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.
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Links from the show
- Supercharge Your Pickup & Delivery Business Webinar
- Curbside Laundries YouTube Channel
- Join Laundromat Resource
- Laundromat Resource Forums
- Laundromat Resource Blog
- Be a guest on the podcast!
- Sell your laundromat
- Laundromat Resource Coaching
Connect with Matthew
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Phone- (562) 533-0053
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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