Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
Hey.

Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
Hey, what’s up guys? It’s Jordan with the Laundromat Resource podcast. And I’m pumped you’re here today because today we have got episode 220 with my friend, my boy, JR Jean Roque Dumas probably butchered it. Sorry, Junior. That’s why he tells me to call him Junior because he’s French and I. My accents are the worst. But anyways, super excited for you to hear this episode. Junior had a vision of what he wanted to create and this episode is the story of how he took this vision that he had and he brought it to life and turned it into laundry and lattes, which has been in the news episodes a couple different times. And listen, this is a very cool story with tons of practical stuff that JR has learned along the way.

Jordan Berry [00:00:53]:
He’s a client of mine, we went through this whole process together. So it’s really cool to just kind of see from beginning all the way to end. You get to hear that story today and all the lessons that he learned all along the way. And not only that, he’s also doubled his self serve business in like three months. So he’s going to talk about how he did that as well. So tons of really good stuff here. Cannot wait for you to hear. Real quick, before we jump into it, J.R.

Jordan Berry [00:01:18]:
just want to invite you another time to come hang out with me in Hawaii at Laundromat Accelerator. Hawaii, where we’re going to dig into your businesses. If you want to get in a room with other people who are thinking on high levels about Laundromats, listen, this is, this is the place you gotta, this is the place you gotta be. You gotta come to Laundromat Accelerator in Hawaii. It’s tax write offable. I’m gonna be there sharing tons of practical stuff that I have Learned over my 12 plus years in the industry, my 1500 plus consulting calls, the deals I’ve brokered, and on and on and on about what I’ve learned. But I’m also bringing along some friends. Ryan Borneman of Fresh Leads Marketing is going to be there.

Jordan Berry [00:02:01]:
We’re going dig into your business and give you marketing tips specific to your business. No pitches, no sales, nothing like that. We’re just going to help you with your business when it comes to marketing. This last week’s episode with Amanda Barkey who is an EOS implementer. And if you don’t know anything about eos, number one, listen to that episode. It is incredible. But number two, you should do a little research on eos because there are Things that you should be doing in your business to level up your operations. And Amanda is going to be there to break it down for us, show us how to implement EOS into our businesses.

Jordan Berry [00:02:42]:
Incredible stuff. And there’s a whole lot more going on. Plus, we’re going to be in Hawaii. I mean, come on. Come on. We’re going to be doing some Hawaii things, including we’re heading over to Kualoa Ranch to Secret island. The last day to finish things up. And we’re going to kick things off with a little cruise on the water to see the fireworks.

Jordan Berry [00:03:02]:
Friday night. Fireworks on Waikiki Beach. Like, there’s. What else is there to say? And the setting for actual event, phenomenal. With the balcony overlooking, again, Waikiki Beach. Incredible stuff. Tax write offable the weekend before Thanksgiving. So you’ve got the time.

Jordan Berry [00:03:21]:
You’re going to be in a room full of people who are thinking on high levels about laundromats. Not just the presenters, but the actual attendees also. So that’s a room you need to be in, number one. It probably is a room you need to be in. Check out laundryresource.com hawaii and we’ll see you there. Let’s jump into a junior now who is crushing it out there in New York with laundry and lattes. I am so excited. Junior, how you doing, man?

Roch Dumas [00:03:51]:
Good. I’m good. Super excited to be with you.

Jordan Berry [00:03:56]:
Yeah. Well, dude, for me, this is super exciting to be here because we have been in it, to win it together for a while. Finding you a deal in one of the toughest markets on the planet. To find a laundromat deal and then negotiating that deal and actually closing that thing was a beast. And now you’re off and running here with that business. So we want to hear all about all that, but real quick, why don’t you give us a little background on you and then we can jump into how you got into this business.

Roch Dumas [00:04:29]:
Yeah, sure. So, as you probably can hear, I’m French. I came to New York 13 years ago. I have a background in consulting. 20 years of management consulting, advising companies on how to grow their business. And after 20 years, I thought it was time for me to, you know, own something and do it, replicate what I’ve learned.

Jordan Berry [00:05:04]:
And see, you’re trying to see if all the. All the advice you gave everybody actually worked.

Roch Dumas [00:05:10]:
Huh?

Jordan Berry [00:05:10]:
You gotta go find it for yourself.

Roch Dumas [00:05:12]:
Exactly, exactly.

Jordan Berry [00:05:15]:
Which we’ll find out. That did work for you, which we’ll talk about. But okay, so management consulting for a while. Sorry I didn’t mean to interrupt you, but I just thought that was funny.

Roch Dumas [00:05:25]:
Yeah. 20 years. 20 years and, you know, mix of things. Probably the age, getting. Getting old and reflecting on. On the past. And, you know, I had a great run at Deloitte, the firm I was working for, and. But it was time for me to really get into something on my own, something that I like, something tangible, with community involved.

Roch Dumas [00:06:04]:
And, yeah, my girlfriend actually recommended me to look into Laundromat. And, yeah, that’s how I started to get into the industry.

Jordan Berry [00:06:21]:
Why did, why did she think you should do a Laundromat? Like, where did that idea come from for her? Well, because I’m coming from a place where my wife was the one who suggested it too. So I’m wondering how she talked you into it.

Roch Dumas [00:06:33]:
I guess she knows me and she knew. She knew that I needed something where there is customer interaction, where there is community involved, where there is a way for me to apply what I’ve Learned during my 20 years in consulting, you know, bringing in technology and these kind of things. So an industry that has been left behind and something also that at one point makes money, let’s be honest. Yes, that’s. That’s the goal. Let’s not hide it. So she, of course, knows me well and she thought, well, Laundromat ticks a lot of boxes and she listened to a lot of, you know, economic podcast and stuff, so she knew it was something hot. And she said, no, it’s not only hot financially, but I think that’s something that can correspond to what you’re looking for.

Roch Dumas [00:07:43]:
And that’s how it started.

Jordan Berry [00:07:46]:
And you believed her?

