your perspective on what you see is
    kind of working in the industry right
    now
    and i’m sure we’ll talk a ton about that
    but very cool uh
    perspective can you tell us i mean
    obviously we’re gonna focus on
    pick up and delivery because that’s what
    you guys are really excelling at
    you know in your own business and you’re
    helping a ton of other people excel in
    that
    but real quick before we get a little
    bit more into that can you tell us a
    little bit more about just your
    laundromat general like how big is it
    what’s
    you know what what do you guys what does
    it look like
    yeah so it’s about seven or eight
    thousand square feet
    um it’s 200 machines 100 washers 100
    dryers
    and it’s yeah pretty big um
    we some of our machines are older we’re
    replacing you know a bunch as well
    one upgrade we recently did was we went
    with uh article and ozone system
    um to for sanitation and
    and we got a whole bunch of like
    basically pr
    got write-ups in the local papers and
    stuff like that
    um and it just basically for people who
    don’t know sanitize this gets rid of
    viruses and bacteria
    and what nice part about that is it
    upgraded our whole laundromat
    where you know so we have some older
    machines because we you know we’ve been
    open for since the 1990s and and this
    way
    people come in and then they say and it
    says you know ozone enhanced on each
    machine and
    and that matters a lot to the customers
    because you know they really value that
    um we did our
    our drop-off counter for the until last
    year
    was very very very modest i mean it was
    one of the double doors you know where
    just the top opens up and
    and you would never believe that that
    little doorway
    makes more than the laundromat you know
    and the longer it does all right
    and and and you had to go in from the
    front door and kind of find it in the
    back corner
    so one advice i have you know if you’re
    looking at
    locations for your drop off counter you
    want it very visible right from the
    right from the front people shouldn’t
    have to search for it and
    and so the now we have it in the center
    it’s yeah really nice um
    and and it’s basically at the center of
    the laundromat so anybody and that also
    helps employers because now they could
    kind of oversee what’s going on versus
    being tucked away in the corner
    yeah yeah that’s killer because
    you’re right i mean it’s it’s funny that
    you know because when you started it
    it was sort of a smaller part of the
    business doing six or eight thousand
    dollars a month which is
    you know great that’s awesome but as it
    kind of i mean i would
    say your pickup delivery is like the
    focal point of your business obviously
    there’s other aspects to
    it but you know that’s the bulk of your
    business right there so
    having it this little you know half door
    double door
    you know it made sense back then but it
    just didn’t make sense anymore so that’s
    pretty funny
    uh yeah and it’s yeah the pickup and
    delivery
    um yeah if you don’t mind i’d like to
    show a slide just kind of showing the
    the growth of that
    yeah definitely and for those of you
    guys listening on the podcast uh matt’s
    gonna send over the slide and i’ll
    i’ll put a link in the show notes uh so
    that you can check
    out this slide too because it’s pretty
    cool yeah so what
    we’re showing right now is the total
    number of orders and so
    it’s just it just did a search within
    the software
    and it shows you month over month year
    over year
    and i’m kind of looking at august so
    this is
    let’s take it so in august we did 50
    pickup and deliveries
    okay so that’s a hundred rounds or
    basically a hundred trips about 50 round
    trips
    the following year it went up to about
    200. that was in 2016 right
    yeah 2016. exactly so august 2016
    okay four years ago and then the
    following year it jumped up to about
    200 then it jumped up again at 250
    and and then in 2019 it went to 500
    a 500 pickup and delivery assignment
    this is just like just shooting like a
    shooting star
    yeah and then just last month um
    it went up to 700 pickup deliveries wow
    and the goal of this and it doesn’t
    matter whether it’s 700 or 70.
    the main thing about pickup and delivery
    is
    you keep the customers you got and you
    add new ones to it
    so you gotta just always be adding new
    customers to it but unlike a gym
    membership
    this actually has a high customer
    retention this business i mean
    and one yeah and one thing just on a
    separate note
    the magic number in our industry is two
    for pickup and delivery
    meaning if somebody orders a second time
    they almost always become a regular
    customer
    so as you’re bringing new people on you
    want to think about what’s the next step
    like if you’re playing pool how do i get
    the next shot in
    you want to be thinking like okay they
    place an order how am i going to get
    them to place a second one
    and so maybe you put like a card inside
    their wash and fold bag that says hey
    you saved
    percent or five bucks or ten bucks on
    your next order and because their second
    time placing your
    order it’s gonna be so much easier
    because they don’t have to put in their
    address
    they don’t have to create an account you
    don’t have to put in their credit card
    information it’s like tap tap tap
    yeah so that that’s one of the keys
    that’s killer uh i i mean i knew this is
    going to be a
    marketing master class but that’s i mean
    that’s genius just having the
    uh having that magic number and it makes
    a lot of sense right because once you’ve
    done the initial work of putting all the
    information in it’s already there
    well i mean it’s already an easy process
    to to
    you know sign up and and create your
    first order but man it’s so much
    you know you’re taking away all that
    friction to just
    tap tap tap like you said and order and
    i’ll send your laundry is done and
    folded and ready
    you know for you to put it away and
    that’s that’s yeah and
    one of the reasons why you know i want
    to show that graph as well
    is i think a lot of people know since
    covet and the stay at home economy
    that everything pickup and delivery or
    especially delivery
    is just growing whether it’s food or
    you know groceries or amazon and laundry
    it’s your clothes i mean people are
    looking at ways of just getting
    everything
    delivered and picked up and so there’s
    there there’s a number of people out
    there
    saying well this is just a fad the the
    whole pickup and delivery thing
    and so just and maybe it’s just a recent
    trend since
    you know march but this is this trend
    has been going on for
    quite some time and the people who are
    doing it know it
    and you know if they’re doing it well um
    and so it’s kind of like i just want to
    be like
    preach the gospel about pickup and
    delivery because you know it’s been good
    good for us yeah i mean and that chart
    is so telling again if you’re listening
    to this on the podcast
    you know click on the show notes or go
    to alignmentresource.com
    show 22 and i’ll have a link to that
    graph because
    you’ve got to see uh just the the growth
    and
    visually even you know it’s just
    stunning he has uh every
    he has every month of business from 2016
    up through august of 2020 when we’re uh
    you know just we’re recording this
    september 2020 so
    uh you can just see the growth and it
    looks like growth pretty much
    every month and every year is
    significantly larger than the year
    before
    and i do think that you’re right i think
    it’s only going to continue to grow
    further as uh i don’t think that this is
    a fad because i’m seeing it in all kinds
    of industries all over the place like
    you mentioned
    and i think it’s only going to get more
    and more prevalent so
    now is the time to get in to pick up a
    delivery if you
    are at all interested and you have not
    yet started to do so
    yeah yeah and you know i kind of look at
    you know who was way ahead of their time
    was the pizza places
    right yes they were delivering for a
    long time and they’re the first
    ones you know had apps where you could
    schedule you know deliveries and
    customize your order and so they
    and if you’re opening up a pizza shop
    today
    why not do delivery you know if they
    like pizza they’re not going to complain
    if you deliver it to their home
    right yeah absolutely especially yeah
    especially now
    you know they can’t even eat it at the
    store hardly so depending on where
    you’re at
    well okay well let’s talk about this i
