Jordan Berry [00:00:00]:
Hey, what’s up guys? It’s Jordan with the Laundromat Resource Podcast. This is show 254 and I am pumped you’re here today because today, back on the show, Chuck Post, Chris Mason doling out some wisdom on laundromat ownership. And, uh, man, this one’s full of gems. Uh, the combined experience of those 2, I guess all 3 of us, but those 2 in particular is, uh, longer than I’ve been alive and probably longer than most of you have been alive as well. So, uh, lots of wisdom getting doled out in this episode and lots of very practical takeaways for you to help you get into this business the right way and to grow and scale your business, uh, once you do have it. So, uh, incredible episode. I know you’re gonna get a lot out of it. And I just want to encourage you upfront, I know I say this at the end of every episode, but Don’t waste your time here.

Jordan Berry [00:00:56]:
All right? Don’t waste your time listening to this podcast episode or this podcast at all if you don’t plan on picking one thing and putting it into action. All right? So, be on the lookout for something you can put into action because that’s going to help you achieve your goals. That’s your homework for this episode. And now, soak it all in because there’s a lot of good stuff coming up in this episode with Chris and Chuck. Let’s get into it. Chuck Post and Chris Mason, you’re back on the show. How are you guys doing today?

Chuck Post [00:01:28]:
Good, Jordan. Good to see you again. Always have fun, Jordan.

Chris Mason [00:01:31]:
Thanks for having us.

Jordan Berry [00:01:32]:
Yeah, well, good to have you guys back on. It’s always a good time. And I have a sneaking suspicion I’m going to ask one question and then I will be irrelevant until the end of this thing. Because you guys are both a wealth of knowledge and tons and tons to offer here. So I’m super excited about this. Real quick, maybe like a 30-second, maybe Chris do this. I don’t know if Chuck’s capable of doing the 30-second anything when it comes to talking, but maybe just a quick rundown of who you guys are and then let’s jump into what you guys got going on.

Chris Mason [00:02:04]:
Yeah, Chuck, I’ll jump in. And yeah, I’m Chris Mason, my partner Chuck Post. We are PBI Laundry Consulting. To give you a little bit of quick background, Chuck has been in this industry for 40-plus years. I’ve been in this industry for 20. So combined, we have over 60-plus years in this industry. Chuck is my partner as well as my father-in-law. So we’re a family business and we have done everything from development, new buildouts.

Chris Mason [00:02:37]:
We’ve sold laundries, owned laundries, and really a big focus of ours now is for laundry owners and new buyers. as well and guiding them into, you know, have quality laundries, be able to be successful and have models and plans going forward. So that’s a little bit about us. And I know Chuck will talk a little bit more. Also, Chuck’s written a book that we give out to everybody that joins our webinars, and it’s a fantastic, totally free book that you guys would get for joining us. And it’s called The American Green Business Wait, The Laundromat, an American dream business and an entrepreneur’s playground. It’s a fantastic tool in your toolbox as you’re looking to acquire laundry. So with that, go ahead, Jordan.

Jordan Berry [00:03:22]:
Yeah.

Chris Mason [00:03:23]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:03:23]:
Well, listen, I know you guys have been on the show a couple times now, so hopefully people are familiar with you guys. But if you’re not, that gives you a little rundown on who these guys are. Good dudes doing good stuff for our industry. And so it’s always fun to have them on. Well, what do you guys got going on? What’s on tap and where do you guys want to start? I know we could talk about laundromats all day. And in fact, we talked about laundromats half the day already before we record. So I was like, we need to just hit record. So where do you guys want to start? Chuck, what’s up?

Chuck Post [00:03:55]:
The reason for this call is that we’ve decided to start a workshop for owners. It’s a free workshop we’ll be doing twice monthly on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays. of each month to, you know, be at 10:30 Pacific time in the morning. And it’ll be about an hour to an hour and a half. And really it’s just pretty much as we work in sessions with our clients, we want to pick up different ideas and talk to ’em and express a philosophy based on what’s happening in this industry right now. You know, the The industry has just changed considerably in a very short period of time, both with the new types of equipment that we have, the programmability of it, the base systems that we have today, things that we begged for for 30 years before. We have all those things, and we also have a different philosophy amongst owners going after a larger part of their market area and things like this. And then we also have escalating rents that are always an issue, escalating costs and utilities and things like this that we’re always concerned about, varying from market to market.

Chuck Post [00:05:14]:
But we also have a growing market to work with because while laundries have traditionally focused on the 10% lower-income renter base, part of the market and a percentage of that business. Today we’re operating stores that are more sophisticated, fully attended, and with a better outreach to general population groups. So the opportunity to increase market is great today. And every store that we put— I mean, it’s crazy. And you’re having the same experience, I’m sure. We’re putting in stores or refilling stores that were doing $20,000 a month, $18,000 a month, and now they’re doing $40,000 and $50,000. And then one day selling $5,000 in a store of that size, you know. So phenomenal improvements are oftentimes the case.

Chuck Post [00:06:11]:
But the reason we want to do these workshops is because how do you know, you know, in your business How do you know if the time is right? How much should you invest? How should you invest it? What should you look for? You know, a big part of the growth comes from the fact that we’re taking a store with 1,000 pounds of capacity and turning them into 1,300, 1,400 pounds of capacity. 15 years ago, we were putting in stores 26 and 28-pound average size washers. Today we’re 46 to 52-pound. Typically, as the average size washrooms, we’re not using a lot of the small machines that we used to, and the customers are responding well to that. There’s a need for larger machines that just still hasn’t been met. But it’s more than the machines. You have to have the environment, you have to have parking, you have to have ingress and egress, you have to have cleanliness and the rapport, you have to create an image and people have to have that experience. You know, I go back to changing markets in other industries, and let me go back for a lot of you won’t even remember, but video stores, I’ll never forget.