Roch Dumas [00:07:48]:
Oh, I have to believe her every day.

Jordan Berry [00:07:51]:
That’s right. That’s right. Wise man should probably hear this. Well, okay. So she came up with this idea. What. What then? I mean, did you, like, just off and running? Were you like, do I need to look into this myself here? And like, what did you do once this idea came up?

Roch Dumas [00:08:10]:
She. She told me about it. But, you know, I started to ask her, you know, why? And you know, I’m. I was lucky enough all my life to have washer, dryer, my unit. So Lambromat for me was not something that I even know, you know, before. So I asked her a few things and I. And she said, well, why don’t you look for yourself? So I basically started to. I was interested by the idea and I started to bring my clothes to the different lambda maps in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, to see what exactly it is to do your laundry and in the meantime, I was also listening to a lot of podcasts, including yourself, but, you know, many others kind of get up to speed on the industry.

Roch Dumas [00:09:17]:
And quickly I realized, well, that’s something that I may like. That’s something where I can make a difference, especially here in Brooklyn, where I live. I visited probably between 50 and 100 laundromat in like one month. And something was clear. It was dirty. It was, you know, only coin operating. It was. Everything was.

Roch Dumas [00:09:55]:
Kind of all the place I visited were not great. And quickly I realized, well, what, what if, what if you build a place that is actually something great, that. Where actually people can enjoy that time doing laundry, bring a little bit of technology. So I quickly saw the opportunity to make a difference.

Jordan Berry [00:10:27]:
Well, it’s funny because I love quotes and I was writing down your quote, like, what if I built a place that people actually enjoy coming to do laundry? Like, what a novel idea, right? Because a lot of people don’t like doing laundry. Right. It’s a chore for sure. So I love that sort of premise and I, I can’t wait to get into what that turned out to look like for you because I think that it’s very unique. And in fact, you’ve been in multiple times. You’ve been in news episodes that I do, because you’ve been in the news. So I’d like to talk about that too. But I love that premise.

Jordan Berry [00:11:03]:
But it’s, it’s interesting to me, right? There’s, there’s two different eyes you can have, you can have, hey, I see all these laundromats. They’re dirty. You know, they’re not organized well, they’re not run well. They’re coin only. They’re inconvenient. It’s not a pleasant experience. And you can see with one set of eyes, you can say, I would never get into that business. Look at how this industry operates, which frankly is fair and also true.

Jordan Berry [00:11:34]:
Right? Or you can have another set of eyes, which is what? Like a theme that comes up over and over and over. People who are actually making a difference and building good businesses in this industry is this second set of eyes where you can say, man, look at this. These businesses, they’re dirty, they’re coin operated, inconvenient. This experience could be so much better. And that’s a huge opportunity for me. Not just to do something good in the community, which is good too, but also to make money doing it. Right. That’s a thing that comes up a lot.

Roch Dumas [00:12:07]:
Exactly. And you. Absolutely. Right. You can, you can have the two different approaches. Yeah, yeah, well, that’s, that’s, that’s so bad, I don’t want to get into it. And then I think that’s also what, you know, my 20 years of consulting taught me is, well, yeah, the other eyes is there is an opportunity. And what I also like when I did my, what I call my Laundromat tour in Brooklyn is the diversity of people coming into this landlord.

Roch Dumas [00:12:47]:
Every time I had different, you know, people from different background, and I quickly saw that it’s really rich in terms of people interaction. That’s also something that I really liked quickly. And if you can turn these places in something great, not only you can make money, but also truly, you know, help the entire community to have a good time. And that, that was really something that was appealing to.

Jordan Berry [00:13:32]:
Yeah. Well, it’s interesting because, I mean, it sounds like it was one of the things that your girlfriend identified in you and then what you were looking for and you found a way to kind of match that kind of drive that you had to. To make a difference, to have that community connection with a pretty dang good business opportunity as well there in Laundromass.

Roch Dumas [00:13:56]:
And something before getting into the industry that was really important to me, you know, in addition to the community aspect, etc, etc, was also something I needed to have something and to own something that I like. Now, I’m not gonna lie, I don’t like washing clothes. So that’s, that’s, that’s how, that’s how laundry and latte came to, you know, life. I love coffee. I, I thought about coffee shop before, but for quick economy, you know, analysis, I, it didn’t make sense for me to, to open coffee shop, but I thought about why not mixing both things, you know, something that I really like coffee with something where I see an opportunity for growth. And then you take all the boxes that you want and that’s how laundry and latte came. Came. Came to life.

Jordan Berry [00:15:17]:
Yeah. So was that the, was that the goal from. Okay, so your girlfriend brought it up, right, this idea, and then you did a little research and you’re like, okay, yeah, this might be a good fit. Was the laundry and latte idea, was that there from the beginning or is that something that developed?

Roch Dumas [00:15:34]:
The laundry idea was a girlfriend and the latte was myself. So. But it came really quickly. It came because I was going to these places, meeting these people, feeling so bad in these places, saw the opportunity. And at the same time I said, if I do only that laundry, I’m going to be bored. And Every time I was sitting down in these places, dirty places, I always wanted a coffee because I love coffee. So I was going to the next coffee shop, having my coffee, going back and putting the stuff, the clothes to dry. And then quickly I realized, well, mix both.

Roch Dumas [00:16:34]:
So. So laundry and latte came really, really fast after, you know, the, the first thought of my girlfriend asking me to look in London, basically.

Jordan Berry [00:16:49]:
Yeah. Okay, well, did you. And I know we’ll kind of get a little more into this, but did you go out looking for an existing Laundromat cafe coffee shop, or was this something like where it was your idea to build this out?

Roch Dumas [00:17:07]:
Yeah, I didn’t even look if it already existed. I didn’t care, to be honest. Yeah, that was. To me, it’s going to be it.

Jordan Berry [00:17:19]:
Your love for coffee over overcame it all.

