Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
Hey. Hey, what’s up, guys? It’s Jordan with the Laundromat resource podcast. This is show 234, and I’m pumped you’re here today because today we have an OG back on the show, all the way back from, I think, episode 22. Matthew Simmons from Curbside Laundries, aka Laundry Matt, is back on the show. I was just talking to him and I was saying, hey, listen, we cannot go five. This is back in 2020. We’re like five and a half years from the last time he was on the show, so we cannot do that again for sure. But he’s back today with tons to say, and we’re going to have a great conversation.

Jordan Berry [00:00:36]:
I’m already. We’ve already been talking, and I’m. I’m excited for me and for you to have this conversation. So without further ado, let’s jump into it with Laundry Matt. Matt Simmons from Curbside Laundries. How you doing, man?

Matthew Simmons [00:00:49]:
Doing great. And, yeah, thank you for having me on the show. I think it’s back in 2020. I was saying you’re like Joe Rogan of Laundry, and I just love the independ. I mean, I know a lot of people have gotten into the business listening to your podcast, you know, listening to mine, and it just ramped up so much faster than how we grew. I mean, it took us time to get things going.

Jordan Berry [00:01:11]:
Yeah.

Matthew Simmons [00:01:12]:
And you get there are people just entering the market, just knowing what they know, and that’s because of people like you just sharing information. So thank you.

Jordan Berry [00:01:19]:
Yeah, and you, too. Why don’t you mention real quick, just while we’re talking about it, what’s your podcast in case people haven’t heard of it?

Matthew Simmons [00:01:24]:
So it’s at YouTube.com forward slash, curbside laundries. And I interview different people who are just kicking butt and pickup and delivery, talk about what their secret sauce is, how they grew their business. And then I also have, like, some, you know, vignettes. Just talking 5, 10 minutes, just talking about different things you could do to grow your business as well.

Jordan Berry [00:01:44]:
Yeah, yeah. Lots of great content out there. We were both just saying how we both wish we had content. Like, that’s out there now when we first got started. So, man, appreciate you and appreciate you taking the time to come on the show again. And real quick, just in case people don’t know who you are. First of all, shame on you if you’re out there and you don’t know Laundromat. Just kidding.

Jordan Berry [00:02:05]:
But in case they don’t know who you are. Why don’t you give us a little background on you and curbside, and then we’ll jump into it from there.

Matthew Simmons [00:02:12]:
Yeah. So my brother and I started Curbside Laundries. And so that’s a wash and fold, point of sale and pickup and delivery solution. But we really got into the business. We didn’t set out to develop software. I mean, this is back in about 2015 and that we started developing the software, but before that, we’ve got a family laundromat called Super Suds over in Long Beach. And my brother took over the business and was just ramping it up like none other. The wash and fold at the time was about $8,000 a month.

Matthew Simmons [00:02:42]:
Just today, in perspective, we’re doing about $150,000 a month in wash and fold, 80% pickup and delivery, all from a single location. And so he just blew it up by having a strong web presence and creating strong branding. And he knew that if we kept on growing it the way we’re growing it, we’re going losing customers as fast as we’re going to be getting them. Because we needed a way to manage the process. And that’s something people don’t always consider when they’re getting into the business. They’re like, well, I just need to accept credit cards. And you really need a lot more than that. You need a way to track every order.

Matthew Simmons [00:03:14]:
There’s so many moving pieces, especially in pickup and delivery. And so we had customers who had to find their own laundry in the back room, you know, and if you get a negative, bad Yelp review or a whole bunch of them because you mixed up somebody’s order, it’s going to be hard to grow. And especially in Washington fold, what people really need to consider is this is a retention business. You know, one customer could spend about 2,000, $3,500 a year. And so if you lose one customer, you know, that’s taking a big pay decrease. And so that’s where my brother is. Looking for different software out there. There wasn’t any at the time.

Matthew Simmons [00:03:53]:
People were fancy schmancy if they’re using square, you know, or clover, because I could accept credit cards. And he knew we more than just a point of sale. We needed a way to. It’s called a business process management system, like a way to track every order from beginning to end, remind customers we’re driving and going to be picking up their order. So we needed to automate things, because as soon as you’re doing stuff by hand, that’s where Mistakes happen.

Jordan Berry [00:04:18]:
Yeah, well, listen, I think a lot of ears probably perked up when you said $150,000 a month of wash and fold to pick up delivery out of one location. You know, I talk to people all the time who are like, I’m trying to grow my, you know, pick up a delivery business. You know, how do I do it? How do I do it? How do I do it? So, you know, listen, well, well, at least. I know we have a lot to talk about today, but we’ll at least have to delve into a little bit of like, hey, if somebody’s trying to grow their pickup delivery, you guys are crushing it. You know, what are you guys doing? But we can wait on that. You know, just a little, little teaser there to keep you guys around a little bit, but there’s going to be plenty for you here. So, dude, first of all, thank you guys, like making the investment in kind of pioneering some of this software stuff in the industry to help us manage our businesses better. I, I kind of joke that for decades, you know, the laundromat industry was like a dinosaur industry.

Jordan Berry [00:05:13]:
Like we just move slow as molasses in terms of tech stuff. And even, even, you know, as of like maybe a couple years ago, that was still mostly the case in the industry. Like, it blew my mind that we got super excited when we got touchscreen washing machines like a couple of years ago when we’ve had touchscreen phones in our pockets for, I don’t know, 15 years or something. So, you know, we’ve, we’ve not traditionally been a fast growing tech, fast changing technological industry, but that’s changing right now. So I thought maybe we could start off with. Before we, you know, delve into the pickup delivery stuff, maybe we could delve into a little bit of. How are you seeing this industry changing right now? I know you get to see a lot of different companies across the country. Country.

Jordan Berry [00:06:02]:
Because of the nature of your company, your software company, curbside. What are you seeing in terms of changes happening right now in the industry?

Matthew Simmons [00:06:11]:
Yeah, I think one exciting area as well is on the payment side of things. It used to be, I mean, we were tokens for the longest time and we just want to get away from cash, make it easier for attendance, that type of thing. And so we switched over. So we’re using CCI Flex now where it’s touchscreen, just like what you’re talking about on the payment side. But now we’re also saying. Yeah, that, you know, as you’re saying as well, the touchcreen on the washers and dryers, people are getting a lot more sophisticated and even how they’re selling it as well, because it’s not, you can’t tell a customer, oh, it’s 350 GS or 450 GS, it’s like, what does that mean?

Jordan Berry [00:06:50]:
Yeah, yeah.

Matthew Simmons [00:06:50]:
And so now people are looking not only at how many turns per day, but what’s your throughput, you know, like, how much business could you get through from beginning to end? Communicating that to customers and clients, you know, is really important as well, which is some of the benefits of being able to get in and out quickly, you know, and that’s just another reason to like charge by the drive versus by the minute, because, you know, people’s revenues are kind of going down if they’re still charging by the minute because the dryers are more efficient and the washers are getting everything drier before it even hits the dryer. So we’re seeing a lot of technological advances. And then on the payment side of things, that’s pretty exciting too, where it’s not just card, it’s app. It’s, you know, it’s cash. It’s all different options. And so now laundry owners can make the choice of what’s right for them. I don’t think there’s a right answer. I think generationally things are going to be moving more towards app, but it’s not all there yet.

Matthew Simmons [00:07:49]:
There’s a lot of people like their cards, there’s a lot of people like their cash. So you, you know, so it’s, how do you have the right balance of being able to delegate to your, you know, attendees, but at the same time have the right payment system for you as well?

Jordan Berry [00:08:01]:
Yeah, yeah. I, I mean, I like, one of the things you were saying that just really stood out to me was the, you know, talking about throughput and, and how people are marketing their machines. We got these higher, you know, G4 spinning washers that extract more water. That’s what he’s saying. In case you’re not aware, they extract more water during the wash cycle. So the dry cycle takes less time to get people through the store quicker. Right. And that’s, that’s like the difference between, Margaret, between like a fe.

Matthew Simmons [00:08:33]:
Oh, no. Benefit.

Jordan Berry [00:08:34]:
A benefit. Yeah. Thank you.

Matthew Simmons [00:08:35]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:08:37]:
Right. 350. Yeah, that’s right. 350G is, is a feature. And the throughput of, hey, you’re going to get in and out of here in an hour or less, that’s a benefit. Right? That’s Something that really means something to clients who are, you know, busy and on the self serve side. Right. And it also is something that means a lot to somebody like you guys who is, you know, trying to process a whole lot of pick up and delivery orders as quickly as possible.

Jordan Berry [00:09:06]:
That throughput is, I’d say probably even more important when you’re doing the kind of volume you’re doing out of one location. So that throughput kind of works both ways, I think.

Matthew Simmons [00:09:16]:
Yeah, it’s a win all the way around. And I’m also thinking in terms of marketing because we do hundreds of websites for different laundromat owners. We’ve been doing websites for ourselves since 2010 and that was really, we’re the first laundromat in Long Beach, I believe, that had a website. It’s just a real dinky one page, you know, the coupon in the middle, pretty tacky. But it worked because we’re the only laundromat that had the website. And suddenly our business went way up. And so that was a bit. And so the key on that was people were looking, they’re already looking for a laundromat, they’re already looking for wash and fold and you either they either find you or they find somebody else.

