Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
Hey. Hey, what’s up, guys? It’s Jordan with the Laundromat Resource podcast. This is show 247 and I’m pumped you’re here today because today we have back on the show, Barbara and Ernesto with Kolari and Wardell marketing and ad agency. And listen, we’re talking all things AI. This is like an AI masterclass today and how you can use AI in your Laundromat business. There are are things that you can implement yourself. There’s some pretty incredible things that they can implement for you and your business. And we just talk AI in general and how we can use it to improve our lives and our businesses.

Jordan Berry [00:00:39]:
Fascinating episode. AI is all the rage. It’s moving super fast. Things are changing so quickly that I don’t know, maybe we may have to have a semi regular AI podcast episode because it’s changing so quick. But without further ado, let’s jump into. Oh, before we jump into it, actually, I wanted to mention Barbara and Ernesto and I are going to be doing a live Q and A, talking all things AI and being able to allow you to ask questions about AI or some of the things we talk about in this episode. That’s coming up May 21, 2026 at 2:00pm Best Coast West Coast Time and 5:00pm East Coast Time. So be there for that for sure.

Jordan Berry [00:01:23]:
Get your questions in all things AI for your business. And I know you’re going to be blown away by what’s, what’s possible here with AI in your little old Laundromat business or little old Laundromat empire you got building over there. So you might have questions about how to apply it specifically to your specific business. Bring it to that live Q and A Again, that’s May 21, 2pm Pacific Time, 5pm East Coast Time. And be on the lookout for an email with more details about that that’ll be hosted on YouTube live on my LinkedIn channel, maybe some other places, but definitely on YouTube at the Lawnmower Resource YouTube channel. By the way, if you haven’t subscribed over there, I haven’t, I haven’t pointed anybody over there in a little while. While you’re over there reserving your spot for that live Q and A, uh, go ahead and give us a. Give us a subscribe.

Jordan Berry [00:02:16]:
Uh, I can’t even say it. It’s been so long since I’ve asked. But go give us a subscribe over there. Lots of good stuff happening all the time on the Laundromat resource. Laundromat resource YouTube channel, including that live Q and A. So now, without any further ado, let’s jump into it with Barbara and Ernesto. Oh, man. Back on the show, Ernesto and Barbara.

Jordan Berry [00:02:37]:
How are you guys doing today?

Barbara Wardell [00:02:39]:
We’re doing great.

Ernesto Cullari [00:02:40]:
We’re happy to be back with you. It’s been. It feels like it’s been way, way, way too long.

Barbara Wardell [00:02:44]:
Way too long. Definitely.

Jordan Berry [00:02:46]:
Yeah. Well, you know. You know, my feelings on this is if it’s been more than a day, it’s been too long. We should just be hanging out every day. You know what I mean?

Ernesto Cullari [00:02:53]:
We don’t live in heaven like you do. You’re in the heavenly bliss of Hawaii. We’re where mortal people live, you know, where the weather changes, know, cold and icy. And I just.

Jordan Berry [00:03:07]:
I want you guys to know the pink plays in Hawaii. So you guys maybe just need to come out here.

Ernesto Cullari [00:03:11]:
Ready?

Jordan Berry [00:03:12]:
You know, we’re ready.

Barbara Wardell [00:03:13]:
We’re going.

Ernesto Cullari [00:03:15]:
We should do.

Jordan Berry [00:03:15]:
We should do one of these on the beach. One of these days, you know, maybe we can get a pink couch and throw it in the sand, because we love the beach. Yeah. Yeah, that’d be good. Well, hey, super excited to have you guys back on the show. This one I’m excited about. We’ve been kind of chatting a little bit about what to talk about, and we’re. We’re going straight to the hotspot right now.

Jordan Berry [00:03:34]:
We’re hitting AI and real quick. Before we jump into it, though, I want to just give you guys a quick opportunity to. If. If you haven’t heard who Ernesto and Barbara are, Kalari and Wardell, tell us who you guys are, and then you guys who are listening go back and listen to their previous episodes, too. But who are you guys?

Barbara Wardell [00:03:56]:
Well, now we. We have a lot of titles now, but we started a geofencing company, and we have grown our marketing and everything with AI and everything else. How do you want to wrap it up?

Ernesto Cullari [00:04:13]:
So, yeah, Barbara and I got started, I think, three or four years ago.

Barbara Wardell [00:04:18]:
Yeah, almost four years.

Ernesto Cullari [00:04:19]:
Four years ago.

Barbara Wardell [00:04:20]:
Almost four years, yes.

Ernesto Cullari [00:04:21]:
And I have been doing geofencing a while. You know, start off with working with the biggest operators in the business and, you know, driving. I mean, right out the gate, we were doing like 5,000 plus visits a month. And then Barbara and I joined forces, and then we had a. We appeared on your podcast. And the interesting thing about that conversation we had is, you know, Barbara and I were always thinking about how do we take technology and use it for our business and then use it for our clients and take it to the next level. And at that point I don’t even know if it was called, but there were platforms around back then called Make. So make is like, you could think of it like a no code way to do automation.

Ernesto Cullari [00:05:10]:
So automation at that point was really basic. I had messed around with automation with Instagram in around 2015. That’s when I really got into looking at automation. But then Meta shut us down. Any, any type of third party integration you did into when they acquired Instagram, they shut you down. So my background for, for automation goes way back then, but that we touched on it with our very first podcast talk together. Because what Barbara and I wanted to do is learn how to automate or introduce AI or automation into geofencing. Because why is geofencing important? Because it leads to foot traffic.

Ernesto Cullari [00:05:52]:
So this discussion is sort of like a long time coming and it’s a culmination of really what began back in 2015 with Instagram automation and then getting into geofencing and then Barbara and I partnering up and appearing on your podcast.

Barbara Wardell [00:06:08]:
And we made a lot of promises to our customers that we would stay right on top of all the technology. And we have kept that promise to this day. It’s a lot of work, but we have done it.

Ernesto Cullari [00:06:20]:
Very true.

Jordan Berry [00:06:21]:
I think that’ll be evident by the end of this thing as we start digging into, into it. But let’s, let’s, let’s, you know, AI can be an intimidating topic for some people to talk about. A lot of people aren’t living in it, breathing it, eating it, sleeping in it like you guys are. And all they know about AI is maybe a little bit about chat GPT and how it’s going to take over the world and enslave us all. So let’s maybe start with, you know, how, how do you guys look at AI? What is AI? What do we need to know high level about AI?

Ernesto Cullari [00:06:57]:
Most people think about AI like Alexa or Siri or ChatGPT and that AI is a language model and most products that most people have experience with would be a large language model with a wrapper. So what I mean by that is if you’re using a chat widget with no tools on your, your website, then you’re using a basic version of AI which is basically ChatGPT, given a few instructions to answer a few questions on your website. And that’s basically what, what people think of as AI. People think AI can freely think and in some ways it can. It depends on what you plug the information that.

Barbara Wardell [00:07:49]:
Right.

Ernesto Cullari [00:07:50]:
The information you give it and the guardrails that you give it. But what AI actually is and where it becomes useful is a large language model, could be example, a real world model where it knows proprioception is another example. But it has tools. So if you see self driving cars, you know, I spent a lot of time pitching at the Capital factory in Austin and everywhere I went was with a self driving car. We had our food delivered by robot. And that is AI in the real world where you give it a tool, you give it a task, it can handle those tasks. You have metrics to, to, to verify and validate what work was done or what work was not done. And the reason why we’re here is because I think that there’s a large gaping hole in business, in particular the laundromat industry, the laundry industry, because there’s all these tools now that don’t have to do with large language model wrappers one and that have tools that could do real work for you and actually can make you money from moment one.

Ernesto Cullari [00:09:01]:
And that’s the important thing. If you’re using AI and it’s just a chat widget on your site, that’s a vanity thing, that’s really nice, you might as well have a gold belt buckle because it’s really not doing much for you. Right. Hold your pants up. That’s it. But it’s really not being fruitful for you. I was curious because you talked to laundromat operators probably in more than one country by now. You know, you’re all over.

Jordan Berry [00:09:23]:
Yeah.

Ernesto Cullari [00:09:24]:
So I’m really curious what you’re hearing, what complaints you hear about AI. What good do you hear about, about AI in the laundry. Laundry industry, what you think is possible, all those kinds of things. Because I think you’re, you’re at a great vantage point to hear things from, from many different angles. So what have you heard about AI and, and its application in the laundry industry?

Jordan Berry [00:09:45]:
Yeah, I mean, I’ll just shoot straight with you. It’s probably not going to be a surprise to you or maybe anybody, but I would say most people are not really using AI meaningful way in our industry yet. I mean, you know, and we, we’ll, we’ll talk about this, I’m sure. But even, even when it comes to just basic marketing without AI or anything, still a lot if not most laundromats are not even doing that. So you know, the utilization of AI is, we’re in an infant stages. So if you’re out there and you’re listening to this and you’re like oh, man, I’m so behind the eight ball. There are a few people that you are probably behind in our industry, but by and large you’re okay. So.

Jordan Berry [00:10:26]:
But with that said, there are some pretty cool use cases out there of AI. You know, obviously people are using chatbots, stuff like that on their website. Some, the sort of like the next level to that is some of the answering services that are out there to be able to answer your phones. There’s some of that out there. Some people are using that to not miss out on customer service calls. I’ve heard some people using AI in some creative ways to kind of help them analyze some of the data they’re getting from their POS systems or their, their software.

