Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
Hey, what’s up, guys? It’s Jordan with the laundromat resource podcast. This is show 232 and I am pumped you’re here today. Even still, after 232 episodes, I’m probably even more pumped that you’re here today than ever before. Kate and George Wolf are joining us for a super fun, super duper. Like, I was gonna say knowledgeable, but I don’t know, like, there’s just a lot of nuggets being dropped in this episode. How about that? This is awesome episode. You’re gonna. Kate and George are phenomenal people and have built a phenomenal business and tell you exactly how they did it.

Jordan Berry [00:00:38]:
Not going to want to miss it. Whether you’re new or a veteran, this one’s got something for everybody for sure. Before we jump into it, I just wanted to point out laudermoresource.com resources. We got all kinds of resources over there. Make sure you go check those out. If you’re looking to get it in the business or if you’re in the business looking to optimize your business a little bit more, go check out a lot of my resource.com resources for. For all the downloadable tools and resources that we use when we help clients find and run, optimize, scale their laundromat businesses. Awesome.

Jordan Berry [00:01:11]:
Okay, how about this? Let’s jump into with Kate and George right now. Kate and George, thank you for coming on the show. How you guys doing today?

Kate Wolfe [00:01:19]:
Good. How are you?

George Wolfe [00:01:20]:
Good.

Jordan Berry [00:01:20]:
I am doing excellent. I’m doing excellent. Super excited to have you guys on. Thank you so much for taking the time and. And for reaching out too, and being willing to come on and share your story with everybod. I know. You know, when we were just chatting before we hit record, you’re saying, man, we really hope this will help somebody. And as you were just telling me little bits and pieces about your story, I know it will for sure.

Jordan Berry [00:01:42]:
So appreciate it. But while we jump in here, why don’t you tell us, who are you guys and how did you get into this business?

Kate Wolfe [00:01:49]:
Well, first, thank you for having us on. We appreciate it. We’re really excited to be on here. We’ve learned so much. So we are so excited to hopefully give somebody some information or something that maybe will finally click. But we’re husband and wife team. We’ve been been married for almost 15 years. We do a lot together.

Kate Wolfe [00:02:08]:
We did work together years ago and now we work together all the time.

Jordan Berry [00:02:14]:
Is that a good thing or a bad thing that could go either way.

Kate Wolfe [00:02:17]:
Though, it depends on the day, Jordan. Right?

Jordan Berry [00:02:22]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Kate Wolfe [00:02:23]:
Because we really love the business, but then there’s times that we’re like, okay, why’d we do this? Yeah, yesterday was one of those days.

Jordan Berry [00:02:34]:
Well, today we’ll have fun doing it. And then it could be one of those days where you’re, like, excited about it. So how about that?

George Wolfe [00:02:39]:
Yeah, it’s exciting being on the show.

Kate Wolfe [00:02:42]:
Yes. Yes. So we. We got into the business two years ago. We actually just celebrated our two year anniversary in the laundromat business on the 15th. We. So during the pandemic, we. I had seen, like the videos.

Kate Wolfe [00:02:58]:
Oh, you know, start a laundromat, start a vending machine business. My husband’s in property management and maintenance, so he has kind of like that business acumen. And then I have a master’s degree and I’m a manager as well. So we knew we wanted to do a business at some point together because we have worked together in the past and we just didn’t know, like, what we wanted to do. And then I think we kind of settled on, like, we want something that’s already in existence. Like, I don’t think we have the ability to start something from scratch at this point in our lives. So we were like. I had been looking on biz by sell very consistently.

Kate Wolfe [00:03:36]:
And so two years ago in 2023, on Veterans Day, I had seen it listed. Oh, did you want to say how you.

George Wolfe [00:03:44]:
Yeah.

Kate Wolfe [00:03:45]:
Okay.

George Wolfe [00:03:45]:
The real story is, Jordan, is I was driving to work in the morning time.

Jordan Berry [00:03:48]:
Let’s get the real story here. A little too sanitized.

George Wolfe [00:03:52]:
Did you see the laundromat that we bought? And I said, we didn’t buy laundromat because we don’t know how to run a laundromat. We’re not going to buy it. She’s like, no, that’s our laundromat. We bought it. I said, really? She said, yeah. And we buy the laundromat.

Kate Wolfe [00:04:05]:
So obviously very different than mine. I just called me and was like, yes, so we’re going to buy a Laundromat. And I mean, he is not wrong. That is how it went down. Like, I was. I was stalking this by style, you know, twice a week, every week. And it was really late. He was already asleep.

Kate Wolfe [00:04:23]:
I found the listing, like, what, eight minutes away from our house. We know the area. We know it well. I actually lived there when I was a teenager.

George Wolfe [00:04:31]:
Right behind it in housing.

Kate Wolfe [00:04:33]:
Yeah. So we. As soon as I saw it, I started reaching out to, like, My realtor friend, my banking friends. I put an inquiry in. I was doing everything that I could to try to contact people. So when I woke up in the morning, it was a holiday, but he had work. So then I called him and I said, hey, did you see the laundromat that we’re gonna buy? And he laughed and he’s like, oh, what are you talking about? And I was like, no, like, we’re gonna buy that. I’ve already talked to the bank.

Kate Wolfe [00:04:58]:
I already talked to my friend.

Jordan Berry [00:04:59]:
Go get her.

Kate Wolfe [00:05:00]:
I was like, I’m just waiting for the owner to contact me back. And he’s like, no way. So f of the afternoon, I finally get a hold of the owner. He was actually the last person I spoke to and always the last to know. He says to me, well, you know, the last person that went to look at it said it was really dirty. So I set my cleaner there and you know, let me know if it’s dirty. And I said, okay, we’re gonna go take a look at it, but I’m pretty sure we want it, so I’ll call you right back. So we drive over.

George Wolfe [00:05:30]:
It wasn’t clean.

Kate Wolfe [00:05:31]:
It is. Yeah, dirty. I mean, there was graffiti on the wall.

George Wolfe [00:05:36]:
It had a board on the. On the one store, like a two by four. It looked run down and it was dirty. We knew what we could do with the store because we just knew. We. I knew what we could do and I know my wife’s drive. So I thought, well, there’s no way this store is gonna look like this when we own the store. Of course.

George Wolfe [00:05:55]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:05:56]:
Yeah.

George Wolfe [00:05:56]:
So. So of course we cleaned up the store and made it beautiful. I mean, we put laundry works in the store since then, you know, it doesn’t. Look, there’s actually a TV that’s actually on in the store, right? Yeah, we’re not afraid of somebody stealing it. It’s actually on the wall and it’s on.

Kate Wolfe [00:06:10]:
But the owner himself had told us, so he was out of state. And so, you know, he was the. Oh, this is a passive income business. And he was a big time landlord in the area. So he has like hundreds of properties and only two employees and then laundromats. So it just. It wasn’t working for him. So he wanted to get out of the business.

Kate Wolfe [00:06:29]:
He did keep one laundromat at first. So we dove in. We bought the business only. And we were like, okay, let’s see what we think. Like, let’s. Let’s dip our toe and like, see what we can do with it. So like the first day we get the keys, we go in and we start cleaning and like getting rid of the graffiti, get rid of the two by four, cleaning it up. You know, we installed all new cameras, painted everything, repaired things, make sure it.

George Wolfe [00:06:57]:
Was nice and bright, broke out the.

Kate Wolfe [00:06:58]:
Steam cleaner everything and anything. And then the biggest problem that the owner had said, the prior owner had said was that there was like kids that hung out and like homeless people that came in. And that was a serious issue. So we installed cameras and we would watch them very diligently. And that was like a full time job in and itself in the beginning. To chase people out. Yeah, in the beginning because it was, it was a lot of work. That was the one thing that customers told us.

Kate Wolfe [00:07:27]:
The owner told like it was very well known. That was like the hangout. And so we worked really hard to change that perception and change that image.

George Wolfe [00:07:34]:
And the neighborhood knows now, Jordan, that we’re no nonsense laundromat. You know, we’re there to take care of the, the people in our community, of course, but we also are not going to tolerate anything that’s. There’s going to be no fooling around like that.

Kate Wolfe [00:07:47]:
Tell me about yourself.

Jordan Berry [00:07:48]:
So, so that’s real quick on.

George Wolfe [00:07:51]:
I don’t want to interrupt you. I’m sorry, go ahead.

Jordan Berry [00:07:53]:
Just real quick on that point. I, I mean that was one of the big lessons that I took away was like, it’s much more difficult in my opinion to rehab how the community like the reputation of the laundromat than the, than the laundromat itself. And I’m like having FL where I’d be like, I’d have anxiety looking on my phone at the cameras to see what was happening in my laundromat because I’m like, I don’t even know what’s going on in there right now. And I don’t know if I want to know. And it was like a lot of work. Like you were saying, it’s like a lot of work to actually clean up the place. And it is. That’s something that, especially if you’re buying like a fixer upper laundromat, a zombie mat, something like that.

Jordan Berry [00:08:28]:
One thing you can underestimate is, you know, there’s. I talk a lot about how laundry is like a habitual business, which is really good for us. But also, you know, other people have habits at your laundromat potentially as well, you know, maybe coming to try to sleep there, to hang out there, to do whatever there. And you got to break those habits as well. So I, I was just like resonating with what you’re saying and like having some flashbacks there with you.

Kate Wolfe [00:08:57]:
Yeah. We had to get rid of the unscrupulous behaviors that were, that were occurring and, and George ended up buying, buying a sign for the window.

George Wolfe [00:09:07]:
Like 20 bucks, 15 bucks at Amazon. And it said under new, under new ownership, it says. And it, it, it works really well to bring customers back that left to give, give Laundry lane a chance to let them have one more shot at our laundromat. So they knew who we were and that we were going to keep the place like it is now, well maintained and take care, and take care of. I mean that’s, that’s the main goal there in a laundromat is making sure it’s taken care of.

Jordan Berry [00:09:33]:
Yeah.

Kate Wolfe [00:09:34]:
I mean even like the customers would come in and they would, they would say, wow, it’s so much cleaner. Like we didn’t do like, you know, we talked about this before we hit record how we, we took a lot of loans and so we didn’t, we didn’t like renovate the place or put new equipment in. We just cleaned it and then took care of the customers and then answered our phone when they would call. Like all of these things that really aren’t.

George Wolfe [00:10:00]:
Customer service is number one, completely out of the norm. You know, that’s my wife’s department. She’ fantastic with it. That’s one thing we do do is we don’t wait three weeks to call you back. Yeah, we’ll call you right back. My wife always does. She’ll call you right back. If not right there and then she tries to make within the hour, she’ll get right back to the customer.

Kate Wolfe [00:10:17]:
We’ve gotten very creative with our problem solving since we’re not always available. Like we can’t just always pick up and run over. I mean, obviously we do and we have to when there’s, you know, we.

George Wolfe [00:10:26]:
Can because we do work full time jobs.

Kate Wolfe [00:10:28]:
Yeah. But we do make it a point to try to get over there as much as possible whenever there’s an issue that requires us physically to be there.

George Wolfe [00:10:35]:
So.

Jordan Berry [00:10:36]:
Yeah, when you, when you were, when you were like looking at the, the cameras and you know, trying to like clean that up, I mean, did you have like cameras with two way communication or like what did you do?

George Wolfe [00:10:47]:
Yeah, yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:10:48]:
So you’re able to communicate with people in there and like get out of here.

Kate Wolfe [00:10:51]:
So we have two sets of cameras. We have like, so you always, you know, one thing I did learn on the podcast is you always have to have a backup, right? So we have a set that’s in the store and then we have a set that’s mobile as well. So that one, we have two way communication. So we are looking and we’re. There’s an alarm feature too, which the kids know now. Like if they do try every once in a while, they just before I kicked them out last week, they were like, they’re going to tell us to get out of the laundromat. And I was like, you’re right. Please leave.

Kate Wolfe [00:11:20]:
We can also control our doors from an app as well. So, you know, when the kids were getting out of hand, we would just lock the doors, lock the doors when they left and they try to come back in and it’s like, no, you need to leave. So it works out perfect. It’s.

George Wolfe [00:11:34]:
It’s not like that now, of course, but now it took a while though, to get things straightened out. A few months, I mean, and a few months later, what was it, six months later? Then we bought the. We actually the owner was saying he was going to sell the property and my wife’s like, you know, we’re going to buy the property. And I was like, I don’t think that’s. We can feasibly do that. That’s expensive. We’re not going to do it. She’s like, no, like, somebody can come in here and raise our rent and like that.

George Wolfe [00:11:56]:
That could kill us. Like, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to buy. This actual property had two rental property. There’s like two rentals there. So my wife’s like, you know, you’re in property management, you already know maintenance. And she knows the, the finance side, of course, so I’m very fortunate. So she’s like, let’s, let’s buy the property so we could be the landlord for the laundromat too.

Kate Wolfe [00:12:12]:
Well, so my husband’s like part of the story so that when I talked to the owner about purchasing the property of the first laundry lane location in Edwardsville, he said, hey, I’m actually thinking of selling the building that my other laundromats in. And so we had had a conversation already that like, eventually we were going to get the second location because he wanted out of the laundro business. Like, like I said, he just wasn’t, he wasn’t putting the time and attention it needed. So when he said he was going to sell both the buildings, I was like, okay, we want both. And so I call him again. And I’m like, so we’re buying two buildings, not one. And he’s like, there’s no way. I don’t want that other building.

Kate Wolfe [00:12:46]:
It’s not in good shape. And I’m like, so we’re gonna buy it.

Jordan Berry [00:12:49]:
We have a maintenance guy. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.

George Wolfe [00:12:52]:
Yeah, yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:12:54]:
I know what’s happening. I know it’s going through that mine.

George Wolfe [00:12:57]:
You can fix it. You can fix anything.

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

Kate Wolfe [00:12:59]:
So we bought the first laundromat December 2023. And then we bough June 2024. And then we. We’re foster parents, too. So we brought home a foster baby during that time too.

George Wolfe [00:13:13]:
Okay.

Kate Wolfe [00:13:13]:
And then we had, like, the worst apartment. That was it. Because the buildings are three and four units. So one of the apartments, the long, longest term tenant left. So we were renovating an apartment, almost $10,000. Had a newborn, had our daughter worked full time. And then what, four months later, October. October 2024.

Jordan Berry [00:13:36]:
However.

Kate Wolfe [00:13:36]:
Months. However many months later, then. Then we finally got the.