Matthew Simmons [00:09:53]:
So on the, the website, it’s really important when you’re talking about throughput and you’re talking about the benefit to customers, we’re going to get you in and out quickly. Is that present on your website? Are you communicating that? And even on the SEO, the snippets, like when you do a Google search and you see the two lines underneath the link, well, you actually control that. And if you’re not taking control of that, Google simply takes the first two lines of your website and then put something in there. So if you control that snippet and you tell people about the benefit of you’ll be in and out quickly and under this many minutes, you’re going to do a lot better than the other people. Just say laundromat.

Jordan Berry [00:10:29]:
That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. And well, and it kind of brings up, I mean we’re talking about changes and innovations here in the industry. Kind of brings up the. I mean this is what’s glaring us at us right in the face right now is that this industry is, I mean, weirdly, we’re getting a little bit sophisticated over here, right. This is not any longer where you just throw open the doors. The, if you build it, they will come.

Jordan Berry [00:10:55]:
Feel the dreams. That was sold to me back when I Bought my first laundromat that, you know, a decade and change ago. It, this is, you know, there’s people coming in that are running businesses like you’re running them, and some of these other guests that we’ve had on the show and that you’ve had on your show where you’re running them like real businesses and you’re having to be strategic about, you know, what you’re putting underneath, you know, your, your snippet on the search engine pages, results pages, and, and the wording is important on that. Right? And they’re starting to track things like throughput. And we’re starting to track things like that are more sophisticated than turns per day, like average order size, lifetime value, like all these things that nobody paid attention to almost at least a decade ago, but probably still most people don’t pay attention to it. But more and more people are. And I think that I’ve seen that being one of the biggest changes in the industry. The, the, the tools we have at our disposal now are incredible.

Jordan Berry [00:12:03]:
If we would have told us a decade ago that we could do some of the things we’re doing now, we wouldn’t have believed it. And the technology we have available to us now is allowing more sophisticated people to come in and allowing people like me who are not sophisticated to pretend like we’re more sophisticated and act like we’re more sophisticated than we actually are.

Matthew Simmons [00:12:24]:
Well, I’m guilty of propagating information I learned from other people too. So, I mean, it’s one of the benefits of being in this type of situation, situation talking to a lot of different laundry owners is being able to kind of, you know, learn from others. And, and before you know, it, it’s, it, it adds up. And you know, one of the trends I’d say that’s different is when we first started, we were just doing everything by pen and paper, by the triplicate tickets. And if the driver was gone that day, we had a replacement driver. He did not know that that specific customer left the laundry by the, you know, chimney or the side of the house.

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

Matthew Simmons [00:12:58]:
And so we had so many missed pickups. And so it’s all in people’s heads. And we didn’t even know our numbers. We had no idea how many customers came back again and again. And now it’s given us so much strategy. Like, for example, we, we, we found out that the top 10. So we have an order minimum, and at the time, there’s $35 order minimum for pickup and delivery. We’re going to drive to your house, it’s 35 bucks.

Matthew Simmons [00:13:24]:
And since then, we’ve bumped it up to 45. But we did some analysis. It turns out 30% of our customers were giving us orders $45 and less on pickup and delivery, but that only attested to 10% of our gross revenue. So in other words, we could spin our wheels 30% less, only pick up 70% of the orders and be on the. Cut down on payroll with our most expensive person, which is the driver, by 30%, and we would still make 90% the same gross revenue. Net profit, it’s even higher. And we had one client who told us, you know, if you raise it to. From 35 to 45, I’m only going to call you once a week instead of twice a week.

Matthew Simmons [00:14:03]:
You’re like. And we said, that’s all right, so don’t throw. Yeah. So our profit went up and that we could have never done without looking at the numbers and really understanding the business.

Jordan Berry [00:14:16]:
Yeah, that’s. Yeah, that’s the kind of thing that I’m talking about, though. Like, there’s no. I mean, I, I shouldn’t say there’s no way you could figure all that out with the paper ticket system, but it would have been a lot of work to go through and figure all that out with the ticket system. Right. And, and having that kind of information and that kind of data available to figuring out what to do with it. And now, I mean, listen, we can throw on top of that, now we’ve got AI to help us weed through all this data and make some sense of it and help us make better business decisions utilizing, you know, just, even just chat GBT or something like that, Claude, or whatever to help us do that. And so really, if, if your game plan, I guess my.

Jordan Berry [00:14:59]:
I don’t know if you agree, I’ll speak for myself. I won’t speak for you on this one. But I think if your game plan is to come in to this industry and sit on your hands and collect quarters, like, just don’t, don’t do it. You’re gonna get, you’re gonna get it handed to you because you got a lot of people out here who are very smart, thinking very smart things and taking some action on those, those, you know, brains of theirs that they’ve got going and are building big businesses, man, $150,000 a month is no joke.

Matthew Simmons [00:15:31]:
Yeah. I mean, it’s a serious business we’ve got. And the hardest part really is growing things, because later on you get the manager, you’re able to free up A lot of your time, you know, Andy. But you know, in a way it’s kind of created an opportunity because, you know, on, on the self serve side, yeah, things are getting more sophisticated and on pickup and delivery to really stand out, you really need to know what you’re doing and you know, beforehand. If you wanted to not worry about the marketing, sometimes people would sign up with the revenue generating, sorry, revenue sharing company where they have their hands in your pocket. And so then they say, hey, we’ll take care of the marketing, we’ll take care of the website, we’ll take care of all this stuff. And it’s operating under their brand and then that really mortgages your future. So not everybody has all the skill set.

Matthew Simmons [00:16:20]:
You know, it’s good to delegate. And so some people see that as appealing because they’re delegating something they may not know how to do do. So that’s something on curbside we really pride ourselves in is we’re looking not just at the software, but we’re looking at the whole business. You know, there’s people in like rural areas, there are people in other areas. They may have a lot of competition, they may have commercial opportunity. And guess what, your website, your web presence, all that stuff should reflect your ecosystem that you’re in. You know, because everybody’s situation is different. And you know, sometimes people say, well, there’s already this real great competition.

Matthew Simmons [00:16:53]:
Well, there’s always opportunity for niches. I mean, that’s one thing people have really done well, going after specific niches and not just like comforters, but even more, you know, like horse blankets too. Like, you know, all types of different things where people rank really well on Google. And I mean we even go after we start getting mop heads. So it’s like, hey, you know, let’s do a whole page on our website about mop heads. And suddenly now we’re getting more commercial accounts. Because who has mops that they need professionally cleaned? You know, it’s not the mom and pops residential, it’s businesses. And guess what? They’ve got other laund.

Matthew Simmons [00:17:30]:
So where there’s a will, there’s a way you kind of need to focus on the whole business. And we’ll get phone calls all the time. Like, how do you price this out on commercial? I just got one this morning. You know, she’s going after Airbnb and it’s like, you know what? Put yourself in the Airbnb’s point of, point of. She, she lost out on this one account and I gave her advice on how to get back in. Well, you know, just taking care of some of those accounts, doing a great job. And then that way if the other person, she knows the other person’s not going to be doing that great of a job, she’s first in line.

Jordan Berry [00:18:00]:
That’s right.

Matthew Simmons [00:18:01]:
And then, and then even on pricing it, there’s some opportunities where you could price the fitted the flats, the cases and by the room, like, okay, there’s twins, there’s queens, they’re king sized beds and they really want to be able to tell their boss how much is this going to cost? So one strategy is you can say, okay, it’s this much per room and you should already know what a queen size room looks like, king size. And then all the towels and all that stuff, it’s just by the pound. And the, by the pound will go in and out of their ears or head and they are making their decision based upon the, based upon the fitted flat, you know, based up on the sheets.

Jordan Berry [00:18:34]:
Yeah.

Matthew Simmons [00:18:34]:
And so that’s one way of standing out and getting those Airbnb accounts. We’ve had clients that have made their entire business off servicing some of the airbnbs with over 100 locations. And we, and that’s another thing we had, probably shouldn’t say this, but we had one client who’s using our software, he switched over to somewhere else and back to us because the invoicing for the Airbnb accounts just didn’t work. And so being in the business, we know, like, hey, you’ve got to break it down by location. You know, you can’t just put it all under one list. And, and so it’s important. And that’s where coming from. Being in the laundry business, we know how the clients, the end, you know, the customer’s customer, you know, not just, you know, how they want to see stuff.

Matthew Simmons [00:19:14]:
And we, and that’s the neat part. We’re able to based on firsthand experience.

Jordan Berry [00:19:20]:
Yeah, I mean it’s, it’s so power. And we talked about this in our very first episode, you know, if I can remember that far back. But we talked about how one of the huge advantages you guys have is that you built this thing for yourselves. And so you’ve been able to test it and you’ve got good volume going through your store. So you’ve, you know, been able to test it. But in addition to that, now you have all these other Laundromat owners that are also giving you feedback and helping you refine it and make it better and getting feedback from their customers. And now there’s a huge volume of a feedback loop that has just continued to refine curbside laundries as you’ve gone through, which is pretty cool.