Barbara Wardell [00:11:06]:
Okay. So they put it in there and then get a report out.

Jordan Berry [00:11:09]:
Yeah, getting some reports and opportunities for growth, profitability problems. I mean, there’s a whole lot of, you know, things like that that you can do with AI that people are doing. I’ve just started seeing, and I’m surprised it’s kind of taking this long actually, but I just started seeing some people in the industry who are starting to vibe code some, some dashboards or apps or things like that. We’ve, you know, we’ve got some stuff over here that, that we put together too, but I’ve been seeing some people trying to, you know, get that out there. So I think that’s kind of interesting. Yeah, but you know, in terms of like, where we can go with this, I, I mean, I think that we’re, like I said, we’re just scratching the surface and, and still most people aren’t utilizing it at all. What are you guys seeing? You’re, you’re talking to a lot of owners now too.

Ernesto Cullari [00:11:59]:
I’m seeing that the best operators in the industry are not using AI almost at 100% level. Yes. They’re using it in. As a tool. ChatGPT as a tool or Claude as a tool. Like you just said that they might, in a good way. They’re, they’re using it maybe to vibe code some, some of the assets that they need. But the best operators in the country are not.

Ernesto Cullari [00:12:23]:
They don’t have any unified kind of platform. They have no unified communications, no unified way to manage their data. And whether you’re in laundry or in medicine, we actually came up with many of the tools that we’re going to talk about today by developing what’s called Luke Luke. You can look at it. It’s a telehealth platform that peptide companies use. Clinicians that do telehealth and prescribed peptides that need to deal with blood work. So we took a lot of that technology and now we’re coming back to the laundromat industry. Not just to do.

Ernesto Cullari [00:13:01]:
We’ve always been doing geofencing, but we never left it. Never left it. That’s a good point. But we’re taking the tools that are used in telehealth that we developed and now we’re offering them. Now that they’re proven technologies. We’re now we’re offering it to small business in a unified way for laundromat owners. And you defined. Actually have a little outline here that you kind of.

Ernesto Cullari [00:13:25]:
You mentioned. Let me see if I can share my screen while you’re doing that.

Jordan Berry [00:13:29]:
I, I appreciate that you experimented first on the healthcare industry before you brought it into something serious like laundry.

Ernesto Cullari [00:13:35]:
That’s right.

Jordan Berry [00:13:37]:
We need it proven.

Barbara Wardell [00:13:39]:
Seriously use it on human beings first.

Ernesto Cullari [00:13:41]:
If they don’t die. The idea is if they don’t die, then we can use this totally for, for laundry.

Jordan Berry [00:13:48]:
He guess it’s okay.

Barbara Wardell [00:13:51]:
So.

Ernesto Cullari [00:13:51]:
Absolutely. So let me see if I’m sharing. Did that work?

Barbara Wardell [00:13:59]:
Yes, there it is. Did you see it? Yeah.

Ernesto Cullari [00:14:02]:
That worked for you. Great. So what we’re really talking about is opportunity. And I can totally understand we, we talk to business owners in and out of the laundry industry that are really concerned about their data. One, the quality of customer service. Two, but all those, all those things can be mitigated, you know, with, with great development. You know, like I said, we built platforms that will pass HIPAA compliance. So if it works for the federal government and for, for peptide clinicians, it’ll work for laundry.

Ernesto Cullari [00:14:40]:
So. But the main issue is that there’s a lot of opportunities being lost and it really starts with a disjointed systems.

Barbara Wardell [00:14:48]:
Right. And I’m trying to duct tape it all together and just kind of. Or not at all, just use those ones or the other.

Ernesto Cullari [00:14:58]:
Yeah. If you really think about just.

Jordan Berry [00:14:59]:
That’s a trick too, right? Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. But real quick, like that’s the trick too, right? Like anybody could dump something into chat, GPT or cloud or whatever and it’ll spit out stuff. But when you have tools that need to communicate with each other to, to integrate and to create a full, you know, plan or even a full task list that either you’re going to do or employees or AI itself will do, that’s the tricky part, I think.

Barbara Wardell [00:15:25]:
True. That is. And also when you’re using the. Each individual ones and then you’re trying to put it to another one. You spend more time doing that than if you connect them all, you know, and make it a flow so much faster and so much easier. But the intelligence has to be there too. You can’t just put junk in there because you’re only going to get junk bag.

Jordan Berry [00:15:46]:
That’s right.

Ernesto Cullari [00:15:46]:
That is very true. That is a wonderful point about AI. What you put in is what you get out. So if you’re not using high quality tools, if you’re using out of the box AI, it’s a good start, but it’s going to be limited. It’s like what Barbara is saying, it’s going to be duct taped together. There’s no unified communications. And really what we hope to convey today is that whether you work with us or you work with, you know, engineers, developers, those engineers and developers would also want to put a unified platform together for you. We just happen to have solved that for medicine.

Ernesto Cullari [00:16:22]:
Which brings us to our conversation with, we experimented on real human beings now

Jordan Berry [00:16:27]:
and more importantly now, laundry, some real important stuff.

Ernesto Cullari [00:16:32]:
So tools don’t talk, you know, your, that chat widget on your site doesn’t talk to clean cloud. That chat widget on your site doesn’t talk to sense. All those things are not talking to your, you know, not handling phone calls. It’s not integrated with your email. It’s all those things are disjointed. So what we want to let people know is that the data is real. It says that more than half of the phone calls going to you, going to your laundromat are not being answered. And a lot of times it’s sad, but people are, people’s attention span.

Ernesto Cullari [00:17:11]:
They, they want things done. If they wanted to do a drop off or they want to, they want to schedule for pickup, they want it done, they want it done now. So, and we can understand that, right? You’re, you’re a parent and you’ve got stuff going on. Tomorrow you got a soccer game and you just realized that you’re, you know, you tried to let your 11 year old have some responsibility. They didn’t get clothes in the washer nor the dryer. Now you have to get into a laundromat. So that’s, that’s the problem that we’re all here to solve. We’re here to solve these customer service problems.

Ernesto Cullari [00:17:40]:
But when calls go unanswered, when emails go unanswered, it’s a loss of money. When the chat widget is answering questions and it’s not handed over to A human. We’re just creating chaos with, with, with these tools we have and they’re not really doing any work for us and

Barbara Wardell [00:17:54]:
they’re not going to come back. Everything’s about instant. If you’re not getting an answer, you just move on.

Jordan Berry [00:18:00]:
Yeah, well, in the, in the, I’d say maybe even a bigger deal than losing money is you’re losing trust, right? You’re customer trust erodes if call doesn’t get answered. Like you said, they’re just going to move on.

Barbara Wardell [00:18:13]:
That is true.

Jordan Berry [00:18:14]:
They’re not going to trust you anymore. And you know, one thing I’ve learned doing business is if, if you have trust, you can, the money will come, right? You don’t have to focus on getting the money. The money will come if people trust you. And you know, like, like you’re saying like if calls go unanswered or an experience is a bad one erodes trust. And in today’s world that spreads like wildfire, right? Like we’ve got Google reviews, we’ve got Yelp, we’ve got social media now that

Ernesto Cullari [00:18:48]:
will put you on blast and it adds up. It’s cumulative. Those things that we’re talking about, a wash, dry, fold order here and there, actually you know, we’re going to talk about in a little bit. But I think wash, dry, fold, there’s so many cool things that can be done in terms of communications and I think some of the things we’re going to talk about are such low hanging fruit that it’s almost embarrassing that we’re, that we came up with solutions for it. You know what I mean? It’s almost embarrassing. Like it’s almost like reminding. Imagine having an app where you reminded your kids to brush your teeth, right? And, and, but think about this seriously. An app that reminded your kids to brush your teeth, how much you would save in, in dental bills and fillings and what a healthier smile your kid would have over time if we just did these low hanging fruit things.

Ernesto Cullari [00:19:37]:
So we want your Laundromat not to have cavities. We’re, we’re, we’re here to show you low hanging fruit things that you can do with or without us. Uh, that’s, that’s always our mission when we come on. You know there’s other companies out there that can do one each. I don’t want to say everything here, but at least one piece of the pie. There are companies out there that they can put together for you. But the problem becomes, is that when you start with one issue and you start Duct taping things together and you start dropping the ball on one thing, it becomes cumulative. So one of the things that we’re seeing is right now, every industry is seeing this, is that people aren’t Googling as much as they used to.

Barbara Wardell [00:20:21]:
I mean, have you heard AI, have

Ernesto Cullari [00:20:22]:
you heard of these news stories where people are all concerned about their Google placement now? Jordan.

Jordan Berry [00:20:27]:
No, fill me in.

Ernesto Cullari [00:20:29]:
Yeah, so I went to an. What would you call that when you, when a whole bunch of marketing and advertising people get together? What is that called? It’s like an expo or a.

Barbara Wardell [00:20:39]:
No, it’s a marketing event. The.

Ernesto Cullari [00:20:44]:
I went to one of those, whatever they’re called, those, those marketing meetups.

Jordan Berry [00:20:48]:
Marketing party.