Roch Dumas [00:17:23]:
Yeah, that’s going to be longer than that. And I have to admit something also, I never look about. Maybe I should have. I never looked at the coffee financials. Never. To me, it was more like, I don’t know, something again that I like, and it was not negotiable. It’s going to be lambre and latte and it’s going to be a coffee shop and a proper coffee shop with proper coffee. That’s it.

Roch Dumas [00:17:57]:
People don’t like it. They don’t like it. That’s. That’s what. Yeah, the, the. The coffee financials. Never looked at it.

Jordan Berry [00:18:08]:
Yeah, well, I bet you looked at them since. But. Since you’ve opened. But, but I mean, that’s. Yeah, that’s the makings of a strong brand, though, right? It’s like one thing that a, a brand, like a strong brand, which I think you have for various reasons. But one thing that a strong brand does is it attracts the people that, you know, align with that brand. Right? People who are like, yeah, I got to do laundry. I want to do it at a place where it’s pleasant to do laundry and I can get my coffee.

Jordan Berry [00:18:39]:
Like, you’re going to attract those people and anybody, for whatever reason, I don’t know, they hate the smell of coffee or whatever. Like, you don’t want those. That’s not your target customer. Right. It’s not that you don’t want them. They’re not welcome. They’re not your target customer. Right.

Jordan Berry [00:18:54]:
And having a strong brand is. Has this like, magnetic effect on the people that share your values, that share the things that are important to you. And, and listen, like, you’re a coffee lover, right? Like, it’s gonna attract the right people to Your store by having that strong brand.

Roch Dumas [00:19:13]:
No, absolutely, Absolutely. I definitely see now that some. Some people, you know, don’t. Don’t get into it. Don’t want, you know, some people just want the laundromat traditional way. But I have to tell you something. It’s. It’s probably 2%.

Roch Dumas [00:19:41]:
2%. 2% of the. Of the. Of the customer base. 98%. 98%. Love the concept, love the space, love the. Love the ability to just, you know, sit, relax, listen to music, have a pastry and a coffee, which was exactly what I wanted.

Roch Dumas [00:20:16]:
So, of course you’re always gonna have people. And that’s okay. You know, that’s okay. It’s totally.

Jordan Berry [00:20:27]:
It’s a good thing, right? It’s. It’s not just okay. Like, it’s a good thing there. If, if everybody likes what you’re doing, then you’re probably not doing anything meaningful. Right? Like, that’s just how it goes. Yeah, that’s just. That’s just how it is. Okay, so you.

Jordan Berry [00:20:46]:
You did your. Your laundromat tour. You went and checked out like 50 to 100 laundromats, like, when you were like, okay, it’s go time. And maybe this. Maybe did your tour after you said it’s go time.

Roch Dumas [00:20:58]:
What.

Jordan Berry [00:20:58]:
What was your first step or your next step, you know, to. To get going to finding this deal after these.

Roch Dumas [00:21:05]:
50. More. More hundred probably visits after listening to podcasts. Including use. Not only use, but including you. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:21:26]:
But mine most helpful.

Roch Dumas [00:21:27]:
Obviously, you helpful.

Jordan Berry [00:21:32]:
Okay, okay, okay. All right, fine. Somebody has a better one.

Roch Dumas [00:21:38]:
Better one. But you was the first, so I guess.

Jordan Berry [00:21:42]:
Okay, I’ll take that. I’ll take that. If I can’t be the best, at least I could be the first.

Roch Dumas [00:21:48]:
And, you know, listening to podcasts is great, but, you know, if you don’t take action, nothing happens. So what I did, after my little lanomic visits and my podcast listening, I reach out to different people. Some of them were on your podcast to learn more about the industry, to learn, you know, the different financial aspects and stuff. And then quickly I said, okay, that’s gonna be it. I’m gonna go after it. I’m gonna look for a place, and I list a number of requirements because, of course, you know, I knew it was going to be laundry and latte. So you need space to do the latte, to do the coffee shop. And he needs a lot of things.

Roch Dumas [00:22:50]:
You need. You need to be in the right neighborhood. You need to be careful about, you know, where. Where you’re getting into, because not Every neighborhood are gonna welcome, you know, laundry and coffee are going to be able to afford a coffee. So there were a number of things that in. I needed to put on on paper to say, okay, where what I am looking for before I’m, you know, looking into different places. And then once I’ve done that, I, I guess I did what everybody is doing and look online. LANDOMAT FOR SALE Quickly I realized that it was probably not the best way to, to, to get what I wanted, especially because my requirements were so kind of.

Jordan Berry [00:23:54]:
Specific.

Roch Dumas [00:23:58]:
So I just went back and said, okay, well let’s first select the place that you think will work and then let’s see if people are willing to sell. That’s what I did because I had visited so many places I could identify the places that I thought would be a great fit what I did. And then I did what was recommended on one of your podcasts, which was send letters to the owners, which I did. I had limited success and I did the last option I had, which you recon recommended me to do. Go talk to people in person. And funny enough, the first Landomat I went to is located two blocks from where I live at unused space at the front where they were putting bags, not really organized properly. And I saw quickly the opportunity for the coffee talk to the owner and it wasn’t for sale. That’s probably the best deal if it’s not for sale and if you manage to buy it, that’s probably the best deal.

Roch Dumas [00:25:49]:
And I built the relationship over couple of months and we managed to find an agreement.

Jordan Berry [00:25:59]:
Yeah. Yeah, well, and the reason I was so curious about how you found it. Not curious because I didn’t know, but curious for the people listening is because, I mean, like, like I said, you’re in one of the most difficult markets on the planet to find these deals. Like Laundromats are, you know, like your girlfriend said, like they’re hot right now and a lot of people are looking to buy them and not that many people are selling them relatively speaking right now. Finding those deals is tough and I wanted to kind of give people a sense of like, what does it take in today’s market to actually go find. Go find a deal? And you did a lot of work to find those deals.

Roch Dumas [00:26:38]:
There is no magic recipe. It’s. And it’s. It’s a lot of things. It’s you. First of all, it needs to be from my perspective. I literally spent I guess three months only on that, only on trying to find the right place. And there is not One way to do it.