Matthew Simmons [00:19:58]:
Yeah, one of the cool things were our own guinea pig, you know, so a lot of, you know, so any new feature we tried out at supersets first, you know, even the delivery fee, we didn’t even really want to try charge a delivery fee because all of our vehicles, it says free delivery, but hey, right, you know, we got to test it out. So we charge just a nominal two and a half dollars, which I do recommend. Now, like, even if it’s a nominal amount, it gives you one more lever that you could adjust if you need to adjust pricing, rather than changing your by the pound price, you have another lever. And it’s easier to increase something than to introduce a brand new cost. Yeah, I learned that from the government. That’s right. On rent control, you start off at one thing and then before you know that, it’s another. But, but in any case, so we’re charging two and a half dollars per pickup and delivery.

Matthew Simmons [00:20:42]:
That’s an extra $2,500 a month, you know, so it’s like, hey, I like that. And another feature we’re beta testing right now is auto route fill up. And so what this does, we’re getting about a 3.5% response rate. And so that should be coming out soon. But in essence, what it does is sends out text messages to high propensity client. And so every about $20 we spend, we get about $2,500 of pickup and delivery orders. And so I just want to get it out the door because it’s like I want to see people’s revenues go up. So that’s gonna be a lot of fun.

Jordan Berry [00:21:16]:
Yeah. Wait, so what, what are you doing? What is that feature?

Matthew Simmons [00:21:19]:
So that’s the auto route fill up. And I could send over a screenshot or video of it. Yeah, it, in essence, what it does, it sends them a text message. Because the number one reason somebody doesn’t place an order is, is they forgot about you.

Jordan Berry [00:21:31]:
Like, hey, we’re in your area. Is that what you mean? Like, hey, we’re in your area. If you got any laundry, we can swing by and grab it. That kind of thing.

Matthew Simmons [00:21:37]:
Exactly. And we already have their address, we have their laundry preferences, we have their payment information. So it’s literally two taps to place an order. So they click on the link and they click confirm, you know, or they can make changes if they like. But. And so it Just makes it really fast, really easy. And if you’re. And the whole goal with bringing in more business is reducing friction.

Matthew Simmons [00:22:01]:
And this reduces friction because think about that. You’re pushing that message to clients and they just two taps away versus relying on the customer to remember to go to your website or app and. And then placing an order. It’s like two completely different equations.

Jordan Berry [00:22:16]:
Yeah. All right, I’m putting it out there right now. Whichever one of you takes this and figures out how to precisely time these things, I’m thinking like, hey, Saturday afternoon. I know a lot of people don’t do it probably on Saturday, but Saturday afternoon, after kids soccer games, we send this out. The mom’s looking at the pile of, you know, dirty soccer uniforms is like, you know what? Bam. There you go. Let’s just have these guys take care of it. Right? So I’m.

Jordan Berry [00:22:42]:
I bet there’s like a lot that you could refine on that to be able to just really get. Drive that response rate up. I mean, three and a half percent is huge already. And if you drive, every percent you drive that up is just money in the bank. For sure.

Matthew Simmons [00:22:59]:
Yeah. So this is going after high propensity people. But I agree. I mean, the whole reason why pickup and delivery is just taking off like it is, it’s the mass customization of each individual order because you have a lot of moving parts. And it was just a. People were trying it by hand, but it was the wild West. You know, I was talking to somebody, hopefully signs up with us, but he’s. He’s over in New York, and he’s been doing this since 2009, doing a lot of pickup deliveries.

Matthew Simmons [00:23:25]:
I mean, double digits, closer to 100 than zero. And he’s doing it all on his own. The entire business is in his head. And he gets home from work or home from driving, and he is just like, I have no time to research software. So he is like the last Mohican. You know, he’s. And so. But he’s.

Matthew Simmons [00:23:43]:
And so it’s very hard for him to go away, you know, because people are texting him, they’re calling him, they’re emailing him. I mean, it’s just any which way it goes and, you know, the longer you go doing things a certain way, his business starts reflecting that specific way. And so you really want to get the business out of your head. I mean, just to kind of show you that in scale. So we’re doing over 100 pickup deliveries a day at Super Suds. And. And it’s a well oiled machine. I brought in my daughters and her friends some dry cleaning and, and so, and I go, hey, do you mind dropping this off the dry cleaner? I didn’t run it through the software.

Matthew Simmons [00:24:17]:
I figured we’re doing 100 pickup and delivers a day, we do a great job. And the close got lost and it’s like, I don’t know if they made it to the dry cleaner or back or this or that, but it just, it, you know, that’s what happens. It’s like the reason why things are a well oiled machine and we’re doing a great job and we’ve got great reviews is because we’ve got a strong foundation. And it, it’s just too much to keep in your head. And people just starting off may not value how important it is to have the right foundation, but if you want to grow it, you should. It’s easier to start off right than to try and change it. It, you know, five, 10 years later.

Jordan Berry [00:24:52]:
Oh my gosh. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean we’ve worked with, with people who, you know, have, are, are purchasing a laundromat or have been running a laundromat where it’s all paper tickets and you know, not only, you know, do you have to get everything out of your head and learn to use the system from scratch, but retraining staff, like if you have staff who’s doing laundry and stuff, I found, I don’t know if you’ve seen this with your clients, but I found a lot of times where people, people buy a laundromat, it’s been run off paper ticket system, the staff there knows that system and likes it, doesn’t want to change and you either got to make the tough decision and let them go and try to find new people to hire that are going to run the business how you want to run it, or worse, you keep them and you fight back and forth with them and it never really meshes and it just drags your business down and slows down progress hugely. And we see that happen all the time. All the time. So yeah, starting with that foundation of, you know, listen, if you’re out there and you’re bootstrapping it and you don’t quite have it to, to get the software, I get it, but I would say get it as soon as you can get it, get it. Because having that foundation is going to help propel you forward and it is the engine for growth there as you, as you continue to scale and grow the business. And it’s going to help you do that?

Matthew Simmons [00:26:16]:
Yeah, I’ve heard that story a million times as well. We have a client in San Diego who, when he started with the software or beforehand, he always thought he was busy in Washington fold. And it turns out he was busy because the attendants were only folding laundry when he was there. So he always thought from his perception, there’s always laundry to be done. And then with our software, things were accountable. And a lot of times, I mean, even with the way we got into the business, we had a couple that, that their whole job was just. They ran the washing pole, all they had to do was feed the machines and they got free rent. They had tons of people coming through.

Matthew Simmons [00:26:50]:
They’re probably making what we were making at the time, which was 8,000 gross, you know, per month. And they didn’t have to pay rent, so they’re actually making more. And again, they only had to feed the machines. They figured out how to start the washers and dryers for free. And, and so if it wasn’t for that, we wouldn’t have got into the business. So anybody who’s outsourcing wash and fold because somebody’s offering to do it, I highly recommend doing it yourself. It’s a revenue cent. It’s your reputation.

Matthew Simmons [00:27:16]:
If they do a bad job, they’re going to go to your Yelp. Not, they’re not going to their Yelp, they don’t have Yelp. They’re. They’re going to tarnish your reputation. And if you don’t have the controls in place, a lot of times funny things happen where I have seen it, where managers sometimes leave because they’re used to making extra money because is the Wild west and there’s no accountability.

Jordan Berry [00:27:37]:
I’ve seen that huge. And I think, actually, I think that’s one of the biggest innovations, if I’m honest in our, our industry right now is the, the ability to have cash accountability. I think that’s what’s driving a lot of more sophisticated investors into here. I think that’s what’s driving private equity towards laundromats. I think that’s what’s driving consolidation of owners owning or laundromats than they have in the past, probably because they’re able to now, but also that cash accountability because it’s hard. If you, you, if you have a 20 laundromats, your entire job is going to be collecting quarters. If you have a quarter quarter stores like that’s, you’re just going to drive around collecting quarters and then get to the last one and start over and do it again. So having this ability to not not only accept cash, but also to have cash accountability allows you to, one, not have to go collect quarters everywhere, but two, now you can also have an employee collect cash because the cash that’s at risk is the cash that they’re collecting that one time, not ongoing over and over and over.

Jordan Berry [00:28:43]:
And you can see, here’s how much cash we received and like in our loyalty card payment system, and here’s how much was deposited in the bank and those numbers should be the same. And now you got cash accountability and you’re good to go. Right? And I think that’s, I think that’s a hugely underrepresented innovation in, in the last few years in our industry is the presence of cash accountability.

Matthew Simmons [00:29:06]:
Yeah, I agree. And I think that brings up what I think is the most exciting integration or the most exciting. One of the most exciting trends with Wash and Fold is the integration between software and the payment system, you know, specifically. And I don’t just mean going over, paying for stuff over the counter using your laundry card. I’m talking about your attendant starting the washer and dryer from the curbside laundry software, from whatever software they’re using. And so that integration, the reason why that’s important is because beforehand you’re giving. Your people would give their tenant cash. And it was a big mess.

Matthew Simmons [00:29:41]:
I mean, they’re using spiral notebooks to figure out how many washers and dryers they’re starting during their shift, which orders. And nobody’s really looking at that info is like real quick.