Ernesto Cullari [00:20:49]:
Yeah, marketing party where these agencies meet up at, at Bell Labs and, or wherever. So we met up at Bell Labs and There was about 500 marketing and ad execs there. And a presenter came up and he started Talking about how ChatGPT is, is about, is now about 50, 50 might even be 51% of all search. And this is a room, by the way, that made all of its money on SEO. Yeah, they made all of their money on Google AdWords and Google AdSense. And suddenly the rug gets pulled out from under them because now it’s about getting referred by ChatGPT. And there are owner operators out there in laundry right now smartly adding some code to their site so that at least when ChatGPT scrapes their site or someone asks about it, there is some code on sites out there where ChatGPT can at least give an answer. But over half of search right now in the rest of the advertising world has been eaten up by ChatGPT referrals.

Barbara Wardell [00:22:00]:
So it’s not just ChatGPT though. We have, you know, all the other AI platforms as well.

Ernesto Cullari [00:22:08]:
Right. So another issue is that out of that, if you. This, I think we were talking about this even before we started the official discussion is that 62% of laundromat owners are actually still not doing any kind of marketing, nor are they even trying to get their stuff listed on Google. So that’s insane.

Jordan Berry [00:22:30]:
It’s a big deal. Yeah, yeah, it’s. And one, we’ve been talking about this for a while. Like this is pretty low hanging fruit. And this whole, you know, just, just being on Google, listing your services, keeping that updated, doing some basic marketing, all pretty low hanging fruit. And you know, but, but I will say we’ve seen a huge jump in the number of Laundromat owners who are starting to do that over the last five years or so. But this is the next low hanging fruit, right? Is the chat GPT AI search and search for answers as well.

Ernesto Cullari [00:23:07]:
Yeah. These are things that can be addressed by AI for AI that don’t cost an arm and a leg to do it. But what’s interesting, you know, the industry, it’s A laundry is a $7, $7.2 billion industry with 18,000 locations and, but the industry is contracting each year by 1.5% on average. So those are zombie mats that, that are being spoken about. But a large percent of this 1.5% is also these laundromats that are not letting users know where they’re found. And it goes to the low hanging fruit that we’re talking about. At the very least you need to do the basics of marketing. AI can help you do it, but you have to make that first step.

Ernesto Cullari [00:24:01]:
1.5 is A, in an industry where the people are looking to get into it. It’s kind of interesting, right? The industry’s contracting 1.5% but people are trying to get into it more and more. You know, every conversation that you have is someone looking to get into the laundry industry or save their business. Right. They’re looking, they’re, they’re coming to the laundromat resource to find new tools or they’re looking to get into the industry and they want to hear from you and other industry veterans. But nonetheless the industry’s contracting. It’s quite shocking and I think a lot of it’s because a lot of reinvestment into the basics is not being done. People are buying buildings, they’re buying machines, but they’re not reinvesting in the health of the way they’re interacting with the public.

Barbara Wardell [00:24:52]:
And it’s very important for foundation. All those for low hanging fruit.

Jordan Berry [00:24:59]:
That’s right, yeah. Yeah. And you know, I think is interesting to see kind of what’s happening with, with the industry. I’d be, I’d be interested to see. I, I am not sure that the industry is contracting in terms. Well, I, I think it might be contracting by number of stores. Yes. I’m wondering if our wash capacity and our revenue are actually increasing because we’re seeing larger stores being built, we’re seeing people put larger machines in and so, so, but there’s interesting dynamics here with all of that that’s going on.

Jordan Berry [00:25:40]:
That’s not related to necessarily what we’re talking about. But, but it kind of, I stand

Ernesto Cullari [00:25:45]:
corrected because it’s, it is one when actually you look more into that data, you’re, you’re right. It’s the, it’s the number of, of stores that may be. And, and these individuals that are going out, but they’re, they’re being absorbed or you have more growth in the financial side, but this other side that is certainly contracting. So I think you’re more accurate in my statement.

Jordan Berry [00:26:10]:
Yeah, well, which I think actually kind of goes right along with your point. Right. Is like, well, why is this happening? Well, it’s because, guess what, now we’re getting tools that we can utilize to own more laundromats. We can own them further away from where we are. We can, we can manage them better because we have more information and analytics about it because of the technology that’s involved. And that’s just going to increase as the stuff that we’re talking about today continues to kind of grow in its influence in our industry here. So, I mean, I think that the, the point stands here that the number of stores is, is diminishing, but it’s because sophisticated operators who are running their business like a business are coming in. They’re owning more stores.

Jordan Berry [00:26:58]:
They’re putting one large store in the middle of four small stores, and two of those go away. Right. And so it’s interesting what’s happening right now, and it does tie directly into what we’re talking about today.

Barbara Wardell [00:27:11]:
Absolutely. I think. And with the way that economy and everything else is going, more and poorer people are renting than buying and they do have to wash their clothes. You know, they’re getting smaller and smaller, the apartments that they are renting.

Ernesto Cullari [00:27:28]:
Yeah. You would be amazed. I was just in Austin and then I was back in Manhattan and I was. We have a client in Manhattan who was just telling us that he had no idea that the building that he’s in, the entire building he just found out, does not. They don’t have their own washers and dryers. So then we were talking about how to reach people. It’s a fairly new client. How to reach people within his own building.

Ernesto Cullari [00:27:53]:
And. But yeah, like these apartments are being built up. They’re. They’re all rentals. Many of them are rentals in major cities or not. And they don’t have the washer and dryer capacity that you thought.

Jordan Berry [00:28:08]:
Yeah.

Ernesto Cullari [00:28:09]:
And so opportunities, there’s opportunities that abound there. So one of the main premises that we want to drive home today is that you can have your systems and your communications unified. And it doesn’t need to be overwhelming. There are ways. If you remember, Jordan, some of our first conversations, actually, all of our conversations have eventually gotten back to don’t give away free wifi. Don’t give away WI fi for free. And I was always, like I was telling Barbara earlier, I always let women know that if I’m going to the prom with you, when I was in high school, we’re making out.

Jordan Berry [00:28:48]:
Like, you gotta. Yeah.

Ernesto Cullari [00:28:50]:
There are no free rides here.

Jordan Berry [00:28:52]:
Non negotiable. There’s no free rides if I’m putting a tux on. Yeah, come on.

Ernesto Cullari [00:28:56]:
Absolutely.

Barbara Wardell [00:28:57]:
I love it.

Ernesto Cullari [00:28:58]:
So no, there’s a price for admission.

Barbara Wardell [00:29:01]:
Yeah, yeah, that is true. It was funny because we, a lot of our customers, we told them to go and get Beanbox, right?

Ernesto Cullari [00:29:08]:
Yeah.

Barbara Wardell [00:29:09]:
We were telling people, you know, we had, you know, no affiliation with them, but we knew that that would work. And it’s funny how we’ve been giving that advice for so long and now we found a way of solving that problem without going that route, which is incredible.

Ernesto Cullari [00:29:26]:
So stop giving away free WI fi.

Barbara Wardell [00:29:28]:
It is a bad thing.

Jordan Berry [00:29:30]:
Well, what do you mean by that? What do you, what do you mean by that? I know we’ve talked about it in the past, but I mean, what do you mean?

Ernesto Cullari [00:29:36]:
Like we would charge people, so.

Barbara Wardell [00:29:39]:
No.

Ernesto Cullari [00:29:40]:
Well, well, well, well. We’ll explain it right now. So let’s do it.

Jordan Berry [00:29:44]:
That’s what I’m talking about.

Ernesto Cullari [00:29:45]:
So you’re paying right now money, right? A couple hundred bucks, depending on how many locations you have. Because you’re, you’re basically giving away WI fi and people just sign on and that’s, that is the first touch in your store where you’re losing an opportunity to build a relationship. So there’s other places where that’s being done, right? If you’re heavy on Instagram and heavy on Facebook, and one of my buddies is big in the peptide world, just had his Facebook for no reason taken away and his Instagram was also taken away. There’s your relationship. Your relationship is gone. Well, in the laundromat industry, you have these people walking into your store and you have a captive audience for about an hour. And when they’re in your store, they’re. They’re using your wifi.

Ernesto Cullari [00:30:36]:
It’s. Very few people don’t want to know what your WI FI password is. In fact, if, besides, do you sell detergent? It’s what’s your WI FI password? Right. And if you’re just giving away WI fi and you’re not using it as a tool, then you’re missing the opportunity. So on visit one, depending this, this cadence, you know, can be customized. But on visit One you know, you should be grabbing their information so you can send them a welcome email letting them know what services you have. And with the platform that we developed, you have to leave a Google review. So before you can access WI Fi, you have to leave a Google review.

Ernesto Cullari [00:31:17]:
You’ll also have to opt in to receive emails and or text messages. And with the way we have our WI fi set up, it’s software only, it’s not hardware. We don’t have to send you a piece of hardware to do this. You simply enter in a snippet of code into your WI fi router and our platform does the rest. It hooks you. But at the very least, if you think about this, if you do nothing else today, you can use Beambox or you can use us. Do not give away free WI fi. You’re missing the opportunity to develop a communication cadence with your people.

Ernesto Cullari [00:31:51]:
You can instantly get a Google review. You can instantly have them opt in for email and text messaging. And every time they come in, the system knows, our system knows if it’s a repeat visit or if it’s a new visit. So whether or not you’re doing geofencing, it doesn’t matter. We can validate visits for you and we can know if those devices are new devices or if they’re repeat devices. So it’s a huge opportunity. If you just think about, we have clients, I forget what the natural number is. We have one client that gets about 30,000 across their places.

Ernesto Cullari [00:32:27]:
30,000 visits a year. Right. So imagine if we had done this technology with them and for them, say when they started with us. Right. How their email database would be 30,000 deep.

Barbara Wardell [00:32:43]:
Now that low hanging fruit would have been amazing.