Roch Dumas [00:27:08]:
It’s a mix as always thing that works. It’s a mix of things. Send letters which now start to be almost known in the Landomat community because even brokers now sending letters and stuff. But that’s the first thing that you need to do. Going talk in person to the different corner. Of course a lot of people don’t do it. If you really want to get into the industry, you need to pass the, you know, you need to take time and talk to people. If you don’t do that, never going to work.

Roch Dumas [00:27:56]:
That’s my, that’s my perspective. And the last thing is probably talking also to making sure you’re involved in the community, what I call the Landomat community. Nanomat owners. If you’re not included in this Nomad community same you’re not going to be aware of the last deals available. So there is no magic recipe. It’s end. I will ask the last thing that my father taught me. Luck.

Roch Dumas [00:28:39]:
You always need luck.

Jordan Berry [00:28:42]:
That’s right. Always need a little bit of luck. Throw it in there whenever you can. But. But you did, I mean you sort of made your own luck here, right? Because you did, like I said, you did a lot of the work. You talked to a lot of brokers, you sent out letters, you went and talked to owners you got involved in. In the Laundromat community. You know, the first time we met in person because we had been talking every week, you know, trying to help you figure out how to find one of these suckers.

Jordan Berry [00:29:13]:
But we met in person at. At Waleed’s Laundry CEO forum. I think that’s the first time we met. Right? In person.

Roch Dumas [00:29:20]:
Yeah, that’s. That’s. Yeah, that’s right.

Jordan Berry [00:29:23]:
And that was, that was before you owned the laundromat, right?

Roch Dumas [00:29:28]:
Yeah, it was these events that you’re referring to, you know, that worried organized the Laundry CEO forum was for me definitely amazing. That’s, that’s not only because I met you in person which was of course amazing.

Jordan Berry [00:29:57]:
Thank you. Yes, likewise, likewise.

Roch Dumas [00:30:01]:
But also because I met so many different people from distributor to, you know, investors, people who are financing the industry and you know, some owners with who I’m still, you know, I became friends with one of them owns a donormat also in Brooklyn. And you know, there is no. What I love in this industry is that there’s no real competition. Of course there is, but it’s healthy competition. People help each other. You know, one of the owner that I met at Walid conference helped me, you know, Pick up and deliver some stuff for commercial clients right now. So I couldn’t recommend enough to, to get involved in the community, participate to this conference. That’s my own experience.

Roch Dumas [00:31:17]:
I’ve heard about that. You know, it’s a little investment, but the return is huge. It’s. You cannot even. It will be simple for me. If I didn’t attend, for example, Eastern Funding Workshop, the Laundry CEO forum, I wouldn’t be able to have my Laundromat right now. Simple as that.

Jordan Berry [00:31:47]:
Well, there’s. Yeah, that’s a pretty, that’s pretty ringing endorsement for those events. So make sure you’re getting involved, people. That’s the mor. Moral of this part of the story is get involved in the community. Go to the events if you can. If you can’t do them in person, do them online. Get connected with other owners.

Jordan Berry [00:32:02]:
Reach out to people in the industry and get connected. I think that’s. That’s such great advice. I guess. It’s so underrated.

Roch Dumas [00:32:13]:
It’s simple advice, but it’s true. And, and it’s not the first time. And, you know, I learned, I learned also from you keep reminding people on your, you know, different podcasts and stuff. And that is important. And, and that’s true. And maybe, you know, I come from, of course, the management consulting world. And that’s something we do every day. We participate to events and stuff.

Roch Dumas [00:32:50]:
Why? Because we learn from it. And so I think the laundromat world, again, was a bit behind and with, you know, people like you and Walid and a bunch of others, of course, kind of help to bring back this industry to their just where it should be. That’s simple as that.

Jordan Berry [00:33:19]:
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I love that. Okay, so you went and did all this work to find this laundromat deal in. And I want to throw in real quick just because this worked out for you and it was after a whole lot of other stuff that this ended up working out for you. But to people listening or watching out there, like, don’t necessarily fall in love with a lawnmower just because it’s close to you. If you notice, he looked at a lot of laundromats and then happened to find one that was close to him. It wasn’t because it was close to him.

Jordan Berry [00:33:57]:
It was because it hit his criteria. And being a couple minutes down the road is awesome, but don’t fall in love just because it’s close. I just wanted to say that it’s a caveat.

Roch Dumas [00:34:07]:
Yeah. And on that, that was definitely the luck piece I was mentioning because. Absolutely. I would say though that having a Laundromat, especially your first, at least you know, at you know, a reasonable time between, you know, what. Whatever it is, walk car. When I say reasonable could be 31 hours. But if you go beyond that.

Jordan Berry [00:34:50]:
Too far. Yeah it’s.

Roch Dumas [00:34:51]:
It starts to be too far because the reality is you’re gonna need to go back and forth your home and stuff. And so yeah, on this one I was so lucky that that’s the only reason. But as you said, it was meeting all the criteria and A little bit of luck.

Jordan Berry [00:35:10]:
Yeah, a little bit of luck. A little bit of you making the luck and a little bit of. There’s just a Laundromat on every corner in New York. So you know, you’re bound to get one kind of close hopefully. Okay, so you found this deal. Can you tell us, you know, just a little bit about like what was the, the transaction like actually like making the offer, getting that accepted and then closing on that deal.

Roch Dumas [00:35:35]:
So I guess that’s, that’s where I started to also work with you were, you know, I was a bit lost in terms of how things work in this industry to get the transaction done. It’s so.

Jordan Berry [00:35:55]:
Yeah.

Roch Dumas [00:35:57]:
So in my experience it was super old school. Maybe. Maybe you know, again, again it’s. It’s my first transaction. But I don’t think again there is a playbook sometimes it’s. It depends on so many factors. Most of the time you don’t have a lot of. You don’t have a lot of data that which is true especially the coin point only operating Andromat.