Jordan Berry [00:29:49]:
I just, I, I did this for a while and I used painted quarters. And not only was it a huge pain to even keep, I don’t know where they all went, but I. They eventually dwindled down. I don’t know how that happened. You know what I mean? But not only that, but even just collecting them out, I’d have to like collect quarters. And then I had to fish out all the colored core, like huge pain. So anyways, it just that, that brought back some, some old trauma that I had to just express here for a second, but keep going. Sorry.

Matthew Simmons [00:30:18]:
We were there too. We used painted quarters, so you weren’t the only one.

Jordan Berry [00:30:22]:
Okay.

Matthew Simmons [00:30:22]:
And then we thought we’re really fancy because we’re using tokens. And so then we didn’t have to paint anything and. But I think they’re actually there turned out to be a black market for the tokens because once we switched to the Flex system, we had customers coming in with $200 worth of tokens. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m not going laundromat paying for 200 of tokens at no discount.

Jordan Berry [00:30:44]:
Yeah, yeah.

Matthew Simmons [00:30:45]:
So that’s. We’re actually making thousands of dollars more now with the upgraded payment system. But the tokens were great. They got us to where we were. And then. So now with the integration, what’s really beautiful is rather than going through the color tokens or the spiral notebooks, now the attendance, you know, our software, it could be run on any cloud device, you know, any Internet device. So they could use their tablet, they could use their phone, you name it, or go back to the kiosk. And so they could use their phone and they could choose machine.

Matthew Simmons [00:31:20]:
I’m working on this order and I’m going to use machine 25 and 26 start. And it sends a start signal to those machines. And now I know for a fact that those orders, that start was tied to this order. And, and so that’s huge because, you know, you got a minimum wage employee and you don’t want to tempt people. And if you have. So it is a good thing that they’re using cards instead of cash, you know, because you got cash out of their hands. But that card, I mean, I was talking to Joe Dan from Splash Mount, and he said, like, somebody went into one of his stores because they’re doing laundry for Airbnb. They filled up two rows of washers and in the tenant goes, hey, for 10 or 20 bucks, I could start all those washers for you.

Matthew Simmons [00:32:03]:
And the person went with their card and went boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And so now that scenario, that’s a lot of theft. That was revenue that would have gone directly to his pocket, but instead it went to his attendant. And, and so now with the. We’re able to see, okay, on this order we use this machine mix and it’ll flag any order. So if somebody uses way too many washers for that order, it gets flagged and the, the owner could go straight to that one and focus on. And that happened to us. It turned out one of our attendants was using the 40 pound machine machines for small orders.

Matthew Simmons [00:32:37]:
Why? Because they’re next to our folding station. So, you know, it wasn’t malicious. It made perfect sense from her point of view. Yeah, but we had to explain, you got to use the right size machine, you know, because of utility cost.

Jordan Berry [00:32:49]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, and that’s the thing, right? This is like a, a little bit of a cat and mouse game that we have to play a little bit, right. Of like, hey, we’ve got quarters here. You can give, you know, quarters, you know, and you’re like, wait, where are all my quarters going? It should be the same amount of quarters. Like, they shouldn’t be going out anywhere, El. And then, you know, it’s like, okay, we fixed that. We got tokens. Hey, like, where all these extra tokens come from? You know what I mean? It’s like, okay, we got a card system.

Jordan Berry [00:33:16]:
Well, that’s only good if you’re gonna go through and check all of those things. And I know, you know, I know. I know some people who. They’ve got a camera at every, you know, every. Every machine or every group of machines, and they’ll. They’ll corroborate the.

Matthew Simmons [00:33:33]:
But that’s a lot of work.

Jordan Berry [00:33:34]:
Work, right? And so, you know, as we get kind of better and better, like, listen, this is what we’re talking about. We’re talking about, you know, Laundromats are. You got to run them like a business. They’re not easy. Is. There’s. There are ways that our customers try to get away with stuff. There are ways that our employees try to get away with stuff.

Jordan Berry [00:33:51]:
In fact, there are ways that a lot of us try to get away with stuff as well. So basically, like, no idea what you’re talking about, but, you know, I mean, that’s. That’s just the nature of, like, you’re going to work with people, you’re going to have problems like that. And that’s what we’re talking about when we’re saying, hey, you got to keep your. On your business and. And mind your business, otherwise you’re going to run into this stuff and a lot. I mean, I don’t know. I can’t tell you how you probably run into this a lot, too, but I can’t tell you how many times I ran into, you know, people who sold their business and a buyer bought the business and was like, I’m making.

Jordan Berry [00:34:24]:
I fired the employee and I’m making, you know, four grand more than I thought I was every month because they were just skimming off the top and the previous owner didn’t even know. That’s an extreme example, but it’s happened for sure. So, yeah, it’s.

Matthew Simmons [00:34:38]:
It’s.

Jordan Berry [00:34:38]:
It’s tough. But that cash accountability, I think, is. Is massive. And as we get kind of better and better at tracking, you know, our. Our businesses and how our businesses are performing, it’s gonna not only lead to more profit for us, but also just better service, better employment conditions, all of that. Stuff, we’re able to pay more if we know that nobody’s stealing from us. We can offer, you know, benefits and like we can do more also as owners if we’re, if we’re minding our business, taking care of things.

Matthew Simmons [00:35:11]:
Yeah. And I think that just comes back to just the reporting, the systems in place. And you know, you’re right. Like this industry, I mean, it’s like wildfire in terms of the technology coming in. And then I’m seeing all these, you know, the podcasters, YouTubers, Instagram, TikTok and we’re getting a lot of different voices in the industry as well. And what that’s great is twofold. One is it’s getting new owners. So people are getting into the business or getting exposed to the, quote, the boring business.

Matthew Simmons [00:35:39]:
We got into the business by actually as my dad was driving around and he’s looking for something that was recession proof. This is in the early 90s and he saw a line out the door at a local laundromat and he’s like, you know what? People will always need laundry. And so other people are finding out about this not by driving around but by staring at their phones and like, hey, this sounds interesting. And then so one is getting more owners, which is driving up the prices for laundromats. I mean it’s making it more in demand, which is good for resale. And the other one is it’s also increasing demand for wash and fold and pickup and delivery. Because what are people doing TikTok and Instagram about? They’re showing all the bags of laundry. I mean, each one of these bags is about 45 pounds on average.

Matthew Simmons [00:36:20]:
So when you pick up the laundry, they’re giving you 45 pounds instead of if they bring it to the store, it’s like half that size. It’s about 20, 24 pounds. And so each bag is for us about 100 dol and, and that’s residential. And then on commercial we’re averaging over $300 per order. And those businesses, they’re not going to drive it to the laundromat. They are demanding or not demanding, but they want it picked up. So the whole market I think is growing as a result of people trying out wash and fold and pick up and delivery. And just kind of accentuate that.

Matthew Simmons [00:36:51]:
Point is during COVID this goes Back to episode 20, 20, 22, we’re on during COVID Covid. And we saw from the software side almost everybody’s business who was established, it basically doubled. So people’s revenues just doubled. So you think after people were let out of the house and they could do things on their own, that, hey, maybe things will go back the way it was before? And that wasn’t the case. It still continued to grow, maybe not doubling, but it was still going up the same rate it was before. But it wasn’t a bump, you know, it was a lift. And so I think what that tells me is people try out the service, they like, like it, they value their time and they want somebody else to do their laundry.

Jordan Berry [00:37:34]:
Yeah, I want somebody else to do my laundry, that’s for sure. That’s part of the reason I got into pickup and delivery in the first place back in the day, is I didn’t want to do my own laundry anymore. Yeah, yeah. I mean, pretty. I, I think, I mean, this is, this is kind of my perspective. I’m curious what you think too, but I think we’re still, there’s still so many people that don’t even know that they can have somebody come pick up their laundry and, and bring it back clean and they don’t ever have to leave their house. Like, I think there’s still a huge market for it, both in commercial and residential. I know, like the big, big commercial, like the Cintas, you know, clients and stuff, they know about this.

Jordan Berry [00:38:16]:
Right. But I think a lot of these, like small, medium sized businesses don’t even know that they can outsource their laundry. And so they have, have. How many business owners are bringing laundry home after a long day of running their business and having to do laundry and have employees doing that or having a machine in the back that they’re trying to do while they’re running their business. Like, I think a lot of that is an awareness problem and which is great news for anybody trying to get in the pickup and delivery business because I think the industry on that side of things is just going to continue to grow over time.

Matthew Simmons [00:38:49]:
Yeah, I think people are focusing more on their core competencies and outsourcing the other stuff, you know, going back to the Airbnb, you know, how are they currently doing it if they’re not using a laundry service, they’re having the cleaning service do it. So, you know, the first thing the cleaning service does is they throw the sheets into the washing machine right away because that’s what’s going to take the longest. And then they’re sitting, twiddling their thumbs versus going to the next property and then they’re pulling it out of the dryer. Is it dry? Well, maybe it’s just dry enough. And maybe it’s not. And maybe there’s stains and that’s not their forte. They’re not going all over again. And, and then maybe it’s mildewy and if you could smell it, you’re getting a one star, you know, Travelocity review.