Chuck Post [00:07:23]:
There were just all these little video stores all over the place, and then Blockbuster came out and a couple others and stuff, and they operated like real businesses. They made them large, they had a large variety, they kept a lot of Each, each title out for people to get. Most importantly, when you walked in there, you were greeted. You knew who the attendant was. You could tell it was comfortable in there. The lights were bright. It flattered the inventory of the various movies. You know, one industry after the other has the opportunity to operate the store in a more flattering way.

Chuck Post [00:08:01]:
And ours does too. People have looked at laundry as something they have to do, you know, that it’s been called America’s worst weekly chore, you know, and for good reason.

Jordan Berry [00:08:18]:
I call it that for sure.

Chuck Post [00:08:19]:
My worst chore for sure. Well, you’re the customer. But it’s true, you know, so making it more enjoyable, more comfortable, more friendly is good. And there’s just a lot to capitalize on because we deal potentially with everybody. Everybody washes their clothes, at least you hope they do. You know, for a lot of laundries, I mean, cities especially have homeless customers as well as everybody else. Controlling them is another issue, but that’s what you— you know, that’s part of the job. So in order to To have to take advantage of this larger market, of course, you also need to have a store that’s conducive to it.

Chuck Post [00:09:06]:
And in areas where you have diverse populations, where you might have rowdy groups of large families and this sort of thing that have been your customer base for many years and they produce your revenues, and now you’re going to make these changes in the store, you want to capitalize on a larger percentage of the population. Right. Then you have to run your store differently. And how do you do that? So the purpose of these workshops that we’re gonna be doing will be in working with the customers who call and answer questions and this sort of thing. And then when we find a question that seems interesting for a large group, we’re gonna break it down. We’re gonna talk about what kind of folks did you pay for them to analyze that market? To see what that potential is. Because let’s face it, the cost of equipment today with the average machine running $10,000 and up, you know, that’s a big consideration. How much should I invest and what should I expect? So we want to teach them a little bit about how to do their own market research, how to determine these things, and then what are the obstacles preventing.

Chuck Post [00:10:16]:
So we really want to help people elevate their businesses. And that’s the key. That’s what Pierce and I do in sessions with our own clients. And we feel that it’s the industry because— and I imagine that you’re probably familiar with this too, Jordan.

Chris Mason [00:10:33]:
Of course.

Chuck Post [00:10:34]:
But before we do go in and we do all of our magic to a laundry and it starts bumping up and stuff, you know, there’s 2 choices for the other laundries in the area. And one is to lay back and Cut prices and cut costs, and that sort of thing, which hopefully they’re not doing, or start to meet the challenge. So they start cleaning up their stores too. And I want that to happen. See, I mean, the guy that owns the store, he’s worried, oh no, they’re going to do that. No, no, there’s plenty of customers out there. What we want are more people to say, yeah, I go to that laundry. I like laundries.

Chuck Post [00:11:08]:
Laundry’s a good thing to do. Well, I’ll get that out of the way. I go there, I get my nails done. You know, I go— people in their ads, they shouldn’t advertise the price of laundries. I mean, you know, do it in a generic way. If you have value, if you’re running a sale, of course talk about it. But in the background, show people having a good time. Show them enjoying the laundry.

Chuck Post [00:11:29]:
Show them waving at the nail shop lady, I’ll be right in. You know, things like this that kind of bring us into the American life a little bit better. And then make these stores conducive to that atmosphere. So I’ll stop for a second and let you comment.

Jordan Berry [00:11:49]:
Whoa, rare moment here.

Chris Mason [00:11:51]:
Rare moment.

Jordan Berry [00:11:52]:
I love it. No, it’s so good, man. I mean, I think you’re right. There’s a new philosophy, how you put it, mentality coming into our industry where There’s a level of sophistication that hasn’t been here ever before in our business. There’s a level of ambition that hasn’t been here ever before in our business. And there’s a level of scale. And that scale is kind of hitting at a really interesting time where, I don’t know about you guys, I talk to people every day and everybody tells me they want 10 laundromats, right? That’s what everybody wants, 10 laundromats, right? And I’m like, okay, well let’s get you one first. And And I mean, Workhorse 10, but that was a much more difficult task to accomplish even 5 years ago or 10 years ago.

Jordan Berry [00:12:43]:
But we have, you know, new technology in play now that can allow us to scale to multiple locations. And a lot of people choose not to go scale through building a a large portfolio, they’ll utilize their 1, 2, 3 laundromats and add the service side of the business, right? The drop-off, the pickup and delivery, because you can run a lot of revenue through one store if you’re incorporating the service side of the business in addition to your self-service side. So there’s a lot of different interesting business models. There’s a lot of ways to scale. There’s a lot of ways to manage multiple locations or larger operations. Now that just wasn’t really that possible without huge amounts of effort not that long ago in our industry. So to your point, there’s a lot of technological advancements, which is funny because I, you know, you go back and listen to like first episodes, it’s a lot of me whining about how we haven’t changed anything in our industry for a long time. So that’s not the case as much anymore.

Jordan Berry [00:13:51]:
We’ve got a lot of— new technology now and coming ahead here in the future too. So pretty cool time to be in the industry for a lot of reasons.