Roch Dumas [00:36:26]:
And so you have a bunch of of way to evaluate the value of the randomat. But of course it’s kind of, you know, it’s not perfect but then you need to, you need to get back also to from my perspective what, what’s your. I guess where you want to go and what’s your. What’s your goal? And look at you know, what’s, what’s the. What’s the actual estimated revenue of the. Of the current, you know, Landomat. But you know you’re going to do better and I would, you know, it’s really difficult to evaluate the value of Landoma today because you know you balance between. Okay, well some people tell you you shouldn’t evaluate it on the.

Roch Dumas [00:37:48]:
Based on what the potential.

Jordan Berry [00:37:50]:
Yeah.

Roch Dumas [00:37:51]:
What you think it’s going to be. But at the same time if you only look at what it does today especially a running down on the matter Zombie matters Brian Grell will men call them. And. And. And I think it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, you need to be careful about, you know, to be. The reality is to be a little bit in the middle from, from my perspective. You mean you can, you can’t pay X because it’s almost doing nothing, but you cannot pay? Why? Because you think it’s gonna do big money? It’s. It’s a middle.

Jordan Berry [00:38:41]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. Well, and too. I mean, you. I think you nailed it, like, right. You have to be clear on what your goals are and make sure your acquisition lines up with your goals. So for you, in your particular case, number one, the laundromat was underperforming, and we’ll see. I.

Jordan Berry [00:38:58]:
I want to ask you about. I mean, you seem pretty confident going into it that you were going to be able to do better in the business. I want to hear about why. But in your, in your case, right, your goal was you needed a specific kind of space to do a specific business plan, to bring to life a specific idea that you had. And there’s, you know, it was underperforming. Like, we knew that. And so you had to find out, okay, how can I structure this deal to where it makes sense for me so that I can achieve my goals and in a way that makes sense for the seller so that I can actually get the location to do it? And that’s what we did. That’s a little bit of that compromise that you’re talking about there.

Roch Dumas [00:39:38]:
No, exactly. And, and the, The, The. The problem I run into, especially for a landlord that was not for sale, is to evaluate, you know, at least make the first offer. You, you hear a lot that if you buy, you shouldn’t make the first offer. Guess what? I made the first. Not because I wanted to, because I had to. And the previous owner just asked me to give him a number. I could have said, no, I don’t give you any then.

Jordan Berry [00:40:30]:
Still on the Laundromat? Yeah. You wouldn’t have it right now.

Roch Dumas [00:40:34]:
Yeah. And I remember we had. We had some conversation, and again, it’s so. Especially not like, huge Lambda Mat. We’re talking about, you know, you know, 17 washer, 18 dryer. So it’s, you know, 1,000 square feet. It’s, it’s not like, huge, but again, it’s. It’s not easy to kind of.

Roch Dumas [00:41:03]:
You can, of course, look at the key things, the lease, age of the machine, all that stuff. But in the end, you know, you have probably a couple of hundred Thousand of room to, you know, it’s not that simple. So what I did is I evaluated at the best, consulted with, you know, a lot of people, yourself one of my friend now Jason that you may know.

Jordan Berry [00:41:48]:
I know Jason. Yeah.

Roch Dumas [00:41:51]:
Who also helped me to, to evaluate it. And I made an offer that didn’t meet the requirements. The owner asked for a lot more and in the end we met in the middle, which was a kind of a smooth agreement for the actual target price. What started to be a really, really painful process was the actual due diligence slash letter of intent. Because again, old school owner having the random at 30 years doesn’t know about letter of intent or due diligence, doesn’t want to know about it. And you just need to go with it because if you start to get lawyers involved and stuff, that’s the best.

Jordan Berry [00:43:04]:
Way to kill that deal. Yeah, yeah.

Roch Dumas [00:43:09]:
You need to take risk, consult a lot of people, get input from a lot of people and get confident in what you buy. That’s in the end. That’s, that’s the thing, you know, you need to get confident in the price you’re willing to pay. That’s.

Jordan Berry [00:43:38]:
Yeah, yeah. And there’s always like, you know, the way that I like to look at it is there’s like two numbers, right? The price is one thing. There’s two numbers that you want to look at. I think when you’re doing a deal like this that we kind of went through a little bit is your return on investment. Both your real return on investment that you would get if things perform the same now, but also where you think you’re going to be, your projections of where you’re going to be based on how you’re going to run the business different that return on investment. And then also there’s like a threshold in there of like, hey, I could give you like a hundred percent return on your investment, but you’re gonna make a thousand dollars a year, you know, and it’s like, well, 100 return on investment sounds great, but it’s not worth it to me to run a business for a thousand dollars a year. Right. So you gotta have those two numbers and as long as you can hit them like you can pay any price for a bit.

Jordan Berry [00:44:33]:
There’s no right or wrong when it comes to pricing. You just gotta hit your goal, your criteria that you’re looking for.

Roch Dumas [00:44:40]:
Exactly. I, I love what you said. There is not right on or wrong. I, I’m hearing a lot of, you know, multiples and stuff. In my experience, I’m not sticking to this, of course. Don’t get me wrong, it is. Everything is. You need to get, you know, your numbers right and know the multiple and stuff.

Roch Dumas [00:45:08]:
But that’s not, that’s not the end of the story. That’s not the end of the story. For sure.

Jordan Berry [00:45:16]:
Yeah. Okay. So we got this transaction done by some miracle. There was a lot of back and forth going on here. This guy was an old school guy, so some haggling, no little intent.

Roch Dumas [00:45:30]:
Just the price agreed. And then, you know, a lot of, you know, exchange for like two, three months around, you know, electricity bills and gas and water and leaves and stuff. I got pretty much everything I wanted to kind of.

Jordan Berry [00:45:56]:
Eventually.

Roch Dumas [00:45:57]:
Eventually. But again with no, nothing. Nothing actually sign on paper, you know, so you’re always like, you know, is this gonna happen? It’s not gonna happen.