Matthew Simmons [00:39:27]:
So it’s, you know, really letting business kind of reminding businesses what they’re in business for, outsourcing the stuff that they don’t need to be paying their employers, you know, to do. Not as good of a job is, you know, people like us. Moscow.

Jordan Berry [00:39:40]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I think that that’s, that’s my. We have a. We have an Airbnb in the washer. The washing machine went down in the Airbnb like a few months ago and it like threw this because that’s exactly what the cleaning company was doing, was throwing it in our washer, which is probably honestly why it broke because they’re trying to wash sheets and, you know, towels and blankets and stuff in our house washing machine. And, you know, they, they ended up having to like scramble and figure out what to do with it and stuff. And I’m like, I’m thinking make man somebody down the street should be making a bundle of money here, just taking care of this problem for them. So it’s not a problem anymore.

Jordan Berry [00:40:21]:
But there’s business to be had, people, business to be had. You got to go out and get it, though.

Matthew Simmons [00:40:27]:
Yeah. And that’s that, you know, so we’re hosting the curbside conference. Yeah, that really excited about. And so a big focus of that. So that’s June 24 to 26 over in Long Beach. And so we’re. It’s all about pickup and delivery. And one of the big focuses is commercial because we’ve got, we’ve seen so many of our clients just break out, you know, where the revenue is this and now it’s that.

Matthew Simmons [00:40:54]:
And one of the deciding factors where they’re really scaling their businesses is getting those commercial. Commercial accounts. And it’s kind of a different animal. So, you know, we’ve got a lot of speakers who are going to be like, focused on that because, you know, we’ve got, you know, we’re starting. There’s more competition. You know, there’s the pop lens or the, you know, gig economy doing the pickup and delivery or, you know, or just doing it as almost like an Uber driver. That’s their job is they do other people’s laundry and they’re charging sometimes a dollar a pound. And so, and that is a force.

Matthew Simmons [00:41:26]:
And so you Know, we, we. And that also brings us into branding which is we have to brand ourselves way better. So they know you’re a laundry professional. This is not just somebody running it out of their, you know, pinto, you know, and doing the folding the clothes on a, you know, Rice Krispie treat, you know, roach infested, you know, apartment, which you know, some of those are. And, and so this is a, we’re a professional outfit, you know. And so, so yeah, on the low end of the market, market there’s more competition but they’re also helping bringing in awareness so more people are aware of the business. But there’s this really great opportunity where the census are too big. I mean, I just want their crumbs and that’s enough to eat, you know.

Matthew Simmons [00:42:09]:
So we’re doing, you know, for professional sports teams, we’re doing, you know, assisted living facilities, we’re doing chiropractors, dentists, you name it. And those are great accounts. Just to emphasize that, you know, I was looking at our numbers and about, about. So pickup and deliver is 80% of our washing fold. If it wasn’t for pickup and delivery, we would be flat because people are only willing to drive so far to the laundromat or walk, you know. And so pickup and delivery has allowed us to like 10x what we were just like five years ago. So you know, we’re doing about 123,000 a year and now it’s like 1.5 million a year. So the, so in any case the, on, on the commercial account, those, it turns out only 23% of our pickup and delivery, pickup and deliveries are commercial accounts.

Matthew Simmons [00:42:59]:
80% of our pickup deliveries are residential. However, 40% of our profit is from our commercial accounts. So that tells me it’s just so important for us to help other laundry owners get those commercial accounts because I mean we could get rid of 80% of our pickup and deliveries and still have, have 40% of our profit. So those are great accounts. And then we’ve got, you know, guys in the business, you know, hands on going to be talking about how they got the commercial accounts, how they service them, how they price them, how they contract them. So yeah, it’s gonna be good stuff.

Jordan Berry [00:43:34]:
Yeah, yeah. Real quick, point people to where, I mean we’ll have the links and everything, but point people to where to go to find more information about that conference.

Matthew Simmons [00:43:41]:
Yeah, so it’s curbside laundries.com forward/conference and, and then you can see the lineup of the speakers, the topics, I mean all what’s really cool is being on the softer side of things. We could see the movers and shakers, you know, like, and we. Hey, do you want to speak? Like one of them is Alex Bloom. And that goes back to the very beginning of our conversation. Right, you know, today, right now is he grew his business 10 times in eight months. And he gives a lot of the credit to you, to Dave mend, to myself. You know, he educated himself in the business before he even got into the business. And so that type of growth, I mean, I wish we grew that fast, but you know, there’s some real great, there’s a great lineup.

Matthew Simmons [00:44:24]:
Another person, Andrea Carney, so she’s with let’s Talk Dirty in Florida and she started off with just four washing machines and she’s doing great numbers. She already, she just posted, she did over 100,000 and she’s pretty new to the business. She did over £100,000 of laundry with four washing machines and now with those proceeds she’s buying a self serve laundromat. So, so we’re seeing different people get into the business in different ways and when. And me, that’s just so impressive like to be able to, you know, I don’t know about you but like I Wish we had four machines that did £200,000, you know, it’s pretty incredible.

Jordan Berry [00:45:03]:
Well, and you sent me a picture too of those four machines. It’s not like they’re brand spanking shiny new, you know, machines either. They’re, they’re just washing machines. Like it’s like you know, two, I don’t know, 240 pounders, a horizon and a top loader or something that, like, like that and, and to be doing that kind of business, I mean it’s just a credit to though it’s not, it’s not the machines, right? It’s not the machines. It’s the people and the processes that make or break. Especially a pickup and delivery business. You got to have the right people and the right processes and technology software to help you out. But less important is, you know, the brand spanking new machines and you know, all that stuff.

Jordan Berry [00:45:48]:
It’s about how you’re treating your customers, what your brand. Uh, you mentioned branding. I mean that’s another, you know, talk about an innovation or change in this industry. I think brand, I’ve been saying this for a little while now. I think branding is going to become more and more important. It’s already becoming more important. It’s going to become more and more important as we go forward that you properly brand Your laundromat. No longer can you get away with, you know, laundromat or coin laundry on your store.

Jordan Berry [00:46:17]:
You’ve got to brand it. And the reason is, is, is that, you know, if you start looking at some of the people who are going to be on your, your speakers panel and you start looking at, you know, the, the laundromats that are successful, they have very strong brands. And we’ve got some strong brands coming into our industry right now. You’ve mentioned a couple of them, but like Tide Laundries, Franchising is coming in, got Aloha Laundry with Cindy Crawford coming in. We’ve got all kinds of like Poplin. Right. These brands are coming in and they’re strong brands and they’re building trust with people. And that’s exactly what we need to be doing as independent owners and operators is coming in with a strong brand and presenting ourselves the way we want people to think about us.

Jordan Berry [00:47:00]:
Otherwise they’re going to come up with their own way to think about us and we may not like that as much, I think.

Matthew Simmons [00:47:06]:
Yeah. I mean, it’s so right on. And you’re right, the lady, Andrea, when she was operating, she, she said out of those four machines, three of them worked most of the time, one of them hardly ever. And when there’s a lot, she was taking it home. So. But you know what, her branding was phenomenal. Still is. I mean it’s, she has a very recognizable, you know, brand and who, you know, the logo, it was just very well thought out.

Matthew Simmons [00:47:31]:
It’s very memorable. One of her speakers, as well as Michelle and Craig, they have Monster laundry and their whole vision was to be the, the Nordstrom’s of laundry.

Jordan Berry [00:47:41]:
Yep.

Matthew Simmons [00:47:41]:
And so just top tier service. And so, so it’s not just a logo, it’s not just a color scheme, it a Persona. They could tell you exactly who they are. And then that’s almost like a mission statement. Like what is your mission statement? I mean, a lot of us, we don’t have mission statements, but they had a guiding mission statement that tells them how to respond to different situations and then they live up to their brand, they become their brand, they are the brand and something. Our keynote speaker, Sasha Strauss, he’s a professor in branding at USC’s business school, UCLA’s business school. He’s taught, talked to Google, talked to Disney, talked to Lego. I mean this, this guy, I, I’ve known him since first and second grade, so I, you know, otherwise they’d be out of our league in a sense.

Matthew Simmons [00:48:21]:
But he Hooked us up. He’s going to be speaking at the conference and something he said is you need to look at every single touch point that your clients have. And, and we don’t even think about this in that terms. It’s like even your floor mats at your laundromat, the door, the snippet. I mean, before they even go to your website, what does the search results look like? You need to pretend to be the customer and look at every single touch point. And you know, when people go to your website, one thing really, they’re not mousing around your whole website. They’re not going to view your whole website and get information here and get information there and make a decision. You’re lucky if they just look at that one page.

Matthew Simmons [00:48:56]:
So everything needs to be self contained. If they land on that page and it say like it’s guided towards commercial, it doesn’t have everything that commercial account needs in order to go to the next step. Now if they go to the next step and they call and they get a voicemail, what does that look like? You know, or even sometimes not worse. But you know, sometimes one of our tenants do a great job. But then we got a call from a motel and the, you know, one motel could be $10,000 a month in wash and fold. And, and so the, and then it’s like, hey, we got a call from motel. Oh, which one? I’m not sure. They said they call back.