    mean
    this is taking a little bit of a
    different format uh
    but let’s talk about this because you
    know let’s
    like we’re just saying like now is a
    good time to jump in if you haven’t yet
    or maybe
    you know if somebody is already doing
    pickup and delivery now is a good time
    to start
    trying to level up your pickup and
    delivery service and expand it
    so maybe we can talk to uh talk to the
    person who
    is looking to get into the industry how
    what’s a good way of going about
    doing that getting into pickup and
    delivery um
    you know i’ve got so we started yeah
    curbside laundry is it kind of going
    back
    a little bit one that one of the issues
    we had was both in store and pickup and
    delivery
    and so that’s what led us to develop our
    own software and
    one thing is in terms of ways of getting
    in
    i’ve got a webinar that you can find on
    youtube you can just do a search
    for curbside laundry’s webinar and i’ve
    got one about
    how to get started and pick up and
    delivery and and
    you know what’s and that kind of goes
    into what i think
    this is really the future of how to
    communicate with people
    or i guess the future’s already here
    because you know we’ve got like three
    four thousand people watch that online
    and i gotta say like you know the clean
    show is awesome
    you know i mean it it’s just there’s no
    replacement to seeing everybody in
    person things like that
    but you you know wind up spending a
    whole week spend tens of thousands of
    dollars to get over there you get all
    this equipment you get all those
    marketing materials you got a booth
    design
    you gotta pay somebody to lug it from
    the parking lot to there because you
    can’t do it yourself
    and then you walk out with like 300
    leads you know
    so in a way this online format is just
    and in a way like and then there’s like
    five minute conversations
    you know i i should probably stop
    talking right now but
    what this going in depth talking about
    marketing talk about all these things
    there’s no way you could have that on a
    one-on-one thing
    with you know hundreds and hundreds of
    people like this way
    you are talking to hundreds of people
    and they’re able to learn
    a whole bunch and i just i’m passionate
    about teaching people about like
    how to do it right because you know we
    want people to be successful
    you know even you know one thing with
    our clients
    is a lot of times we’re saying okay here
    are the different ways to make your
    website more prominent
    and here for example again you need to
    be on those referral websites
    whether it’s yelp and google my business
    and bing and there’s probably like 75
    other ones
    and so we give our client that list of
    those and you could
    find them on your own as well with the
    hyperlinks and it does take a chunk of
    time
    because you got to prove to each one
    that you own the business right
    yeah or you could you know pay us you
    know like 500 bucks and
    we’ll do it for you and we don’t care
    whether you pay us or
    you do it on your own we just want you
    to do it because
    the more prominent your website is our
    number one source of leads
    is our website yeah okay so that’s the
    number one source and so
    everybody’s listing do a search for your
    own laundromat find
    how easy or hard it is to find you know
    use terms like laundry service wash and
    fold
    you know pick up and delivery laundry
    pickup you know because we think of it
    in terms of delivery
    customer thinks of it in terms of i want
    my laundry picked up that’s a problem
    they have they have all this dirty
    laundry
    so you want to see how your laundry mat
    is ranking
    not just by your laundry map but in
    different areas
    and and if you tap in
    to getting on top first second or third
    search result you’re going to be getting
    new customers for free basically every
    month the second way of getting
    customers is google adwords um that we
    wind up paying between like three and
    four bucks
    per click so basically what that means
    for people not familiar with google
    adwords is
    you can actually bid for different
    keywords so if somebody goes to google
    and they type in i’m looking for wash
    and fold
    you could bid three bucks or whatever it
    is in your area
    and you’ll be listed number one it’ll
    say add next to it
    but the b you only get charged if they
    click on it so if you know that that
    customer is looking for wash and fold
    it kind of is worth three bucks to
    all days every day i will pay
    three million dollars if it’s gonna cost
    me three dollars a click
    because yeah your your returns are going
    to be so much higher than that
    it’s right so so that’s so that’s that
    customer if they become a customer
    they’re going to be spending hundreds of
    dollars every year
    so it’s a good three dollars um when
    you’re first starting off though
    it could you know ten three you could in
    three clicks your daily budget could go
    like you know there goes ten bucks right
    and then you have to wait till the next
    day
    and so in the beginning it is sometimes
    cost prohibitive
    to get all of your customers by google
    adwords um
    we get about 25 of our business from
    google adwords 75 through the website um
    but it’s in the in the other
    referral website that’s really big that
    i see people overlooking all the time
    is yelp so we get 75 people per month
    from yelp who go directly to your
    website supersubs.com
    and you know and i’ve talked to a lot of
    owners who say oh i already did yelp
    but they did yelp like 10 years ago and
    there’s no mention of wash and fall and
    there’s no mention of pickup and
    delivery and there’s no service area you
    know you want a service area like a blue
    shaded area on the map of where you
    serve not just a little dot on the map
    you know where your laundry mat is
    so you’re in the delivery business you
    got to let yelp know that you
    you know service this entire swath of
    area so it does take some work
    but you do it once and then it works for
    you in perpetuity
    so that’s you know even if you feel
    you’ve already done all these things
    do it again take a look at it with fresh
    eyes and is it promoting
    what you want to promote yeah i love
    that because you know when i was
    when i first started in with my
    laundromat i was doing
    yelp ads and they’re not super cheap but
    i was just doing it for my
    laundromat and i had no real way of
    tracking to see
    how much business was coming from yelp
    uh but i did know that it wasn’t as much
    as i was spending
    on my yelp ads and so i ended up
    stopping but
    i love what you’re saying because it’s a
    different business and
    there are ways to track it when you’re
    doing a pickup delivery service and
    they’re registering through your website
    and
    all of a sudden it’s a whole different
    ball game so if you’re looking to start
    pick up and delivery and maybe you’ve
    tried yelp in the past
    well this is a different business it
    uses the same assets
    as your maybe your self-service laundry
    map but it’s really a different business
    and so it does make a lot more sense
    there i think i love that yeah and a lot
    of people have a misconception that yelp
    costs money
    because you can pay the money and
    but it’s you could also just have a
    business listing there
    so we’re not paying anything um granted
    they’ll favor you and give you more
    exposure if you do pay them but
    you know if you are going to spend money
    you’re best off
    the google adwords that you’ll just get
    a better return on investment
    love it love it that’s i mean dude
    already you’re bringing
    crazy solid i mean you’re bringing hard
    numbers you’re bringing
    you know very practical tactics again
    marketing
    master class i love this and i think our
    industry needs
    that because you know most of us are
    just
    mom and pops we don’t have you know an
    nba marketing from usc
    uh you know over here so you know just
    thank you for bringing bringing that
    that’s awesome uh well
    let’s talk to um
    you know let’s let’s talk a little bit
    about
    let’s say we have a pickup and delivery
    service and
    we we want to expand it um and obviously
    we’re going to be doing some of these
    marketing things that you’re talking
    about
    in terms of organizing
    your business are there are there any
    particular things that we could be doing
    to
    just kind of make things a little bit
    more efficient and i know you know maybe
    talk to that but i also know that you
    got some
    stuff coming up with your software