Chuck Post [00:14:03]:
Yes, it is. Yes, it is. And the opportunities for adventure stores are greater than they’ve ever been. And modifying your operational style. We’re taking out 1,060 pounds out of the store right now. We’re going to put in about 1,280. And in doing that, because we’re using larger machines and larger dryers and everything else, primarily, we’re also opening up an area that could be a nice lobby, a very comfortable area for seating and that sort of thing. So we’re doing more for the customer experience than we’ve done with the house-to-home store.

Chuck Post [00:14:47]:
And we’re finding the room, including the amount of check-ins in the market. And this certainly brings it to a different level. You know, people are happy, they tell their friends, you know. And, well, the service that we offer is essential and very good, you know. So operating the stores in a manner that encourages that is pretty terrific. But once again, how do you go about doing that? The expense is high. You know, we’re buying stores for $100,000 to $300,000 and then putting $500,000 and $800,000 back into them, you know, pretty regularly. And that’s a lot of money and a lot more than people that are looking at ads for $150,000 stores thinking they can get into the laundry business for that.

Chuck Post [00:15:33]:
They’re just, they’re getting, you know, they’re getting fooled. And that, you know, kind of sorting that out for them is really important at the beginning or they’re set up for Failure, and you’re set up for an angry customer. You know, angry client. You’ve got to bring reality into the picture as to what the expectations are. And for those that want to muscle themselves in, which we’ve always supported, you know, there’s ways to do it. If you can’t afford to do a full retool, that’s understandable. But what can you do? Can you do enough to make it, one, sustainable, and two, increase capacity enough to pay for your planning? And 3, do you have a plan of what you’re going to do next? And then stage some things out. So a lot of times it’s just like that.

Chuck Post [00:16:17]:
But it’s also important to know what you’re going to get, what kind of bang you’re going to get for your buck. And that really comes down to research. You know, one thing about this business that I’ve always said, and it’s no different today, this is a community service business. And each community has different obstacles, different markets. And this sort of thing. And some places you have family size in 4 and over, you know, in other places you have 1.5, you know, that’s the same equipment mix work for both of those markets. Potentially either could do great, right? Depending on how you run your store and the type of customers you’re generating and things. But, but how do you select how you’re going to approach that market? And if you have a multiple market, you’re not focusing on these fun To your, to your west, you have low income, a lot of renters and large families, like this sort of thing.

Chuck Post [00:17:13]:
All those good things that we like so much after so many years in this business. Over here, we have more normal, you know, you have some startup families, maybe 2 or 2.5 people per household. The incomes are higher. They have easier access to equipment and sort of stuff. How do you encourage those people in? You know, because remembering that for other than the lower income and that group and large families where laundry is a big expense for them, you know, if you’re washing for 4 or 5 people, that’s, that’s, you know, you’re talking $60, $70 a month, you know, something like that, maybe more. That gets to be an attribute. But for the rest of the population, it’s about the convenience. If they’re going to come in, they don’t want to feel like they’re in a dirty environment or people that are there are dirty, you know, or there’s a lot of kids hanging out and they don’t want to be around kids.

Chuck Post [00:18:10]:
I mean, you have to deal with the issues at hand. Some areas you might want to encourage kids. That brings in the parents, you know. So you put an area in for it to handle that. You deal with it. Other areas you want to kind of discourage them. What’s the free drives that we do a lot of the time now? Let’s face it, how much are you going to— how many minutes are you going to end up giving for a quarter in 2 or 3 years from now? You know, already a lot of the better stores are giving 4 or 5 minutes for $0.50 to start and then have different pricing going on. And it’s like, you know, I think a one-pay system ultimately makes the most sense.

Chuck Post [00:18:47]:
I thought that for a lot of years. But today, what do we have? We have 200 machines, which reduces down the time. If your utility bills in the area are around that figure, you have to go through a full energy and current dryers, you know, dryer blows your whole maintenance out maybe even. So, you know, that’s a pretty big incentive right there. And it also moves people through the store fast. And then you have the programmability when you can upsell. You can charge extra for hot if you want to, or for a double wash or larger wash, various types of wash systems. So a lot of our new stores, We’re at the 6 to 8% up fees, you know, so that people are using enough of those upgrading, which was all left on the table before, you know.

Chuck Post [00:19:31]:
So these, this new expensive heavy-duty smart equipment pays for itself in a number of ways. So how do you, how do you decide whether or not you should retool? First, you know your market, you know what the opportunity is. What size machine average should you be at? How many should you be buying? You have to know what you can afford to spend right away. You know, you’ll need 30 to 40% typically on a new laundry acquisition and new equipment. But if you’re an owner of a laundry, you can find that you— they’ll pretty much finance the equipment right now along with some of the installation. So your out-of-pocket cost is minimal.

Chris Mason [00:20:12]:
Yeah.

Chuck Post [00:20:13]:
Your monthly expenses go in. You’ve got to make sure that that’s happened. So the issues to do that in order to make these decisions are manyfold. First, the first, and this is for everybody, regardless of what you’re playing, you have to strengthen your exit strategies. Over and over again, we’re running into stores with inadequate leases. That’s the biggest problem. And then getting the landlords to see that we need 20 or 30 years on a lease is more difficult than it ever was. They see so much fluctuation in leasing and issues that a lot of them are reluctant.