Matthew Simmons [00:49:31]:
You know, so these, these are the, you know, when we all shared one thing, I’m dating myself. But when we shared one single line, it didn’t have our own cell phones. That’s how it was in the family.

Jordan Berry [00:49:39]:
Like, oh yeah, you know, that line was hanging on the kitchen wall there and you couldn’t go more than six feet from it.

Matthew Simmons [00:49:45]:
Yeah, yeah. So you got to look at every single touch point from your receipts, your tickets to your emails, the, to everything the customer does. And then what happens after they place an order and that’s something on curbside we also look at which is, you know, how do you get them coming back? Because again it’s a retention business. And you know, we’re always like studying the information, you know. And so big thing to me is the customer journey. You know, what we found is a huge number of clients just place one order for pickup and delivery, never again. So you know what’s. So that’s an opportunity handy so you could insert yourself, you could create a touch point you could put inside the bag.

Matthew Simmons [00:50:22]:
So one thing we do is on our tickets, we Write first on every single first time clients. So we could do something special like a 8×5 index card with a really sweet promo because we’re not looking at just making a lot of money on the next transaction. We want to create that relationship where they order over and over again where it’s just part. Part of their deal. So that’s. Yeah. So anyways, branding I think is the next frontier that people really need to pay attention to. And, and I was surprised at a recent washable conference.

Matthew Simmons [00:50:52]:
A lot of these laundry owners, they had their, you know, their, not the jerseys but you know, the, their shirts.

Jordan Berry [00:50:59]:
Polos.

Matthew Simmons [00:51:00]:
Yeah. Branded. So people are taking them seriously.

Jordan Berry [00:51:03]:
Yeah. And they should be. I think they really should be. I think it’s wise and I think, you know, I mean we all should be right to be branding. And you know, I mean that, that goes down. I love the, you know, look at every touch point from before a customer ever interacts with you, which is going to be. Be probably Google or Yelp or maybe a social channel and making sure you’re showing up on Google Maps. And you know, once they, Is it easy for them to pull in the parking lot? Once they pull in the parking lot, can they find parking? If they find parking, is it easy to get their clothes from the, all the way through to the follow up, even past their experience with you? Right.

Jordan Berry [00:51:40]:
And going through all those touch points, which I think is, I think is massive, massive to be able to do that. Because again, I mean we’ve, we, I’m pretty sure we even talked about that in our, in our first episode that we did together a long time ago. But it, you know, it takes some work. All right. It takes some work to go through all that. It takes time to evolve it and learn and grow and change and pivot. But that’s what it takes to build a successful business. That’s what it takes to make 150k a month of, of, you know, wash and fold business.

Matthew Simmons [00:52:14]:
For sure. Yeah. And that’s something we’re real strong on as well is having customer success agents reach out to people. And because we figure, you know, it takes about, you know, anywhere from like 20 minutes to an hour that we could help kind of tinker with things that we could see opportunities that forever changes their growth trajectory. You know, so we’re kind of always looking at, you know, helping people kind of bring their aame because, because people shouldn’t have to figure everything out on their own. I mean, there’s just a lot of things we’ve learned through the school of hard knocks. And we’ve experimented a lot with different things. A lot of things haven’t worked, but a lot of things have worked.

Matthew Simmons [00:52:52]:
You know, that’s where, you know, we learned about just even focusing on the online presence was we were doing the door hangers, the mailers, and nothing was working. And our first positive response was online. And that’s something. So now we’re doing Google Ads for different, for just for curbside clients. And it’s been really great just as far as like learning different things about the customer. So one of the things we learned was people with kids are less likely to place an order. People without kids are more likely to convert and turn into wash and fold and pick up and delivery clients. And so, okay, maybe I should just advertise to people without kids.

Matthew Simmons [00:53:31]:
But it turns out the people with kids give you more, more laundry. So you went either way. But it does go to show you the future trajectory of this business. You know, one, the awareness is low. So that tells me. And the awareness is growing because all the tick tock and YouTube, but then there’s a lot of room where you, you ask a random person, did you know about pickup and delivery for laundry? They’re going to say no. And so that tells you there’s a lot of room to grow because once people try it, they like it. And, and then second, the next generation is even more likely to schedule pickup and deliveries and before you know it, they’re going to have kids too.

Matthew Simmons [00:54:05]:
So it’s going to be bigger orders and more often.

Jordan Berry [00:54:07]:
Yeah, yeah. We all know kids are filthy, disgusting creatures and God bless them for it in our industry. Right. Except for when they’re our own kids. Mine are, mine are mostly grown out. I don’t know, they’re teenagers now. They’re different kind of disgusting now I guess over here. So.

Jordan Berry [00:54:25]:
Yeah, okay, so listen, first of all, Curbside conference that’s coming up in June 24th to 26th is that.

Matthew Simmons [00:54:35]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:54:36]:
June 2426 curbside laundries.com conference also I want to make sure I’m not done with this interview. I just want to like recap it real quick just so people have a chance. Also go to curbside laundries.com check out more about curbside laundry software to run your drop off or pick up and delivery business. Um, before I, I’ve got, I’ve got a couple more questions for you before I move on to that. Any other innovations or anything that you see kind of going on that you feel like we need to talk about here.

Matthew Simmons [00:55:05]:
Yeah. So what. One thing I put together a webinar and it’s, it’s free, it’s at get.curbside laundries.com forward/webinar. And it might be easier just with, in the show notes.

Jordan Berry [00:55:18]:
Yeah, we’ll put the link in there.

Matthew Simmons [00:55:20]:
Yeah. So that, that webinar, it’s really, I started off with I just bought a Laundromat. Now what? Because there’s so many important things to do and, and then I put in so many different revenue generating ideas that I changed the, the name of it to how to increase your revenue at your laundromat. So how to increase your laundromat’s revenue. And so I put it, it’s a one hour and you know, and I talked to like for example, when people buy a Laundromat one of the top things that forget is to get their digital keys. And so somebody buys the Laundromat and then about six months a year later, guess what happens? Their website goes poof and they get a 404 error because they never got the domain transferred to the new owner. And the same goes with their Yelp login with the Google my business login. All these things are so critical to your business.

Matthew Simmons [00:56:07]:
And I was telling that story to a group over at the teeters conference and about three people in the audience out of a 100 had that happen to them. So this is a big thing. And so not only is it for new owners, like hey, these are things you got to do, but then even for experts, people have been in the industry for a long time, there’s going to be some nuggets in there that will help them increase their web presence and get more customers. So yeah, it’s good. Out of your time.

Jordan Berry [00:56:33]:
Yeah, listen, I mean it’s free and you’re telling people how to make more money. So I don’t know, I mean it sounds like a no brainer to me to go watch that. Take an hour of your time. Stop scrolling TikTok watching Laundromat coin collection videos and, and go watch this webinar and make your own money.

Matthew Simmons [00:56:50]:
How about that?

Jordan Berry [00:56:51]:
Yeah, we’ll put the link there. Go ahead.

Matthew Simmons [00:56:55]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think there, there’s a big difference. Like with Instagram and TikTok, it’s really about entertainment. People are watching the quarters going to the buckets and that’s entertainment. But I think the real education is on YouTube. It’s on the podcast. You know, that’s where you’re really investing in Yourself and, and learning.

Jordan Berry [00:57:13]:
Yeah, I agree with that too. The long form content, you know, I know people tell me all the time because I, you know, my wife tells me I’m a slow talker and people tell me that all the time. They’re like, I listen to your podcast, but I listen to it at one and a half or two times speed. Like, all right, well hey, that’s great. But I think that long form content is where you can really dive in and you know, talk about like, which is what I want to talk about next. Like, hey, how did you grow this thing to $150,000? Like what tips do you have have? Let’s say there’s somebody who’s brand new starting a pickup and delivery business. Maybe they own a laundromat, maybe they don’t yet. Give me like 1, 2 tips for the newbie that can help them, you know, hit that.

Jordan Berry [00:57:58]:
You talked about how like growing a business was hard and there’s, and you’re right, like getting to that scale where you can like hire a manager and you know, take your own personal foot off the gas for a little bit, let somebody else drive a little bit is, it’s hard to get, get there. But let’s give some people a jump start. What are one or two tips you got for the newbie out there to start their own pickup and delivery business?

Matthew Simmons [00:58:20]:
Yeah, so I’d say number one is you. You need to answer the question, how are you going to get business? And with pickup and delivery, like self serve, it grows faster on its own than wash and fold. And wash and fold grows faster on its own than pickup and delivery. But pickup and delivery has the most long term value because, because you’re able to expand, you’re able to grow, you’re able to not be limited by who’s within a two mile radius. So that’s why I love pickup and delivery. And I’d say the number one thing to focus on is going to be your web presence. And there’s a lot to that. It’s both your website, then the different websites that are linking to you and, and I’ve.

Matthew Simmons [00:59:01]:
And the problem is even if you do everything right, it still takes about three months for the website to get traction. And so if you do things wrong, you sign up with the wrong company and you’re going to have to wait three months to realize that didn’t work. So I’d say your number one cost is wasting time with the wrong solution. Whoever does your website, I would do incognito searches. You can Right click on, you know, the icon and choose incognito. Do searches for laundromat pickup or I mean, laundry pickup near Long Beach. And so you could do wash and fold pickup, you know, towel laundry service, wash and fold near Long Beach. And you’ll see our family slaughter mat supersedes.com at the top.