    that’s going to help with that a lot too
    so maybe you can touch on that
    also at the same time oh yeah yeah so
    real soon i’m going to be putting
    together a
    webinar just on how to create routes and
    how to be efficient as possible
    because if you do it right you could
    cover a bigger area
    and yeah you could basically cover a
    bigger area with the same amount of
    resources
    meaning like same number of vehicles and
    that’s
    one of the tip-offs that i needed to do
    a webinar about this
    was we’re signing up a new car a
    customer was about to launch with a
    pickup and delivery using our
    curbside software and i said oh what
    days are you doing pick up and
    deliveries
    and what are your time slots you know
    meaning like what time could customers
    schedule the pickup at
    and so this is a customer is just
    boarding and he said well i don’t know
    and i realized oh my gosh you know i
    didn’t do my job because
    you know there’s a whole bunch of stuff
    i need to communicate to him you know
    about
    because there’s a lot of ways of doing
    it and i wanted to find out what works
    best for him like whether he’s starting
    off three days a week or four days
    whether he’s doing a milk run between 8
    a.m to 5 p.m or whether he’s doing it on
    demand
    and you know where it’s smaller time
    slots more common in like new york
    you where some places actually do
    one-hour time slots
    and of course you’ll make more money
    from 8 am to 5 p.m
    because you could be a lot more
    efficient in your route you’re not
    hitting up the north side of town
    five times in the same day and you know
    you can make like a beautiful route and
    lower your cost and maybe pass that on a
    customer
    or so there’s different things and
    different ways of
    of doing the routes and that’s one of
    the number and whatever you choose
    you want to be consistent so it’s just
    like with your laundromat
    you’re not going to be open at 8 a.m one
    day and 10
    a.m the next day so with the pickup and
    delivery i’d say the
    most important part is consistency
    so whatever days you offer it you want
    to stick with it
    and i’d say so that’s something it’s a
    new feature in our software
    that allows people to service different
    areas on different days of the week
    meaning so you could do the east side of
    town because there’s some places in
    texas where they’re in the middle of
    nowhere but they got a big town to the
    left and a big town to the right
    and there’s no way they’re going left
    and right on the same day so
    and so one of the things that the places
    like that need and even for us
    you know like we don’t want to we’re
    seven days a week pickup and delivery
    but and we’re expanding our reach but we
    don’t want to go to those new places
    seven days a week until there’s more
    money being made you know you want to
    grow
    organically or you’re making money along
    the way and if you just start offering
    seven days a week to some place that’s
    far away
    it’s not gonna be profitable and you
    know we’re all here to make some money
    so
    so now with the software we’re able to
    say okay we’re going to go
    service those areas on these three days
    monday wednesday and friday
    and as it gets busier well that’s
    saturday as it gets busier we’ll add a
    second shift
    so that’s kind of our approach and i
    think that really helps
    you got to figure out and a very common
    mistake people make
    is they make their surface area too
    small so
    it’s because they’re looking at it from
    the prism of their laundromat
    they’re saying well the only people come
    to my laundromat are within two miles
    so i’m just gonna service to pick up a
    delivery within like two or
    five miles you know you could go we’re
    doing like 10 15 mile radius
    granted we have the ocean on one side
    but
    you know you got wheels use them you
    know it’s less
    customer per square mile but
    there’s a lot more square miles you
    could service right yeah
    yeah that i mean it’s definitely one of
    the big differences
    and what makes it a different business
    than the self-service you’re
    you’re obviously your range can be a lot
    bigger
    um and you’re right that it’s less
    customers per square mile
    but you have so much more area that you
    can service that
    you know it more than makes up for it so
    i i mean
    i i love that are you are you seeing
    uh i mean i’m sure you’re seeing all
    over the board but
    is there like a and i’m sure it depends
    on population density and all that stuff
    but is there like a minimum radius that
    you kind of recommend
    people start with so the best place in
    my opinion to start with is nearby your
    laundromat
    and the reason for that is you’re going
    to rank better on google
    because you have a bricks and mortar
    location the
    other thing i’m very passionate about
    you know it’s not a requirement there
    are
    people successful doing it both ways but
    if you operate under the same brand name
    as your laundromat
    you’re going to start making money
    faster and and it’ll actually lower your
    advertising expenses as well
    because going back to google adwords if
    you’re promoting your self-serve
    as one brand say like it’s super suds
    and we were like super you know totally
    different brand
    for pickup and delivery you miss out on
    the opportunity to
    upsell the people at your laundromat to
    pick up and delivery
    because they’re looking for washable and
    they don’t even know you do pick up and
    delivery
    and then you’re also missing out on the
    opportunity to
    um now if you’re doing google adwords
    you know now you’re promoting two
    different businesses and google adwords
    works like a bidding system
    so you’re actually driving the minimum
    cost per click up
    in your your own worst competition so
    so as far as where to best start
    i would brand them the same so that way
    you get google gives you
    bonus google points or google juice
    for having a bricks and mortar location
    so and so naturally you’re going to rank
    better so
    so in essence they’re having to
    create a virtual company out of thin air
    and meanwhile if you’re a laundry owner
    you probably spend a few bucks on that
    laundromat and it gives you a huge
    amount of assets so my recommendation is
    use that asset
    um you know because if you start up a
    virtual company with a different brand
    name
    you’re not leveraging that um so
    so so that’s and i find places that have
    laundromats just do
    way way better than people who don’t
    there are a lot of people who don’t have
    a laundromat who are successful
    because they have a business plan and
    they know they’re focused on how to get
    customers they’re not just waiting for
    people to place orders
    but by and large if they don’t have a
    laundromat and they’re just looking to
    pick up and delivery
    the good news for laundry owners is most
    of them i mean this is not
    great news but most of them actually
    don’t succeed because they put up the
    website they’re not getting business
    they don’t really have a business plan
    so um
    and the other thing is you want software
    that tells you where your customers
    are because we there’s no way of
    really knowing there’s certain zip codes
    we found that no matter how much we pump
    into there like from
    google advertising we weren’t getting a
    return so you want to look at your
    spend where you’re spending money and
    look at your google adwords as part of
    your
    your utility bill it’s just the cost of
    business and we keep it about the same
    even though our business is way way up
    because there’s only so many people
    looking for pickup and delivery each
    month and you either get them or you
    don’t
    you can’t just make that market bigger
    so
    so we’re so you want to review your data
    see where you’re advertising seeing what
    works and then decide do i want to up
    the spend over there or
    decrease it and reallocate that
    yeah killer killer stuff and
    you know i think uh i mean you touched
    on a lot of
    things there and you know you know i
    i get asked the question a lot can you
    start a pickup and delivery
    business before you own a laundromat and
    like you said the answer that is
    yes in fact we had um someone on the
    podcast recently who started that way
    and is actually
    going backwards now and as now trying to
    get locations just because
    you know the margins are much better
    when you have a location let alone you
    know your marketing advantages and all
    that stuff
    you know just your efficiency and your
    margin
    everything just is more favorable when