George Wolfe [00:13:39]:
I asked her, I said, can you call them and ask them about the Laundromat? Because that’s why I bought the other building. It was to potentially own that laundromat. Right. I wanted that laundry knew that. So she made the phone call, of course, and she’s like, listen, we want to buy their laundromat. Let’s do it. And we did. We bought the other laundromat.

George Wolfe [00:13:52]:
And of course, Jordan, that laundromat had no lights at all. You couldn’t see the washers.

Kate Wolfe [00:13:57]:
It was funny because when we get the. When we got that one, the customers were coming in, and they’re like, wow, you put in new floors. Well, there’s new equipment. And so to back up for a minute, though, we did technically get that second one for the free laundromat because we took over his equipment loan.

Jordan Berry [00:14:14]:
Yeah.

Kate Wolfe [00:14:14]:
So we didn’t put any money down. We didn’t do, like, additional financing. We just took over his equipment loan. The equipment was only 2 years old, but the customers couldn’t see it, so they didn’t know how clean it was and how new it was. And then we cleaned everything. You know, that one took a little.

George Wolfe [00:14:30]:
Bit more time, actually, than the first one. I thought we had to put all new lights in, but I think we had to fix the sign. But we were already veteran.

Kate Wolfe [00:14:36]:
We did it fast. Faster, I think, though, because we kind.

George Wolfe [00:14:39]:
Of knew what we had to do. We. I still don’t think that we knew everything that we know now, of course, but we did learn from the first, you know, experience, and now it’s all clean and it’s bright. I mean, our Google reviews are out the roof there, actually.

Kate Wolfe [00:14:52]:
Yeah, that’s one of the highest rated ones.

George Wolfe [00:14:53]:
It is. It’s amazing.

Kate Wolfe [00:14:54]:
We have those, like, signs up inside of the stores with, like, a QR code to get our customers to leave us reviews. And then when we help them with things, like if there’s a problem or whatever, we always say, hey, can you leave us a Google review? We’ve since incentivized our employees to ask for Google reviews. We give them $5 every time they get a review, and then the customer mentions the employee’s name. Yeah, we got that idea.

Jordan Berry [00:15:14]:
Make sure it’s a good review, though.

George Wolfe [00:15:16]:
Yeah, we got the review. We got that idea. Actually. We stole from a gentleman the was dry called Carlos. We actually got it from him, and he did that with his employees. So we stole his ideas.

Kate Wolfe [00:15:28]:
We’re like, that’s so great. We’re gonna do that. And then I think when we first implemented it, we got like, five over one weekend. So you’re like, oh, this. This is great. Like, it’s working. This is working great.

Jordan Berry [00:15:36]:
Now I gotta pay 25.

George Wolfe [00:15:40]:
You’re right, Jordan.

Kate Wolfe [00:15:42]:
I’d rather pay out for. Because it’s like, okay, Now I know that, like, we’re gaining traction and getting that.

George Wolfe [00:15:48]:
We’re keeping our employees engaging with our customers. That’s what we want. So that works out great for us.

Jordan Berry [00:15:52]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I. I feel like we need to, like, pause for a second and. Okay, so right now you have two Laundromat locations.

Kate Wolfe [00:16:00]:
Yes.

Jordan Berry [00:16:00]:
Where are you guys located?

Kate Wolfe [00:16:02]:
We’re in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, and Edwardsville, Pennsylvania. So they’re. They’re not too far from each other. Edwardsville is a really small city. They’re about 10 minutes apart from each other. So it works out great.

Jordan Berry [00:16:12]:
Nice. Okay, and I want to back up. Let’s go back to that first Laundromat here for a second. When you. When you bought, like, how did the process of buying it go? Was it like a smooth kind of transaction, buying the Laundromat or how’d that go?

George Wolfe [00:16:29]:
How long we bought the Laundromat?

Kate Wolfe [00:16:30]:
I mean, it was. It was fairly smooth. And I will say this was a very atypical way. So you’ve probably not heard many people not have to put any money. Well, we put 25 down. Yeah.

George Wolfe [00:16:42]:
Tell them how we bought the actual unbound.

Kate Wolfe [00:16:44]:
So we. So when he had it Listed on Biz by Sell. And when he had it listed on Biz by Sell, he had all of his financials. So he had, he had it listed for the last three years. And then, you know, when we started talking, we asked for the year that we were within to be able to present to the bank. And I have a. The person that does our taxes is also working in a bank full time, so she was able to look at them. So when we had talked with the owner and we said, hey, we’re interested in this, we want to buy it, I said to him, if you want a cash deal, like, we’re not it.

Kate Wolfe [00:17:18]:
We don’t have this kind of money. Like, unfortunately, we’re born into generational wealth. So if that’s what you’re looking for, like, we can’t provide that for you, but if you’re willing to, you know, wait for us to get a loan and let that process, then, you know, we’re, we’re really interested. We want to dive right in. So he said, that’s fine, you know, as long as somebody can show me that they can get a loan. So even though it was a holiday, we were able to get a pre qualification to show that we were able to, like, obtain the funds from our bank. So we definitely beat out anybody else because it was a holiday. It was like a Friday.

Kate Wolfe [00:17:52]:
So when I had talked with my friends that does our taxes who works in the bank, I said to her, hey, listen, like, for this down payment, if I can show that I have the money for the down payment, but then wait for the loan to process and then take a personal loan for the actual down payment, can I do that without it affecting, you know, the, the primary business loan? And she said, yeah, you can absolutely do that. So that’s what we did. So we actually did not take any money out of our pockets. We were able to show funds, you know, like, we did have the money, but that would have drained our account. We would have not had anything. So we were able to prove that. And then after the primary business loan went through, we went took personal loans.

George Wolfe [00:18:31]:
And then we got the loans from our credit card. Jordan.

Kate Wolfe [00:18:34]:
Yeah. And so then we, we put that down and then we had to get a business checking account before we were actually in business. So we had to put like $25 into that account. So we did take $25 of our own money and we had to put that down.

Jordan Berry [00:18:47]:
That didn’t bankrupt you, right?

Kate Wolfe [00:18:51]:
$25 to, to put down.

Jordan Berry [00:18:54]:
You didn’t have to give that to your Employee later.

George Wolfe [00:18:57]:
Yeah, well, maybe later on.

Kate Wolfe [00:18:59]:
Well, we had no employees.

George Wolfe [00:19:00]:
No.

Kate Wolfe [00:19:01]:
Until just recently.

George Wolfe [00:19:02]:
Yeah, we actually just hired. It’s a great idea to do, though. Thank God we did.

Jordan Berry [00:19:06]:
Yeah. Congrats. Okay, well, when you. When you. I mean, that’s. That’s super interesting way to kind of go about it. When you bought it, this first one, this first laundromat, was it making money already or.

Kate Wolfe [00:19:21]:
Okay, so it was making money, but it wasn’t making, like, what we’re making. Like, we have definitely increased revenue for sure, because don’t forget, it was the local hangout. My. The customers that had been going there were uncomfortable. It. It. It drove people away. It drove them to the competitors.

Kate Wolfe [00:19:38]:
So, you know, George’s $20 sign probably turned us so many profits. I qu. But it gave us so many more customers back because we spent a lot of time in the stores as much as possible in the beginning. I mean, we still go there a lot, probably more than most owners. Most owners definitely care about our.

George Wolfe [00:19:57]:
I mean, we just care about it. We’re passionate about what we do.

Kate Wolfe [00:19:59]:
Yeah, we enjoy it. And so we had a lot of customers that would come in and say, oh, we saw the sign in the. In the window, and we wanted to come check it out. Are you the owners? And we’re like, yeah, you know, and then we have a conversation and tell them the things that we’re doing and how we’re improving it. And, you know, they see our passion for the business and for, you know, taking care our customers and really providing that community service for them. Because, you know, we went into this business with the intention of, okay, like, yes, we want to. We want a business, but I don’t think we realized how much of a community resource and how necessary that is. And now we feel so passionately about giving that to our customers.

Kate Wolfe [00:20:36]:
Like, we get genuine, heartfelt thank yous even now. Consistently, people come in and say, thank you so much for how much work.

George Wolfe [00:20:44]:
That you do last this week. Tuesday, I think it was. I was there, or last Tuesday I was there, and I was fixing one of the machines. I was putting a fill valve in, and the lady said she couldn’t believe how nice the machines were and how well they were kept. And she was so thankful at the laundromat was so nice and clean. I was like, that really means a lot to me. My wife, because we work so hard to make sure it looks like that and we have that reputation. That’s what we want.

George Wolfe [00:21:06]:
So, yeah, you’re right that it does mean a lot to me, 100 just like you that you know that we’re doing the right things, that. I feel that when they say that, Jordan, that we’re doing the right things, then we know we’re doing something right. When the customer says that, it’s like.

Kate Wolfe [00:21:18]:
The, it’s like the, it’s like the non financial way that we kind of like get that, you know, like, like I said, I, we wanted a business, but I didn’t realize how integral that business would become to a community. And people tell us all the time like, this is the community laundromat. And now that we’ve worked so hard to change that reputation that they, they know what to expect from us. They know that it’s going to be clean. They know that we’re going to, you know, not tolerate someone not doing laundry.

George Wolfe [00:21:48]:
It’s not a hangout or a bus.

Kate Wolfe [00:21:49]:
Yeah. I mean, they actually kind of do the work for us sometimes.

George Wolfe [00:21:52]:
I mean, my wife told me one time to put a broom and a dustpan like a little like dollar tree mop there and hanging on the wall. And I was like, that’s ridiculous. Nobody’s gonna do that. You know, I mean you’re being. This is never gonna work. Where are you getting this idea? Stop these stupid ideas. And I hung it up on the wall and they sweep up the laundromat and they actually mop the floor sometimes.

Kate Wolfe [00:22:16]:
Actually, our two employees that we now have were customers. Like one was from each location and they actually used to sweep up for us. And so it turn like, you do this anyway. Do you want to get paid for this? And they’ve been the best employees because they, they’re, they’re already invested. They know how much we care about it. They care about it because they want a clean, safe place to do their laundry. And they’ve been like the best employees because they really care about it.

George Wolfe [00:22:42]:
They are, they’re fantastic. I agree.

Jordan Berry [00:22:44]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I found some of my best employees just from either being customers or friends or family of customers. And they. Yeah, they have, there’s some like, pride of, of, you know, community pride there of taking care of the, of the business. Right. So it can be a great way to find. I’ve also had a couple bad ones from the community, so it’s not a given, but yeah, it’s awesome.

Kate Wolfe [00:23:06]:
We struggled quite a bit there in the beginning. When we first finally started hiring employees, we were like, oh, wow. Like we were doing it ourselves for so long. And then we got into hiring employees and we were like, wow, this is more difficult to have someone just show up. But then once we started hiring the customers, things really turned around for us.

Jordan Berry [00:23:28]:
Yeah. Okay, so listen, I think when people hear your story about how you bought this first one, I mean, you said it right? Like you, you leveraged it, you know, pretty much entirely. So I. How. How is that gone? How has that gone? Like, has that been a. Are you, like, excited that you went that path?

Kate Wolfe [00:23:49]:
Yeah, I would do it again. Yeah, I would do it again. Not only did we not touch personal finances, which was a really big deal for me, and we’re not rich, and.

George Wolfe [00:23:59]:
We bought a Laundromat. So.

Kate Wolfe [00:24:00]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:24:01]:
Yeah.

Kate Wolfe [00:24:01]:
Like, our number one rule has always been to not touch our personal finances, you know, and, and keep that out of it and have everything generating from the income from the business.

George Wolfe [00:24:11]:
The business pays for the business. We don’t pay it.

Kate Wolfe [00:24:13]:
Yeah. And so since, since then, we’ve paid off those personal loans. We still do have the business loan, but it’s worth it. You know, we just recently replaced the card system because that was a card only laundromat initially. Very antiquated system.

George Wolfe [00:24:28]:
Sean, we can make a whole another podcast just for that alone about what we. What the troubles.

Kate Wolfe [00:24:34]:
We went through a lot of trouble without.

George Wolfe [00:24:36]:
And, and not only the trouble, but then, you know, when you buy a laundromat, people don’t realize that your distributor is a big part of your laundromat. So when you buy a laundromat and I’m speaking to everybody out there that wants to buy one or is thinking about buying a laundromat, remember, the distributor you have makes a big difference.

Kate Wolfe [00:24:53]:
Yes.

George Wolfe [00:24:54]:
If they don’t answer your phone calls or, or if you can’t get somebody on the phone, that’s going to be.

Jordan Berry [00:24:59]:
An issue for you.

George Wolfe [00:25:00]:
So, you know, you need to be out there and make sure you’re doing your diligence.

Kate Wolfe [00:25:03]:
The YouTube videos did not prepare us for that. When we got this little idea, you know, that turned into this great big thing we’re doing, it didn’t prepare us how important they really are and how much you need to rely on them. Like, you can’t just call and say, hey, I want to order this particular. You. You generally can’t do that. So that is one thing we did not know. And we learned the hard way.

George Wolfe [00:25:29]:
Very. And since then we have a new distributor, of course, but we’ve grown, like I said, in the last few years that we’ve had these businesses and, and learned we also put laundry works in since then. But we, we’ve, we’ve.

Kate Wolfe [00:25:41]:
And by the way, we put those on business credit cards. Like we did it.

George Wolfe [00:25:44]:
Yeah, we didn’t, we didn’t buy laundry works out of my money. I didn’t have that money. I’m not rich. We’re poor people. But yeah, we, we used it from, from that. You are right. But yeah, I mean, we’re growing and doing well.

Kate Wolfe [00:25:55]:
Edit out the poor people, please, Jordan. Edit out the word rich and poor people.

Jordan Berry [00:25:59]:
Listen, we’re gonn. Because listen this. Number one, I don’t think you’re as poor as you think you are. But number two is that is a temporary condition. Even if it was true because you guys, I mean just, I’m just listening to how you guys have gone through this and how you’ve like, problem solved and the go getterness and how you’re taking care of your cut. Like, you know, even if it was true, it’s not gonna be true for long because you’re doing the things right and you’re owning, you’re owning things. You’re not using your own money to, to acquire them. You’re letting businesses pay for.

Jordan Berry [00:26:33]:
Yeah, you know, it makes, that makes some people nervous. You know, obviously like makes people nervous. But you guys are getting after it and you’re making it happen and you’re like, hey, we’re working full time jobs and we’ve got kids and we were fostering and got a couple of properties and a couple laundromats. Now I mean, we haven’t gotten to the second one or even really into this first one too much. Right? You got a lot going on, but you’re, you’re getting after it, right? You’re not trying to make it as passive as possible right now. You’re, you’re working, working like you’re working for it. So.