Matthew Simmons [00:59:40]:
You could even do it for Newport beach, which is 30 or 40 minutes away. And you’ll see super suds right at the top, even though we’re really far away. And guess what? We’re picking up laundry from there. And that’s a significant market. So, you know, so I recommend to people to do your own, like, due diligence. And I’ve heard so many. Sometimes we’re, you know, we’ll get replaced in a sense by, oh, I got a family member who does websites. And you can’t really knock it because it’s their family member, you know, so.

Matthew Simmons [01:00:07]:
But just make sure they really are focused, specific to laundry because laundry is different than a pizza shop or a bricks and mortar location, especially pickup and delivery, because you need domain authority. You need to rank for the what and the where. So the what is the different garments, the different things you want to rank well for. And you also need to rank for the wear. And a lot of other people don’t even know what the problem they’re trying to solve is. You know, they’re just making a website that looks pretty and people get attached to it. And then the. We had a client actually in Colorado who had a beautiful website, and so they didn’t want to change it.

Matthew Simmons [01:00:41]:
He was, his revenue was kind of flat at some point. And then he goes, you know, I’m going to be switching over, you know, because they’re going to do all the marketing for me. And I’m like, you know, before you mortgage your future, before you give up a part of your revenue to a third party and bring the competition into your neighborhood, why don’t you let us make a website first? And since then he, his business has taken off and, you know, I never got. Well, you know, it’s kind of interesting because he could have given up 35% of his revenue. Now it’s under his own brand. So that’s my top advice. Do it under your own brand. You don’t have to be the expert, but you need to team up with people who are.

Jordan Berry [01:01:18]:
Yeah. What’s a, what’s. I mean, 35% ROI right there is great just for letting you put together a website. So I, I mean, it’s huge. Right. It’s massive. We talk about how, you know, having the right website showing up at the top, having great Google reviews, that’s like, that’s most money in your pocket. There’s money in your pocket.

Jordan Berry [01:01:38]:
It’s why those things are so important. So you got to take good care of your customers and then ask for a review or, you know, through the software system, asking for the review. That’s why you’ve got to, you know, when there’s a problem that goes. Not if, but when there’s a problem that goes wrong, you got to take care of it swiftly and, you know, aggressively take care of that problem, take care of that customer, make sure it’s right. Cause like you mentioned earlier, that customer’s probably worth two to three grand a year. Not to mention they have the ability with one click of their finger to, you know, to keep you from getting more business by giving you a bad review. Right. So this stuff is so, so important, especially early on as you’re getting started.

Jordan Berry [01:02:25]:
Huge, huge, huge. To focus on that and to get some volume under those reviews and to start, you know, start ranking. And, and two, if you’re just real. Sorry, I know you got more to say if, if you there and you’re, you’re getting ready to start. I talk to people like this all the time. You’re getting ready to start your pickup and delivery business. Maybe it’s with your Laundromat or without your Laundromat. I would suggest, like, if you’re like, hey, I’m doing it, I’m just kind of getting ready.

Jordan Berry [01:02:50]:
I got to do yada, yada, yada, get your website up now because like Matt was saying, it takes a little while for that to start ranking naturally, organically on the search engine results pages. So if you get it up earlier and you have it done right, it can be doing its magic while you’re doing your other stuff. And so when you’re ready to go, it’s ready to, ready to go too. All right, go ahead. Sorry.

Matthew Simmons [01:03:11]:
Yeah, you’re right. It takes time to marinate. And the other part is you got to keep the customer, you know, you got to do a great job. That’s one of the reasons, you know, we offer to all of our clients, you know, a free visit behind the scenes tour of our family Slaughter mat Super Suds. And they could go out with the driver, they could see how we’re folding the clothes and the laundry and everybody sort of has different questions. And then it also gives people a lot of confidence that they’re doing things right, you know, and they’ve seen it firsthand. And, you know, it’s a great investment for us because if they’re successful, they stick with us. So.

Matthew Simmons [01:03:42]:
And, you know, I’d say that also kind of ties in with. With networking with other people. You know, going back to the conference or could be just a local get together. It really. In this business, you know, networking with other people, you’re going to learn a lot.

Jordan Berry [01:03:58]:
Yeah, huge. I mean, I know you’re part of a couple mastermind groups. I’m a part of a couple mastermind groups both in, in the industry and out of the industry. And, you know, we, you know, I know. Well, I know we put together mastermind groups for people who want to be in a mastermind group. I. I just think there’s so much power in getting together with a bunch of other weirdos thinking about the same weird things that you’re thinking about, like laundry and, you know, who are trying to build businesses the way you’re trying to build a business and getting together and, you know, sharing ideas, critiquing ideas, helping problem solve together, just encouraging. Just having somebody to hear you and your frustrations, all that stuff is so.

Jordan Berry [01:04:39]:
It. I was going to say valuable. I think it’s invaluable. Like, you.

Matthew Simmons [01:04:42]:
It.

Jordan Berry [01:04:43]:
I don’t even know if I’d be here today if I didn’t have groups like mastermind groups or groups of people that I was meeting with on a regular basis. I. I don’t know if I’d be here because it’s hard. It’s hard to run a business. It’s hard to scale, it’s hard to grow. It’s hard to stay consistent. We were talking about being consistent on hosting podcasts before we hit record and, and the struggle there. But the same with laundry, right? Like, it’s hard to stay consistent with building that business, delivering the same, you know, quality of product day after day after day, client after client after client.

Jordan Berry [01:05:12]:
It’s hard. And so having other people is transformational.

Matthew Simmons [01:05:16]:
I would say 100%, because, you know, we’re all stuck in our own bubble and we get our routines down and it’s so important. And by having a mastermind group, you’re with other people. You gotta love and respect. And when you hear there’s just so much, so much stuff that we don’t even know, I mean, there’s more stuff we don’t know than stuff we know. And by networking with other people, it’s like, oh, I never would have thought of that. And then you’re having these conversations that just would not exist. So, I mean, that’s what makes life so much fun, is just being creative. I think that’s why we’re drawn towards the laundry business, is we’re, we’re able to add our special sauce to it.

Matthew Simmons [01:05:52]:
And when you’re talking to other people, it just helps you kind of break free and, and be able to do things. And you know, that’s where I’ve just got a lot of, of respect for, you know, the, there’s different like influencers like yourself, like Dave men, different people who are like helping other people. And just because it’s, rather than having learn everything on your own and it all just comes from networking with other people. That’s, I’d say the number one takeaway from any conference is the people at your table, the people you say hi to. And another thing we’re doing on the badge is we’re writing down the city and state that people are from just to help promote communication. One, it’s something to talk about, but then two, it kind of lowers the guards because then you’re not, you don’t have to talk to the person who has a laundromat two miles away, you know, and chances are we’re pulling in people from all over the country, so it’s not going to happen anyways. But it just gives people that confidence to speak freely, to share, because that’s really how you’re going to excel.

Jordan Berry [01:06:46]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and a lot of, I mean, this is not news to most people, but a lot of the value of a conference like this is coming from stage, but a lot of it’s coming off stage too. And it’s at lunches and the dinners and the breaks in between and you know, after hour stuff, things like that that are happening that you start to make these connections with people and you start coming up with new ideas and getting reinvigorated. I, being reinvigorated is like one of the things I love most about conferences because sometimes, you know, you just, you need to feed off the energy of other people who are excited about what you’re doing and what they’re doing. And it could be a huge help. So, so, yeah, huge. And listen, if you’re in the industry or you’re thinking about getting in the industry, you know, make sure you’re hitting up the curbside laundries conference. He, he told me last one they did was pretty big.

Jordan Berry [01:07:34]:
He told me they’re, they’re doing it up big this time. If you go look at their speaker lineup. Yeah, they’re. They’re pulling out the stops here to make this. Make this a winner, to help you grow your business, which is huge. So real, real quick question. I think practical question may be in some people’s mind mine. Do I have to be a curbside client to go to this conference?

Matthew Simmons [01:07:55]:
Oh, great question. And so you do not. This is open to anyone thinking. Thinking about getting into pickup and delivery or already doing pickup and delivery. Most of the people came were. Are actually already doing it or they’re doing wash and fold, and they’re going to be getting into it. They only have one thing in common. They want to grow pickup and delivery.

Matthew Simmons [01:08:14]:
So if that’s your. What you want to do, this is a conference that’s exclusively for. Focused on that topic. And the vendors from last time, I got this highlight reel of, you know, the vendors giving testimonials. And they all said one thing, you know, without prompt, without even us prompting them. They said the crowd, they were so impressed with the crowd. They said it’s the most sophisticated crowd they’ve seen. And so.

Matthew Simmons [01:08:36]:
And I think it’s because the pickup and delivery guys, they’re literally the go getters. You know, they’re not complacent. They’re not waiting around to fall into the machine. They are picking up laundry. And so these guys are driven. And. And so it’s just a great, great group of people. So I think the networking opportunities can be huge.