    you own your own
    store your own equipment and all that
    stuff so
    you can do it but you’re right it’s very
    tough to do it you have to be very
    intentional about the way that you’re
    doing you have to have a solid business
    plan you have to be able to execute that
    business plan
    if you’ll stay organized you have to be
    able to you know all this stuff
    in order to make that work so if you’re
    an existing laundromat owner
    you’ve got a leg up right now uh to be
    able to
    jump into the business do well succeed
    and
    and to really you know own your area
    yeah one of my
    favorite parts about pickup and delivery
    is it is a separate business
    it is using your laundry mat so now it’s
    transforming your laundry mat to three
    different revenue
    sources you got your self-serve you have
    your wash and fold
    inner pickup and delivery and you know
    one of them takes a hit
    because you know there’s a coin shortage
    or there’s this or that or anything
    you’ve got something else and so
    diversification i think is probably your
    best protection
    and it just happens to be that
    diversifying into pickup and delivery
    now you’re tapping into the fastest
    growing segment of the market
    um i will say you still need to analyze
    your market
    because every market is different so
    we’ve got
    you know a client in nashville who’s
    just going bananas like their business
    is going
    going so great i mean he was yeah i
    can’t get into details but
    um he’s doing very well and
    he’s growing at a fast clip and every
    month it’s getting bigger
    i think he’s okay with me saying that um
    the
    then somebody outside of nashville about
    an hour out
    great operators but they have a
    different issue
    people aren’t looking for wash and pull
    or pickup and delivery because they
    don’t know it’s a thing
    and so you do need to be aware of your
    market like
    is it already mature is it already are
    people looking for it because
    when we started pickup and delivery the
    google adwords only did so much because
    there are only so many people looking
    for it
    so we had to invest more in awareness
    campaigns you know the banner ads where
    you pay like 50 bucks for
    2000 impressions and you’re just hoping
    you find somebody
    but just increasing awareness so
    um another source with brand new
    i know i’m kind of jumping all over the
    place but
    another great source of customers are
    your customers
    so if you’re doing in-store wash and
    fold
    um at the bottom of our tickets that we
    print out you can customize the bottom
    and it says schedule your next laundry
    pickup at
    supersubs.com here’s five bucks off
    and use use this promo code so
    we love so a lot of laundry owners say
    why would you want to cannibalize your
    business
    if they’re dropping off at the
    laundromat i’m going to be i’m going to
    be making more money than if i have to
    go pick it up
    but what winds up happening in reality
    and this is where having the experience
    like helps is we know when they do a
    pickup and delivery they’re going to
    give us about 40 some pounds of clothes
    versus 20. so when they bring in laundry
    to your laundry mat they’re not carrying
    in i mean you go to the gym that 25
    pound weight you know that’s something
    imagine carrying two of those like you
    know it it
    it it and your kid on your hip and
    throwing another toddler behind you
    yeah yeah i mean that now you’re lugging
    stuff around and
    it’s a lot easier to take those two 25
    pound weights and put them in front of
    your house
    than it is to take them all the way to
    the laundromat and stuff your trunk with
    smelly laundry for half the day until
    you get there
    so yes so the pickup and delivery
    they’re going to spend more and it’s
    such a difference
    that once a day at our laundromat
    somebody drops off their laundry
    in person and this is also and it turns
    out
    that we we offer and we deliver it home
    to them we keep it at the same price
    and generally we do it on the bigger
    orders hey if you want we could drop
    that off at your house like oh really
    you do that that’s great
    and once they get hooked on that they’re
    hooked yeah and
    and and so that’s you know great source
    another reason
    our software does both the in-store
    point of sale and pickup and delivery
    so it’s one system one database you
    don’t have to train your employees
    on two different systems and that also
    makes it really easy when
    they drop off their laundry in person
    that you could deliver at home to them
    let me ask you this question i mean this
    might be actually i have a few dumb
    questions to ask you
    uh those are my favorite if you could
    just humor me um but
    this one i just had a curiosity just
    popped in my head
    is it possible to uh
    to run a pickup and delivery
    out of your laundromat without doing a
    like a drop-off service and just say hey
    we only do
    that that was a really good question
    i know it’s possible right i’m
    i’m thinking if we i’m wondering if we
    have any clients who are doing that so
    we have about 200 some
    people customers you know they’re
    let me tell you why i asked this
    question is because i think
    that you know there’s a little still a
    lot of laundromat owners out there who
    run
    unattended laundromats but if they want
    to
    [Music]
    you know get into the pickup delivery
    game i mean it’s
    it seems like pretty daunting to have to
    hire employees to be there all day
    before you have the business and you
    know and maybe they don’t want to hang
    out there all day so maybe they want to
    try to start off with
    doing pick up and delivery either
    themselves or they can hire somebody as
    an
    as needed basis uh and run it but
    not have somebody at the store all the
    time to
    be available for pickup and delivery
    yeah
    my recommendation on that is maybe have
    limited i mean it’s not ideal but maybe
    limited drop-off hours
    so by and large almost everybody doing
    pickup and delivery
    is doing in-store wash and fold because
    it’s and i would master the wash and
    fold in store first
    and then tack on pickup and delivery
    after that
    just because you have more moving pieces
    and you’ve got
    you don’t want to inundate your
    employers too quickly
    you know granted you know because if
    you’re you want to do one thing at a
    time
    and if you’re just throwing all the
    stuff at them that’s that’s a lot of
    moving parts
    um so i think it would be easier to do
    wash and fold
    and then add pickup and delivery my one
    thing if you do follow that advice is
    we also have clients who got complacent
    you know where their
    in-store wash and fall started going off
    the hook
    because then now they got the website
    and they got all the stuff and they’re
    doing everything right
    and then they’re like why should i do
    pick up a delivery that seems like a
    pain
    so because it is extra work you know
    yeah
    because it is a pain right you got it
    the driver is the hardest person to hire
    you gotta make you know insurance
    i mean everything’s solvable but yeah it
    is extra work
    and my advice is to stay hungry
    don’t leave all this money on the table
    because that’ll increase the resale
    value of your laundromat
    and you’re gonna make more so it kind of
    comes from a family of maximizers where
    we got this laundromat
    and one of the visions we had was
    keeping the machines running at night
    time
    always spinning and the way we
    accomplished that is
    pickup and delivery and we’re just
    bringing in you know
    close to a thousand pound i forget
    exactly how many pounds a day but
    um just sometimes like 1400 pounds a day
    and and it’s and so
    we’ve got a night crew that comes in
    sometimes between like five and six
    people
    to do laundry um just throughout the
    night
    while the laundry mat is closed and then
    we open our doors at seven a.m
    and you know sometimes we’ll still have
    like two or three hundred pounds left
    over
    so you know we’re rushing to get that
    done before so we can load them all in
    the truck and
    get them out delivered yeah yeah
    uh can you talk to me just a little bit
    about how just
    maybe like nuts and bolts i don’t know
    if we’ve ever talked about it here so
    maybe somebody’s totally unfamiliar with
    you know pickup delivery and how it
    would even work
    uh how do you how are you keeping
    track of like the actual clothes i’m
    assuming you’re not mixing clothes
    in the washers and can you tell me just
    a little bit like nuts and bolts how
    does that process work in terms of