Chuck Post [00:20:54]:
But if you don’t have an exit strategy, and that’s determined by a couple things. One, your pleasure of use, your timeframe, and generally as far as the whole investment goes, but also the time locking in the equipment. Yeah. You know, if you have, let’s say, 8 or 9-year-old equipment and you have 12 years left on a lease or 14 even, you know, how much time can you use this other equipment before you replace it? Would it make sense then if you only had 8 years, 7 or 8 years left on lease? You’re not going to go buy expensive equipment. You don’t have time to run it off and you have no value of it afterwards. So you have to address these leases in that regard. If you have inadequate parking, there are issues and ways to make some modifications both in parking and that sort of thing oftentimes. And if not, in the way you operate your store.

Chuck Post [00:21:49]:
In other words, possibly lower pricing during the daytime or other certain times of the day when large families who have a stay-at-home family member taking care of the kids and stuff can get in there and take advantage of lower pricing. Keep your volume high during this time and free up the machines for a higher price for those people that don’t find that to be the motivation as to what store they pick. They’re more interested in a cleaner environment and that kind of control. We have to understand how to, how to, one, know what your market is and the potential is, and then two, how, what is it going to take to get them in? comfort and all those things are critically important. So once you arrive at a store, and when Chris and I review stores, we do this all the time, is that we’ll usually, we have a Target store that we’re gonna go see. Before we go there, we’ll go see 2 to 3 stores that compete mostly with that store by looking online. And finally, you guys that have your own stores now, of course, you know who your competition is. You need to get to know them pretty well, what their faults are and difficulties, what their pricing is and their promotions, what services they’re offering and how they’re offering in store.

Chuck Post [00:23:14]:
And then when you go to your store and take a look at it at the same time of day, it gives you kind of a perspective as to what’s going on in the various areas. But you do need to know your own competition. If there are a lot of apartments, you should know what kind of equipment they have in there. You know, how much do they have? Do they have adequate? If you’re in an area that still has people hanging clothes outside, you know, those are good things to know. The free dry can combat that, start driving them in. So there’s just a number of different things that you need to know about the store, and then you can analyze what the turnover should be. We, you know, after doing this for so long, I can walk into a store and pretty well tell you what their turn levels should be based on just what I just explained. If I know that much, I can walk in there and say, this is a 3.5-turn store, you know, versus a 4.5-turn store, a 5.5-turn store, where you can pretty well determine where the store should fall.

Chuck Post [00:24:11]:
Doesn’t mean that’s the limitation as to what they can do, but it does tell you where it ought to—

Chris Mason [00:24:16]:
Yeah.

Chuck Post [00:24:16]:
Does tell you if this store was designed to be operating properly right now. We should be doing this. The growth should be about this. And from that, I can see what influences that we can make at that store to improve that situation, get all that money that’s been left on the table back on the table, but also how to grow it beyond that, you know, and what capacity we’re using. And that’s it. So when we lay out the store, then we have, you know, some real real foundations to work on and a method to our madness of the approach. So it’s important to know your market area. It’s important to know your store.

Chuck Post [00:24:59]:
It’s important to tie down an exit strategy, meaning the lease has to be in place. Your numbers should be clean. It should be trackable things, being able to demonstrate your life potential. Things that are still left on the table. If you’re considering selling your store at any time, these are really critical steps for you. And if not, all you want to do is enjoy extra revenue, these are really critical steps for you. Okay? So regardless of what you’re doing, the biggest failing of our industry has always been the lack of participation of the owners. You know, it started out with blue-collar workers.

Chuck Post [00:25:45]:
Well, when we first started doing laundries and I came on tier 2, I mean, you know, they’ve only been out for one generation by the time I get around. And at that time, you know, guys that worked at Lockheed, Boeing, I was in California. So these were the people that we were selling laundry to because it gave The average person has this and be an entrepreneur and express himself and earn extra money and keep his job. Maybe he’s doing okay and people can’t afford to quit their work and start a business very easily. That takes a big chunk of money. You have $300,000 to invest into a business and you’re going to take $100,000 to live on while you do it. You know, that’s money that you could be having work for you. So This has been a wonderful business for that type of person.

Chuck Post [00:26:33]:
Today, the same theory is there. You know, people are looking for a business that they can operate on the side, hands-off, which this still is. The most sophisticated businesses are still visited once a week and sometimes not even that by a laundry owner because of the advantages and things like this. But we’re dealing with a different type of investor, somebody that’s scaled up, has more money to work with, has more experience in general. It’s no longer just a blue-collar business. Of course, it’s been popular for immigrants that have come in because communication has been simple and things like this. All these things still apply, but the opportunity is big. So by addressing your students, the And then figuring out what you’re ready to invest, the key would be how to go about doing that, what you need to do.

Chuck Post [00:27:30]:
And the most important things are to have a good sustainable business. In other words, you’re not having faulty machines. And then to increase the capacity. So—

Chris Mason [00:27:45]:
Peter?

Chuck Post [00:27:48]:
If you were to make the decision that it’s time for you to retool, and I know a lot of you out there are in that thought process right now, the questions are how do you go about it? And this is what our workshops are really for, is to help you kind of answer the questions based on your specific needs in marketing.

Chris Mason [00:28:10]:
Yeah.

Chuck Post [00:28:11]:
But for this conversation, Once you understand your business, then you’ll know how to meet and what its needs are. And as far as projecting it goes, there’s a lot of ways to project revenue. But what you might do is this. If you were to retool your store, chances are you’d take 10 to 15% away from the marketplace that’s not coming there now.

Jordan Berry [00:28:36]:
Oh, yeah.

Chuck Post [00:28:38]:
You’d increase your actual market area by customers that live in your market. aren’t coming there now, they’re doing clothes and all that sort of stuff, by another 5 to 7%. And then with price increases and lower utility bills, you’re talking probably another 7 to 10%. So you can see a 30%, about 25, 30% improvement in revenues on a well-done retool or more.