Kate Wolfe [00:27:02]:
And that’s the thing that like we knew going into it that we weren’t, I mean, I don’t, I don’t mean to say it sounded like we weren’t expecting a profit. And I don’t mean it like we weren’t expecting to make money. I mean it like we weren’t expecting to take a paycheck home from these at least in the beginning. And we knew that. And we like, we reinvest everything that we have back into the business.

George Wolfe [00:27:25]:
We take something, but it’s not huge.

Kate Wolfe [00:27:26]:
We take a very little amount every month and you know, everything else gets reinvested back into the business. And when we chose to do it that way with the financing we Knew that. So, you know, this was a long play. This is not. I think so. So often people want instant gratification in life, and they just instantly want to become rich or they instantly want to have businesses or they instantly want to be a success. And that’s just not real life.

George Wolfe [00:27:56]:
That’s. That. That’s why we’re here to say that the people are trying to go out there and buy a laund or two like we did. It’s not going to be, you’re a millionaire tomorrow. It’s going to take time to build your brand and, you know, do the customer’s trust. Exactly.

Kate Wolfe [00:28:09]:
Build the brand.

George Wolfe [00:28:11]:
Yes.

Kate Wolfe [00:28:11]:
You know, develop that relationship. Attract the customers.

George Wolfe [00:28:16]:
Remember that your distributor means a lot. When you go into the business, you. You have to make sure your distributor is. Make sure you work with him. Make sure that, you know it’s going to be a good connection for you and a good fit for you as well, because you’re paying out all that money. But also, you can’t do much without a distributor to help you and. And making sure, you know your equipment. I mean, we didn’t know that when we started that we didn’t know anything about our equipment or what to buy or how it works.

George Wolfe [00:28:37]:
I mean, now. Now do I know right in. Right. I mean, can I fix my dryer rollers? Of course I can. Can I fix the pump on a washer and a belt? Yeah. Can I fix a door and a bezel? And I could do so many things and put a fill valve in. Sure. But I didn’t know any of that stuff when I first started.

George Wolfe [00:28:50]:
And there wasn’t a lot of people out there willing to help me to learn that stuff.

Kate Wolfe [00:28:53]:
And I always tell him, like, when he gets nervous. Nervous, you know, because naturally he gets nervous because it’s our equipment. And he’s like, oh, my gosh, what.

George Wolfe [00:29:00]:
If I don’t want to mess something up? I mean, he’s paid 500 for the part alone. Jordan.

Jordan Berry [00:29:03]:
Expensive. Yeah, I know.

George Wolfe [00:29:04]:
1200 bucks.

Kate Wolfe [00:29:05]:
And I agree with what he’s saying, but at the end of the day, I always try to tell him, like, that’s not our personal problem. That’s laundry lane’s problem. Right. And that’s. I compartmentalize. Like, that is the business’s problem. And although we are controlling the business, that’s their problem. And so, you know, if you make a mistake.

Kate Wolfe [00:29:23]:
Mistake and you don’t fix it right the first time, it’s fine. You will just get it right next time, you know, like. And I Told him, you know, he, he has a maintenance background, so he. I told him, like, did you know how to do everything in maintenance before? No. You broke a lot of stuff first.

George Wolfe [00:29:38]:
Yeah. And I mean, now being on this podcast with you, Jordan, which is fantastic. Maybe I could help somebody else if they need some. Some kind of advice on fixing something, or they could pick up, you know, and call us or email us. Maybe I could help them in some way so I can make them successful as well as us or the finance side with my wife, because she’s so savvy at how she buys things. And now we have two companies. We have Laundry Lane and Quick Lane Rentals. So we didn’t want Quick Lane Rentals.

George Wolfe [00:30:08]:
We just. It just came about.

Kate Wolfe [00:30:10]:
So we didn’t use any money for that one either, Right?

George Wolfe [00:30:12]:
Exactly. We didn’t buy that. That company either with our money. I mean, it’s just, that’s what my wife is. She’s good with finances. Right. So, you know, and with my background, and her background is just me, so. Well, it’s like when you had.

Kate Wolfe [00:30:24]:
We have our own role.

George Wolfe [00:30:25]:
We do. It’s like when you had Kelly and Joe Dan on here.

Kate Wolfe [00:30:27]:
Right.

George Wolfe [00:30:28]:
With great people. We met them at the Wash Rifle. They. They’re like, kind of like us. We have our own departments. You know what I mean? So we’re being a wife and husband tag team. It works really well for us. We’re very fortunate to have each other.

Jordan Berry [00:30:39]:
Yeah. I mean, that. It’s a killer one, two punch. Right. I told those guys that Luke and Lee Williford have that as the Williford brothers. We’ve got that. And, you know, I, I’ve said this before, but it’s like the, the book Rocket Fusion Fuel by Gino Wickman, and it talks about how if you’ve got somebody who’s kind of orchestrating everything and then somebody who’s getting after it and actually getting their hands dirty and doing the stuff like you’re. You got a powerful one, two punch is going to be tough to.

Jordan Berry [00:31:08]:
Tough to beat there. And you guys got that for sure in spades.

Kate Wolfe [00:31:14]:
I mean, we have that, like, in our. It’s. It goes back to, like, home life because our home life and our work life intersect a lot, you know, and you were saying, like I said, a good or a pet thing. And it depends on the day. Right. Because sometimes we get really passionate about it. But it’s like at home, you know, like, we have certain things like, like we have certain roles and duties. You know, when the one Person can’t handle it, we tap the other one in, and we do the same thing at the business.

Kate Wolfe [00:31:39]:
You know, at the end of the day, it’s. It’s making sure that the business is running smoothly, that the customers are happy, that the laundromat’s clean, which I know we keep saying it, but it really is such an important part. And I think everybody kind of knows that by now, but.

George Wolfe [00:31:52]:
And we want our machines up and running. I mean, a big part in a Laundroma, when you walk in, Jordan, is I don’t want every one of my machines to be down with a sign on them. I want them to be up and running and sparkly, clean and ready to go. I mean, not, am I losing money, but it looks bad for your. Your business when you’re walking in and seeing that. So for me to know how to fix stuff, it’s. It’s detrimental for me because for my business. I want to make sure when you walk into laundry lane, you’re saying, wow, look at this place.

George Wolfe [00:32:15]:
It’s clean and everything’s running. All my machines are up and running and go, ready to go. You know, so those. Those. Those couple things make a big difference, I feel, when you walk into a laundry laundromat.

Jordan Berry [00:32:26]:
Yeah, huge. I mean, they’re very simple things, but it. Yeah, it’s. You know, it can be tough. Like, you have a whole bunch of machines, you got a couple locations. It can be tough to keep everything up and running and balancing all that, plus all the other things going on in life and stuff. But like you said, like, what I love about what you guys are saying is, like, you got your eyes on the prize, right? And, you know, kind of what’s important, and you’re taking care of business, you know, with the. The important things, you know, with.

Jordan Berry [00:32:55]:
And I mean, again, like, I think that that’s why you’ve had the success that you’ve had already building your business and why you’re going to continue to have that success going forward. Okay, wait. I need to. I need to back us up again and keep running ahead. I need to back us up. So laundry lane is your brand. Did you implement that right away?

Kate Wolfe [00:33:15]:
Yes.

Jordan Berry [00:33:16]:
When you. When you bought the business.

Kate Wolfe [00:33:18]:
Business, yes. So we, like. As soon as I think, like, the night we decided we were going to buy it. Right. Is when we started bringing.

Jordan Berry [00:33:26]:
The night you decided that you guys were gonna buy it.

Kate Wolfe [00:33:29]:
The night that I called him. Hey, you’re stuck in that. And I hear that theme often with you, that the wives are Always the instigators.

Jordan Berry [00:33:39]:
My wife was the instigator. Yeah. I feel your pain, George. I know. She has these ideas, and you got to go make them happen.

Kate Wolfe [00:33:48]:
So I think we were like, we talking about different names, right? We were. We were kind of like, in a brainstorming session about different names and knowing some of the problems that there was, like, people hanging out and, you know. You know, not doing laundry. We were kind of like, okay, like, what’s gonna make them want to get in and get out? Respectfully, come in, get your laundry done, and respectfully leave right after.

George Wolfe [00:34:14]:
By the way, the quickest way to do your laundry.

Jordan Berry [00:34:16]:
That’s right.

Kate Wolfe [00:34:17]:
So we came up with the name.

George Wolfe [00:34:19]:
Star on it, like, almost.

Jordan Berry [00:34:20]:
I know. Yeah.

Kate Wolfe [00:34:22]:
We were. When we. When we came up. So we were naming a bunch of different names. We came up with that name, and we both were like, oh. And I was like, wait, I think our logo. You know, here’s.

George Wolfe [00:34:31]:
She drew our logo.

Kate Wolfe [00:34:32]:
Actually, I took this very terrible sketch. I’m not good at drawing at all. And so I. I took a terrible sketch, and I. I drew it on my phone, and I said, what if it was, like, a washing machine, but, like, with wheels? And he was like, oh, my God, I love that. And I was like, right. So. So when we.

Kate Wolfe [00:34:49]:
So, yes, to answer your question, we launched it right away. We went right into it. So, like, the day after we. Or maybe it was a couple that does our accounting.

George Wolfe [00:34:58]:
Her sister actually works in a sign company.

Kate Wolfe [00:35:00]:
Yeah.

George Wolfe [00:35:01]:
So it’s a lot. We got very fortunate. We knew enough people that it. Yeah, we got lucky.

Kate Wolfe [00:35:06]:
It was like a good network of connections, and people are always very willing to tell you, hey, I know this person that can assist you with that. And so I told them, please don’t make fun of me. I’m going to send you this terrible drawing. But, like, can you bring this vision to life? And then, you know, we went back and forth about the specifics of it, and then we finalized our design, and then that has been something that we’ve stuck with as far as our brand. Like, we put it on everything. We bought shirts and around the neighborhoods. Yeah.

George Wolfe [00:35:34]:
Benches there with our sign that says laundry Lane on it.

Kate Wolfe [00:35:37]:
Yeah. Like a way to advertise, you know, a very. Signs at the end of the day.

George Wolfe [00:35:40]:
By where we live, even we have a big sign there. So, yeah, we. We. The walls were painted green inside. That’s where all these ugly green shirts came from. But, yeah, actually, because the walls were green inside the store. So.

Kate Wolfe [00:35:53]:
So that was One thing again, we didn’t do a renovation that was the.

George Wolfe [00:35:55]:
Core of the walls.

Kate Wolfe [00:35:57]:
Let’s go with it.

George Wolfe [00:35:58]:
So I repaid it. Of course.

Kate Wolfe [00:35:59]:
We don’t want to have to buy a bunch, a bunch of new stuff we were really strapped for. We didn’t know like you said, Jordan, like we, like, yes, obviously we dove into the financials, we did what we could, but you never actually know, right? You don’t actually know is it going to. To produce the way that they’re saying it does or, you know, maybe, maybe we might not know what we’re doing and maybe it might go south. So we were trying to put as little into it as possible.

George Wolfe [00:36:21]:
And paint does a lot for you, Jordan, believe me. It makes us look beautiful. And I’m always on it and I’m not afraid to go in there and paint on a sat like a Saturday night or later on at night I’ll go in and I’ll touch up the white paint because I think it looks dirty in there.

Kate Wolfe [00:36:34]:
And painting. He fiddles around.

George Wolfe [00:36:37]:
I want my store to be nice and clean looking. I want it like I said it. I want you to be impressed when you come to my, my store. I mean it. Where we are in the first store is in a tough neighborhood. It really is. And you wouldn’t think that store would look like that in a tough neighborhood. But I’ll tell you what, it does.

George Wolfe [00:36:52]:
It does look like that in that tough neighborhood.

Kate Wolfe [00:36:53]:
Because to say like, like we, you know, even now our customers will like take care of things for us. Like we were just in the store the other day and a customer was like, oh, hey, there was somebody that was trying to vape in here and another customer told them not to. And I was like, oh, good. I’m glad they, I’m glad they took.

Jordan Berry [00:37:07]:
Care it of self policing. Yeah.

Kate Wolfe [00:37:10]:
When we got a new distributor, they were at the store the one time with me, George wasn’t there and I went into the back into like the employee only area and one of our customers was like, hey, you can’t, you know, the vendor was following me and the customer was like, you can’t go back there. They were concerned about me and having.

George Wolfe [00:37:28]:
And random person going in the back.

Kate Wolfe [00:37:30]:
Yeah. And they were like, no, it’s okay. So I came out and I told them, hey, you know, this is my vendor, whatever is a new vendor. Yeah, they, they really like take care of care of things themselves. And then they do call us when there’s things, you know, and we see it on the cameras, we’re still doing all the things. Right. But as far as branding, we put our logo on everything. All of our advertisements, we put it on our window, we put it on our signs, we put it on all of our socials.

Kate Wolfe [00:37:55]:
We really want to create that brand recognition with our logo because very much in this area, everybody’s just laundromat.

George Wolfe [00:38:03]:
I mean, I, I, I’ll say this like, so I’m blowing the face. There’s a lot of blue in laundromats and bubbles. That’s all I’m going to say. And I have a lot of wheels, so, you know, mine are green. So that’s the reason why we stood out. I thought, I thought that would be a great idea. And actually my wife came over. Like I said, I think that, well, we were brainstorming.

Kate Wolfe [00:38:20]:
It wasn’t just me. Like, we were, we were kind of like bouncing off of each other. And then like, you know, then I was like, oh, let’s do this. You know, with my terrible drawing. So, yeah, it worked out.

George Wolfe [00:38:29]:
It worked out for me. I liked it.

Kate Wolfe [00:38:30]:
It’s much better. This is definitely the refined version.

Jordan Berry [00:38:34]:
I think you need to like print off that sketch that you, that you made and hang it up somewhere.

Kate Wolfe [00:38:38]:
I think I still have it. I should do that.

George Wolfe [00:38:40]:
It’s a good idea.

Jordan Berry [00:38:41]:
Yeah.

Kate Wolfe [00:38:42]:
First $10 we ever made.

Jordan Berry [00:38:44]:
That’s awesome.

Kate Wolfe [00:38:45]:
Because we were, we were a card operated store and so when we saw a customer, you know, that first day, we were there all day and then we saw the customer make the first purchase, we went in the back real quick and we’re like, surface, $10, you know, so we still have a 10.

George Wolfe [00:38:59]:
And now look where we are. Jordan, we’re on the podcast. Podcast now.

Jordan Berry [00:39:02]:
Look at you.