Jordan Berry [00:32:46]:
Well, and I, I just interject and I’ll say that I’ve been, I’ve been saying this for a long time. I think email marketing is the most underutilized, highest ROI thing that we can be doing. So I mean, and it starts with capturing that information, you know, from them as well. And I want to say before I let Ernesto go, because then I might not get to say anything anymore.

Barbara Wardell [00:33:12]:
I know, isn’t that a problem? And he says I talk a lot. Yeah, that’s because we have lots of video on this. So yeah, we got evidence.

Jordan Berry [00:33:23]:
No, but I wanted to say too, I mean, just being in people’s inbox is a huge win. Automatically telling them, you know, what services you have, getting that Google review. We talked about how that’s a low hanging fruit as well. As long as you’re providing a good service, don’t get a bunch of bad ones and being able to kind of re. Engage. I mean, kind of what you’re outlined here, all huge. But one other thing that you don’t mention here that I think is huge. Well, you kind of do a little bit, but that I think is huge about the opportunity with what you’re saying is I’ve been.

Jordan Berry [00:33:54]:
I’ve been kind of spouting off a little bit about branding lately and we had Beau Para back on the show, we were talking about branding and I think that branding is getting more and more important. I think it’s going to be hugely important going forward. We’re seeing brands like Tide come in and, you know, people know that brand, they will drive by a mediocre laundromat to go to a Tide laundromat. I don’t think that’s true for all franchises, but for that franchise, it’s true.

Barbara Wardell [00:34:23]:
That’s all chemicals.

Ernesto Cullari [00:34:25]:
That’s right.

Jordan Berry [00:34:26]:
Yeah, but. But it’s known chemicals. That’s the thing. Known and accepted chemicals widely. But this gives you a huge opportunity. When we talk about branding, all we talk about or all we mean is do people know you? Like, do people know you and how do they think about you when they know you? This is a huge opportunity to not just be a laundromat, random laundromat you went to, but to be known by your customers. And that builds brand loyalty, that builds trust, trust, which we already talked about, and that builds your revenue stream also, when it comes comes down to it.

Barbara Wardell [00:35:02]:
So it all works out together.

Jordan Berry [00:35:04]:
That’s right. That’s right. So I think this is hugely powerful, all that to say. And, you know, I know we talk about email not giving away free WI fi, I mean, all the time, but I think for good reason.

Ernesto Cullari [00:35:16]:
Yeah, definitely want to maintain a good connection with them. Email’s a wonderful way to do it. You don’t have to send an email every day like Spirit Airlines does, so

Barbara Wardell [00:35:27]:
that would get annoying anyway.

Jordan Berry [00:35:29]:
Yeah, but it’s riding on Spirit Airlines.

Barbara Wardell [00:35:33]:
Oh, God, I’ve never done that.

Ernesto Cullari [00:35:34]:
But you know what, Jordan, back to your point about branding, they’re very. Their emails are very funny. Yeah, if you’re going to email someone every day, you better be funny.

Jordan Berry [00:35:42]:
Yeah, that’s right.

Ernesto Cullari [00:35:43]:
So they’re actually pretty funny, pretty clever emails. So we were talking earlier about the difference between a basic chat widget, which is a large, which is a ChatGPT wrapper or a Claude wrapper or some other, you know, AI platform wrapper, versus what an agent is What a, what an AI agent is. And an AI agent is something that basically can do work for, you know, it doesn’t just handle your hours, it doesn’t just handle basic questions. We have clients that use our chat widgets and our phone agents to check what their balance is on their card. So that is low hanging fruit because I could tell you right now, we get reports of what every interact, every chat interaction is for each one of our clients. And the top question is, is not your hours or where are you located? It’s from existing customers with questions like how much do I have on my card balance? So answering questions like this and then enabling them to refresh their balance online through the agent is very important because now you’re removing a step, an extra step that the user needs to make. You’re enabling them to do that right there when they’re asking their question. You’re enable them to make, make more purchases right then and there.

Ernesto Cullari [00:37:13]:
So it’s good if you’re using a chat widget, but I recommend that you give your widget some tools. And if your widget doesn’t have tools, then you need to get an agent. And an agent is something that can actually do work for you.

Barbara Wardell [00:37:29]:
And an agent gives you time. It frees you up answering those little things that would have taken you time to do, which is very important.

Jordan Berry [00:37:38]:
Well, and one other thing, I mean, I’ll just, I’m gonna, I’m gonna be a little vulnerable with you guys here. One thing I’ve learned about myself, and I think it’s true of a lot of entrepreneurs, business owners, is doing the same things over and over gets really boring. And so if I’ve realized that if I want those things to get done, for example, editing this podcast, Shout out to Tristan, if I want it to get done, I’ve gotta have somebody reliable who can get it done. Because if it relies on me, it’s gonna be spotty at best. Right. And that. And you know, I think we’ll probably get to the get to this point of if we are missing phone calls and things like that, that gets real costly, that that affects the top line and eventually the bottom line for us in a real way. So if we want things to get done, let’s get it to very important people or tools that are going to get it done for us.

Ernesto Cullari [00:38:38]:
One of the other things we see that’s disjointed is no matter what ad platform you’re using, if you’re doing Google Ads or you’re using, there’s plenty of people that do social media ads out there that are really good. But a lot of the population in America speaks more than one language, and the two most common are English and Spanish. So if you’re not delivering your ads with language detection, then you’re missing an opportunity or you’re overspending on your ads.

Barbara Wardell [00:39:14]:
Yeah, that’s what we used to do.

Ernesto Cullari [00:39:15]:
Remember, we used to have to.

Barbara Wardell [00:39:18]:
So we used to have to do ads in, say, Spanish and in English. So we had so many ads because you didn’t want to deliver that ad to a customer that wasn’t their native language. Right. So we would have to work even harder and spend more ad spend to segregate those ads for those populations when they came in contact with them. Now with the language detection, it automatically picks up the fact that they’re speaking Spanish because of their. Their context in their phone. Right. Is that what it’s called?

Ernesto Cullari [00:39:54]:
Sure. So we engineered. I did the engineering part. So when someone is browsing the news in Spanish, because that’s the language they speak at home, you want to deliver their ad to them in Spanish and vice versa, by the way.

Barbara Wardell [00:40:10]:
Yeah, I want them in English.

Ernesto Cullari [00:40:11]:
Yeah, we want our ads in English because we speak English. So everything that we engineer and everything that.

Barbara Wardell [00:40:17]:
If you’re over here in Hawaii, I’m thinking about pigeon.

Jordan Berry [00:40:19]:
What are you saying?

Ernesto Cullari [00:40:20]:
I think pigeon’s great because basically you get a low, low calorie message of stuff on your car. So you know your mail’s arrived and you know, the notes they carry are very.

Barbara Wardell [00:40:34]:
I really like those little notes.

Ernesto Cullari [00:40:35]:
Yeah.

Barbara Wardell [00:40:36]:
We may need a magnifying glass to read it, but maybe AI will do that for us.

Ernesto Cullari [00:40:40]:
Yeah. So our version of old fashioned is sending each other pigeon notes. That’s actually John Wick.

Barbara Wardell [00:40:49]:
Like in John Wick, we do a chat widget of a pigeon.

Jordan Berry [00:40:52]:
Oh, gosh.

Ernesto Cullari [00:40:53]:
Yeah. We put a little chat thing around the neck.

Jordan Berry [00:40:58]:
I hate to do this because I’d really like this rant we’re going on here, but I meant pigeon is in Hawaiian. Pigeon language. But we can stick with the messenger pigeon as well.

Barbara Wardell [00:41:08]:
So they. They speak. It’s called a pigeon.

Jordan Berry [00:41:11]:
Yeah, it’s Hawaiian pigeon. Yeah.

Barbara Wardell [00:41:12]:
Oh, I did not know to have

Ernesto Cullari [00:41:14]:
one of the greatest Pacific Islander.

Jordan Berry [00:41:16]:
I’m supposed to know one of the. That. Well, if you came and hung out with me in Hawaii more, you’d know one of the greatest.

Barbara Wardell [00:41:22]:
We’re definitely doing that.

Jordan Berry [00:41:23]:
One of the greatest things I’ve ever read in my entire life is there’s a. There’s an Entire Bible in pigeon. So if you ever want to hear Jesus talk like a Hawaiian, you can go find that.

Ernesto Cullari [00:41:33]:
That is amazing.

Jordan Berry [00:41:35]:
Yeah. So.

Barbara Wardell [00:41:36]:
All right.

Ernesto Cullari [00:41:38]:
That sounds great.

Jordan Berry [00:41:38]:
It’s pretty great.

Ernesto Cullari [00:41:39]:
So that is one language I’m pretty sure I can’t program for. And, and I’ll tell you why. I’ve already done Korean, Japanese, Tagalog, but if, unless there’s a large source of data out there on that is how, how protected is that language? Do you know?

Jordan Berry [00:41:58]:
Yeah, it’s not super common.

Ernesto Cullari [00:41:59]:
It’s not super common. Gotcha. Yeah. So that, that would be wonderful, by the way, for AI to preserve. That would be a really good example of, of having people capture their conversation, recording it, and then creating a database. And that’s a great, wonderful use case for AI, by the way.

Jordan Berry [00:42:16]:
Yeah.

Ernesto Cullari [00:42:17]:
In this context, you don’t want to waste money by splitting up your budget and you really want to honor different cultures because it’s good for business, right?