Chris Mason [00:29:06]:
Okay.

Chuck Post [00:29:06]:
So that analysis can be done relatively easily. You know, and then selecting the equipment that you need for them. Basically, you have to know what your turn levels are, what the other stores are doing. If you’re going— if your turn levels are, you know, I’m getting 7 turns on the weekend on my 60s and 80s, and I’m getting 3.5 on my 30s and 4 on my 40s, you know what you need, right?

Jordan Berry [00:29:31]:
Yeah.

Chuck Post [00:29:32]:
You have to be more of those 60-pounders and 80-pounders. So, you know, we need to kind of balance things out a little bit as to how you build that store and then take a look at the end result. So oddly enough, we’re not really talking about a lot of price increasing after this. You know, if it’s necessary, we do it and we put things in play to accomplish that. But what we do have are lower utility costs, more upside, more customers. And the capacity. Now, if you’re increasing the capacity from 1,200 to 1,400 or 1,440, that’s a 20% bump to the capacity. So certainly that should also be on the table, right? So there’s a lot of revenue streams coming in and doing the analysis, cost out figuring and things like this will tell you if it makes sense.

Chuck Post [00:30:28]:
And then it’s just a matter of how to start. You know, what steps do you take? What do you need to accomplish ahead of time? Like strengthening your exit strategy. You don’t want to go in and start retooling the store with a bad exit strategy. You know, it just, it may not turn out. You want to make sure that you’ve done enough research to become, you want to know what your customer’s liking out there. You’re not building a pretty store city. You’re building up a good community environment for them. So those things are all very important.

Chuck Post [00:31:07]:
Yes, go ahead, Glenn. Well, we don’t want to head into political issues with specific equities, things like that. That’s not our expertise. We know a lot about equities, of course, because we’ve been in business a long time, but We’re not repair guys. You know, we are model makers. We go in and improve stores, and that’s what this workshop is designed for. If you’re struggling with a lot of broken-down equipment, the best advice I can give you is figure out a way to replace it or sell it to somebody that will, because it doesn’t grow younger. It doesn’t get better on its own.

Chuck Post [00:31:45]:
We have a client Because we weren’t able to get certain issues taken care of, putting $2,000 or $3,000 every month into his— into keeping equipment running. You know, I mean, that took everything off the table for him. And sometimes he’d have something serious go on and the store wasn’t making any money anyway. So he cleaned it up really good. He did everything right. It’s like he read my book. Actually, he did. Read the book and went about everything.

Chris Mason [00:32:12]:
Yeah.

Chuck Post [00:32:12]:
Except for addressing the equipment because he didn’t have an exit strategy. Yeah, that’s right. He failed to create an exit strategy. He listened to the broker who was, you know, and, you know, bless brokers, I’ve been one for 45 years, but the fact is, is that they don’t make a dime if they don’t sell the store. That’s a pretty big incentive and people need to remember that, you know? And they do make a lot of money. You’re talking 6 or 8 or even 10% on a transaction. Well, you know, that can be a lot of money. It’s about what Chris and I make on a store that we sell and retool together, you know? It is a lot.

Chuck Post [00:32:52]:
So you need to make sure that, you know, you’re getting some outside advice, that you’re doing your own work. We don’t go out and do these things for everybody. We do it with everybody, you know? I imagine you work the same way.

Chris Mason [00:33:08]:
Yeah.

Chuck Post [00:33:08]:
We’re the entrepreneur’s guide. We’re there to keep them from stepping on stuff. So all we need is for them to be open and talk to us, and we can help them a great deal and give them tips and that sort of stuff and help them get the resources and things. And like you, we work nationwide. We have projects all over the country that we’re involved in.

Chris Mason [00:33:32]:
Okay.

Chuck Post [00:33:32]:
And oddly enough, there are resources for laundry equipment and fittings everywhere, you know. So it’s finding them and talking to them and figuring out who to use and things like that. So it’s just fun. And it’s a lot of work to take these challenges and reach along. But the rewards with it, you know, the rewards are amazing. One store that we actually sold way too early, but then the person had life changes that we didn’t agree with, but we Built the store, it was around $560,000 or so to do all the retooling and fix it up. And it grew to a point where we sold it just recently for $1.2 million. You know, so that was after 6 years and cash flowing like crazy, you know.

Chuck Post [00:34:18]:
So, and that’s—

Chris Mason [00:34:21]:
Right.

Chuck Post [00:34:22]:
So normal now, you know, that it’s almost a shame when you see a good store sitting there Potentially a great store catering to a larger marketplace that’s stagnant because one, the owner may not be capitalized sufficiently to do it. 2, doesn’t have things, or 3, doesn’t have the exit strategy in place that allows them to do that, you know. And those things are all solved. And we encourage everyone to do that. Go ahead and pick it up, Jordan, if you don’t want to run out of juice here.

Jordan Berry [00:35:00]:
Yeah, I don’t think you’re in danger of running out of juice here. But I would love to throw a question over to Chris. Who’s, from what you guys are seeing, who’s the typical buyer now? Who should be buying? What do buyers need to know? I mean, I think that there’s huge opportunities that Chuck’s talking about in terms of This industry is upgrading. We’re upgrading right now in terms of sophistication of our owners, equipment, technology. We’re in the process of upgrading and there’s a lot of money to be made in doing it properly, which is great.