George Wolfe [00:39:06]:
I’m so proud to just be on this podcast. You have no idea, man. You’re, I listen to this every day. Going to work. So for me, it’s amazing. My wife’s the one I turned me on to. She’s like, you know, do, do you listen to the podcast? I’m like, what podcast? Maybe you learn something. And I was like, wow.

George Wolfe [00:39:19]:
I’m like, yeah, definitely, I’ll listen to. If I could learn something. I definitely will.

Kate Wolfe [00:39:22]:
It helps too when there’s something that I say he should be doing and then like somebody else says it. And so I’ll send him that particular episode because we don’t like listen to it together. It is something that we usually do individually and because I like to listen to it on full speed where like everyone, I can’t Even hear you.

Jordan Berry [00:39:39]:
So like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kate Wolfe [00:39:42]:
Trying to listen to it at regular speed. So he gets annoyed with that. So we do our own thing. But I’ll send him a clip and be like, hey, this person said you should be doing that thing I’ve been telling you about. Maybe you should start doing it.

George Wolfe [00:39:53]:
Yeah, yeah. It’s been helpful though. It has been helpful.

Jordan Berry [00:39:56]:
It has, yeah. That’s awesome. That’s. That’s hilarious though. Well, thank you guys for listening. I appreciate that.

George Wolfe [00:40:02]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:40:03]:
Okay, so going back to, to your first line. We haven’t gotten the second one yet really, but the first one, I’m assuming that didn’t have. You guys are doing wash and fold now, is that right?

Kate Wolfe [00:40:15]:
So we’re actually getting into wash, dry, fold. So that was one thing. It didn’t have it.

Jordan Berry [00:40:19]:
Yeah, I was gonna ask. Okay.

Kate Wolfe [00:40:20]:
Yeah. So it was just only self serve. And then for a while, because we had so much going on, we scaled kind of quickly. You know, I think we were thinking, okay, we’re just gonna stick with self self serve for now. Like, we’re just gonna go with that. It’s like the path of least resistance. And then as we’ve been trying to look for other deals, it’s just the, like, our area is not like an LA or New York City or, you know, there, there’s not that many laundromats and people don’t get rid of them very quickly. We just got lucky with the same owner.

George Wolfe [00:40:53]:
Very fortunate. Yeah. Great guy, might add.

Kate Wolfe [00:40:55]:
Yeah, it’s fantastic. And I would do business with him again and again. He really was truthful in everything he had. Um, but as we’ve looked for more, you know, we’ve, we’ve tried to expand our portfolio and as we’ve looked for more, we kind of looked at each other one time and we were like, why don’t we just expand what we have? Like, let’s try to like expand what we have right now rather than trying to go out and get more and then, you know, going through the same process we’ve gone through before. So we’re actually going to skip the wish, wash, dry, fold and we’re going to go right to pickup and delivery. Because not many people are doing that in our area and we want to offer something that, that, you know, others aren’t. And we have a lot of people that use like doordash and Uber. Not that we’re going that route with it.

Kate Wolfe [00:41:37]:
We’re just kind of relating the fact that people love the convenience of getting it picked up. You know, if I don’t have to do my laundry and then it’s going to get picked up for me and then drops back off to me. I mean, that’s a really big draw. And I know you say all the time on the podcast how like, pickup and delivery is really changing the game. So that’s pretty much where we got the idea to be like, hey, why are we not doing this? Why aren’t we jumping into this? So we’ve been trying to learn more about it. This is kind of one of those things that we spent probably more time figuring out what we’re going to do with Watch. Right.

George Wolfe [00:42:07]:
I think we’re dragging. I think we’re dragging our feet too much. When I think we’re guessing it too much, I think we just have to go out there and just do it. That’s what we’re going to do.

Kate Wolfe [00:42:14]:
We’re going to get started in January.

George Wolfe [00:42:15]:
January. We’re going out and doing it and we’re just going to do what we got to do. Because if you wait too long and try to do something, it’s going to pass you by. I think it’s time for us to just get out there and do it.

Kate Wolfe [00:42:25]:
Like we, when we, when we said we were going to buy the laundry rent, we just jumped right in. Like, we just did it and then we did. We’re not doing that with the, with the pickup and delivery size. So we’ve decided to get into it. But we needed like a website, which, you know.

George Wolfe [00:42:39]:
Yeah. Actually we met the guys at the, the Watch Drive fold. The guys that are doing our website. That’s where we met them at. Was the Watch Drive fault.

Kate Wolfe [00:42:46]:
Yeah. So our website’s just about ready to launch. We have to do a couple more revisions on it and then we’re going to, we’re going to finally get started, but we’re going to do per bag pricing is what we’re. What we’re planning on doing.

George Wolfe [00:42:59]:
Try to make it simple.

Kate Wolfe [00:43:00]:
Yeah.

George Wolfe [00:43:01]:
See how it works out for us.

Kate Wolfe [00:43:02]:
That’s the angle we want to play. We, we own everything in our business now. Like we own the vending machine.

George Wolfe [00:43:06]:
We even own the vending machines.

Kate Wolfe [00:43:07]:
We own the property. We own the business. So we’re fortunate. We want to have full control over everything. We’re going to hire a driver, employee, our employees already employee.

George Wolfe [00:43:19]:
And again, networking, going to the events that they have out there. I think it, it’s like having a small family of owners and a lot of owners. Owners are, you know, at those events, are willing to help you. And we’re one of the, We’re. We’re them people. I mean, we’re definitely going to help as many people as we can.

Kate Wolfe [00:43:35]:
I think that, like, it differentiates the type of owners though, right? Like, did we have money to participate in those events? Not necessarily. Right. Because we’re so little and we’re still paying off loans, like I said. I mean, we’re being fully transparent in that, like, if we’re not rolling in the dough, bathing in money every night, you know, like.

Jordan Berry [00:43:55]:
And not yet.

Kate Wolfe [00:43:56]:
Not. Not yet.

Jordan Berry [00:43:57]:
Scrooge McDuck is coming for you, though. I, I feel it.

Kate Wolfe [00:44:00]:
We’re manifesting it. But, you know, we decided that that was a really important investment for us to get around like minded people, to get around people that are doing the things that we want to do and be around people that are just way more successful.

George Wolfe [00:44:13]:
Going to the Watch drive, I think those things helped us enormously. And meeting the people and meeting the people that are there in those shows and at those places, businesses, it was worth every dollar we spent. Because those folks, I could pick up the phone and call somebody tomorrow that I know that’s doing a fantastic job in their businesses and they’re willing to help me. It’s like having a small family. I mean, in my advice to anybody that’s out there and they’re getting into the business new, definitely do the networking, definitely spend the extra money if you have to, to go out to those, those events.

Kate Wolfe [00:44:44]:
I mean, I don’t want to be in a room with people that are doing better than you. You aspire.

George Wolfe [00:44:48]:
So successful.

Kate Wolfe [00:44:49]:
Like, we look at them and we’re like, oh my God. So, you know, like, if we’re like fan girling over these people and like, because we know that they’re successful, we know that they started in the business and maybe they have time or, you know, they had, they had similar issues and then now they’re killing it and they’re sharing their advice and they’re speaking at the events. You know, like, that’s the type of stuff that we’re aspiring to be. We want to, we want to be there. We want to inspire others. We want to share our passion for this business business and tell everybody how great laundry is.

Jordan Berry [00:45:23]:
That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. Join. Join us weirdos out here just loving laundry and nerds talking laundry all day. I know, I know, but it is, it is. I mean, that’s. It is so true.

Jordan Berry [00:45:36]:
You know that, you know, these. Because people like you will come on like A podcast or sit on a panel or something like that and just share your stories and share your lessons. Like, it, it is inspiring and it is a way to kind of shortcut that growth. Like, I’m, I’m sure, I mean, you guys have shared a little bit of some of the tough lessons you’ve had to learn along the way. I’m sure there’s, I’m sure there’s more of them as well. But man, I mean, I, one of the benefits of this and why, why I started the podcast is that I like firmly believe that if we should share information with each other, we’re all going to get better much faster and we can go farther, faster.

Kate Wolfe [00:46:18]:
I agree. Better together. And I, I really, it’s just such a motivator. Like we went, you know, when we’ve gone to these events, then we’re like, we need a website. What are we doing? You know, like you said like at some point, things that everyone’s been saying that we should be doing finally just click. And then we’re like, we need to do that. Let’s do that.

George Wolfe [00:46:37]:
And you know, I’ve listened to your podcast before where you say there’s enough for all of us.

Kate Wolfe [00:46:41]:
Yes.

George Wolfe [00:46:42]:
And I go by what you say. Like I’ve heard you say that many times on a podcast. There’s enough for all of us.

Kate Wolfe [00:46:46]:
So I agree.

George Wolfe [00:46:47]:
We’re not those owners. Like, we’re, we’re happy for you. I mean, if we could help you down the road, we’ll help you. Actually, not saying we’re not afraid to help.

Kate Wolfe [00:46:54]:
We’ll help our Advertsville location. There’s like, there’s three other stores. You know, I said we’re not la, we’re not New York, but really there’s three of us in a very small, probably like a two mile radio and.

George Wolfe [00:47:04]:
Every one of us have our own kind of customer.

Kate Wolfe [00:47:06]:
Yeah, right.

George Wolfe [00:47:08]:
Like, and I’m happy for them. I mean, if we could help them in any way, I would. I don’t know if they would be the same way as us, but of course, if I could help somebody.

Kate Wolfe [00:47:14]:
Yeah.

George Wolfe [00:47:15]:
Only because I’ve been through the struggle to get where we are, you know.

Kate Wolfe [00:47:19]:
Yeah. Knowledge in itself just really helps propel you though. I feel like if you can educate yourself on the machines, the equipment.

George Wolfe [00:47:27]:
Yes. A distributor, you save any money, do.

Kate Wolfe [00:47:29]:
It day to day. I mean, we, we created a checklist for our employees which, you know, SOPs are talked about a lot, making sure they’re that something that’s, you know, everybody’s following that’s helped a lot. Just different things that help you get to the point where you’re like, okay, we kind of know what we’re doing.

Jordan Berry [00:47:51]:
Yeah, well. And I don’t want to gloss over. I mean, you. You guys are starting to go down a path that I think is huge. And it’s. It’s something that it’s. It’s one of the. In.

Jordan Berry [00:48:04]:
In my view, from my perspective, it’s one the of. Of the differentiators between people who, you know, make progress and people who don’t is that, you know, you’re kind of talking about starting that washroom full of business and how you feel like you’re sort of dragging your feet a little bit, getting in research mode, you know, kind of that. That type thing. And, you know, one. One of our, you know, at laundry, my resource. Right. Like one of our values is default to action. Right.

Jordan Berry [00:48:28]:
Like, it’s the.

George Wolfe [00:48:29]:
It’s.

Jordan Berry [00:48:30]:
You gotta. You got. You gotta learn, you gotta do some research, you’ve gotta do some prep work work. You know, you gotta have the website and the software in place and like, all that stuff. So I’m not putting that down. I’m not saying you don’t have to do any research, but most of the time we don’t start acting nearly soon enough. Right. And that’s something that you guys have done really well.

George Wolfe [00:48:52]:
Yes.

Jordan Berry [00:48:52]:
You’ve jumped in and you’ve taken the action, and that’s how you, like, got lucky, you know, having a couple locations, a couple properties now, you know, you’re building this wash and fold business, you know, here. And it’s.

Kate Wolfe [00:49:07]:
It.

Jordan Berry [00:49:07]:
It all started because you. You jumped in, you took the action.

Kate Wolfe [00:49:10]:
Right, Exactly.

Jordan Berry [00:49:11]:
Awesome. I didn’t want to gloss over.

Kate Wolfe [00:49:12]:
Kind of walked in since we brought it up on the podcast. Now we can’t come back. Like, we have to do it, so you have to.

Jordan Berry [00:49:18]:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. I think we’ll just put the pressure on.

Kate Wolfe [00:49:25]:
No, yeah, we.

George Wolfe [00:49:26]:
We.

Kate Wolfe [00:49:26]:
We just needed to kind of get some logistics together. And when we kind of first came up with the. With the thought of it, we were still doing everything. I mean, we were still cleaning the stores, you know, every aspect of the business, and it’s like there’s only so much we can handle. Like, we only have so much capacity, which is why it took us a bit longer than I would like, just because we just have so much capacity and we were full. So being able to finally hire employees and get that cleaning off and like, offloading some of the duties that I don’t necessarily. Don’t require my level of attention. We can start moving on to different things now.

George Wolfe [00:50:02]:
Now.

Jordan Berry [00:50:03]:
Yeah. Well, and, and that’s huge. Right. Is the. Every stage of business that you go through, like the skills and the energy that you have for that, the way you’re doing business now don’t necessarily translate. Right. So you’ve got to have some systems in place if you’re going to scale to do a pickup and delivery. You’ve got to have some employees in place if you’re going to scale to do a pickup delivery.

Jordan Berry [00:50:27]:
Like you, you can’t do everything on your own, nor should you do everything on your own. I bet you didn’t buy the business so you could do everything on your own either. You know, for a time, maybe, but. But long term, that’s not the goal. Right. And the business has to grow and evolve as. As you grow and evolve personally and also as. As a company.

Kate Wolfe [00:50:49]:
Right.

Jordan Berry [00:50:50]:
Which is exactly what you’re doing. So pretty. Pretty cool. Okay, so you’ve got the second location now from the same, the same owner. And you kind of talked a little bit about how you got that. What about, what about the actual acquisition? Did you do something similar again where you did a, a bank loan in a. Oh, no. You bought the property for that one, right? And then.

Kate Wolfe [00:51:11]:
Yeah, yep. So we bought that. We bought the first laundromat first and then we got the properties second. So we bought both of them the same day, despite my husband’s hesitation.

George Wolfe [00:51:25]:
We had the first laundry first. Then we bought the two building.

Kate Wolfe [00:51:28]:
But when we bought the two buildings.

Jordan Berry [00:51:30]:
How did you finance the buildings?

Kate Wolfe [00:51:32]:
So that was like a mortgage. We went commercial mortgage for that because. So our Wilkesbury location is a four unit building and our Evansville location is a three unit building. So we did acquire apartments, which we have had rentals in the past as well.

George Wolfe [00:51:44]:
Yeah.

Kate Wolfe [00:51:45]:
And my husband’s in property management. So that really wasn’t something that like we had to learn or, you know, we kind of already knew that side of things. So that I think was a little bit easier than having like zero experience and going to 100 into a laundromat. This was something that we were already familiar with. Um, so we didn’t put any money down for that either. Um, we took the commercial mortgages and then because it’s commercial, you have to put 25% down. Um, so we took the one time we did, I guess, kind of, you know, tap into our personal. We did a HELOC on our, on our Our home, but everything’s paid out of the business.