    how do you know what laundry’s wear at
    various points in the process
    yeah great question and that’s all stuff
    we incorporated
    into the software so and we basically
    copied our
    pen and paper system but now it’s
    reliable and automated
    so so step number one
    before the driver it actually starts
    before the driver leaves to pick up the
    clothes
    so he goes into the software hits print
    all and it prints all the tickets
    of all the different pickups he’s going
    to be picking up so nice ticket where
    you can label the orders
    and and that way you know who belong
    which belongs to
    each person then when he gets back
    or she gets back from being on the road
    then we unload each order and so you
    simply tap
    well when he’s going to pick up the
    order
    one one quick thing a very important
    piece is you need to communicate with
    the customer
    the most expensive thing is driving out
    there and there’s no laundry
    so which comes that’s communication
    issue so the day before the software
    automatically emails people i mean this
    stuff would take forever to do by hand
    and then and then you’ve got when the
    driver is in route he taps in route on
    his tablet
    and then the customer gets a text
    message saying you know super suds will
    be there in
    15 minutes if there’s a problem please
    call
    so then he picks up the laundry after he
    finishes his route
    goes back to the laundry sometimes he
    needs to go back first because it’s
    overflowing and then he taps unload and
    he unloads each order one at a time
    we weigh the clothes both when we unload
    and then after the clothes are laundered
    and that’s very important and most
    people don’t do it because it’d be just
    more tracking but it’s so easy with the
    software because
    it grabs the weight automatically from
    the scale you just tap add weight
    so so that information is super handy
    because in case an order gets
    it helps prevent orders from getting
    mixed up
    because then you could see you know
    bob’s order you know gain five pounds
    and sally’s order lost five pounds
    and and then you’re able to know exactly
    which attendant worked on that order
    because when you’re hiring somebody new
    you you know you train them as good as
    you can
    and you know exactly who to talk to if
    there’s an issue so you can fix that
    um so the second thing is more common
    is somebody says hey you lost my jacket
    you know i and i’m guilty of
    blaming stuff on the cleaning person um
    so
    so because they think you’re the last
    person to touch their clothes and i’m
    missing my jacket
    and they left it in their cart or
    something right and and
    so now we have the initial weight we
    have the final weight it’s
    displayed beautifully on the screen and
    we show it to them and then they say oh
    my mistake i probably have misplaced it
    and and so that helps protect us
    then we put the orders in a bin so
    because
    everybody gives you their clothes in
    different bags and the socks just love
    to jump out of those bags
    and and if and that might not seem like
    a big problem somebody lives as a sock
    but
    it’s a huge problem because those socks
    are going to go in somebody else’s order
    and when somebody else gets somebody
    else’s sock or undergarment in their
    clothes
    you just lost a customer yeah it’s weird
    it’s just weird
    you have a bigger chance of losing the
    customer got somebody else’s clothes and
    the guy who’s like missing clothes he
    doesn’t realize
    so so it is such a costly
    and if you lose one customer that’s
    hundreds that could be like 500 bucks a
    year
    you know or thousands so
    so we put each order inside a bin
    then we we track each order from
    you know through the software as well
    the the attendants use tablets
    and you could use the main kiosk if you
    want and then you tap wash
    and you could even choose which machine
    you’re using and how much you’re putting
    in the machine
    so you could track all that information
    and a lot of laundromats are using
    spiral notebooks and they’re having
    their manager look over all the reports
    and there’s and with ours it’s just
    doing it automatically it knows that
    machine is two and a half bucks or three
    bucks a start
    and then you got a report that you could
    access the softwares in the cloud so you
    could access it from anywhere from your
    phone or at home
    and you could see hey why did you know
    johnny spend over 40 percent
    of the order total on machines
    you know so you could just go right down
    the column and just look at the
    percentage of how much money they spent
    if that number is over 40 percent or you
    know your numbers may be different
    but if it goes over a certain percentage
    you know that they
    are either using the wrong machines or
    they’re giving themselves a raise
    you know either way so um so that’s
    really important to know who’s tracking
    to track who’s working on which order
    and
    and we even track where where each bin
    is located
    so this order when the driver unloads it
    he says i’m putting on shelf number
    three
    and and the other really important thing
    whether using software or pen and paper
    the most important thing is to write
    down the number of packages
    and and basically because the most
    common
    mistake is a customer comes into the
    store
    and the tenant is kind of you know
    adrenaline’s going they’re trying to
    find the order really quick they find
    the first bag they see they hand it back
    to the customer
    customer gets home and they realize hey
    i’m missing all these clothes
    the tenant goes looks on the shelf and
    they go oh you still have two bags left
    over here
    and now that and so you think problem
    solved but from the customer’s point of
    view they paid for convenience
    now they’re driving back to the laundry
    yeah
    um so that’s and on pickup and delivery
    that still happens
    if you don’t write down the number of
    packages one you might not load the
    vehicle with all those clothes
    two when you get to their house you
    might not give them all their clothes
    so and then you have to drive back so
    there’s a lot of little
    there’s not like any one major mistake
    in wash and fold
    there’s a whole bunch there’s no silver
    bullet it’s creating good
    software or processes it’s really a
    whole bunch of little mistakes that over
    time you say oh i’m not going to make
    that mistake again
    and we basically bake that into the
    software to help prevent those mistakes
    from
    ever happening real quick i got this
    i was talking to somebody who’s looking
    at different software
    and he goes man let me explain the
    situation i’m having
    and then tell me if your software would
    help and he explained the situation
    i’m like well there’s about nine
    different reasons that could never
    happen
    using our software so you know just
    a lot of we all kind of know what the
    mistakes are it’s just
    handwriting is a big mistake you know
    the not putting in the decimal
    we had somebody manually using
    in the weight instead of using in the
    scale and they didn’t put in a zero
    or or they did it they didn’t put in the
    decimal point
    you know so it’s a big difference big
    difference
    and and so that turns into a big issue
    where if you just tap add weight
    um it’s that’s that scale saves a huge
    number of mistakes
    um so as much stuff as you could
    automate every time there’s handwriting
    there’s potential mistakes so that’s
    probably the best advice is you want to
    just
    get away from pen and paper yeah and i
    would say
    even even beyond that i mean you’re
    equally likely to make a mistake when
    you’re manually adding
    weight into the software and so you know
    anything you can automate is going to be
    way
    better so finding a good software that
    is automating as much as possible and
    eliminating that human error
    because that’s really the most costly
    thing in pretty much
    any business is the human error
    and every human error you can eliminate
    through using an
    automated feature in a software is gonna
    really benefit
    your business but also your sanity as
    you’re trying to
    you know undo all of the damage that
    you’ve done
    through a small it could be a really
    small error in an innocent error but
    you know again yeah you lose one
    customer that could be
    500 plus dollars a year yeah and then it
    makes hiring
    easier when you have an automated system
    because then you’re looking for
    just these the skill set over here where
    there’s a lot of laundry owners who they
    say
    i’ve got this manager who basically