Jordan Berry [00:46:12]:
Yeah, yeah, we. We were like filling around in the dark pretty much for a little while there. I mean, obviously, like you especially where we’re. And we’re trying to get creative on trying to verify things without really having much information, but, I mean, we ultimately got there. And you felt good about it? I felt pretty good about it. The owner eventually sold, so that was that. Can you. Can you tell us a little bit about.

Jordan Berry [00:46:42]:
I’ve got kind of two more things I want to talk about. I want to talk a little bit about. Well, three more things. Talk a little bit about the process of bringing your vision to life. Like, you had this vision of laundry and lattes. So can you talk about a little bit about bringing that vision to life? And then I want to talk about growing your business. How, if you’ve been able to grow it, and if so, how have you been able to grow it? What does that look like? So let’s talk about, like, bringing it to life. Like, you had this idea, laundries and latte.

Jordan Berry [00:47:13]:
It didn’t exist before. It was a laundromat before, but not a laundry and latte. Tell us a little bit about that process.

Roch Dumas [00:47:20]:
Yeah, so I took over in November last year, and the first intention was to run it as is for three months and, you know, see how it goes. And end of November, I buy the place. Literally 15 days after I was ready to shake up and change it and bring it to life. I. I didn’t want to wait three months because I felt confident in the operations and I thought it was time. So I decided quickly to bring it to what I wanted to. And the way I did it is I, you know, it’s always like that, I guess, you know, I. I have a good friend of mine who is a French architect in New York.

Roch Dumas [00:48:27]:
He does a bunch of different places. One of them he did was old laundromat that in turn, he turned into a restaurant. I don’t know if I told you about that, by the way, but.

Jordan Berry [00:48:40]:
No, no.

Roch Dumas [00:48:42]:
Is also focused on bigger projects usually, but because he did this laundromat into a restaurant then. And funny enough, from the outside it looks. The two laundromats look the same. Which. Anyways, I think that my friend thought, okay, well, it’s a smart project. They can do it.

Jordan Berry [00:49:08]:
And.

Roch Dumas [00:49:10]:
In December, we started to design everything and we get along really well. And I think we had the same vision. And he helped me a lot. I’m so bad at, you know, like, you know, design and stuff. I just had this idea. I want laundry and latte. I want. I want the coffee here.

Roch Dumas [00:49:35]:
I want the. Yeah, laundry.

Jordan Berry [00:49:38]:
Somebody make it pretty. Make it pretty for me.

Roch Dumas [00:49:40]:
Then make it. Make it. It nice. That was. That was the. But I trust the guy. And he actually, in a record time, just, you know, designed the thing and. And made it exactly how I, you know, in my dream envision, like, designed the place.

Roch Dumas [00:50:10]:
January 1st, we started the renovation, kept the place open. It was a nightmare. A nightmare. But I’m glad we did it financially. It was super helpful. Was nightmare because, you know, you probably know how it is when you renovate the place. So we had to close certain days, and of course, people were not happy, but we kept the operation going somehow. And in not even three months, you know, end of March, we reopened a fully renovated space.

Roch Dumas [00:50:53]:
And yeah, that was the thing. But having someone I knew that they trusted, who also was interested by the idea, was instrumental to get it done on time and of course, in a reasonable amount of funding for the renovation.

Jordan Berry [00:51:22]:
Yeah. You know what’s interesting is one thing that I’ve been learning lately. I mean, this probably seems obvious to some people listening, but it wasn’t to me. But it’s being like, your story is like, punctuating this, and it’s a lesson that I’ve been learning lately, is if you have a dream, a vision, something big you want to accomplish, you need other people around you to help you bring it to life. You know what I mean? Like, that’s what you said over and over and over.

Roch Dumas [00:51:54]:
Yeah, I mentioned girlfriend.

Jordan Berry [00:51:59]:
Yeah.

Roch Dumas [00:52:03]:
Random at bonus yourself, Walid. I mean, so many. You need to have this help. If you’re alone, forget about it. Forget about it. Because there are so many things. So many things you need to do that. You can do it yourself alone.

Jordan Berry [00:52:29]:
Yeah, well, you know, and it’s funny, like I said, probably most people are like, yeah, duh. But for me, like, genuinely, like, it’s kind of a relatively new idea for me where I’m starting to see, like, one plus one does not equal two. Right. One plus one equals ten. When you’re. When you’re working with the right people, you have the right people on your team in your corner. Like, and you mentioned, like, the architect, I think, is a really great example because you’re like, it was something that he was interested in. He had the capabilities, he had the vision for it.

Jordan Berry [00:53:01]:
And. And I think that, like, he was interested in it is, like, a key component. Right. Like, it was intriguing to him. It was exciting to him. And having that in your corner is huge.

Roch Dumas [00:53:11]:
I learned that. And that’s something that I’m also watching now for myself. I want people who are buying into the. The idea, the concept, the space that’s so important. So important. It’s. It’s a game changer.

Jordan Berry [00:53:35]:
Yeah. And it kind of goes back to that strong brand, too. Right. Like, you’re doing something unique. That’s probably, like, what. Part of what intrigued him about it is you’re doing something unique. He’s like, yeah, okay. It’s like, not a big project.

Jordan Berry [00:53:46]:
I can. I can tackle it. But it’s also kind of intriguing to help be a part of building this thing, which is pretty cool.

Roch Dumas [00:53:54]:
Exactly.

Jordan Berry [00:53:56]:
Yeah. And then, you know, like, obviously, like, everything in that bringing your dream to life went super smoothly and was very easy to do. No obstacles. Right. I’m just kidding. I mean, obviously that’s not the case, but in his particular case, he had some like. Like pretty good obstacles along the way that you just kind of stuck through. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:54:24]:
And you just stuck through and made it happen, which is, you know, and, like, that’s the thing too, where, you know, one thing I learned a while back was like, frustration and discouragement comes when your expectations don’t meet reality. And, you know, if you expect there to be no problems and things go easy and smooth. I know there’s like, it’s so clickbaity, especially in our industry right now, the passive income, the easy, the boring business, you know, this. And that is like, so clickbaity trendy right now because it’s easy to sell that idea. But the reality of it is, is that there is nothing easy, and you need to expect things to go wrong. And. And you. One thing that you did, and this is what we do as entrepreneurs, right.