Kate Wolfe [00:52:21]:
So. Yeah.

George Wolfe [00:52:23]:
Quick Lane Rentals, too.

Kate Wolfe [00:52:24]:
Yeah. So the rental income that we generate, because we also do pay ourselves rent, we kept the same rent that we were paying when we.

George Wolfe [00:52:31]:
Laundry LA pays Quick Lane Rentals. So one company pays another company.

Kate Wolfe [00:52:35]:
And then our. Then we have, obviously, tenants in the rentals, and we work very hard to keep those going.

George Wolfe [00:52:39]:
Always filled, and they’re always taken care of.

Kate Wolfe [00:52:41]:
Yeah. And. And. And when we’ve had openings recently, we filled them very quickly.

George Wolfe [00:52:45]:
They don’t stay because they’re. They’re beautiful. And, you know, and.

Kate Wolfe [00:52:49]:
And, you know, we. We do. We have nice properties and we keep it a little under market value to keep them rented and we don’t gouge them. Yeah. And so we. We did that deal and then we didn’t pocket. So that is all paid for of that business. And then when we did the second laundromat, George said, hey, I’m ready to get that other laundromat.

Kate Wolfe [00:53:12]:
And I was like, oh, my gosh, you want a second one? I don’t know. I don’t know. Going to two every day instead of one, that’s a lot.

George Wolfe [00:53:18]:
But that laundromat was a little bit smaller, Jordan.

Kate Wolfe [00:53:21]:
Yes.

George Wolfe [00:53:21]:
And it didn’t do the. If you. We probably doubled our sales in that laundry.

Kate Wolfe [00:53:25]:
He tried to talk us out of it. He’s a. He’s such a good guy that he tried to talk us out of it.

George Wolfe [00:53:30]:
He got it. You don’t want this one. No. Right. He said that. But what he didn’t realize is that we already had a vision and we already had a brand.

Kate Wolfe [00:53:36]:
Yes.

George Wolfe [00:53:37]:
And we were already in that other business and we already turned other business around quite a bit. When we went to the second location, we doubled his sales and we doubled them. Honestly, we did. We put on new LED lights in, me and my brother. And then there was a light on the outside that wasn’t working. That got fixed. And then once that light got fixed and we put new lights in, it was already there. It just wasn’t clean.

Kate Wolfe [00:53:58]:
It was so funny.

George Wolfe [00:53:59]:
That needed paint, and it’s some lipstick and some rouge. Right. Once you put that lipstick on. On there, and you put some rouge on there and you take care of your property, you’re there and you’re making sure that it’s cleaned every single day. You’re inviting your customer, you’re saying hi to them, you keep your prices reasonable. It just worked. It worked itself out. Honest to God.

George Wolfe [00:54:16]:
It really did.

Kate Wolfe [00:54:16]:
I mean, but it was funny because we took over on a Monday and we were like, oh, Monday, we’ll put.

George Wolfe [00:54:22]:
New lights in Monday. Just a slow day at our other store.

Kate Wolfe [00:54:24]:
Slow day at our other store. Right.

Jordan Berry [00:54:25]:
It was.

Kate Wolfe [00:54:25]:
It’s their busiest day in that store in this 950 square foot laundromat. Like, they’re, they’ve got ladders and they’re climbing and they’re trying to change lights and we’re trying to work around the customers and I’m steam cleaning things. There’s.

George Wolfe [00:54:41]:
So that’s going. Like, this is a bad time right now for this. This isn’t working.

Kate Wolfe [00:54:48]:
I have no idea what we are. So now we know that’s the busiest day we. We learned that trial by fire. But Monday, wow, it’s crazy.

George Wolfe [00:54:57]:
Monday here, Sunday here. Like, what’s going on?

Kate Wolfe [00:54:59]:
Yeah. But he was trying to talk us out of it. He said, you know, you don’t want that location because that location. I’m breaking even.

George Wolfe [00:55:07]:
I’m breaking even. Yeah.

Kate Wolfe [00:55:08]:
So when you had asked earlier, like, was the other one making money? Yes. But this one, he told us honestly, like, this is breaking even.

George Wolfe [00:55:13]:
Yeah. We still wanted it.

Kate Wolfe [00:55:15]:
We were like, okay. Like, we did some num. I did some numbers and I was like, okay, if we can do like X number, I think we can. We can definitely like, pay the bills, obviously, which is what’s most important. Got to keep the lights on and have the water because obviously you’re not in business without those things. And if we can just increase revenue by just this much, you know, then. Then we’ll be breaking even. And that’s, again, this is a long game for us.

Kate Wolfe [00:55:42]:
So we didn’t think, okay, this isn’t like our livelihood. This is. This is going to like, pay our bills and feed us.

George Wolfe [00:55:49]:
Don’t forget, Jordan, we have a daughter. So in the future, we plan on making sure my daughter’s setup in the future so she doesn’t have, you know, so many things to worry about. So if we could even just pass it down to our. Our.

Kate Wolfe [00:55:59]:
The next generation wants to get into it. If not, that’s fine too. Like, if nothing else, it’s a learning tool. You know, she. She can see their help.

George Wolfe [00:56:06]:
She helps us every day, too. She cleans.

Kate Wolfe [00:56:08]:
We grew up very different than her. You know, we did not have any family members in business. We did not have many family members that were good with money. Like, I had one, two, I might add a few. And so we say time. Like, if you’re not good with your personal finances, that’s going to translate poorly into your business. So it is very much about a discipline. So we’re very disciplined in how we handle our, our business and our bills and things.

Kate Wolfe [00:56:35]:
And so even if our daughter’s not interested in that, in the future, at least she’ll get, like, the acumen of learning how to run a business and, you know, how to run her finances and things like that. And then if she decides to do it, great. If she doesn’t, that’s okay too. We’ll, we’ll, we’ll. Succession plan when we get there. We had a long time ago, but.

George Wolfe [00:56:53]:
I mean, once we did those small things, Jordan, just cleaning the place. I mean, the soap trays were filled with soap, and it was nasty. And they were brand new machines, and it didn’t look like new machines. Once we cleaned that up and, you know, again, new cameras. We implemented the same things we already did in our last store.

Kate Wolfe [00:57:09]:
Yeah, just cookie cutter.

George Wolfe [00:57:10]:
You know, we. We cleaned it, we painted it, we put brand new lights, brand new LED lights off. I think it cost like 550 bucks for lights. Yeah, that was maybe two grand for the front light. I mean, so we weren’t into it too much once we did those things. The store had all brand new everything there. It was a brand new floor, there was brand new machines. But they didn’t realize you just had to paint the walls a little.

George Wolfe [00:57:28]:
Right. I mean, enforced a little bit of law, like, you know, getting the kids out of there. Right. And once you did that, they came and I put my little sign out there like I did before, right. New owners. And they, I painted the sidewall blue so it would be outrageous. So they would see that from far away. And you know what? They came and, and it’s an old building.

George Wolfe [00:57:45]:
I don’t love the building.

Kate Wolfe [00:57:46]:
He said no blue, but he did.

Jordan Berry [00:57:49]:
That’s what I was thinking right now. I was like, sold out, man. You sold out.

George Wolfe [00:57:54]:
Listen, it’s still green on the.

Kate Wolfe [00:57:55]:
The inside is still the color.

George Wolfe [00:57:58]:
You see the outside, it’s like this ugly green. A yellow building with this big giant blue sign. So I was like. And I put the new sign out there. And, you know, the people came and it. When, when, when the people came from around the neighborhood, they’re like, wow, like, you got brand new machines, you got brand new floors. Like, no, like, no, no, no.

Jordan Berry [00:58:15]:
We just put new lights in again.

Kate Wolfe [00:58:17]:
Like, we didn’t, we didn’t come in and do a renovation. Like, I hear, I hear that with your podcast a lot. People come in and they renovate top and bottom and. And we just cleaned it.

George Wolfe [00:58:25]:
We cleaned it, we painted it, we put new new lights in it and we didn’t spend 400 and some thousand dollars and we doubled our sales. That’s all I’m going to say Mike drop. But no being seriously in all seriousness, I mean we did micro again.

Kate Wolfe [00:58:38]:
Like we like it was quote unquote free laundromat. Right. Like I mean we pay for it every month but. But we didn’t like buy a bunch of stuff and remove everything. We just.

George Wolfe [00:58:48]:
They still have the old vending machines in there that look like they’re from 1980 but they still make me money.

Kate Wolfe [00:58:55]:
Make me money.

Jordan Berry [00:58:56]:
That’s right.

George Wolfe [00:58:57]:
So they’re still making me money. I mean that’s the real truth.

Kate Wolfe [00:59:00]:
It sounds so silly, right? Like we, we closed on these laundromats and we went in and we did like a deep clean from top to bottom.

George Wolfe [00:59:06]:
We painted it, we put some new lights in it.

Kate Wolfe [00:59:08]:
I mean fill the vending machines.

George Wolfe [00:59:10]:
Right. We policed it to make sure that.

Kate Wolfe [00:59:12]:
People know that we’re got our cameras installed.

George Wolfe [00:59:15]:
Right.

Kate Wolfe [00:59:15]:
I mean those are lighting was right, right.

George Wolfe [00:59:17]:
We, we learned a lot. I mean we taught ourselves enough to, to like I said if there’s somebody that needs help out there, that’s, that’s what I said. I, I really wish I would have had me when I started because when I started I had no idea. I mean we were paying $5 for one card a customer add to so our cards aren’t that expensive now. Right. So there’s just so many things that we, we got hit with in the beginning. It had so many black eyes from it. Right.

George Wolfe [00:59:42]:
So a couple years later here we are, right. We’re, we’re on your podcast telling you that we could put a pump on a washer. Like back when I started I, I wouldn’t know anything about a pump. You know what I mean? I would know how important that is. Right.

Kate Wolfe [00:59:53]:
I still can’t do a pump. Yeah, you can. But I have him.

George Wolfe [00:59:57]:
You can.

Jordan Berry [00:59:58]:
Okay. You need to get your hands dirty. Come on.

George Wolfe [01:00:00]:
He changes the bezels on the door.

Kate Wolfe [01:00:03]:
It’s hard. He doesn’t understand the struggle with.

George Wolfe [01:00:07]:
But I mean the things that we’ve.

Kate Wolfe [01:00:09]:
Learned concepts of the things and not Can I actually carry them out in execution. Maybe, maybe I’m the manager or of the projects.

George Wolfe [01:00:16]:
You know, that’s why it always goes back to your show. Like a lot of things that I’ve learned or I heard it really helped us. The podcast helped Us. And that’s why when I found out we could be on this show, I was so passionate and so happy. Like, I’ve been bragging about it for, like, a week now, you know, because it’s like.

Kate Wolfe [01:00:31]:
Like four days.

George Wolfe [01:00:33]:
It helped me. It helped me, and I hope to God that we could help somebody if that starts. If they do starting to launch my business, because we’re willing to help.

Kate Wolfe [01:00:40]:
I mean, maybe they’ll get some creative ideas on financing, nothing else.

George Wolfe [01:00:44]:
I mean, you’ll do that. That part she is really good at. I will say that.

Kate Wolfe [01:00:47]:
Yeah. I mean, the goal really was to take nothing out of our pocket.

George Wolfe [01:00:50]:
And every month, we don’t want to pay out of our house. I mean, we let the businesses. The businesses have to be sustainable to take care of themselves.

Jordan Berry [01:00:56]:
Yeah.

George Wolfe [01:00:56]:
And. And they do.

Kate Wolfe [01:00:57]:
Yeah.

George Wolfe [01:00:58]:
And they still give us money. So we’re fortunate. We’ve been fortunate. We’re trying our best and keep on rolling, and hopefully we’ll. We’ll keep on moving up, you know, and keep on buying more and more Laundromats, I hope.

Kate Wolfe [01:01:06]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:01:08]:
Yeah. No, I love it. And, you know, I. I guarantee you people will get a lot out of this. I mean, you’ve already given, like, a. A ton of, like, very practical INP Practical advice. But also, you know, and I hope. I hope people are picking up on this, too.

Jordan Berry [01:01:22]:
But, like, the way you guys are thinking about business, I. I say this is like, a common theme with people who are doing well in this business, is the way that you’re thinking about the business and the way that you see your customers and how important it is for you to take care of the little things. Where, like, traditionally in this industry, there’s a whole lot of owners who are like, yeah, that machine’s been down for, you know, six months or a year, ten years or whatever. Like.

George Wolfe [01:01:50]:
On my face.

Jordan Berry [01:01:51]:
Yeah, I know. Well.

George Wolfe [01:01:55]:
He.

Kate Wolfe [01:01:55]:
He gets. He gets very upset if. If something’s down. And, like, I get it. We want to. We want to do as best as we can. But so, again, I always have to talk some sense. Like, hey, you know, that’s laundry.

Kate Wolfe [01:02:09]:
It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna fix it. We’re waiting on that part. Like, we can’t make it chip any faster. You know, we can’t. We don’t have that. So it’s like, it is.

Jordan Berry [01:02:17]:
Will it faster?

Kate Wolfe [01:02:18]:
Yeah. Like, if it were up to him, he’d be, like, driving to the locations to build. I don’t know.

George Wolfe [01:02:24]:
I don’t know everything. I mean, I Always tell her when we retool the one storage we’re going to do here, pretty soon it won’t be long because we just put brand new laundry works in that store too. But in the future we plan on retooling. And when we do, whoever we decide to go with, it’s going to have to be a company where I can fix the machines.

Kate Wolfe [01:02:39]:
Yeah.

George Wolfe [01:02:40]:
Because I want to be knowledgeable of what we have inside of our store. Not that it matters that I pay them 100 bucks or whatever to come do it per hour. It’s just that I don’t want to have to wait for somebody. Right. It’s like the distributor thing all over again. I want about to make sure that I have control. So yeah, maybe today, maybe I won’t want to fix that bezel. Maybe I won’t want to fix the bump, right.

George Wolfe [01:02:56]:
Or maybe I won’t want to put a fill valve in. But I want about to know that I can. So God forbid that I don’t have to wait if something. I don’t want to wait seven months for a machine to be down.

Kate Wolfe [01:03:05]:
He hates waiting.

George Wolfe [01:03:06]:
I want to make sure that our place is up and running. I mean, you know, and if I.

Kate Wolfe [01:03:10]:
Could teach my daughter like some of our customers, right?