Jordan Berry [01:08:53]:
Yeah, huge. Huge.

Matthew Simmons [01:08:54]:
Huge.

Jordan Berry [01:08:55]:
All right, so I got one more question for you before we wrap this thing up, and that is, listen, if. If somebody out there, you know, there’s been a ton. You’ve. You already have like, a ton of, like, golden nuggets here to take away whether you’re new or your. Or your season. But if. If I came to you and I was a seasoned pickup and delivery operator, but I’m still looking to grow, Maybe I’m in that sort of no man’s land middle. I’m, like, not quiet enough to have a manager, but that’s the goal.

Jordan Berry [01:09:24]:
That’s where I’m trying to get to. Do you have one piece of advice for that person who’s, you know, relatively seasoned but still trying to grow?

Matthew Simmons [01:09:35]:
Yeah, great question. And there’s a lot of people in that boat. Most of our clients that sign up with curbside laundries, they’re doing their own pickup and delivery themselves when they first get started. And one of her speakers is Cami. She’s laundromat. The laundromat Laundromat girl official on Instagram and TikTok. And she’s going to be talking about how she got into the business specifically to. She created.

Matthew Simmons [01:09:58]:
She was putting a lot of hours in the beginning. I mean, for three hours, she was a nurse doing pickup and delivery. She was working crazy hard. But she had a plan, which. Which was to own the business and not have the business own her. And so a lot of us can get into that place where the business is owning us, and it’s really hard to get out. And a lot of times we think we can’t get out, but you can. You know, we got a manager over at Super Suds who does a lot of the stuff for us.

Matthew Simmons [01:10:23]:
So it doesn’t, you know, takes care of the things. She’s got the same thing, but she’s been in the business a lot less time. But she set this up intentionally. Talk about Joe dan. He’s got 10 stores. He is not at every single store all at one time. You know, he’s hardly at his stores at all because. Because he’s got a system in place.

Matthew Simmons [01:10:41]:
So there are ways to build that system. It does take time, but you have to be intentional about it. And Cammie’s going to be talking specifically about how she created that system in place. But really, the long short of it, it has to be intentional. You have to be okay with delegating. You have to have the standard operating procedures. Otherwise you’re starting every day all over like a groundhog. And by having standard operating procedures and training centers, somebody else.

Matthew Simmons [01:11:07]:
You know, those are the steps for success. And in the beginning, the number one thing is to grow it. And then that gives you options. So you could hire the talent so you could focus on ideas which help you grow even more.

Jordan Berry [01:11:18]:
Yeah, yeah. That’s huge. And that, I mean, I think that’s critical, you know, and it’s. It’s pretty common. Not just in our business. I think it just as a business owner in general, it’s like the whole, like, what got you here won’t get you there scenario where, like, if you’re in that. In those shoes, it’s because you. You grinded, you worked extra shifts, you did long hours.

Jordan Berry [01:11:39]:
I mean, like, that’s like. Dave Men’s story is similar. Right? Like, he just. He worked and then he worked on his laundromat, and then he got up and worked on his laundromat, and then he worked and he worked on his laundromat. Right. Like so many, you know, just entrepreneurs in General, that’s their, you know, that’s their cadence. That’s what they do. And.

Jordan Berry [01:11:56]:
And then they are trying to get out of their job. So they get out of their job eventually, but then they just work on their business all the time. They don’t know how to get out of that because it’s really difficult to do.

Matthew Simmons [01:12:07]:
And it’s.

Jordan Berry [01:12:08]:
It’s what got them to that level of success where they were able to, like, leave their job. But to get to that next level where you have a little bit of freedom, it’s a hard jump to make because you have to give up control. And it’s a different skill set. It’s the skill set of putting the systems that are in your head, like you mentioned earlier, on to pay paper. And AI can help you with that now. So there’s some tools that we have access to that would blow your mind five years ago, right?

Matthew Simmons [01:12:35]:
So you.

Jordan Berry [01:12:35]:
But helping you get those onto paper and developing those systems and then refining them and then handing over some of the control, you know, it could be a little out of time, but you got to hand over some of the control of your business. And we get stuck in that. Nobody can do it as good as me. Nobody’s going to fold as good as me. Nobody’s going to have the relationship with the customers that I have. And if you get stuck in that mindset, you get stuck in the business that you’re in, and it leads to burnout a lot of times and overworked and depression and dejection and loneliness and et cetera, et cetera. Not always. I don’t want to, like, paint a bleak picture, but if your goal is to have more of that freedom in your life, that’s what it takes.

Jordan Berry [01:13:16]:
And it’s tough. It’s tough to do. It’s tough stuff to do. So listen, another reason to go to the conference. Go, go. Listen to Cammy and some of the other people who’ve already gone through that part of the journey, if that’s where you’re at and you’re trying to get out of that to the next level. Killer.

Matthew Simmons [01:13:33]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:13:34]:
Awesome, man. Well, listen, this has been awesome. I mean, you’ve just all, as always, as always, brought a ton of just great wisdom because you’ve done it and you’re doing it, and you talk to a lot of people who are doing it. It as well. And so I appreciate you taking the time to come on again. Check out curbside laundries.com if you’re interested in the software. And I believe just on the website there, you can book a demo, right, to talk to somebody about it.

Matthew Simmons [01:14:01]:
Yeah. And, you know, one of our clients just posted on Facebook, you know, picture of his van fully loaded with laundry, and it goes in this. Yeah. Chris Stark from Atlanta Laundry Company. Great guy. And he goes, this is one of our two delicious delivery vans heading out for the day. This is not a flex, but simply a testament to what the curbside laundry’s best practices have done for a business. Hit me up if you want to chat.

Matthew Simmons [01:14:23]:
And, you know, that’s something we take pride in ourselves, you know, that’s why, you know, our. Our feeling is we could have kept, you know, we did webinars. I’ve got some webinars on YouTube about how to get started with pickup and delivery. You could use any software you want, you know, but the main thing is the message is clear, you know, pick up delivery, delivery. And then it’s not only the software, Software is a big part of it, but it’s like all the things, concentric circles around it as well, you know, to make sure you have a business. And the software is one part of it, but it’s also the customer experience, it’s the marketing, it’s the touches, it’s the branding. And, you know, that’s. Yeah.

Matthew Simmons [01:14:58]:
So there’s a lot of best practices to help you excel. And the information’s out there.

Jordan Berry [01:15:03]:
Yeah, it is out there. The information’s free. I’ve been saying it since started learning my resource, like, information should not cost you information. And the reason for it is because implementation is where the money is at. You gotta take action. And actually, that’s the difficult part. That’s the part where people separates the people who scroll on TikTok, watching people collect quarters from the people collecting the money, and the people who say, you know what, I saw that and now I want to go get one myself. Here I am, ready to go get one.

Jordan Berry [01:15:32]:
Right. It takes that implementation and now more than ever before, for the knowledge is out there not just because of podcasts like yours and others and YouTube channels and some of the social media stuff, but we’ve also got these powerful tools that can help us organize this information, come up with a plan in, you know, AI. And then there’s also more than ever, you know, people like consultants and people who will help you, you know, one on one with your journey as well. So you’ve got tons of resources and zero excuses. So if you’re out there, out there looking to get into the laundromat business or wash and Fold or pick them and delivery. You’ve got no excuses. You got to get off your hiney and get to work and head over to curbside laundries.com conference to book your seat for that conference coming up in 6-24-26. How about that? Dude, I got fired up for a second there and I’ll jump off the.

Jordan Berry [01:16:28]:
Jump off the soapbox. But Matt Laundromatt, appreciate you once again for coming on. Let’s not make it so, so long between the next time you come on the show. How about that?

Matthew Simmons [01:16:39]:
You know, it really doesn’t feel as long just because I’ve been listening to you. I heard that let’s Grow Company on there. We hired them out super subs to help us. And so it doesn’t feel like it’s been as long as it has been. But you’re right, it has been way too long. So thanks for having me on the podcast. It’s. Yeah.

Matthew Simmons [01:16:55]:
Been nice to reconnect.

Jordan Berry [01:16:56]:
Yeah, anytime, man. Open invitation. You want to do anything, come on. Podcast, do webinar, whatever, QS A. I’m game to do anything with you guys. I love what you guys are doing. I appreciate the time, the effort, the money, the investment, the blood, sweat and tears that it’s taken to help continue to push our industry forward and to help continue to help owners and operators become successful and achieve their goals. That’s what it’s about when you’re.

Jordan Berry [01:17:22]:
We’re talking about the software that you’re building, right? You’re trying to help people achieve their goals and to serve their communities. And I can’t think of a better goal or mission than that. You talked about not having, you know, having a. The ports of having a mission statement that’s a. I don’t know if that what your written mission statement is, but that’s a pretty good mission. That’s what you guys are doing. So I really appreciate you guys doing that, continuing to innovate, continue to reinvest in the business, to continue to reinvest in our industry overall, man. Appreciate it.

Matthew Simmons [01:17:50]:
Oh, thank you.

Jordan Berry [01:17:51]:
Absolutely. All right, we’ll talk again soon.

Matthew Simmons [01:17:54]:
All right, see you later.