Chuck Post [00:35:38]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:35:39]:
But before you can upgrade, you gotta actually find the sucker and lock it down. So who’s that buyer? Who should be thinking about buying a laundromat? And what do they need to know about buying a battery?

Chris Mason [00:35:53]:
So that’s a great question, Jordan. Thank you. So there’s a couple things that I want to touch base on that. One, right now, and in fact over the last couple years, we’re getting just a much more sophisticated buyer. We’re getting a lot of people from corporate America that really have that entrepreneurial spirit, right? And those are the ones that we get excited about. And I know Chuck has talked about this before, how excited he gets about the entrepreneur spirit because the amount of money that can be made in this industry is fantastic as long as, and we’ve talked about this before as well, as long as it’s purchased correctly with a model in place, with a plan to go forward. Because why we do these actual owners workshops are because this is a deteriorating asset every day as we speak, right? The equipment is always getting older, the lease is getting shorter, the costs are always rising. So how do we stay on top of it? So you could have an operator who makes great money, but if they don’t do anything with a plan, a model, something going forward, then that can deteriorate.

Chris Mason [00:36:57]:
And over a length of time, their returns start to diminish. And so what we’re doing is we’re just getting buyers coming in that are coming from that corporate America. They’re coming from a workplace where they want to work for themselves. They want to be able to run a business, live the American dream, support their family, have their families come in. In fact, when I had my laundry for 13 years, I had my families come, my families, slow down. I had my daughters come in and they were collecting coins with me back then. They were, it was a part of the community as we do it. So we’re getting a lot of people that are much more community oriented.

Chris Mason [00:37:34]:
There’s, as the sophistication goes up, the amount of money can be made can go up. The programmability of the machines, the promotions that we can do, the environments that we create, the community centers that a lot are laundromats. The laundromat is a community center. We get people from all over, and if we build it correctly and we guide a buyer into not only understanding what the laundry is when they’re buying it, but what it could be, we could be grabbing from 3, 5 miles out, bringing people in into small areas. And that’s That’s really the bonus of the buyer that we’re putting in now. And so what we do is, and where Chuck and I really, our expertise is in helping buyers is one, identifying the store. One, we need a footprint, we need a store. And then 2, what’s the value of that store based on what they are going to get it at? And then what is the potential of that store going forward? And that’s really important for us to be able to show potential.

Chris Mason [00:38:33]:
Because if you’re buying a store at what the seller is selling it for and operate it the same way the seller’s operating it, it’s going to go downhill and you’re going to lose money. And we’re going to say, hey, if that’s your plan, don’t pay us. Don’t pay us to do that because that’s not the plan forward. We have to help you really grow the business. And how do we grow the business? By pricing, as Chuck was talking about, and doesn’t necessarily mean raising prices. It’s not always raising prices. It’s being competitive and strategic in our pricing and how we’re going to price it and what type of promotions and things like that. Single pay systems that Chuck’s talking about for laundry owners.

Chris Mason [00:39:12]:
A lot of times free dry, that sound free dry scares people. Okay, it shouldn’t, but it has to be done correctly because if you don’t do it correctly, it can destroy your business. So what we want to do is make sure that with that, we put everything in place As we guide our buyers coming in, laundromats are not as cheap as they used to be. Plain and simple. What used to be you can get in for $200,000 to $300,000 easily is not that way anymore. A good quality laundry, you know, in Southern California, you’re looking between $400,000 to $600,000 at a base laundry. That’s just the facts of what it is. The cost of equipment has shot up tremendously.

Chris Mason [00:39:49]:
The cost of utility, cost of everything has gone up. Inflation has shot everything up. So with that, we want to make sure that we’re guiding our buyers into a correct fit for them, not only the business, but what about location? Are they comfortable there? Do they feel safe there? How does it fit their living profile? Where are they located? Ideally, you don’t want to have them go 2 hours out of their way. We want to have kind of a centrally located area that they can get to. Or have a management style in place which we can help guide them in into how to operate those long-term. So the short of it is we are getting way more sophisticated buyers. We’re getting more professionals coming into this industry, doctors, educators, we’re getting lawyers, we’re getting corporate America coming into this business. And part of it is what you had discussed as you were jumping in is how scalable this business can be if done correctly.

Chris Mason [00:40:47]:
Okay, this is a scalable business. We have had many clients use their first laundry that they’ve purchased and leverage that to acquire a second laundry without money out of their pocket. Now you’re having money make money for yourselves without having you spend anything. And that’s really the kind of dream is how we can scale this business up using that original investment that you’ve put in. So hopefully that answers a little bit of your question, Jordan.

Jordan Berry [00:41:12]:
Yeah, no, that’s great. And I think it, it really does speak to, you know, how—

Chris Mason [00:41:20]:
This way.

Jordan Berry [00:41:22]:
Endangered owners are who are just sitting on their hands. I mean, this industry, I mean, frankly, and it’s part of the reason why we have such a bad reputation in this industry, but frankly, you could have a cash cow of a business, you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, And just sit on your hands and not have to think about the fact that my business is deteriorating. You know, like the my lease is getting shorter, my equipment’s getting older because guess what? Your equipment’s 15 years old. Well, hey, it used to be a badge of honor to have your equipment for 30, 40 years, right? Like we were we would brag about that in our industry, and now it’s like well, listen, you’re you’re losing money if you’re Equipment is you know not just maintenance costs but utility costs and losing customers because they’re going to go down the street to the store that has the newer, better washing, more efficient equipment over there and a better customer experience, right? All the things you guys are talking about. And so this this industry is you know on the one hand super exciting time to be in this industry because. There’s a lot of stuff happening, a lot of good stuff, a lot of technology coming in, a lot of people doing some innovative things in their laundromats, a lot of people doing big things with their little laundromat empires. But also it’s a scary time to be in this industry if you’re someone who originally got in this or trying to get in this to be completely hands-off because that’s Tough to do. And the way I always say it is like, hey, there’s a spectrum of you’re completely hands-on and you’re completely hands-off.