George Wolfe [01:03:12]:
If I could teach my daughter how to fix that stuff, or I could teach somebody else how to fix that stuff, right. I’ll be glad to do that. So this way they don’t have to wait either, Right. It just makes it look bad for us as owners. Just think that all owners should be knowledgeable on those kind of things. So this way they could, you know, they don’t have to worry about that kind of stuff.

Kate Wolfe [01:03:28]:
I just think it’s like such you have to be active. I don’t think that you can have a successful business by being passive in any way. You know, we, we say to our customers all the time, like how many other laundromats have you been into before you came into ours? Because you know, they settle on ours, right? They come in and they, they, they see the passion, they see the cleanliness.

George Wolfe [01:03:49]:
How many owners.

Kate Wolfe [01:03:50]:
And I’m like, do you see the owners every time you’re in you owners like time and, and we enjoy it. It’s, it’s not, you know, it’s not always work. It’s like we enjoy giving that.

George Wolfe [01:04:03]:
I don’t know. Sometimes I, I feel that maybe there’s something wrong with me. Cuz I’ll be at the store changing wheels inside the dryer and I’ll walk around the store and I’ll be messing around the vending machines that breaks every other week, and I’ll be like, we.

Kate Wolfe [01:04:15]:
Need new vending machines definitely in our lives.

George Wolfe [01:04:17]:
I’m enjoying myself. Why?

Jordan Berry [01:04:21]:
Because you’re right in your lane, man. No pun intended. You’re right in your laundry lane. Exactly. Exactly. What you’re doing. Right. It.

Jordan Berry [01:04:30]:
It, like, reminds me of. I mean, I’ve brought this up with other people because, I mean, this is. Again, this is a theme that comes over and over, but the. I think. I think it was Grant Cardone. He wrote a book called Be Obsessed or Be Average. Right? Like, you either have to enjoy walking around tinkering with your store or finding deals and creative ways to get them done and, you know, managing employees and building the business, or you’re just going to have an average laundromat, which. An average laundromat is not a good laundromat these days right now.

Jordan Berry [01:05:03]:
So I. I don’t think. You know, weird. Yes. I’ll just. We can just all admit it. Like, we’re all a little bit weird because we. It’s okay, you know, but weird in a good way, right? Weird in a way that’s setting you up to have some good businesses right now.

Jordan Berry [01:05:19]:
And. And down the line, all this is really going to pay off big for you because you’ve done got, you know, you’ve got four assets that you picked up here in the two properties and the two laundromats, you know, and then who knows what else kind of going forward, right, that are just going to help you build, you know, the life that you guys want to build. Like, that’s what it’s all about, right? Like, and, and. And you found out along the way just same as I found out along the way that, like, the money is good. Like, we want to try to make money, right? That’s the whole point of going into business. And whether it’s short term or long term, like, we do want to make money, but sort of the unforeseen, at least in my case, perk to it is there’s a lot of fulfillment that comes in serving the community, you know, and making a difference in people’s lives. When people say thank you for all the work that you’re doing, and you see that it really matters to them. Even though it’s just laundry, I’m just fixing a washer, washing machine, I’m just installing lights.

Jordan Berry [01:06:17]:
Like, that’s a big deal and it’s super fulfilling.

Kate Wolfe [01:06:20]:
It is a big deal. I mean, you can’t go to work, you can’t go to school with dirty clothes. You just. You can’t. It’s like. It’s like washing. It’s like taking care of your body. Right.

Kate Wolfe [01:06:31]:
It’s a basic human need. And so for us to be able to provide that to them, and then, you know, like you said, it was an unintended good consequence that they. That they say, hey, we really appreciate you. We really appreciate what you bring to this community. And what better of a way to give back to the communities that we’ve literally lived in, you know, like, I’ve lived in both of these cities. You know, know, I’ve gone to school in these areas, and both came from the housing.

George Wolfe [01:06:56]:
And that’s. That’s where we live when we were kids, both of us. So we can give back to anybody. We’ll definitely do that. Yeah, most definitely. I agree.

Jordan Berry [01:07:04]:
Okay, I need to bring us back to the laundromats. Just real quick again, because I got a question. Okay. So you went from owning a laundromat to owning a laundromat and two properties to owning laundromat, two properties and another other laundromat.

Kate Wolfe [01:07:19]:
Yes.

Jordan Berry [01:07:19]:
And I know it hasn’t been all that long that you’ve had the second one, but I’m curious, has it. Has it changed owning two laundromats versus one laundromat? How. How was that transition? Is it pretty much same?

George Wolfe [01:07:35]:
I’ll tell you what, One’s card operated and one’s coin operated.

Kate Wolfe [01:07:40]:
Oh, yeah, that was.

George Wolfe [01:07:41]:
We totally loved. We totally love the card operated one, not the coin operator one. Because it’s more of a pain in the neck with the coins.

Kate Wolfe [01:07:48]:
I say, oh, it’s. So it was easier to definitely go. Like, it’s. It’s like, I’ve heard people with multiple children, Right. Like, it’s easier to go. It’s harder to go from 0 to 1 and then, but it’s easier to go from like 1 to 2. So to go to the second laundromat, we already knew what to expect. We already kind of knew the anticipated issues for the most part.

Kate Wolfe [01:08:07]:
And so it was definitely easier because we got that done quicker. We knew what to expect. We knew how to put our brains on it and our colors and whatever. But that was one thing because we’re all card operated in the first location. Like, we are not handling coins at wall. And then the second location is a hybrid location. So we have coins and we have an app.

Jordan Berry [01:08:24]:
Yeah.

Kate Wolfe [01:08:25]:
And that was the one thing that we Were like, oh, quarters are heavy, and we have to go and deal with these quarters a lot. So. Yeah. So it’s funny that he said, because I actually forgot about that.

George Wolfe [01:08:39]:
The only downfall, I would say, Jordan, from having the second location. Is it. Is it? I would say it’s not. I think. Think. I mean, I. I’ve heard your podcast where there’s a guy on here saying he buys them all over different states. So I would think he would have more of a challenge than me because mine aren’t that far away from our house and from each other.

George Wolfe [01:08:58]:
So it’s easier for us that way. I mean, we’ve thought about buying them further away, like in Philly. From Wilkesburg to Philly is like two and a half hours. So we. We talked about that. We talked about going to New York or New Jersey or going down south so we can go on vacation once in a while. But.

Kate Wolfe [01:09:13]:
And we will maybe eventually.

George Wolfe [01:09:14]:
But, but. But to. I think that would be more of a strug because my wife’s kind of a control freak and so am I. Only because we want our stores to be so successful and we have a lot of passion, as you can see on the show, and we want to make sure that we do the right things for the store and for the community. So the answer would be no, I don’t think it’s. And if we bought another one towards around here, I don’t think it would be a big deal at all if we bought one.

Kate Wolfe [01:09:37]:
Especially now that we’ve dealt with those headquarters.

George Wolfe [01:09:38]:
Right, right.

Kate Wolfe [01:09:39]:
Prepared for anything.

George Wolfe [01:09:41]:
Yeah. And the car machine, whatever it may.

Kate Wolfe [01:09:44]:
Be, the whole car machine gave us such a run part our money.

George Wolfe [01:09:48]:
I would say no.

Kate Wolfe [01:09:49]:
Literally.

George Wolfe [01:09:49]:
I would say to your.

Jordan Berry [01:09:50]:
To.

George Wolfe [01:09:50]:
Your question is no. But to buy one from state to state or from further away at this.

Kate Wolfe [01:09:56]:
Point, it would probably be a challenge for us just. Just to kind of mentality.

George Wolfe [01:10:00]:
If number three is around here, I would love it because I love to put my brand out and make it into another laundry lane. I would. That would be ecstatic. It’d be like being on the show. But if it’s further away, I think it’s going to be. I’ll, like, fight back a little bit with my wife on this one, I think.

Kate Wolfe [01:10:15]:
I mean, see how that’s worked out for him so far, though, right? Like, George, we’re buying two buildings, you know, and so. Yeah, he just goes with the flow.

Jordan Berry [01:10:25]:
Yeah. I’m just gonna let you.

George Wolfe [01:10:31]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:10:32]:
Okay. Smart man. Keep the mouth shut. So. Okay, so quarters are a huge pain. Couldn’t agree more with it. Are you gonna. Are you gonna add a card system there ever? Or you’re just gonna run it as is? Is what’s the plan?

Kate Wolfe [01:10:47]:
I don’t know, because it’s like, you know, we talk about this all the time. There’s some things that are really beneficial in one system and then really beneficial. And, like, I feel like there’s positives and negatives to both.

George Wolfe [01:10:58]:
Yeah. And that story has an app, so that store has an app so they can download the app if something goes wrong with the quarters, Right?

Kate Wolfe [01:11:03]:
Yeah. There’s like a backup.

George Wolfe [01:11:04]:
But if you don’t have two machines with the card system and you’re not having change and card, it kind of eliminates you from getting that business then.

Kate Wolfe [01:11:13]:
So I don’t know. I kind of like the idea. Like, I feel like right now we have a lot of flexibility. Like, for example, and in our hybrid store, the Internet went out. We had really bad storms a couple days ago, and the Internet went out. So the customer came in, downloaded the app, was able to load the app, but then our machines were offline because it obviously relies on the Internet. And I was like, well, do you have cash? You know, they call me. We’re trying to troubleshoot.

Kate Wolfe [01:11:35]:
That’s where our creative problem solving comes in. And I was like, okay, if you don’t have cash, just. Just head over to our other location. George happened to be there, so I sent him over to the other location. We just. We helped them. We. We figured it out.

Kate Wolfe [01:11:46]:
But, like, I like the flexibility that we have. We’re kind of like, we have something that meets everybody’s needs. So, like, our customers that come to our Effortsville location where it’s card operated, if they say, oh, I live in Wilkesbury, we’re like, well, we have a location there. Or, you know, if someone says, I prefer quarters. All right, cool. Go to Wilkes Barre. If somebody’s like, I hate quarters. I only want to.

Kate Wolfe [01:12:03]:
Okay, go to Edwardsville. So it’s like, we have an option.

George Wolfe [01:12:06]:
I don’t know if we would install a card system in a Wilkes Barre store. Well, because the machines are two years old, and we have. We have the option for you to use the app if you didn’t want to use the quarters. So I don’t think I would mess around with that system right now. I think I’ll let it roll away.

Kate Wolfe [01:12:22]:
I feel like if there was a way to combine the two and give us all the things that we really love about each system, I feel like I would be more Compelled to say yes or no. But, you know, that’s just.

George Wolfe [01:12:30]:
I mean, when we retool in Edwardsville, we might just do that. We might go to. We might go to quarters and do quarters.

Jordan Berry [01:12:37]:
End card.

Kate Wolfe [01:12:39]:
I don’t know. Just.

George Wolfe [01:12:40]:
He’s like, no, we’re not. We’re not picking up the pool. I mean, it’s been successful without this, so I don’t know if we would either. I don’t know if that’d be a good idea.

Kate Wolfe [01:12:49]:
I mean, like, really, like, they’re dirty.

George Wolfe [01:12:52]:
I think the card system is the new error. That’s. That’s what I think. I mean, I don’t know if I’m right or not.

Kate Wolfe [01:12:57]:
When we’re on Facebook and. And people say things like, oh, we only do quarters. I’m, like, shocked because I never have cash.

George Wolfe [01:13:05]:
No, we don’t even carry cash.

Kate Wolfe [01:13:06]:
We very rarely carry cash. So I just feel like there’s such a draw to the card system. So I don’t know. Right now we have something for everybody. We don’t know, like, what the future holds. I guess we’ll, like. We kind of got forced into changing a new card system at the. At the first store, so we’ll see what happens.

George Wolfe [01:13:20]:
They were charging $5 a card there. That was ridiculous.

Kate Wolfe [01:13:23]:
I don’t.

George Wolfe [01:13:23]:
We could never do that. I can’t do that to my customer. That’s what I said. The.

Jordan Berry [01:13:30]:
Yeah, that’s. Yeah, that’s steep. Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, the.

George Wolfe [01:13:35]:
The.

Jordan Berry [01:13:36]:
You know, the style continues. What’s really good about what you have right now is that you’ve got some data coming in for all these different systems. Yeah. I’m curious. You may not know this, but I’m curious that on the hybrid store that you have card or not card, do you know, like, what the breakdown is? How many people Pay with cash versus, versus the app?

Kate Wolfe [01:14:00]:
It’s definitely a lot more cash versus app. We have, I would say between 20 and 25% using the app, and then the rest, the 70, 75, is all cash. And I do think it’s a difference in the population, too. I think that they have a preference for that. So like I said, we have.

George Wolfe [01:14:17]:
It might just be because it’s elderly there on that side of the fence over there, and there’s younger people at the other store.

Jordan Berry [01:14:23]:
I think.

George Wolfe [01:14:23]:
I think that might have.

Jordan Berry [01:14:24]:
I think that’s pretty common, though, from what I mean, whenever I’ve asked some. Somebody who’s had the app plus cash versus a card plus cash. I mean, usually on, you know, When I, when I ask somebody, they fall within the like 10 to 15% use the app and the rest are using cash. And I think they’re still, for whatever reason, I think there’s still like a, a barrier to use in the app. Whereas if, even if they have like a, like a laundry works or a card system, ESD or laundry card or whatever and cash, that number. Number will be like in coin, but that number will be higher on the card system than it. Yeah, typically than it would on an app payment. So it’s just interesting.

Jordan Berry [01:15:02]:
I’m not really sure what to make of that, but I was, that’s why I was curious what you guys were seeing in your store.

Kate Wolfe [01:15:08]:
Yeah, I think, I think people really like the card system that are over there. I mean, there’s some people that won’t come to our store because that store in particular because they don’t like the card system. And that’s fine.

George Wolfe [01:15:17]:
You know, like I said, there’s two other laundromats down the road. I mean.

Kate Wolfe [01:15:20]:
Yeah, it’s not.

George Wolfe [01:15:21]:
That’s what I said.

Kate Wolfe [01:15:21]:
It’s like shortage. It’s like no competitor. No, we don’t always push that narrative, though. Hey, you want to go to the other location? You know, we had to shut down for three days when we installed our laundry work system in the Edwardsville store and we had to sign out. I mean, a lot of our customers waited for us. Like, we had people like knocking, hey, are you, are you open yet? Because it is such a tight knit community. But you know, we did tell them, hey, we have this other location. If you want to check that one out, you can go there too.

Kate Wolfe [01:15:46]:
And, you know, you don’t have to buy a card or whatever, so. Yeah, whatever works for them.