    there could be problems with that
    manager but they would never do anything
    because
    the whole business is in that custom
    that manager’s head
    and there’s all these nuances and
    details all in their head
    so by automating it by having a system
    that’s designed for laundry
    it gets the business out of people’s
    heads and makes it approachable so any
    of your attendance they just do tap tap
    tap
    they create the order and they don’t
    even realize they avoided all these
    potential
    landmines and pitfalls they it just
    works yeah
    yeah exactly i love that and i love uh
    that your software is building in all of
    these things
    and is learning i love that you guys are
    you’re learning from all your customers
    and your own experience and building
    those lessons
    into your software because you know then
    you know owners and operators who are
    using your software aren’t having to
    learn those lessons
    because they’ve already been learned and
    they’ve already been dealt with and
    they’re not
    issues any longer you know there’ll be
    new issues there’s always new issues but
    you know you can as you’re eliminating
    um
    with your software and you’re rolling
    out these big software updates and
    everything
    i mean killer killer thing and i love
    that you guys are just kind of on this
    mission to make things more efficient
    optimize your family of maximizers and
    optimizers i love that
    and uh and kind of passing that on to
    your customers
    killer killer killer yeah it’s a lot of
    fun and i
    one you know one thing when you’re
    looking at software solutions for your
    laundromat
    you know because you’re it’s a big
    decision it’s the platform your pickup
    and delivery is on
    one thing and there’s a lot of stuff you
    would never even know to ask about
    that’s one of the challenges too so i
    recommend talking to a bunch of people
    i’ll give you an example we have this
    client who’s
    using something else in the past and one
    question is how does the software
    charge the credit card and when okay so
    our software is automatic
    you know the tenant weighs it for the
    final time after the close are clean
    and they say two comforters you know 30
    pounds whatever it is
    and then unbeknownst to the attendant
    the software automatically charges the
    customer’s credit card
    you don’t have to do a thing you know
    and and then if the credit card doesn’t
    go through the software automatically
    emails the customer
    and says hey it turns out your credit
    card didn’t go through click here to
    update your
    credit card information so it’s all
    automatic that used to be a job
    and that’s not in everybody’s skill set
    to call up and say hey
    deadbeat your credit card didn’t go
    through you know like you know
    or leave that on the voicemail and you
    know it’s just not
    you know that could cause issues right
    there you could lose somebody good you
    know it could just be
    expiration date so so this
    is so we basically took a whole bunch of
    jobs but
    going back to that story about
    in in the software he was using he had
    to go in
    every single day and manually charge
    everybody’s credit cards
    and if he didn’t do that the order would
    not appear
    in the next day’s driver list so he
    would wake up with panic attacks whether
    he’s on vacation or not
    because he’s only one who could do it
    and he had to log in and charge charge
    charge one at a time
    and and he’s just tired of that because
    now he’s like living
    you know instead of the software doing
    the job it’s like he’s doing it
    yeah yeah and how would you even know to
    ask that question
    you know so probably one of the most
    important things when you are looking at
    software is how often do they update the
    software
    and we are investing five figures every
    month
    making the software better and better
    and better all the time and there’s no
    end in sight
    and i actually see that as a good thing
    because
    over time the barrier of entry for you
    know
    people getting into this business
    whether it’s you know on the software
    side
    they’re gonna see what we’ve done and
    say okay let me go over there instead of
    over here because this is already taken
    care of
    and so we just see it as we want to make
    that barrier of entry for other
    you know and and look everybody’s making
    the software choices are way better than
    they were like five years ago it’s
    almost like non-existent
    um that being said you want to make sure
    they’re constantly updating
    because the needs of tomorrow are going
    to be different than the needs of today
    yeah that’s i mean that’s why i mean we
    see we see that
    not just in our industry but you know
    everywhere the world’s just changing so
    fast i mean look at this
    2020 and how much has changed this year
    alone and you know we’re i don’t even
    think we’re like three quarters of the
    way through it yet i’m a little
    nervous about what’s happening the rest
    of this year but i think only good
    things it’s going up
    yeah and speaking of good things pickup
    and delivery is growing
    you know if we were looking at just our
    in-store wash and fold
    it’s down like a hundred orders compared
    to it was like a year or two ago
    our in-store and maybe it’s because
    we’re converting them to pickup and
    delivery
    but our commercial right after kovit had
    dropped 75
    i mean that was devastating it is coming
    back
    um so it is coming back but
    if we’re our self-serve got hit about 25
    percent
    and and so we were just like holding
    tight you know
    if you’re just hugging that tree and you
    don’t want to let go and like i just
    gotta hug it harder
    you know you’re gonna be just holding on
    to a
    something that may be depreciating in a
    sense
    um versus what’s fun and what energizes
    you and what gets people
    up in the morning is like when your
    business is growing and to me that’s the
    fun part about pickup delivery this is a
    growing segment
    you know this is a huge opportunity um
    it is getting more competitive so you
    can’t just throw up a website and just
    say okay
    everything’s done you know you need to
    pay attention to it and um
    constantly evaluate what your online
    presence looks like
    you know that there’s it does take you
    know you gotta attend the garden
    yeah absolutely absolutely let me ask
    you this what
    what does it cost to do i mean i know
    the answer to this actually but
    what does it cost to do uh pick up into
    or you know have a pickup and delivery
    order
    in you know southern california because
    i’ve been asking
    various people around the country and
    the numbers are
    like surprisingly dramatically different
    depending on where you’re at so what
    can you give us a ballpark yeah so we’re
    a dollar seventy
    so it’s it’s accurate yeah yeah so we’re
    dollar 75
    we just changed our pricing because with
    the new software we got the ability
    for customers to schedule recurring
    pickup and deliveries
    so that way they could say i want a
    weekly pickup
    and so we wanted to nudge people in that
    direction because you nudge them in that
    direction
    they’re going to instead of spending
    like 500 some dollars a year
    if they’re every other week they’re
    gonna be spending about seventeen
    hundred dollars a year
    if they’re weekly it’s gonna be thirty
    four hundred dollars a year add a dollar
    seventy
    so we’re a dollar seventy five if they
    schedule it one time
    and we’re a dollar 65 that they schedule
    weekly
    we are about to release a new feature
    where it’s going to be a same-day pickup
    and from the customer’s point of view
    it’s going to be like magic because
    they’re going to be on their phone
    and keep in mind maybe they’re running
    low on some type of
    garment and they they need the clothes
    done i mean from our point of view
    waiting until monday if it’s tuesday for
    a pickup is forever
    they can’t do it they’re going to go to
    another website so
    if you could do a same day pick up which
    we will soon and our clients will too
    how much extra do you charge for that
    you know i’m thinking
    not 25 or 30 premium like we do in store
    for same day
    service thinking like a whole extra
    dollar because
    we’re going to weed out the people who
    are just going to choose if we go 30
    cents
    you know we don’t need the 30 cents that
    bad but if it’s a whole dollar
    then it’s the people who like i know and
    their message even pops up
    same day pickup is 270 per pound
    so and they have to hit okay that way
    they don’t think you’re always 270.