Jordan Berry [00:43:06]:
And you can skew this business. I think Chuck referenced this earlier. You can skew this business pretty heavy on the passive side, but it’s never going to be fully passive, right?

Chris Mason [00:43:15]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:43:15]:
Unless you get to a scale where you’ve got a CEO who’s running your business. And I don’t know if there’s anybody really running it like that. Maybe a handful of of people out there doing that, maybe, but it’s never really going to be completely hands-off. And so the other thing to keep in mind is the more that you skew it to that passive, you just got to keep in mind down the road, there’s somebody else who is working with you guys, working with us, who’s implementing the right tech stack, who’s— Yeah. Continually evaluating their pricing, who’s continually evaluating their competition, who’s continually evaluating the customer experience and improving it, who’s continually managing their employees and holding them accountable to certain behavior with customers when they interact and to certain metrics, performance metrics, right? When they’re doing wash and fold and there’s, A lot of operators operating that way now. So the more passive you are, you just need to be aware of that’s who your competition is. Now, not to say that that model is going anywhere anytime soon. I actually, I don’t know if you guys have seen this at all, but I’m starting to see a little bit of a bifurcation.

Jordan Berry [00:44:34]:
I talked about this a little bit, but there’s a lot more people going into the full-service laundry. But then there’s also this contingency of people who are looking to automate more, use leverage, use AI, use, you know, cashless payment systems, use, you know, like remote customer service that you can either call or you can see on an iPad on the wall or something like that, and are going more hands-off and more fully automated. So there’s this kind of interesting dynamic I think happening right now. Now I’m brain dumping, but I’ll turn it back to you, Chuck. You seem like you got something to say.

Chuck Post [00:45:19]:
Well, yeah, these are terrific points, but I’d argue this. It’s not so necessary that you’re in the storm so often anymore. Most of what you can do could be done at your desktop or on your phone.

Jordan Berry [00:45:35]:
That’s right.

Chuck Post [00:45:36]:
But you hit it right on the head is that Today’s operator, if you’re gonna succeed long-term and build your store and have any idea of scaling it and that sort of stuff, you have to continually follow your numbers. You know, you have to know what your turn levels are at all times. You have to know what your competition is doing. You have to, you have to, you know, when I look at people’s turn, I know when it’s time to raise their prices because the machines are telling me it’s time to raise prices. I know when it’s time to do a promotion.

Jordan Berry [00:46:04]:
Mm-hmm.

Chuck Post [00:46:05]:
Because the machines are telling me they’re not. If the balance is off from what you expect during the time of year, then perhaps there’s something that you could do to improve those things, you know. So I think that it’s more important to be your own producer in this community and take advantage of understanding these things and be regularly aware of it. We follow one That we build for about a year typically.

Jordan Berry [00:46:34]:
Correct.

Chuck Post [00:46:34]:
And we continually are making modifications in the pricing, right? Because you can’t always get your price that you actually want the first day. You know, you’ve got to, you’ve got to compete in that market and keep people in. The most important thing to do when you reopen, which you’ve gone through a soft opening and have confidence in your policies and procedures and employees, then you want to build that store’s volume of customer base as high as you can, as fast as you can. And then you have your retention programs going on from there. So, you know, you don’t want to scale your growth, you know, but yet I remember back when, when the guys at BWS and stuff, they would tell people that, you know, they have 3 months to grow their business and that’s where it’s going to be. And it just tricks me in the tanny when I think about that now, you know, I mean, because we grow stores for 2 years. You know, modifications to the model operating systems and that sort of thing. I think to be fair, if you want to have a physically, at least a pretty hands-off approach, you need a couple of things.

Chuck Post [00:47:44]:
One, you have to have the store in good working condition and you have to have the resources available to you to do the repairs and service. You’ve got to have a go-to person on staff. You know, you don’t want to have to get a call and go down there in the middle of the night to fix them, to deal with the police if something happens. You don’t want to have to go down there and fill in on a shift that somebody messes or be closed or risk those kinds of problems. So you have to have somebody on your staff to manage. So you mentioned full-service laundry. So there’s Full-service laundry has sort of taken on a little more approach. It’s not just having an attendant on today providing services, ancillary services, it’s above and beyond being the leader in that backing.

Chuck Post [00:48:32]:
When I talk about numbers, by the way, I exclude that. Okay? That number is so influenced by the individual operator that how do you predict it? Now, you can predict what should be a normal walk-in trade. Okay, of some percentage or based on the business and the income levels and style of customer, you can say, well, we should do $3,000 a month in walk-ins, right? But if they’re gonna go serious after that business, if they’re gonna do pickup and delivery and do a lot of promotion and they’ve got all the smart equipment and everything to work on every app, And they’re expecting to do $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 a month, then, you know, that’s a whole different thing. And they’ve got to make sure that that fits in. And even that could be a nightmare. I’ve seen stores hurt themselves with too much fluff and fold because they are taking up machines and holding and space and making it inconvenient for their walk-ins, right? So they’re losing self-service business. For full-service business. And that makes no sense.