Jordan Berry [01:15:52]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So listen, I’m, I’m curious, like, if you had to give somebody some advice, who’s buying their first one, first laundromat, what advice would you give them? You know, if they’re like, if they’re looking, if they’re listening to this right now and they’re looking for their first laundromat, what’s the best piece of advice you could give them right now? And maybe each of you might have something separate because you have different lanes, laundry lanes, that you’re in laundry lane. I’m trying to, like, reinforce the brand with you here.

George Wolfe [01:16:23]:
Yes, it’s true.

Kate Wolfe [01:16:25]:
So I would, I would say get a good distributor because it really is important. You know, it, it really, you. You rely on them to help you make decisions and and try to improve your store. So it’s really important to have a good distributor selecting them and. And getting them to. To mentor. Mentor. And not even men be there to answer your phone call even.

Kate Wolfe [01:16:49]:
Right. Like, that’s super important. And then I think you said customer service is the thing that.

George Wolfe [01:16:56]:
Yeah, I think that if you buy a laundromat, you. You have to be willing to be open to take phone calls. You know, one thing my wife does do is she does a customer service for us, thank God. And. And she does it well, it. The last person that maybe. And make sure you have your number inside your store if you’re going to go.

Kate Wolfe [01:17:13]:
Yeah, we see that often when we go into another store, they don’t have it.

George Wolfe [01:17:16]:
There’s not even a phone number. I mean, how do you get a hold of somebody if you lose your money?

Jordan Berry [01:17:19]:
Yeah, they don’t want you to get a hold of them.

George Wolfe [01:17:22]:
I want you to get a hold of me, though. I want that.

Jordan Berry [01:17:24]:
You guys don’t think like that, but that is. That is how we roll in this industry and have for a long time is we don’t want to hear from you. Just give us your money.

Kate Wolfe [01:17:33]:
We don’t roll that way because the way we think about it is if you have a problem and like, some people don’t care, sometimes they literally call us and they’re like, hey, I lost $5, but I don’t even care. I just want to let you know. And it’s like, no, we’re going to take care of you. Right.

George Wolfe [01:17:45]:
If you have four kids and you’re on a fixed income and you’re working, worrying about paying your bills, and you’re coming to my store to pay for your laundry, I don’t want to steal your $4 or your $5. Yeah, I want to give it back to you. Make sure you have to watch your clothes, man. That’s not fair to you.

Jordan Berry [01:17:57]:
Yeah.

Kate Wolfe [01:17:58]:
You know, there’s been instances where it’s. It’s. It’s not even, you know, a lot of time. It’s not actually like our fault. Our. Yeah, like, we didn’t do anything to cause the issue. Like, sometimes it is user error and.

George Wolfe [01:18:11]:
You have to educate your customer.

Kate Wolfe [01:18:12]:
So we, we’re really firm on the fact that we’re going to educate you and we’re going to say, hey, I looked back on the camera and I saw you st that comforter in that top loader, and that’s why it didn’t.

George Wolfe [01:18:22]:
Spin on the laundry work app. And you didn’t even Put money in.

Kate Wolfe [01:18:25]:
Yeah, yeah. So, like, we, we educate them and then we try to make it right, whatever.

George Wolfe [01:18:30]:
And.

Kate Wolfe [01:18:30]:
And we’re heavy on, like, okay, you had a problem in our $3 machine. Here’s $4. Like, because of the inconvenience, you know, we don’t ever hand cash to anyone.

George Wolfe [01:18:39]:
We’re really not answering the question. Before you, you were asking us what you would do if. If you were going to buy a laundromat. Oh, what? So we went off topic, but as usual. That’s. All right.

Jordan Berry [01:18:49]:
Listen, we chase rabbit trails around here.

Kate Wolfe [01:18:53]:
If you’re gonna.

George Wolfe [01:18:54]:
If I was gonna have to buy a laundromat tomorrow and I knew nothing. Again, I would definitely do what Kate said. My wife. I would definitely check into who the distributor is and if you can get a hold of them. Yeah, because you can’t be on an island and not about to get a hold of somebody that you need desperately to run your business, especially if you have a card system. If you have a card system, he. He’s the only person that could buy the cards. So you’re in trouble if you can’t get them.

George Wolfe [01:19:15]:
And second of all, I would say, you know, make a vision of what you think you can make. The store. When you first walk in the store, can you envision yourself being there? Can you envision taking care of it? Can you envision, you know, getting the phone calls? You know, those are the things.

Kate Wolfe [01:19:29]:
I mean, branding is really, I think branding is really important because you want people to recognize your brand for, like, the quality that it is. You want to. You want to represent quality. And so I think, like, identifying what your brand is, identifying customers of what you’re willing to do not put up with. Because one thing that we always say to. I know it’s like kind of not exactly the answer to your question, but one thing we talk about with customer service is like, we worked in restaurants for years.

George Wolfe [01:19:55]:
I think it helped us actually.

Kate Wolfe [01:19:56]:
And the one thing, you know, I worked in the front of the house, he worked in the, in the back of the house. We had our lanes there too. And we bring those interesting lived experiences to the table. And you know, the owner, we worked in a family owned restaurant and customers would just be rude and, you know, treat us terribly and the owner would be accepting of that. And so that’s one thing. Think that, you know, sometimes you have to fire a customer and it’s tough. But I think, you know, if you’re going to buy a laundromat, know what you will accept and what you will not accept. And for us, we will not tolerate any kind of vandalism or disrespect to our equipment.

Kate Wolfe [01:20:29]:
You know, we work very hard. We work very hard to keep it running, and it’s very expensive, and we’re still paying on it. So please, if you’re going to be disrespectful, if you’re going to try to break it, if you’re going to be rude, we’re not going to put up with that because that’s. We don’t have to.

George Wolfe [01:20:44]:
And on the other side, token is. Is again, we have our own lanes. I worked in the back where the customer’s always right. And you try to cater to that customer and don’t lose that customer. You make them happy.

Kate Wolfe [01:20:55]:
As long as they’re not being just. Again, there’s a fine line. Right. As long as they’re not being. So if they overloaded the machine, we just educate them. We had soap pouring down out of the. Out of the washer a week or two ago, and my employee was like, oh, my gosh. I’m like, it’s okay.

Kate Wolfe [01:21:07]:
Like, hey, what’s soap did you use? You know, we just had a conversation. I started our wash again. I kept an eye on it. You know, we just, we. We took care of it. It’s, you know, and she was apologizing.

George Wolfe [01:21:16]:
I don’t want to see a customer walk away from our store and not be happy. And I don’t want somebody. I don’t want to leave my store and go to somebody else because there’s something I did wrong. Jordan. I want to make sure I make them happy.

Kate Wolfe [01:21:25]:
There’s a lifelong value of that customer, and we have to recognize that, because if they have a bad experience or they don’t get their $5 back or the, you know, even if it is their fault, they don’t. They don’t perceive it that way. They don’t think, oh, I overloaded the washer, this is my fault. They think, wow, your laundromat sucks because you didn’t spit out my clothes. Right. So we try to make sure that we’re taking care of them and taking care of the issue and then helping them so that they.

George Wolfe [01:21:47]:
Them so it doesn’t happen again and.

Kate Wolfe [01:21:48]:
Tell their friends so that we get more customers, you know?

George Wolfe [01:21:51]:
Yeah. Yeah. I would think that when you first get in the first, the major thing would be a distributor, like my wife said.

Kate Wolfe [01:21:57]:
Yeah.

George Wolfe [01:21:58]:
And seeing a vision of what you want, what you expect out of your launchpad, you know, and your Expectations of, you know, what kind of income you think you’re going to get out of it. Right. I mean, like we were saying earlier, we put our money back in our laundromat so we could be successful. Successful in the long run, but maybe not everybody sees it that way. Right. So, you know, those are things I would think about if I bought a laundromat.

Kate Wolfe [01:22:16]:
Yeah. Good story.

George Wolfe [01:22:18]:
Yeah. And I listen to your podcast will help them.

Kate Wolfe [01:22:21]:
Yes, definitely. You have.

Jordan Berry [01:22:23]:
That’s the answer I was looking for.

George Wolfe [01:22:25]:
I would definitely. I’ve learned a lot.

Kate Wolfe [01:22:27]:
They have to listen to the podcast. I mean, obviously that is, that is number one.

George Wolfe [01:22:31]:
Yeah.

Kate Wolfe [01:22:31]:
And there’s so many YouTubes and there’s so much information out there. The, the Facebook forums, like, there’s a lot out there.

George Wolfe [01:22:38]:
Networking helps. Yeah, a lot.

Jordan Berry [01:22:40]:
Yeah. What, what the people listening don’t know is that similar to how you incentivize your employees to get Google five star reviews. I now owe each of you $5 for saying that they have to listen to my podcast.

Kate Wolfe [01:22:51]:
So that check in the mail, from.

Jordan Berry [01:22:54]:
The mail to her, like. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. No, I mean, I think that’s all just great advice, right. Of like, you know, it’s so, I mean, for me, me personally, I’m sort of like, naturally, I’m trying to like, grow out of this, but I’m like, naturally, like sort of that lone wolf mentality. Right. So given that advice of like, hey, don’t go it alone, like, you’re not reinventing the wheel here, you know, I’ll be able to put your own spin on it. Like, I’m hunting all over the place right now. Right.

Jordan Berry [01:23:26]:
Spin on that wheel. But you don’t have to, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. So find somebody who can help guide you through it and it’ll help you make good decisions. Right. And you know, you, you said earlier, George, you were like, hey, I wish, I wish I had me when I was buying the first one and everything I know now. Right. And I’ve said a lot of times about myself, like, hey, like a 15 minute conversation with me now.

Kate Wolfe [01:23:49]:
Yes.

Jordan Berry [01:23:49]:
From, you know, back then would have saved me six figures easy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, I get that. And, and listen, you part, part of it is like, you’ve got to go through what you got to go through, right? The, the struggles and all that stuff and the hard work. That’s how you learn, that’s how you grow, and that’s how you refine what you want your business to Be right. You’ve said a lot of things on this episode. Like, a lot of things. We never want our customers to walk away unhappy, and it had been my fault.

Jordan Berry [01:24:19]:
Right. We don’t. We want to make sure that, you know, our. Our customers feel, you know, cared for. We want to make sure that we are. Are, you know, not letting people who aren’t supposed to be there, you know, be there. We want to make sure it’s a, you know, a good experience. And if I just gotta touch up paint, like, I’m gonna do that.

Jordan Berry [01:24:37]:
Right. Like, you just said, like, a lot of things, but all that stuff has been. You didn’t have all of that probably on your doodle pad when you were drawing your logo. Right, exactly. You learn all that, and you refine all that by doing the business right. But there’s a lot of things you can shortcut by having some experience in your corner early on on. I think that’s great advice. I think that’s great advice.

Jordan Berry [01:25:02]:
And I feel like you’ve already gone through a bunch of stuff, but I just want to see if there’s anything else you want to add to this. Like, if you’re talking to other owners specifically, you know, what’s. What’s one thing you felt like you have done really well, that has worked out for you, that you think if other owners did this as well and, you know, not saying that nobody else does it, but if other owners do this, they’ll probably. Probably it’ll help grow their business.

George Wolfe [01:25:29]:
Come on.

Kate Wolfe [01:25:30]:
What?

George Wolfe [01:25:31]:
Answer the question. What would you advise another owner? What would you say that works for us that would help them?

Kate Wolfe [01:25:39]:
Are you asking me?

George Wolfe [01:25:40]:
Yeah. Well, that’s what he’s asking.

Kate Wolfe [01:25:41]:
Do you have an answer?

Jordan Berry [01:25:42]:
We’re both asking you. I kind of do.

George Wolfe [01:25:44]:
I mean, I kind of do.

Kate Wolfe [01:25:46]:
I think you talk so much. Why is that throwing me off? I think.

George Wolfe [01:25:50]:
I don’t know.

Jordan Berry [01:25:52]:
I said a bunch. Yeah.

George Wolfe [01:25:54]:
I think being more personable with the customer, I think that owners should be more visible. I mean, yeah, you can open a laundromat and just leave it. Sit there, Jordan, and make money. But maybe visit your store once in a while. Mingle with your customer, talk to them, see if they’re happy. Ask them if there’s something you could do. This is something that we do, and I do do this, and so does my wife. Hey, is there anything we could do better? What do you think we could do better here? Is there.

Kate Wolfe [01:26:18]:
He does do that a lot.

George Wolfe [01:26:19]:
I say is, do you go to their laundromats?

Kate Wolfe [01:26:22]:
I Always.

George Wolfe [01:26:22]:
When do you go? When you go, is it a better experience than my laundromat? Tell me what I can do better for you.

Kate Wolfe [01:26:28]:
What.

George Wolfe [01:26:28]:
What would make it better for you?

Kate Wolfe [01:26:29]:
Well, what usually ends up happening is people usually tell us the ones that they’re dissatisfied with, and that’s how they landed at us. So then we kind of know, like, oh, should we, like, go check that one out? You know, like. And then we do, right? But yeah, he does do that a lot. He does solicit feedback. He is very, like, grateful to them. He. He tells them, thank you for coming in. Like, we appreciate you.

George Wolfe [01:26:48]:
She does, too.

Jordan Berry [01:26:49]:
This is scary. Great question, though. Like, I mean, listen, I’d rather have.

George Wolfe [01:26:55]:
The honesty, because if I could. If I could do something better for the customer so I could build my brand and be a better. A better laundromat for them, and I get them for life, well, then I win, right? So you tell me, hey, listen, I don’t like this. And if it’s something I could. I can’t change, right? Well, then I can’t change it. But if it’s something that I could do, something small, something. Something silly, I mean, I’m gonna definitely do it, right? Why would you not want that feedback?

Kate Wolfe [01:27:21]:
I don’t point blank. Ask them.

George Wolfe [01:27:23]:
I do. I do.

Jordan Berry [01:27:25]:
Well, I know that’s. It’s huge, though, because, I mean, it is a scary question, right? Like, I think a lot of us avoid asking that question because it feels like personal.

George Wolfe [01:27:35]:
Jordan, if I have to give out free popcorn every Sunday to make them happy, by damn it, I’ll go on. I’ll buy a popcorn machine for a few hundred bucks and I’ll make it every Sunday.

Kate Wolfe [01:27:43]:
We haven’t done that.

George Wolfe [01:27:44]:
I don’t care. I think it’s a good idea, though. I think we should do something. Something like that.

Kate Wolfe [01:27:47]:
That’s what I’m saying.