Jordan Berry [00:42:26]:
Yeah.

Ernesto Cullari [00:42:26]:
And it’s the way we want to communicate.

Jordan Berry [00:42:28]:
And it’s good for people. Yeah, both.

Ernesto Cullari [00:42:30]:
It’s, it’s, it’s good. We, we feel special when people are paying attention to the way we like to consume things. So your agents, your AI agents should be multilingual. And no matter what platform you’re, you’re advertising on, you should be designing ads that have language detection. If you Google it, you’ll find that Google itself struggles to, to fulfill language detection. But we have that solved on our end from a technological standpoint. Anyone who, everyone who advertises with us has language detection built in to, to everything that we, that we have. So have you seen.

Jordan Berry [00:43:09]:
This is a little bit of a diversion, but it’s related. I, I’ve just started getting, like, when I’m, you know, vegging out, browsing on Instagram reels or whatever, I started getting these weird, like a little bit weird videos where I’m like, is this AI created? But it looks really, really not like AI real, but like really, really real. And I realized that these videos were people in other countries filming and communicating in their language, but AI was translating with an AI with a, like a realistic sounding AI voice. And the thing that was off was the lips weren’t matching the words.

Barbara Wardell [00:43:48]:
Yeah, it looks weird, right?

Jordan Berry [00:43:49]:
Yeah, but they’re doing that, they’re presenting videos in the language that you’re consuming, whatever stuff on your phone on, which is super interesting.

Ernesto Cullari [00:43:59]:
I think that’s very interesting.

Jordan Berry [00:44:00]:
Yeah, I just started seeing that pop up recently.

Ernesto Cullari [00:44:05]:
Interesting.

Barbara Wardell [00:44:05]:
I think I’ve seen some of that too. And I just didn’t know what it was. And I was like, that’s because of the way the lips move. It’s just like.

Jordan Berry [00:44:13]:
Yeah. I was like, is this just AI creating something? Like, doesn’t even look good for AI for some reason. But it’s real. It’s. It’s real. And people are doing it in Spanish or, you know, Korean or whatever language. They’re doing Japanese. I see a lot of those.

Jordan Berry [00:44:26]:
And, but, but Instagram is translating them into, I’m assuming English because I’m, I consume in English, so it’s really, really interesting.

Ernesto Cullari [00:44:38]:
So if, if Meta is doing that, that’s a leap, giant leap forward that Google does not have built into their systems. So we had an, we had, we have had to engineer that ourselves so that when we deliver ads on any demand side platform, whether inside the Google network or outside the Google network, our pages and our agents detect what you’re reading. But if Meta is doing that, that’s tremendous. For Meta no longer does. And Google’s a great example with their Gemini models how you’re no longer creating aliens with six, ten fingers or ten toes. Yeah, it’s, it’s remarkable how, how much better it is and how fast.

Jordan Berry [00:45:24]:
Man, it’s, it’s crazy how fast stuff’s getting better.

Barbara Wardell [00:45:30]:
Definitely. I, I think since from, from being young to now. It’s, it’s, it’s crazy what it’s been. Forget my mom. I mean, she’s 78 years old and she went from, she calls the refrigerator an ice box because they used to deliver ice to the box. And now look at our world.

Ernesto Cullari [00:45:55]:
Yeah, we went from hung.

Jordan Berry [00:45:57]:
We have TVs on our refrigerators now. Right.

Barbara Wardell [00:46:00]:
Computers on the refrigerator behind our mirrors.

Ernesto Cullari [00:46:04]:
So if we can do that, wouldn’t it be fair to suggest that the laundromat industry could start implementing some of these tools like language detection? And one other great thing that we’ve implemented, and you should be doing this as well, is geolocation. So a lot of big operators have stores that might be 10, 15 minutes or even closer. And if you really want to make sure that you’re grabbing the attention span of your customer, your ad should be delivered, your landing pages should be delivered, and your website should have language detect. I’m sorry, language detection and geolocation. So there’s a formula. I’m not going to tell you what it is because if someone else is going to try and copy this, I want you to have to do the work yourself.

Barbara Wardell [00:46:51]:
Yeah.

Ernesto Cullari [00:46:51]:
Shh. We’re not telling, but There’s a formula that lets you know that could be programmed into your website or into your landing pages that basically lets the user know when they click on to your site, what location of yours is nearest to them. So a lot of our laundromat owners have this problem that we’ve sat. We’ve. We’ve remediated simply by adding geolocation to both the website and to the ad. The ad assets.

Jordan Berry [00:47:19]:
Well and I like that because the, I’ll call it quote unquote traditional method is a shotgun method. Right. Which is like I’m going to list all my locations, find the one that’s closest to you kind of thing. And this is more of like a. I hate to kind of use this analogy, but more like a sniper laser. Laser like a non harming laser for cats. Right. Less violent.

Ernesto Cullari [00:47:45]:
Otherwise you’re creating frustration with your. Totally with, with your customer. Give them what they need, you know, and as soon as you can deliver it. And language detection is one and then geolocation is the other. Give them the information they need in the language that they need it and then show them how close they are to your nearest location.

Jordan Berry [00:48:08]:
Yeah, yeah. It’s incredible. It’s incredible that, that those tools exist and that they exist in a way that’s accessible to little old s Laundromat owners. Man. Kudos to you guys. You’re always pushing the bounds over there. I like that. That’s why I like.

Ernesto Cullari [00:48:25]:
Well, one of the things I think

Jordan Berry [00:48:26]:
is like your fashion also that.

Ernesto Cullari [00:48:29]:
Yeah, we noticed we matched today and

Barbara Wardell [00:48:32]:
that wasn’t even planned.

Ernesto Cullari [00:48:33]:
It was not.

Jordan Berry [00:48:34]:
They’re in sync. I like it.

Barbara Wardell [00:48:37]:
We do a good job of supporting each other.

Ernesto Cullari [00:48:41]:
Yes, very true. So we threw in a case study here that we’ll let people look at later. But this is more has to do with geofencing and geofencing footsteps for traffic attribution. But we’ll give you a link to share in the thing so people can look at that later. One of the other things that is not unified and laundromat owners are not or business owners are not taking good use of is the relationship between SEO, which is search engine optimization and geo, which is generative engine optimization. And we have invented something called ActiveGeo. You can Google it. It doesn’t exist at the moment because we invented it.

Ernesto Cullari [00:49:25]:
So I’ll explain what that is in a moment. But SEO is a, is a fun game, right, because you’re creating content on a cadence and you’re searching for backlinks and you’re trying to create backlinks. It’s what I was explaining earlier, how I went to that expo for the

Barbara Wardell [00:49:45]:
advertising industry when the guy was up there talking.

Ernesto Cullari [00:49:48]:
Yeah. So by the way, I confronted the keynote speaker. You did? I’m not sure he was, he was happy with what I told him, but he’s trying to tell every. He’s trying. Well, I was like I did on this.

Barbara Wardell [00:49:58]:
You really don’t want that one.

Ernesto Cullari [00:50:00]:
So he has this whole company and they’re, they’re doing well over a hundred million a year in revenue. Right. We’re, we’re not, we’re not there yet. But all the things that he’s doing, I’m like, he’s a keynote speaker. And I’m like, I did that myself. And he’s not even up to what we’re talking about.

Barbara Wardell [00:50:14]:
He didn’t believe me. He was like, what?

Ernesto Cullari [00:50:16]:
I was like, yeah, take my card. Look, look up my platform. I already built all this myself, so. But anyway, there’s a marriage. So as he’s talking about SEO and these things, people are panicking in the room because their, their lifeblood is SEO. And along comes Chachi PT.

Jordan Berry [00:50:36]:
Well, even before that, really before ChatGPT got or maybe like right before Google, because, you know, I, I’ve been in the SEO game a little bit too. And, and all that. And even before that, it, it threw everybody for a tizzy when Google started offering their AI suggestion. So like when you search now the AI suggestion is coming up. It’s not sending. Google’s not sending people to your website anymore, which a lot of like online businesses require and rely on traffic to their sites. Google’s just answering it for them in the front there and then it’ll link the sources. But that was a huge deal on the SEO before even people started chatgpting things so much.

Ernesto Cullari [00:51:23]:
Yes. So this is an opportunity for laundromat owners, like be the first to, to deliver on this for your local community. So basically, where SEO is about the backlinks and the other techniques that marketing and ad people do, including publishing blogs with keywords and things like that. And then some paid things for to increase SEO value, Generative Engine Basics is you need a schema on your site. It’s basically a data packet that when ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude scrapes your site, it has some basic information on there so that they can say, I’ve just validated that fluff and Full Laundry in Ocean Township, New Jersey does pickup and delivery. And no, they do it on their own. They’re not part of some other other group so it can answer these questions for you. And whereas a laundromat that’s not providing this data schema is, is not going to show up.

Ernesto Cullari [00:52:30]:
So I would say 99.9% of laundromats are not chatgpt friendly. There’s no data schema on there, there’s no data packet on there. So that when ChatGPT is asked a question for just to remediate a local query, it won’t do that for you. It can’t do that for you simply because it doesn’t have, unless it has a tool. Unless you’re giving ChatGPT a tool like Playwright MCP, it’s not going to know what’s on your site because it doesn’t have that extra tool it needs when it goes to your site. It needs to see, immediately see that there’s a packet of data on there so that chatgpt knows it’s there. So if you want to know the difference between SEO and GEO is that large language models need to read information. Unless you’re giving them the second tool, a third tool, they need to see that data packet there.