    so yeah yeah and i see that as a huge
    opportunity then it’ll just pop up on
    the driver’s list it’ll say hey new
    order just got added
    and we make sure there’s still time to
    do that route you know with that new
    pickup but from the customer’s point of
    view it’s gonna be magic that
    it could be ten o’clock and they could
    schedule a pickup for eleven to two
    like one hour from now and and then
    superset shows up
    and then we’re making a lot per pound so
    you know for a lot of people it’s not so
    much about the money it’s they just need
    it done
    so that’s yeah but the prices do range
    across the country
    new york is like 90 cents a dollar per
    pound yeah
    nuts no it’s crazy it’s crazy
    but it’s just interesting to hear like
    what different people are charging and
    how
    kind of that all plays uh you know and
    and some of it’s not super intuitive but
    you know if you had asked me before
    about new york i would have assumed it
    was a lot higher me too
    right and a lot of people in like the
    midwest um
    are very surprised even just at like our
    vend prices
    you know here on the west coast or
    because they’re charging like
    double what we charge right competition
    is just so much lower there i guess i
    don’t know
    but it’s just yeah and then one thing i
    get
    a lot of questions on is commercial
    people are wondering how to bid them
    how to how to price it yeah i mean i
    could probably do like an hour thing on
    just that but the you know my big
    picture recommendation
    is we are in the low volume high margin
    business
    and that’s important to remember you’re
    never going to be able to compete
    against centes
    they’re in the high volume low margin
    nor do you want to be in that business
    and and so you know we just do like 10
    or 20 cents lower per pound for some of
    these commercial accounts and because
    we’re in a labor intensive business and
    you know you don’t want to be working
    for peanuts so so i think it is
    another way for the commercial accounts
    to
    negotiate a better price is let them
    know we’re going to be doing a
    price increase pretty soon so we’re
    going to grandfather you in for
    we’re going to skip the next price
    increase basically so everybody else
    will be paying this
    and we’ll keep you at buck 60. so not
    only are you paying 10 cents less but
    you’re not going to get the
    you know bumped up so they feel like
    they’re saving more as well
    but the big pictures i i
    just would hesitate on doing some huge
    discount for some of these places that
    promise huge volumes and sometimes the
    volume is there and sometimes it isn’t
    so you’re best off just protecting
    yourself
    yeah i love that well
    uh i want to ask uh i mean you’ve been
    giving like
    crazy uh crazy good
    information crazy good tips this whole
    like this is
    jam packed i can’t even believe it i’m
    like blown away i’m taking
    notes over here furiously and there’ll
    be a ton of these notes in the show
    notes so make sure you go check these
    out
    uh they’ll be extensive show notes for
    this episode because you’re
    bringing it today i love it thank you
    very much um
    tell me before we get into uh just a
    little bit more
    you know as we as we finish up uh
    what are your guys’s plans for the
    future i mean obviously you’re trying to
    expand your pickup and delivery
    do you have any other uh kind of goals
    that you guys are working towards or is
    that your main
    your focus laser focused on that you
    know
    it’s such a good question when after
    covert
    hit in my immediate response was to
    just cl you know turtle up because you
    know it it’s just like shocking i mean
    the mindset back then is different than
    it is now
    you know and and at the same time my dad
    is like
    you went out and bought another vehicle
    and another delivery vehicle
    and i’m like and this would be and
    because he did see the numbers were
    going up but still
    i was like you know you’re spending
    money now like we didn’t know what was
    going to happen
    and he goes look it’s about 700 bucks
    you know for it’s a zero percent
    interest loan
    and for seven hundred dollars we’re able
    to per month
    we’re now able you know one person pays
    rent that’s like 1800 bucks so like half
    of one person person’s rent
    you’re able to expand into this huge
    another area and i personally
    you know this is the other thing i
    should probably lay off but i think
    pickup and delivery was being kept a
    secret for a long long time in our
    industry because
    the model before was oh you’ve got a
    successful laundromat go buy another one
    and go buy a whole bunch more machines
    and if you’re doing that go buy another
    one and it took a long time to groom
    these owners to teach them how to do it
    and go buy a whole bunch
    and i got somebody with seven laundry
    mats who says he’s never gonna buy
    another laundromat
    it’s just gonna go by another vehicle
    for 700 bucks a month
    so for 700 bucks a month we’re now we
    increased our reach we’re servicing a
    huge other area
    i’m full time on curbside and then also
    helping with the marketing at
    supersets to help just keep the business
    growing
    but if i wasn’t doing curbside full-time
    i i there’s there’s this
    person who’s gonna be switching over to
    our software real soon and
    she had something real interesting to
    say like why aren’t and she’s doing this
    huge huge area
    and and she’s like why don’t more people
    do that
    and she’s doing banging business and
    it’s all pick up and delivery
    and she has one laundromat and making
    more than most
    like she could have a ton of like a
    dozen laundry mats and she’s still
    making more
    she’s got like five drivers on the road
    all the time
    non-stop so it’s
    you know there’s a huge opportunity
    granted you can’t start off that way you
    got to just grow organically
    be whatever you could commit from a
    marketing point of view you got to be
    able to stick to it
    and and and be consistent
    so that’s that’s something to to focus
    on as well is um
    you don’t want it’s not the super bowl
    where you just put down all the spend
    all at once and try and get as many
    customers as you want
    you’re best off sticking to it whatever
    your monthly budget is
    on marketing and you know being in it
    for the long haul
    yeah well i appreciate you sharing that
    uh
    not only because i think it’s super
    valuable information but i do think that
    there
    uh has been a lack of you know
    you say maybe you should stay away from
    it maybe i should stay away from it but
    but i do think that there has been a
    uh a lack of focus on the laundromat
    owner
    and an emphasis on helping them succeed
    uh by the industry
    uh you know plug in your your player in
    the industry but
    but the money is made through focusing
    on those distributors on the vendors
    and and and sometimes at the cost and at
    the detriment of the laundromat owner so
    i mean it’s a big part of the reason why
    i’m doing what i’m doing and why i know
    that you decided to come on
    and talk about you know what you guys
    are doing uh
    because you know i
    the laundromat owner needs to be first i
    mean the customer needs to be first
    that’s who the industry is all about
    and so i i just appreciate you saying
    that and you know hopefully it doesn’t
    get you into any trouble but
    all right yeah and for new laundromat
    owners
    if you’re looking for different
    opportunities something that’s
    very often overlooked is storage
    see nobody makes money selling you an
    empty room okay they make money when
    they fill it up with machines
    so but storage is like hard drive space
    on your computer you can never have
    enough
    okay so so you want to have storage
    there are ways we’ve got clients who are
    like 1 600 square feet who are doing
    great great great
    business you know they got airbnb
    accounts that have 100 customers and
    that’s all
    i don’t know where they’re storing their
    clothes but they made it work that being
    said
    the more storage the better because
    ultimately and it adds and flows you
    know at the end of the day our driver
    unloads or we’ve got four vehicles they
    unload a ton of clothes
    and and then just at night time our
    shelves fill up and in the morning they
    empty out as their
    hit the road so you have to have enough
    storage for your peak
    time and um so that’s something that’s
    easily overlooked people like oh i never
    thought about
    having storage space it wasn’t in their
    mindset so that’s something
    you do need to keep a look at yeah
    yeah yeah and i that’s that’s always
    true and i think it’s especially true if
    you’re thinking about going in the
    pickup and delivery and or even just
    drop off service
    because you gotta have the places to put
    stuff
    while you’re waiting right i’d say
    probably even more so if you’re just
    doing the
    um you know the the drop off because
    sometimes those customers don’t come
    back for
    weeks on end and you’re all right a lot
    of their stuff i don’t know
    that’s another thing like in our
    software that we added that we’re so
    happy
    about um so laundromats could easily
    turn into a storage facility
    and and so one thing we do is is we
    automatically text them that their
    clothes are ready for pickup
    then after seven days and 14 they also
    get more
    that the texts or emails are
    automatically sent out or you can just
    tap
    to remind them the other way of
    preventing from becoming a storage
    facility is
    pay at pickup i’m sorry pay when you
    drop it off
    so so all of our customers they pay when
    they drop it off
    or they keep a credit card on file and
    then they’re automatically charged
    on the dry weight after clothes are
    clean and laundered but we have the
    credit card on file so it’s paid for
    if you let customers pay at pickup a lot
    of times they’ll
    decide they’d rather have their 40 bucks
    than their clothes you just stick
    clothes for free
    [Music]
    so that’s and they’re going to take a
    lot longer they have to wait till payday
    and and you’re just holding onto their
    clothes and you’re like why is this