Jordan Berry [00:55:09]:
Is we bet on ourselves to be able to solve problems. Right. And to be able to get the right people around us to help us solve the problem. And, and that’s what you did in. And you crushed it.

Roch Dumas [00:55:21]:
Yeah, I don’t know if I crushed it, but absolutely. And you never know what you know, it’s gonna. Challenges are gonna come up. But never were you, you know, in, in previous conversation with you, you always told me something is gonna happen. Okay, well, guess what? On the laundry side, everything went well. Then on the coffee side, that’s when things went wrong. So because of the health department and stuff. But as you said, you always need to be ready for the unexpected.

Roch Dumas [00:56:02]:
And they’re going to be always problem, always extra money to spend, always things that can put you down. And if you don’t have these people around you, whatever it is, whoever. Not whatever. Whoever it is. And I think it’s a mix of things. It’s. It’s family, friends in people in the industry. If you don’t have that, that’s where things go wrong.

Jordan Berry [00:56:29]:
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so two final things that I want to ask you about. Number one is you said three and.

Roch Dumas [00:56:40]:
Then now we already.

Jordan Berry [00:56:44]:
Okay, well, I’m not that good accounting.

Roch Dumas [00:56:48]:
All right.

Jordan Berry [00:56:48]:
Leave me alone. All right. I got two more that I can think of. I might come up with more. I don’t know, maybe it’s like 100. Let’s talk about growing your business. Has. How’s it been since, you know, March? You got everything kind of up and running and all that.

Jordan Berry [00:57:01]:
How has it been since. I mean, we’re in September right now as we’re recording this. How has business been? Have you been able to grow it?

Roch Dumas [00:57:08]:
It has been amazing. Not easy, of course, in terms of involvement and you need to be, of course, if you believe that you’re going to run the thing from the outside and let it go now. That’s of course not how it works. Nothing works like that. And you know, from a self service point of view, it’s, it’s. We’re crushing it. I think the, the, the fact from changing coin to laundry cards and lander works was probably the best move I have done is it definitely changed the business. I mean, in three months we doubled the self service.

Roch Dumas [00:58:23]:
So definitely that was a big, big change. And I love not having to deal with coins anymore. But also we’re still growing on the self service, on the pickup and delivery and drop off. You know, it’s separate business. We took more time to kind of get it Right. Because you have so many things to consider, the driver aspect, the staff aspect. But we’re starting to kind of same. We’re now in September, we probably double.

Roch Dumas [00:59:21]:
Important thing is to get the right balance between commercial clients and residential. That’s something we’re working on. Commercial are great, but you need to always get it right in terms of balance. We also do dry cleaning that’s booming right now. And then the last piece is, is a coffee. Coffee never, as I mentioned earlier, was never part of the equation in terms of financials, as you said. Now I’m looking into it a bit more. But you know, the coffee is also a way for us to acquire customer, to bring new customer to.

Roch Dumas [01:00:19]:
So it’s very difficult to say, well, coffee lose money. You know, you can, it’s laundry and latte. So my staff, it’s really difficult to, to say, well you can, you can’t take the coffee and the laundry and just, you know, say, oh, coffee doesn’t make money. It doesn’t work like that. And I stuff at the coffee shop, I asked them, you know, take the dry cleaning order, to tag the dry cleaning, to weigh the bags and you know what I mean? So it’s part of the one thing. And my idea behind the coffee has always been first bring more better customer experience, never to make money. I don’t want to lose. Coffee is a bit slow, but I’m not worried about coffee, to be honest.

Jordan Berry [01:01:21]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and your, your focus, I mean, you kind of casually just mentioned that you doubled your pickup. I mean your self serve business, that’s not a casual thing, that’s a huge deal. And I know a lot of that has to do with how you rebranded, redesigned the place, you know, remodeled it, all that stuff and how you’re operating it now, the new culture you’re putting into this place, you said it’s still growing and you can’t grow all aspects of your business at the same time. But you’re going to get to a point where that, that coffee is going to be continuing to bring you new customers and maintain customer loyalty, but it also will be profitable. I’m, I’m confident of that.

Roch Dumas [01:02:06]:
Yeah. As well. I think so. And, and again, the self serve is a mix of things. It’s a technology, it’s a new space. It’s the staff that is now helping customer. It’s, it’s the cleanness of the store. It’s everything.

Roch Dumas [01:02:26]:
And a little bit of advertising.

Jordan Berry [01:02:29]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are you doing a lot of advertising?

Roch Dumas [01:02:33]:
Not a lot, but you Know, it’s mainly Google. Google Ads, geofencing. That seems to work well.

Jordan Berry [01:02:52]:
Yeah, yeah. Nice, nice. One other thing that I just wanted to bring up, I guess this is the last ish thing is I mentioned this earlier, but you’ve. You’ve been in the news multiple times now. That has popped up for me. How are you. How are you getting pr. How are you getting on the news?

Roch Dumas [01:03:21]:
That’s a funny question. My parents asked me the same.

Jordan Berry [01:03:29]:
It’s your looks, isn’t it? You’re just so handsome. They’re like, put this guy in the news.

Roch Dumas [01:03:37]:
A lot of people think. I know a lot of people in this industry. I’m not. I mean, I didn’t until now. You know, we were featured by the New York Times. I think it was a coincidence. I mean, they reached out to me. They were doing a story on Landomat while doing other things as part of their revenue.

Roch Dumas [01:04:16]:
I just open when they reach out. And this New York Times article kind of. I’m not a big, you know, I’m not super knowledgeable about this news industry. You’re probably better than me. But when someone like New York Times picks up something, then it starts to trigger a lot of things. That’s how we got probably the financial time. That’s how NBC is doing something now. That’s how all the local paper.

Roch Dumas [01:04:56]:
You know, I, I love being in the news, but it’s never, Never was something I was, you know, targeting specifically. I think what helps is what actually we managed to accomplish. I think that’s a testament that to me, it’s a confirmation that what I wanted to realize made it to the.