Ernesto Cullari [00:53:33]:
So it’s, it’s a simple thing to do. You need to be adding, you need experts or the right people, the right agencies to add a schema on there so that the data can be read.

Barbara Wardell [00:53:47]:
Yeah, nicely. But.

Jordan Berry [00:53:48]:
Well, which is, and there’s no, there’s no avoiding it. Right. Because now, like I said, when people are googling things, even if they’re in the past Googling things, it’s an AI response. Right. So it’s functioning similarly to when you’re, you know, searching on an AI, your, your AI of choice. There’s no getting around it here. And I mean, we’re talking about low hanging fruit again here. Like you said, 99.9% of people aren’t doing it in our industry.

Jordan Berry [00:54:18]:
So if you do it, that puts you ahead of everybody else in your market and beyond

Ernesto Cullari [00:54:26]:
Active geo. So this is not something that other, other agencies are doing. I’m actually going to tell you what it is so that other agencies can struggle and that will give us a moat, a defendable moat as they get in and as they try to figure out the technology. I’m going to, I’m going to do it without giving it all away. So Active GEO is what we engineer. Active Geo is when ChatGPT comes to one of our sites or one of our landing pages, it’s greeted by an agent that trades information with that instance of Chatgpt So and further, when one of our sites are updated, it pushes data to bing and to ChatGPT and lets it know that you need to scrape your servers, need to scrape our server. So that because it’s updated with fresh information. And that’s important because the distinction is ChatGPT wants to know that something new is there.

Ernesto Cullari [00:55:25]:
One, they need it in a format that they can read. Two, what’s uniquely different about the way we approach this problem is that we engineered it so that our we have a greeting agent that can answer questions, queries on behalf of the user to ChatGPT and we even provide an MCC MCP server model context proter Model context protocol server endpoint to our sites. Because that is the future. In the future it’s, it’s going to be more like two agents plugging into each other. So we’ve already built that in on every one of our sites. So when the future comes, we’re ready for that. But what is not being done now is active geo, which we do exclusively in the entire ad world. And then GEO is what you should be doing now in combination with SEO.

Ernesto Cullari [00:56:23]:
Those things should not. Just because GEO exists doesn’t mean you can turn your back on SEO. SEO is just as important as it ever was. And I’m sure the agency are using it, is doing it well, especially if you’ve been with them, but it really needs to be used in combination with geo. And then if you want to join the future, we’re doing active GEO and model content model context protocol built into that as well.

Barbara Wardell [00:56:48]:
And there you go, it rounds it back to the prom date

Ernesto Cullari [00:56:54]:
Model context protocol, not model context prom date. So, so this is this actually, this slide actually spells it all out. AI asks a question of your site and then the site needs to answer with your specific data. And that is exactly what you need. You need. ChatGPT needs a confidence score as well. Right? So built into what we do is the confidence score. You need a high confidence score so that ChatGPT knows that this is a reliable answer, that it’s giving the user.

Ernesto Cullari [00:57:36]:
And that’s super important. AI recommendations are often called referrals. If your information is in the proper format and it’s being greeted by another agent, your trust is nearly perfect. It’s not scraping your website and having to rely on did it take the proper snapshot and did it read the proper CSS and HTML on your site? Because that is data intensive, by the way. It takes a lot of tokens to do that. So what you want to do is right away, you want to put your data in the format that AI can read and recognize immediately. And you want that done in 200, you know, 200 milliseconds.

Jordan Berry [00:58:21]:
Yeah. Well, and it. It again, that’s huge to have the ability to have. It’s almost like a. I was gonna say like a concierge or something at a hotel, but then I was thinking it’s like a greeter at Walmart. Right. Like, come in, they greet you, they welcome you, you’re welcoming chat GPTs with your agent. It’s coming in, and you underpay them, but, you know, they’re cheap, but they’re there to kind of greet you and make you feel good.

Ernesto Cullari [00:58:54]:
Right. That’s funny.

Barbara Wardell [00:58:57]:
They’re always there to help.

Ernesto Cullari [00:59:00]:
The agent’s definitely underpaid, that’s for sure.

Jordan Berry [00:59:02]:
Yeah.

Barbara Wardell [00:59:03]:
So they work very hard, though.

Ernesto Cullari [00:59:06]:
Yes. It’s also important to have good information, by the way. So if you’re putting any of these tools to use, you want to know, like, who’s my main referrer? Is it Gemini? Is it Claude? Is it chatgpt? That’s one. And you want to know what questions are being asked. As I said, I was really, really surprised. The number one question being asked of our agents for companies that use point of sale is, how much money do I have left on my card? That is the number one question. It can also tell you, by the way, if you’re having staffing problems. We get things like, by the way, I think James is selling cocaine and crystal meth.

Barbara Wardell [00:59:47]:
And you’re ninth street worried about that James.

Jordan Berry [00:59:50]:
So is the James. I have a brother named James. And it’s true, He’s. He’s nothing but trouble.

Ernesto Cullari [00:59:56]:
He’s always been trouble.

Jordan Berry [00:59:57]:
Nothing but trouble.

Ernesto Cullari [00:59:59]:
You should give him the Bible and pigeon.

Jordan Berry [01:00:01]:
Yeah, I’m gonna have to. I’m gonna have to.

Ernesto Cullari [01:00:06]:
So was he the one in the

Barbara Wardell [01:00:08]:
bathroom that you wanted to do?

Jordan Berry [01:00:09]:
No, that’s my other brother, John, who was in the job. Yeah.

Ernesto Cullari [01:00:14]:
That’s funny. How did you get left out of the Bible?

Jordan Berry [01:00:16]:
I.

Ernesto Cullari [01:00:17]:
You got James and John.

Jordan Berry [01:00:18]:
I’m. I’m not left out. Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River.

Ernesto Cullari [01:00:22]:
Awesome.

Jordan Berry [01:00:23]:
But my brothers do make fun of me that I have a girl’s name. And also there’s James and John in the Bible who are known as the Sons of Thunder, which is a sweet nickname, you know what I mean?

Ernesto Cullari [01:00:36]:
That’s right.

Jordan Berry [01:00:37]:
Got a girl’s name. So it’s been rough. Even though I’m the oldest, it’s been rough. They’re Bullies.

Ernesto Cullari [01:00:42]:
That’s funny. I didn’t realize that Jordan is Jordan.

Barbara Wardell [01:00:45]:
No, no, no.

Ernesto Cullari [01:00:48]:
You know what the problem is? One hot girl named Jordan ruined it for you.

Jordan Berry [01:00:52]:
Yeah.

Ernesto Cullari [01:00:52]:
Hey, she owned the name. She owned the name. And it’s like, oh, you’re like hot girl Jordan.

Jordan Berry [01:00:58]:
I know, Whatever.

Ernesto Cullari [01:01:00]:
That’s. That’s what happened to you. You got typecasted based on the name.

Jordan Berry [01:01:03]:
Dead. And that’s why I had to cut my hair, is I didn’t want people thinking I was the hot girl. Just kidding.

Ernesto Cullari [01:01:11]:
That’s hilarious.

Barbara Wardell [01:01:11]:
So what is your middle name?

Jordan Berry [01:01:14]:
Lewis.

Barbara Wardell [01:01:15]:
Lewis? Yeah. You’re not a low.

Jordan Berry [01:01:18]:
After my grandpa. My grandpa’s middle name.

Barbara Wardell [01:01:20]:
But that’s kind of nice, though. I like names after grandpa. But you’re not a Lou.

Jordan Berry [01:01:24]:
Yeah, I couldn’t. It was a little too old school for me.

Barbara Wardell [01:01:27]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:01:28]:
Yeah.

Ernesto Cullari [01:01:29]:
So I, I created a nice graphic here, by the way, that really ties up what we were talking about, about the kind of information that a large language model like ChatGPT or Yama or Claude or Gemini would need to read. Every single website right now should have a large language model text file. That’s basically what I was telling you. It needs to be in a proper schema. JSON as well. JSON is another. Call it a language. But it.

Ernesto Cullari [01:01:56]:
You need that language file on your site, then you need tool use. We were also talking about MCP server. It’s another kind of tool. It’s another kind of standard. Claude, or Anthropic rather, really pioneered MCP servers and made that a standard way for tools to interact. And then the rest gets into what truly sets us apart from the MCP server all the way down is that we have an answer engine and that our agents actively push for you to ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. So that’s basically our stack right there that separates us from 100% of the ad world is that we’re employing this technology. And even Madison Avenue is not yet caught up to it, so.

Ernesto Cullari [01:02:56]:
But the laundry industry really has an opportunity to take a lead. I mean, there’s the. The industry is ripe for change. These, these tools are not. Don’t break the bank. But what they really do is build a closer connection to people who are going to beer walk in or these are people who. These tools will enable you to capture those pickup and delivery customers, those wash, dry, fold people. But all these, all this technology represents money that’s on the table that the average laundromat owner is losing out on

Jordan Berry [01:03:35]:
huge. Right. Like, and you know, we talked about this before some of the stuff you guys have been building and doing over there and other people in the industry. But, you know, we kind of went from being the icebox of the industry to the Samsung smart refrigerator. And we, you know, we were kind of lagging, you know, when it comes to, like, I, I’ve said it before, I’ve kind of jokingly criticized the industry of like, hey, a couple years ago we got super excited. We got touchscreen washing machines, but I’ve been carrying a touchscreen in my pocket for, since 2008 or whatever. Right. So we’ve kind of been lagging behind everything.