    happening it’s because you’re doing
    payout pickup
    um that’s something in our software
    initially when we hit the road in 2017
    we did not have that because we’re like
    you should not do a pi pickup
    and and so but then there’s so many
    laundry owners where it’s like it’s
    too hard to switch you know if your
    customers are used to it
    so i i would consider grandfathering
    those customers in but for new people
    i would get rid of payout pickup so we
    did add that functionality just because
    we needed
    it for our curbside clients but for us
    and i’d say for most laundry mats you’re
    much better off having them pay
    when they drop it off yeah especially if
    you haven’t started that yet
    exactly yeah hey uh i mean i know uh
    you’ve given so much this episode but we
    have a little section we like to call
    secret sauce listen up it’s the secret
    sauce
    [Music]
    and that is for laundromat owners
    current laundromat owners what’s one
    thing that’s working well
    so i mean you’ve given so many like
    crazy good
    tips but maybe if you had to pick one
    one thing
    that’s working well in your business
    that you could recommend other owners
    kind of implement
    to their business to help their
    businesses grow you got
    you got one thing you could point to the
    secret sauce
    is the website that is the number one
    marketing tool
    and you want your website to be the
    centerpiece
    of all of your marketing so so for
    example
    and to make your website work better you
    want
    more other websites different websites
    pointing to it such as yelp and google
    my business
    another little secret sauce is get pr
    get there’s free pr out there for you to
    take you know whether you’re doing
    pickup and delivery like how you’re
    responding to you know current
    conditions you know how
    and you could call up that local
    newspaper and
    said write a press release and tell them
    what you’re doing whether you’re adding
    pickup and delivery whether you’re doing
    ozone whether you’re
    whatever it is you’re doing something
    special let that
    the pr the local newspapers do it then
    when you’re getting interviewed by the
    reporter and they’re always looking for
    good news
    you want to ask hey can you help me out
    could you mention
    ww could you mention supersuds.com in
    your article
    and the reason for that is not for all
    the people reading it
    the paper and then they’re gonna go type
    into your website
    the reason for that is you want them to
    mention supersets.com in their online
    edition
    because now when you get that local
    paper that local paper has crazy domain
    authority
    because they’ve been writing they’ve
    been publishing a lot of stuff for a lot
    of years
    and they’re like you know the got crazy
    domain
    authority for your location for your
    neighborhood so if you get that local
    paper to mention the name of your url
    your website that’s golden
    so that’ll just make your website that
    much more effective so people can find
    you
    but i i would definitely and if you
    don’t have that skill set for all the
    website stuff
    talk to somebody who does because it’s
    the centerpiece i mean imagine if you
    had a store
    and it had wooden windows you know like
    it was just blocked out and you had no
    sign and nobody even knew you’re there
    you’re losing so much business
    that’s your website either people can
    see you or they don’t
    and it doesn’t matter how beautiful the
    website is it matters
    how well designed the seo is because
    that’s
    affects whether they even find you or
    not yeah yeah
    killer killer secret sauce is way to
    bring it again
    over delivering once again pro
    tips well hey this question’s for the
    the newbie the person who may be trying
    to buy their first laundromat
    and or get into pickup and delivery uh
    your choice kind of which way you want
    to go with that
    um but what’s one piece of advice you’d
    give to somebody
    either trying to buy their first
    laundromat or trying to start up a
    uh pick up and delivery like your number
    one tip
    okay number one tip for somebody buying
    the laundromat is do your own due
    diligence
    and don’t believe anything okay so man
    that’s so good
    i mean i wish somebody would have told
    me that when i was buying the first
    laundromat
    yeah i’ve see i’ve you know i i’ve
    talked to some great great owners who
    who are really good operators and it’s
    usually the good people who fall for it
    because they
    assume that everybody else is good just
    like they are and
    and there’s some not so good or
    scrupulous people out there
    who and there’s every single trick in
    the trade and i
    hesitate to even mention um what people
    do because i don’t want bad people
    saying oh that’s a good idea
    um so but i will say
    don’t you know if if you’re looking at a
    water bill
    that shows the certain water you’re
    trying to calculate it well if that’s
    just last month
    is that a pattern or just last month
    they had a spike and that’s the one that
    they’re showing you
    you know if there’s non-resettable coin
    counters
    you how much does that really mean you
    know so you need to do spot checks you
    need to know how many people are coming
    in and do the numbers add up
    you’re a lot of times when you find a
    location you’re going to want it to work
    and that greed factor of like wanting
    ignoring what’s in your face of like
    the stuff you actually see with your own
    eyes that might be turned off because
    you really want this opportunity to work
    and you make your money on the buy so if
    you get a good deal on it
    you know or if there’s something you
    know there’s a lease agreement that’s
    ending in a couple years and it’s up in
    the air
    you better get that solved before you go
    and you know so
    you really want you’ll save a lot of
    money if you wait for the right
    opportunity
    you know be hungry look for the right
    opportunity but don’t force it so that
    that’s my
    number one advice for new owners please
    listen to this advice i mean that’s
    really really great great advice and you
    know just that feeling of wanting to
    make
    a deal work and wanting to kind of force
    a deal to work i see that all the time
    in coaching where
    you know clients will bring a laundromat
    deal
    and it’s just not a good
    deal and they’re being deceived and it’s
    obvious to somebody who knows and it’s
    not obvious to someone who doesn’t know
    so do your own due diligence and also
    i always tell people bring in somebody
    else who knows the internet
    important does not depend on you buying
    that laundromat you know pay him if you
    have to
    yeah if you know somebody in the
    industry that’s willing to help you out
    get that
    it doesn’t matter just get somebody else
    in there that knows
    what to look for these little tricks of
    the trade that you’re not going to know
    are happening to you because that’s what
    happened to me
    so yeah so that yeah i mean you could
    always
    recover you could always do different
    things to to boost things up
    but it just makes things easier when
    that monthly nugget is
    you know more manageable and and that’s
    great advice like if
    there’s a lot of ways to get blindsided
    and but if you have
    a advisor that you trust that knows the
    business
    has helped other people buy stuff and is
    more relationship based
    not transactional based that’s really
    the key
    yeah before we wrap things up is do you
    have any resources that you would
    recommend
    to somebody maybe in particular you know
    for pickup and delivery
    but you know also generally speaking uh
    you know to help them
    just improve their knowledge i mean you
    got the mba maybe business knowledge
    and or personal growth knowledge
    yeah i’d say the um
    so you know one thing is so we’ve got
    the curbside
    laundry youtube page um and and so
    we’ve got different webinars about how
    to get into pickup and delivery
    how to get commercial accounts um it
    talks a lot about seo
    so there’s a and there’s probably about
    like 10 some hours of
    content on there and probably more and
    it’s you know there’s a lot of
    information out there
    and so i’d and i’d also go
    with people in the business just because
    there’s no way like an engineer
    architect you know who doesn’t know the
    laundry business intimately
    is going to be able to solve i mean we
    get
    um just yeah i’d say like
    we get phone calls from you know from
    people you know
    from our clients you know asking about
    this or that and there’s gonna be stuff
    you haven’t even thought about but
    these situations come up and you want to
    have a resource like whether it’s
    through your software
    and still like for free we’re just
    helping people out you know it’s part of
    because we want them to be successful so
    i i’d say
    even creating a relation you know that’s
    another thing
    the software is the software all right
    and some you know
    there’s sort of like an ebb and flow
    like oh these guys just came out that
    feature these guys came out that or
    but i’d say the the relationship is
    probably the most important because
    situations come up like hey what do i do
    in this situation uh
    like i give somebody some advice that
    helped him get a commercial account
    that he might not have otherwise you
    know he didn’t even know how to approach
    it
    um and now he’s got a solid account
    that’s weekly
    um so i’d say networking is really
    important
    um i’d say the facebook groups
    you know or you know laundry resources
    you know just you want to surround
    yourself with like-minded owners
    because situations are going to come up
    and just like you need a good support
    system for your family
    you also want a good support system for
    your laundromat so i’d say the number
    one advice i have is create that support
    system because otherwise you’re going to
    have to learn everything on your own
    you know we learned a ton from the coin
    laundry association from their forum
    you know when we’re first getting
    started up and we’re very thankful for
    all the
    advice we got and now i see things
    transitioning to new mediums just like