Jordan Berry [01:05:41]:
Yeah, you realized it.

Roch Dumas [01:05:43]:
Yeah, yeah, that’s that, I think. Because. Because, of course. Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s newsworthy to have a place that is clean, where people come with different backgrounds can enjoy finally getting their stuff done. Especially again, in the New York working area. You don’t have that kind of a lot of space where it’s enjoyable. So I think it’s just, you know, piece of luck, but also right timing and good delivery on the idea of what we wanted.

Jordan Berry [01:06:33]:
Yeah, yeah. Super good execution and again, strong branding. Right. Like laundry and lattes. You probably. Probably came up real quick when they were looking for laundry and something else because of that branding and a lot.

Roch Dumas [01:06:47]:
Of, you know, I had a lot of back and forth with people on the. On the branding and names. You always have people say to me, it was good. Why? Because simple and clear. Hungry and latte. Well, you cannot understand what you’re gonna get.

Jordan Berry [01:07:04]:
That’s right. There’s no confusion on that one. Would you guys serve lattes or just black coffee? You probably don’t even serve lattes, do you?

Roch Dumas [01:07:13]:
Guess what the best seller is. A latte. Of course.

Jordan Berry [01:07:16]:
Okay. Okay.

Roch Dumas [01:07:17]:
We have to sell, you know, the new thing, Matcha.

Jordan Berry [01:07:22]:
Ah, yeah. Very trendy. Very trendy, Right? That’s awesome. Okay, listen, this has been incredible partially because, I mean, listen, there’s been so many just practical takeaways. Like, you just shared a lot of. Because you just went through it, like, not that long ago and, you know, had a good team around you, and we’re sort of debriefing and getting stuff kind of along the way. So you have a lot of really good practical takeaway stuff. But even just hearing your story is just so enlightening, right? And kind of refreshing, too.

Jordan Berry [01:07:55]:
And, you know, more and more, we’re seeing more and more of, like, laundry is easy, Laundromats are easy. Getting laundromats, you can do it in, you know, 60 days, you can do it in 30 days, you can do it in 15 days. Like, I’m seeing ads for all these things, right? And I’m like, ah, gosh, like, it’s so deceptive. So it’s kind of refreshing just to hear your story about how you went out and you made it happen. Like, this thing would not have ever just fallen in your lap. This vision would not have fallen. You had to go out and make it happen, and you did and made it. You realized that dream.

Jordan Berry [01:08:28]:
You realized that goal and made it happen. So I appreciate you coming on, taking the time away from building your business and everything else you got going on, meeting with all your fancy people that, you know, since, you know, everybody. All the big wigs over there and. And. And hanging out with us and just sharing your story and sharing some of the things that you’ve learned along the way to help us improve businesses. So I guess my last. Last question for you is, you know what? I know, I know, I know. I might come up with a couple more.

Jordan Berry [01:09:01]:
I don’t know. My last. Last one is, if people want to connect with you, what’s the best way they can connect with you?

Roch Dumas [01:09:11]:
You know, just share my email, personal email, and I will be happy to answer, you know, any question. Connect with anybody. That’s how I got into the industry. So to me, it’s natural to give back. And I don’t say that it’s not. It’s. It’s. It’s true.

Roch Dumas [01:09:33]:
I mean, I learned so much and that’s the reason why I’m here today, because of people, too, some of the time. So to me, it’s so natural to feedback. So please share my email and the personal email, and I welcome anybody to. To reach out, and I would love to, you know, share any. Anything with anybody.

Jordan Berry [01:10:05]:
Awesome. Well, I’ll put those in the show notes. If you’re on YouTube, that’ll be down below. And obviously, if you’re in Brooklyn, you gotta go get a latte or a matcha at laundry and latte over there and go visit Junior doing his thing, building this business. Dude, you genuinely, you are a rock star. It’s. It’s so inspiring to. You know, one of the big reasons I wanted to have you on is because.

Jordan Berry [01:10:32]:
So inspiring to hear somebody who has a vision of something that they want to build, they want to bring to life laundry and latte and then hear about the process of what it took to actually bring that vision to life. And, you know, obviously, like, the story’s not over. You’re still growing your business. You’re relatively, you know, made, you know, relatively new into it. Things are still growing. You’re building, you’re learning all that stuff. But it’s just so cool to see you bring. Bring a vision to life.

Jordan Berry [01:11:03]:
It’s inspiring. So hopefully, if you’re listening to this or watching this and you’re out there and you have a dream, you have a vision, you know, take Junior up, shoot him an email, connect with him. He’s the one who said you got to get connected with people in the industry. So who better to start with in JR here?

Roch Dumas [01:11:18]:
Please do.

Jordan Berry [01:11:20]:
Plus, everybody knows him anyways, and he knows everybody. So.

Roch Dumas [01:11:25]:
Really happy to spend some time with you. And. Yeah, that’s really great.

Jordan Berry [01:11:31]:
Awesome. Appreciate it. Man, I hope you love that episode with Junior. I love that guy. He is doing awesome stuff, bringing visions to life. Listen, as good as that story is, number one, reach out to him and connect with him. He likes connecting with people, so make sure you’re doing that. Number two is.

Jordan Berry [01:11:50]:
And maybe connecting with him is your action step, but take some action off something here. And, you know, for me, I. I just. This narrative of him, like, having this vision of laundry and lattes and bringing it to life is like, listen, I need to probably spend a little more time building out my vision, getting clarity on what my vision of what I’m trying to build is, and then get after it, focus on it. That’s my action step. What’s your action step? I love to hear about it. Drop me a note. Jordanamiteresource.com Tell me what you’re what you’re up to based off of this episode from jr.

Jordan Berry [01:12:30]:
Huge shout out and thanks to him, by the way, we will see you next week on the episode our next episode which again is another incredible interview and some of you guys will see in Hawaii here pretty soon. So laundrieressource.com Hawaii Peace.