Jordan Berry [01:04:13]:
But you guys and some other people are pushing, pushing the edges, pushing the boundaries of what we have access to, which, honestly I did not see coming. So kudos to you guys for doing that because this industry is not known for being on the front edge of technology.

Ernesto Cullari [01:04:33]:
So this is a good graphic about that has to do with the point of sale systems that are out there. What kind of, what kind of things you hear, Jordan? We don’t have to name any names of companies, but what kind of things do you hear complaints about point of sale systems? What do you hear?

Jordan Berry [01:04:50]:
I mean, just inconsistencies, downtime, lack of customer service, confusing, hard to use for customers, but also employees. I don’t know, are you efficient for something in particular? Because it’s probably true whenever you’re fishing for.

Ernesto Cullari [01:05:05]:
Well, you helped me with. The number one thing is if you look on Facebook and you look at some of the Laundromat owners groups, you’ll see that downtime is something they complain a lot about.

Jordan Berry [01:05:16]:
Yeah.

Ernesto Cullari [01:05:17]:
So our system has zero downtime. Our uptime is 99.999999%. So we built a relay system that no matter if you’re using Clean Cloud Sense, which does, at least we’re not aware of, if Sense has API integration, for us, it doesn’t matter. Our platform has 100% uptime. It integrates with Clean Cloud Sense or any of any system that you’re using, even Zapier. So if you made something on Zapier, if you made something on make.com, you want to ask your engineer if they could build you a relay system, which is what? Which is what I built. And essentially what happens is it doesn’t matter what point of sale system you use. We can either plug in directly, like with clean cloud integration, or we can do a runaround completely and deliver you that communication in that order directly to your WhatsApp, to your.

Ernesto Cullari [01:06:13]:
It could text you or it could Deliver it. Deliver that request to your inbox. And then you, you, yes, you’d have to manually. You might have to manually enter something, but we did a complete runaround of every point of sale system out there. It doesn’t matter what you’re using. We can set you up so that you can dunk the ball. So basically, we’ll pass the ball to you, we’ll pass that communication to you in real time. We can pass that order to you, that request for pickup in real time.

Ernesto Cullari [01:06:42]:
If you’re using a platform that will open up its API to us, we can do that. So we can do it by direct webhook, push, or we can do it a myriad of other ways. So.

Barbara Wardell [01:06:54]:
And that was us solving a problem that we did have, trying to.

Ernesto Cullari [01:07:00]:
We did have people telling us, complaining, that they really. They asked us actually to come up with our own point of sale system because they saw how well our system’s working and it’s not something. At least. Unless you’re going to pay me a ton of money, I’m not really interested in doing that. But what we’d rather do is give you. Sometimes the most elegant solution is the best solution. Right? It doesn’t have to be some big point of sale system for us. Our platforms can integrate with any system.

Ernesto Cullari [01:07:29]:
And if you’re using your own developers, you want to ask your developer if they can build you a relay system.

Jordan Berry [01:07:34]:
So, well, you’re nothing if not elegant, I’ll tell you that. All the way through and through, both of you.

Ernesto Cullari [01:07:41]:
It’s the salmon. It’s the salmon.

Barbara Wardell [01:07:43]:
I see. You were magic. But you can’t see because we’re not on two. One camera.

Ernesto Cullari [01:07:50]:
So the rest is case studies. In here you can look. I mean, we. We’ve used these. These platforms ourself. We’ve used them for our clients. We use a lot of this for the healthcare industry. If anyone has $1.8 billion, we’ll take it.

Ernesto Cullari [01:08:06]:
For Luke, I’ll walk away happily.

Barbara Wardell [01:08:08]:
1.8. That’s what I said.

Ernesto Cullari [01:08:10]:
That’s the. That’s the value of our competitor, Medvy. And they don’t. They don’t have all of our tools. They only have two of our e tools.

Barbara Wardell [01:08:16]:
Wait, you said 1.8.

Ernesto Cullari [01:08:17]:
They’re worth 1.8 billion.

Barbara Wardell [01:08:18]:
Oh, billion. I thought he said million. For some reason, I was like, what?

Ernesto Cullari [01:08:22]:
Where 1.8 million covers my tequila bill?

Barbara Wardell [01:08:26]:
That’s what I was gonna say.

Jordan Berry [01:08:27]:
You can’t move out here to Hawaii with 1.8 million. Come on, Popper.

Ernesto Cullari [01:08:33]:
I’ll have to rent your garage.

Barbara Wardell [01:08:34]:
Listen, we’re, we’re gonna go out there and we’re gonna do the nice sailboat.

Ernesto Cullari [01:08:41]:
That’s right. That sounds fun. It does sound fun.

Barbara Wardell [01:08:45]:
Yes, we do like sailing.

Ernesto Cullari [01:08:49]:
I’m looking at my own slide. It made me think one thing we didn’t talk about, which is, you know, Wash, Dry Fold could be imagined reimagined in a little different way. Kind of like how pickup and delivery is where people actually schedule.

Barbara Wardell [01:09:01]:
So instead of just dropping in, they can schedule to, to drop off and pick up.

Ernesto Cullari [01:09:07]:
Yeah. Commitment to commitment. If I, if I say, like, if I’m going to drop, my buddy drops his dog off to the, you know, Mo.

Barbara Wardell [01:09:13]:
Yes.

Ernesto Cullari [01:09:14]:
Bob drops.

Barbara Wardell [01:09:14]:
Mo is the sweetest dog.

Ernesto Cullari [01:09:17]:
Mo’s awesome. He’s a, he looks like a, like, was a ridgeback.

Barbara Wardell [01:09:21]:
Yeah. So him, him and Taylor are almost twins. Except Mo’s longer.

Ernesto Cullari [01:09:26]:
Yeah.

Barbara Wardell [01:09:27]:
And they’re just, they’re, they’re just the best dogs.

Ernesto Cullari [01:09:29]:
So with your dog, you know, you’re going to make an appointment to drop it off at the doggy daycare. Right. So it’s a commitment. When people are committed to doing something, psychologically, they’re going to do it. So why not? The same thing with Washington Wash, Dry Fold. Why not create an opportunity where users can put, put a time on the clock on the calendar and say that they’re going to drop something off and then, hey, Dave, we were expecting you. Or James and John with those cool names. You should get your brother Jordan to come do laundry here.

Jordan Berry [01:09:57]:
So I’d say they’re cool names, but, you know, whatever.

Barbara Wardell [01:10:02]:
I think Jordan’s cooler.

Jordan Berry [01:10:04]:
Jordan’s great.

Ernesto Cullari [01:10:06]:
So Wash, Dry Fold is something that can be reimagined. You know, why not use these tools to get people to commit to a Wash drive, full drop off?

Jordan Berry [01:10:15]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I love that. And I think, you know, that’s interesting, Interesting idea with the having people, you know, schedule and make that commitment. Like you said, once people, you know, put something on the calendar or, you know, or commit, verbally commit to something, they are more likely to do it. Everybody says that, at least in New Year’s resolution, so it must be true. So. Yeah, I mean, I love that. And, and it gives you an opportunity.

Jordan Berry [01:10:42]:
Like you said, if they don’t show or they’re late or something, it gives you another touch point with them to let people know, hey, you know, we’re, we’re thinking of you. We’re, you know, everything good. You need us to send a driver to come do the pickup Instead of, you know, here’s what that costs, you know, things like that. I mean, gives you a lot of opportunity to really serve the customer in a unique way. And you could still, you know, accept walk ins and stuff like that too. But, and that’s what like barbers do, right? Or salons or I don’t know, wherever people do their hair. I’m new again to the haircut game, but you can do, you can do a walk in or you can do an appointment. And yeah, I think there’s a lot to be gained from, you know, having those communication, those touch points with, with our customer base.

Jordan Berry [01:11:29]:
It’s massive. Massive. Guys, it’s been awesome. I don’t know if you have more to say, but I mean this has been incredible. And I think it’s something that people aren’t talking about enough. But even though, you know, even, even the people who are talking about we’re not doing enough of this, we’re not utilizing, we have massive leverage with utilizing some of these tools even just individually and then being able to connect them together for them to be able to communicate. You know, I was thinking like Avatar the movie, how the writers of those, I forget what they’re called, they like plug into each other, you know, and they communicate that way. When we’re able to do that, man, talking about systems to, to be more efficient, to be more profitable, to get more done in less time.

Jordan Berry [01:12:21]:
I mean, huge, huge potential there. Huge potential.

Ernesto Cullari [01:12:26]:
So let me ask you a question. Is there, is there an area of the industry that you think could be better managed by AI but is not currently being looked at?

Jordan Berry [01:12:40]:
That’s a great question. Being looked. Well, I mean, I do think, you know, even just web design is not utilizing AI enough. And I don’t, I don’t know that it’s not being looked at. But we got, you know, the marketing website, there’s still a lot of room for growth there. I’m really intrigued by in general, not just, not just in our industry, but in general, I’m really intrigued by this coming wave of robotics that’s starting to happen here. We’re starting to see the front end and as robotics starts to integrate AI into it. I mean we saw, you know, the Presso machine is utilizing robotics to, to dry clean stuff.

Jordan Berry [01:13:33]:
There’s the folding arm robots that were a huge hit at the clean show. They’re, you know, not being widespreadly that those aren’t being widespreadly utilized right now. But those are interesting. But I do think that there’s more to be done with Our equipment with AI right now that’s not being utilized, at least not very well. And I don’t know how much is being looked at, but I don’t know what about you guys?