George Wolfe [01:27:48]:
Those are kind of things. And she’s like, it’ll be over the floor. So what? We pay people.

Kate Wolfe [01:27:53]:
I specifically said, please don’t bring up any ideas. You haven’t ran past me on the podcast. And here we are.

Jordan Berry [01:27:58]:
Here we go.

George Wolfe [01:28:00]:
I’m just making.

Jordan Berry [01:28:01]:
Love it.

George Wolfe [01:28:01]:
They said if they said, hey, you know what? This would be a great idea. Like, if I can come away with giving the customer something, I would definitely do that.

Kate Wolfe [01:28:09]:
I do it kind of like in. In more of a run. I do ask about other laundromats, but I, like, get to know the customers. Like, you know, where do you live? Like, their family structure.

George Wolfe [01:28:17]:
She does.

Kate Wolfe [01:28:17]:
I’ll find out about their dog and.

George Wolfe [01:28:19]:
She remembers her name too. Oh well, like Bob hasn’t came in this week. I wonder what do you even know who Bob even is it.

Kate Wolfe [01:28:25]:
Okay, so that’s it. So knowing somebody’s name goes such a long way for someone. Like I just feel like, I mean that’s a common business theme, right? Like just knowing somebody’s name and then being able to recall that. I feel like it’s just single handedly such an advantage to not only customers, colleagues, potential business connections.

George Wolfe [01:28:45]:
That goes back to me being more personable. Be in your store once in a while. Say hi to the customers. Right? That’s, that’s us.

Kate Wolfe [01:28:51]:
But like I’ll get to know their name. I’ll know a little bit about them and then I’ll be asking like, hey, how was your, how was your daughter’s vacation? Like, oh, where’s your dog at? How’s he doing? Is he doing better? You know, I know you anxiety. Like I, like I, I talk with and then I notice their days and then I’ll say, hey, it’s, it’s, it’s a different day. Why are you in on this day? And then he’s like, you’re so weird. How do you know their days? And I’m like, the, because they come in at the same, they’ll use the same washer on the same day. And I noticed that. And then they know that I noticed that if they’re going to one of the, the, the just laundromats with no name, no branding, no owner presence, they’re not getting that.

George Wolfe [01:29:25]:
Well. And I thank them for, for supporting our family business. He does every time. Thank you for supporting us. And he’s sincere and I always say that to him. I said I or I hold the door and let them out with their laundry.

Kate Wolfe [01:29:35]:
Oh, we always do that. My daughter knows that she’s somebody laundry. She has to open that door because I mean again, like are you going to a laundromat where you’re carrying your heavy baskets or your heavy bag and someone’s opening the door for you? Or like I’ve carried it out to their cars. He’s carried it out to their, like we help them.

George Wolfe [01:29:50]:
How many owners do that, Jordan?

Kate Wolfe [01:29:52]:
Yeah, I mean we’re in, we’re, we’re doing. Yeah.

George Wolfe [01:29:55]:
Like that’s just who we are as people though. I mean. Yeah, we want to let them know that we’re no different than you, man. You know I’m saying, yeah, we’re not.

Kate Wolfe [01:30:03]:
These like, you know, we’re Too good for it. No, we’re here to help you. We’re here to serve you. Like, yes, this is our business. Business. But we’re here to help.

George Wolfe [01:30:11]:
That’s why our customer service, and that’s why we win all day twice on Sunday at every one of our laundromats or both of our locations, because we’re not afraid to answer our phone and fix that problem. They might be, and they might not want to be annoyed with you, but that. We came from the restaurants and we’ll. We’ll cater to our customer. We’re not afraid. We’re not lazy people.

Kate Wolfe [01:30:29]:
There’s always something.

George Wolfe [01:30:30]:
And I’m not saying other owners are lazy. I’m just saying that that’s not who we are as folks. We want to do the right thing, and we want to do the right thing by our customers.

Kate Wolfe [01:30:36]:
Customers.

George Wolfe [01:30:38]:
That answers that.

Jordan Berry [01:30:39]:
But all that stuff I just said, no. I mean, I’m glad I asked it, because you guys just kicked into, like, it was a little, like, I don’t know. And then all of a sudden, you were off to the races. Yeah. Pun intended again. But, I mean, like, the passion comes out, right? Like, when you’re talking about remembering names and their stories and their days and, you know, helping them, you know, open the doors, helping them out with their laundry, like the passengers, passion comes out, and it’s super clear. And that’s why you’ve been able to build a big brand. That’s why you’ve been able to take over a laundromat that was owned by somebody remotely in double business very quickly.

Jordan Berry [01:31:15]:
Right? It’s because you have that passion and you have that mindset where you’re like, hey, we’re here to serve you, not the other way around.

Kate Wolfe [01:31:22]:
Right?

Jordan Berry [01:31:23]:
And it’s. It’s huge. That’s huge.

George Wolfe [01:31:25]:
That’s how we really feel, too.

Kate Wolfe [01:31:27]:
Well, Dave Men says it all the time, too. You know, like, he was one of. Like, he was the first podcast I ever listened to, which is how I got him onto it. I read his book, and then I heard him on the podcast, and when he said, like, I’m. I’m serving my community, and I was like, you know what? He’s. He’s right. Like, he kind of put into words what kind of. We were already doing and feeling, but we didn’t have, like, those specific words.

George Wolfe [01:31:47]:
That’s why I said, you know, with networking and being on Facebook. My wife was on Facebook. She’s part of the cla now.

Kate Wolfe [01:31:54]:
Yeah, we’re both part of the cla.

George Wolfe [01:31:55]:
And now she’s. She’s on with the Lovely Ladies of Laundry.

Kate Wolfe [01:31:59]:
That’s a group on Facebook.

George Wolfe [01:32:00]:
I mean, she does a lot of stuff with all. With everybody in the laundromat business. That helps. Helps us. And again, with the new owner thing, those are the things I would do.

Kate Wolfe [01:32:09]:
Yeah.

George Wolfe [01:32:10]:
I would reach out to other owners, and if they’re willing to help you, like me and Kate, there’s no reason you could be successful. There’s no reason you can’t be.

Kate Wolfe [01:32:16]:
And for women specifically, there’s the woman’s Laundry network. I recently joined the task force where I’m surrounded by a bunch of really great women that are in this industry, which. That was very lonely for me, you know, like, thinking, okay, there’s really not a lot of women in this industry. Or at least that was my perception. Right. Which clearly that’s not true anymore. Like, I’ve met so, so many great women.

George Wolfe [01:32:37]:
I watched Sasha fix a washer.

Kate Wolfe [01:32:39]:
Yeah. But, I mean, but like, she fixed.

George Wolfe [01:32:41]:
The spring of the washers.

Kate Wolfe [01:32:43]:
That wasn’t. You know, like, not a lot of women were in this business. And. And then, like, I’ve been proven wrong, and I’ve gotten to meet so many great women. So there’s definitely supports out there, and there’s. There’s this entire community, you know, virtual in person, that you need to tap into, and it will make you successful and motivate you.

George Wolfe [01:33:00]:
And there’s a lot of owners that are great. Just great people. Really great people. We were lucky.

Jordan Berry [01:33:05]:
Yeah. Well. And, yeah, I mean, I love that they have, like, the, like, the Lovely Ladies Laundry and, you know, some stuff for the women, too, because, like you said, like, it’s been. The industry’s been like a boys club for a long time. And so. But there are. There’s a lot. I mean, I’ve had a lot of them guests on the show, women who are crushing it and doing awesome stuff in the industry.

Jordan Berry [01:33:27]:
So I love that. Although I do feel a little left out. I’ll be honest with you. I don’t know, George. Maybe we need to start the masculine with Matt Mat. Masculine men with Matt. How about that?

George Wolfe [01:33:39]:
I’m okay with it. I’m okay with it.

Jordan Berry [01:33:42]:
Maybe not awesome. Guys, you have brought passion. You have brought a ton of just very practical advice. And I think, most importantly, you’ve brought great mindsets about how you’re thinking about your business that I. I think we all should be learning from and taking away from. You know, for me, that’s my big takeaway here. But I have one last question. If people are out there listening to your episode and they’re like, ah, I love these guys.

Jordan Berry [01:34:12]:
I would love to connect with them. What is the best way that they can connect with you?

Kate Wolfe [01:34:17]:
So we have a couple different things. We have email, laundry lane llcmail.com. we’re on Facebook. Laundry Lane LLC. We’re on. We’re getting our new website created, which will be laundry lane llc.com. and then we also have Tick Tocks. I have lipstick and laundry all spelled out.

Kate Wolfe [01:34:38]:
And then George is the laundromat maintenance man.

George Wolfe [01:34:41]:
Oh, all right.

Jordan Berry [01:34:42]:
I didn’t know you guys were in the Tick Tock game. I gotta get on that.

Kate Wolfe [01:34:46]:
Yeah, we’re just getting started.

George Wolfe [01:34:49]:
I didn’t do any videos. I started to do. I want to start doing repair videos on there.

Jordan Berry [01:34:54]:
Yeah.

George Wolfe [01:34:54]:
What’s the guy’s name?

Kate Wolfe [01:34:55]:
I always watch Keenan.

George Wolfe [01:34:57]:
Keenan.

Kate Wolfe [01:34:57]:
I watch Keenan all the time.

George Wolfe [01:34:59]:
And he was phenomenal. And he shared his idol. He really was great.

Jordan Berry [01:35:02]:
Yeah.

George Wolfe [01:35:03]:
So I’m gonna start doing videos on repairing stuff so people could see how to do it and we could educate. And this way they don’t have to pay $100 an hour.

Kate Wolfe [01:35:12]:
It’s worth that. And I love. I love lipstick and I love laundry. So we, like. I’m merging both of those two things. Contrary to how most people believe, I actually really love doing laundry. I’ve always enjoyed it, so it was very natural to buy Laundromats for me.

George Wolfe [01:35:29]:
Weird.

Kate Wolfe [01:35:31]:
I was a mess, especially at my beard earlier. I know. I’m weird. I own it. It’s all good.

Jordan Berry [01:35:36]:
Yeah, that’s good, though. That’s good. Well, you got to have at least one video on how to get lipstick out of your laundry on there at some point there, so get that.

Kate Wolfe [01:35:46]:
All right, I’ll work on that.

Jordan Berry [01:35:48]:
Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, we’ll make sure we have links to all that. That’ll be on the Show Notes page or if you’re on YouTube, that’ll be down below. Connect with these guys. This is what they. They literally told me before we hit record.

Jordan Berry [01:35:58]:
We came on the show because they listened to this podcast, other podcasts, and were able to actually connect with people in person at some of the events and stuff like that. And they said to do the same thing for other people. So blow them up. Blow them up. Go, you know, send the email. Go, go follow them on Tik Tok and be a part of the. One of the early ones on their journey there. Guys, thank you so much for taking the time and coming on the show.

Jordan Berry [01:36:24]:
Is incredible. Genuinely incredible. Maybe even an instant classic here. Just so much good stuff in here, and I really appreciate you guys. Thank you.

Kate Wolfe [01:36:33]:
Thank you so much for having me.

George Wolfe [01:36:34]:
It’s my honor to be on your show. I was like a little girl before this show. It. I appreciate.

Kate Wolfe [01:36:38]:
Told you that we were so.

George Wolfe [01:36:39]:
Couldn’t believe that I got to come on the show. I was so excited. You have no idea.

Kate Wolfe [01:36:42]:
It’s such a big deal for us.

Jordan Berry [01:36:43]:
Like, it really is.

Kate Wolfe [01:36:44]:
We learned so much, and. And we’re just hoping that we can give at least some pieces of information to.

George Wolfe [01:36:50]:
You’ve helped us so much just by listening to it. Like I said, going to work. We really appreciate you. Thank you so much.

Kate Wolfe [01:36:55]:
Thanks for what you do. Please don’t stop.

George Wolfe [01:36:56]:
Yeah. Thanks for having us on. I really appreciate it.

Jordan Berry [01:36:58]:
I’ll try to keep it. I try. That helps, you know, because sometimes it gets a little, you know, tedious. Doing a lot of episodes, a lot of work. Put these things out. But I know. I appreciate the feedback that helps all the owners.

George Wolfe [01:37:08]:
I’ll tell you, I really learned a. From your show. I listen to it all the time. Go to work. I really appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Jordan Berry [01:37:15]:
Yeah, well. And it’s all. It’s all genuinely. It’s all only because people like you come on the show and share your stories, like. So I’m gonna. I’m gonna send it right back to you and thank you guys for. For doing that. Everybody out there, you know, like I said, good people here, doing good stuff.

Jordan Berry [01:37:29]:
Go connect with them, you know, especially if you’re, you know, interested in connecting with women in the end. Well, if you’re a woman interested in connecting with women in the industry, I don’t know if you’re a dude looking to connect with. I don’t know. I don’t know. Are you doing a dating service yet?

Kate Wolfe [01:37:41]:
Laundrydating.com maybe like laundry lane.

George Wolfe [01:37:46]:
Don’t give her no idea. She’ll be trying to.

Jordan Berry [01:37:48]:
Yeah.

George Wolfe [01:37:51]:
Buy that next.

Jordan Berry [01:37:53]:
Yeah. When you get it launched, you come back on the podcast and we’ll do a little dating. Dating show.

George Wolfe [01:37:57]:
Be great.

Jordan Berry [01:38:00]:
No, but, yeah, connect up with these guys for sure. Guys, I, again, I genuinely appreciate you guys taking the time coming on, sharing your. Your story, and we’ll have to have you back on as you grow this pickup and delivery business. And we want to hear how that goes and what you learn doing that process as well. So appreciate you guys.

Kate Wolfe [01:38:19]:
Thank you so much.

Jordan Berry [01:38:20]:
Hope you love that episode. I know you did, because Kate and George were phenomenal people. So much good stuff in there. A lot of knowledge, not a lot of wisdom and a lot of fun all wrapped up into one package of Laundry Lane llc. Listen, all that, again, as always, will have been a complete, complete waste of time. Yes, maybe entertaining and fun, but a complete waste of time in helping you achieve your goals unless you get out there and take some action. So go take some action today. Pick one thing from the episode.

Jordan Berry [01:38:49]:
Put it into practice today, if possible. Very least, do it this week as we stack these actions week after week after week. Guess how far you’ll go after 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years from now when you’re listening to the Laundromat Resource podcast stuff, stacking all these actions, 500 different actions in. You’re going to be a whole new person, probably living at a nicer house than me on the beach in Hawaii. So how about that? Let’s do that. Yes. All right, go out there and take some action. We’ll see you next time.

George Wolfe [01:39:22]:
Peace.