Ernesto Cullari [01:14:03]:
One of the things that we look on, we develop recommendation engines. So for hint, beauty, H Y N T beauty we came up with. So basically you could tell it what, you know, what skin issues you have or even what skin color you have, and then the recommendation engine will start making product recommendations. But how that would apply to the laundromat industry I think is one of the things is none of us are made of is money. And, you know, there are supplies that we work with that laundromat owners work with every day. Some of those supplies are. Could be indicative of good productivity or bad productivity. So, I mean, I’m just, I’m just, you know, vibing with you now about it.

Ernesto Cullari [01:14:54]:
But I think in terms of supplies, I’d be curious what problems could be, you know, order. In terms of ordering things like that, AI works really well with planning and logistics. So I really. So if you own seven, eight stores, this is probably, you know, something that we could talk about together. How to, how to manage that and how to, how to forecast that. I don’t know. I’m not sure if you saw this, but I believe it’s. Palantir is working on air traffic control and how to.

Barbara Wardell [01:15:32]:
Using gamers.

Ernesto Cullari [01:15:33]:
Yeah, they’re using gamers and they’re. They’re using AI that if a plane takes off in Chicago and then one from Atlanta, they’re both headed to Newark airport. How delaying the takeoff or how having them just slow up or speed up can impact the safety, airline safety.

Jordan Berry [01:15:52]:
I remember these problems from my physics classes. One airplane leaves. Yeah.

Ernesto Cullari [01:15:58]:
Yes, yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So those are some things, you know, you were talking about the design. I’m not going to tell you how we do it, but we have a roster of designers. Some of them are famous, some of them are not. But the design aspect, we definitely have down some.

Barbara Wardell [01:16:22]:
Some of them integrate the AI into their websites. Yeah, that you were talking about.

Ernesto Cullari [01:16:27]:
So, I mean, who doesn’t love dogs? We do plenty of dog stuff.

Jordan Berry [01:16:31]:
Nobody I want to hang out with. I know that.

Ernesto Cullari [01:16:37]:
That’s hilarious.

Jordan Berry [01:16:38]:
So.

Ernesto Cullari [01:16:40]:
So yeah, the design part also, Google is putting a lot of stuff out there, but. But as an agency, we certainly have that down pat. And even though it’s not an emphasis of ours, we’re really focused and focused on what our discussion was. Solving real problems about money, you know, how to be more Efficient, how to get laundromats to run more efficiently, how to give tools that solves that by unifying your systems, how it’s. How it solves problems. And instead of increasing your expenses, it’s almost like you’re consolidating all the. At least the way we’re trying to solve these problems. Your developer can try and do the same for you is try to consolidate the system so that your WI fi is working with your CRM.

Ernesto Cullari [01:17:28]:
Your CRM is working with the phone system. The phone system is working with the point of sale. The point of sale is working with the CRM. And it’s all integrated in a loop

Barbara Wardell [01:17:39]:
so that everyone, every one of those products are working together and not against each other.

Jordan Berry [01:17:45]:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s where, I mean, you take something that’s powerful and you make it, I mean, unstoppable. Like, I mean, that’s. That. What you’re describing is what companies have paid millions of dollars in technology and. And staffing to be able to do up until the last two years. And less than that, like, we would not, as a small business, have access to be able to do any of that stuff until, like, now.

Jordan Berry [01:18:14]:
Like now now. Like today.

Ernesto Cullari [01:18:17]:
Yes.

Jordan Berry [01:18:18]:
Yesterday, maybe.

Ernesto Cullari [01:18:19]:
Isn’t that exciting, though?

Jordan Berry [01:18:20]:
It’s super exciting. Yeah, it’s super exciting. I’m all about right now, like, you know, utilizing some of this AI, some of this technology, some of these tools to be able to do things that small businesses have no business to be able. Should be able to do. Like, we should not be able to do some of the stuff that we’re able to do now with marketing, with integrating all these different tools. And it’s pretty exciting. It is pretty exciting.

Ernesto Cullari [01:18:47]:
If you have the time to dedicate Jordan, you can build anything you want to do.

Jordan Berry [01:18:52]:
Yeah.

Ernesto Cullari [01:18:52]:
I got so excited doing this. There’s days that I worked 27 hours straight because the tools that we can have. I mean, think about it.

Jordan Berry [01:19:04]:
When.

Ernesto Cullari [01:19:04]:
When you were a kid, did you not love the Sears catalog?

Jordan Berry [01:19:07]:
Absolutely, man. Yeah.

Ernesto Cullari [01:19:09]:
I would look at stuff like the walkie talkies and the watch with the calculator. Calculator, Yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:19:17]:
I couldn’t wait for Christmas because I go through all the catalogs and I’d circle the.

Barbara Wardell [01:19:20]:
You’re checking them all off.

Ernesto Cullari [01:19:22]:
So I was always trying to figure out what I could build. Can I build a fort with this? Can I run away from home and sell my parents in the black market? What can I get away with? What can I possibly do? Turns out no one wanted to buy my Parents. But, hell, so here I am, the 21st century. You can. You can sell your parents on the black market. You still can’t sell. Lo and behold, there’s a weird fetish for everything, you budget freaks. So, yeah, so if.

Ernesto Cullari [01:19:51]:
If you have the desire, you have the discipline, you. There’s things, there’s solutions that you could build for your business. I recommend, by the way, experimenting before you deploy them. But, you know, there’s things that you can build. If you see a problem, you can build it. It’s an exciting time to be in business. If you’re not looking to take the risk, find engineers or developers that could do it for you. It’s an exciting time to be in business.

Ernesto Cullari [01:20:20]:
At least that’s the way we see it.

Jordan Berry [01:20:22]:
Yeah. Well, listen, if somebody’s listening to this and is as excited as we are about what’s going on here, they want to, you know, take a peek at or hear more about what exactly you guys have to offer that. That can be integrated into their businesses. What’s the best way for them to get a hold of you?

Ernesto Cullari [01:20:41]:
You don’t have to put your reading glasses on, because I just blew up the screen. Cwad.agency.com. and you can do all kinds of research out there. Out there. If you’re a competitor, you want to learn how to do it right. You can learn how to do a masterclass right there on the AI. And, yeah, all you need after that is several thousand hours.

Jordan Berry [01:21:03]:
So come at me.

Barbara Wardell [01:21:05]:
Come at me.

Ernesto Cullari [01:21:06]:
Yeah.

Barbara Wardell [01:21:06]:
And we have anyone that calls to make an appointment.

Ernesto Cullari [01:21:09]:
That’s true. We love that.

Barbara Wardell [01:21:11]:
We have a little gift for them if they do. I had the team make something up.

Ernesto Cullari [01:21:16]:
Oh, really?

Barbara Wardell [01:21:17]:
Yeah. The ghoul. Oh, I’m not saying.

Ernesto Cullari [01:21:20]:
She’s not saying. No, but we do have to say it’s funny.

Jordan Berry [01:21:22]:
Just.

Ernesto Cullari [01:21:22]:
Just before we got on with you, someone reached out to us. They’re like, yeah, we saw you on the Jordan’s Laundromat Resource podcast. We’re like, that’s funny. Which one was it? It was like our first one. And I’m like, we’re. We’re about to do our latest one. So they were. They were so excited to.

Ernesto Cullari [01:21:37]:
To hear about this episode and learn all about AI and how they might integrate it. So. And they obviously love your podcast, which is a tremendous resource to people. So we’re just happy.

Jordan Berry [01:21:49]:
Yeah.

Ernesto Cullari [01:21:50]:
To be here.

Jordan Berry [01:21:52]:
Yeah. Well, happy to have you. And I mean, it’s a great resource, you know, mostly thanks to people like you who come on here and share your knowledge. Your work that you’ve been putting into the industry and your experience and lessons you’ve learned. So I. I appreciate you guys always taking the time. Maybe we should put. Put a.

Jordan Berry [01:22:09]:
A Q and A on the book so people can jump on and ask you guys questions live about AI and their businesses. I think that’d be fun.

Ernesto Cullari [01:22:16]:
We would love to. That’d be fun. There’s so many other things to talk about about A.I. you know, it’s an exciting industry.

Barbara Wardell [01:22:23]:
So big, so much to conquer.

Jordan Berry [01:22:27]:
All right, we’ll get one of those on the books, and maybe we’ll do it by the time this one goes out. That way we can announce it in the beginning. So maybe you’ve already heard about this Q A if you listen to the intro. I don’t know. You’re ahead of us. Guys. Thank you again for coming on. Incredible stuff.

Jordan Berry [01:22:41]:
Keep pushing the bounds of what’s possible in our industry, and you will be rewarded, and so will we because we’ll get to benefit from it. So I appreciate you guys a ton. And listen, Q and A coming up.

Ernesto Cullari [01:22:56]:
See you there.

Jordan Berry [01:22:57]:
All right. Hope you love that episode with Barbara Ernesto. So much good stuff. AI is changing so quickly. So many things happening all the time. More and more capabilities, more and more tools to help us grow our businesses, make more money, serve our customers better. All of the above happening pretty much every single week. New stuff’s coming out.

Jordan Berry [01:23:17]:
So join US once again May 21, 2026, 2:00pm Pacific, 5:00pm Eastern, for that live Q and A, and we’ll see you there. Peace.