Chuck Post [00:49:44]:
So you’ve gotta be able to marry those two. And it takes some thought and planning to do that. And that’s really what misses in this business is that our traditional laundry owners don’t really do a lot of thoughtful planning. You know, you have to know that your aisles are wide enough to get around, you know, and if not, what do you do about that? There’s just so many different things in the creation of a store. Yeah. And the equipment mix that you use and where you place different things, like the things like milk cream. Now you want the cream churns right into them and get to them right away, you know, and things like that. There are a lot of little nuances even within that mix.

Chuck Post [00:50:31]:
And I think that knowing that could make a big difference, but the growth potential is long-term of a laundry. You can continually grow because we’re creating new customers in a newer environment. We’re not just going after the renters and the lowest income and the large families anymore. And if you are, you know, grid down your market, see what that potential is and what you’d have to do to go after it. But laundries are remorphing. People like one reason, and they benefit everybody. And the only reason that we’ve catered down to the lower income groups is up around 51 cents, that’s from blitz resistance. We didn’t have all of these reasons before.

Chuck Post [00:51:18]:
We wanted to really work so hard to go beyond that, that we were taking their resistance out.

Chris Mason [00:51:26]:
I’m going to jump in. I’m gonna have a kind of a little hot take. And Jordan, you had mentioned about AI and how technology is kind of advancing. I still believe the customer service and human element of this industry is so important to success.

Chuck Post [00:51:43]:
Mm-hmm.

Chris Mason [00:51:44]:
So as everything is going to automation, everything is going towards AI, which I have no problem using advancements in payment systems, advancements in Automation and how to be efficient with the laundry. In the end, this is the most customer service-oriented business you could have. At its base level, it’s a community of people coming together to have an hour and a half of their time. How do you make their experience not only efficient, but how do you make it comfortable? How do you make it to where they feel like it’s a family? And how do you retain those customers if they do? And that’s literally The component that I think is so crucial and important and why this industry is such a good industry in general, because the human element of this industry allows it to not get completely automated. It allows you to grow a business organically with human element. I think that’s really important for growth no matter how you look at it. Because yes, you go into some big cities where you just want to get in and get out, and we’ve been talking about these, These new washer dryer combos and things like that that are coming out. If when I bring my, if I have to use a laundromat, and I’ll give you an example.

Chris Mason [00:52:55]:
I was in North Carolina for a week. My son’s a baseball player. We were out there and the hotel, someone broke the dryer of all things. Of course I check out the washer and dryers and someone broke the dryer door. So I’m like, ah, all right, I’m going to go to a laundromat. I go over there, And there was 2 kind of in the area, and I went to the one that had an attendant, one that was clean. And as soon as I walked in, I was greeted. And I’ll tell you, I go to North Carolina usually once a year with my son.

Chris Mason [00:53:28]:
I will use that laundry every single time because of that experience. Now, I’m just one person, one time, one year, but think about the community that deals with that person. Yeah. 2 times a week and is there every week for 52 weeks. And this is where the growth is in this industry, separate from everything else. And when we’re talking with laundry owners and why we do these laundry owner workshops is to discuss, sometimes they may think, oh, I can’t pay more payroll, or I can’t pay more to make more. It doesn’t make sense to me. And in fact, there’s absolutely ways to do that.

Chris Mason [00:54:05]:
And make sure that you can grow above what you’re doing right now. And so this is part of what we do.

Jordan Berry [00:54:12]:
Yeah, I yeah, I I think that that is a huge huge point. Good hot take there. You know, and I think, and I might even just take it even a little further and say the more that things are automated, not just in our industry, but just in general, and the more that AI is utilized and robotics are utilized and all that stuff that’s coming down the pipeline, the more important it is to have that customer service, that human touch, that Unreasonable Hospitality. If you haven’t read that book, that’s a good one to read.

Chris Mason [00:54:48]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:54:49]:
And the bigger advantage it’s gonna give you over the people who are automating as well. So definitely, I love that hot take. And I know that sometimes that doesn’t feel, you know, sometimes a hot, like, buzzword is, you know, scalable, right?

Chuck Post [00:55:06]:
No.

Jordan Berry [00:55:06]:
Doesn’t feel as scalable. And, you know, nobody’s saying, hey, you gotta learn all the names of all your customers. But I think it was the Willifer brothers that came on way back, like, years ago, they came on the podcast, and I think it was them that were saying, hey, we have our employees learn 3 new names every day.

Chris Mason [00:55:24]:
I love that.

Jordan Berry [00:55:24]:
And I was like, that’s a great, you know, the most important word to most people is their name, right? Like, that’s, you can whisper their name and their ears will perk up ’cause they’re just, you know, they wanna hear their name, right? And so if you learn their name and somebody remembers your name, it’s a big deal.

Chuck Post [00:55:41]:
Agreed.

Jordan Berry [00:55:42]:
So that customer, I love that, man. And I think it’s, I’d agree with that wholeheartedly. Not to say we shouldn’t be automating stuff, we shouldn’t be utilizing the tools that we have available to us, But don’t forget the human touch. And the more you can lean into that, the bigger advantage I think you’ll have than for other laundromats or other businesses in general who aren’t doing that.

Chuck Post [00:56:04]:
Agreed. That’s absolutely right. I couldn’t agree more. I think that, again though, it really starts at the top. If you’re putting on training programs for your employees, like the people you were talking about a minute ago, If you’re having regular staff meetings, if you have accountability built into your systems, a procedure where there’s a handoff rather than just a change of personnel, and you develop these sorts of things, you can probably still be away quite a bit because large corporations do that. But you have to have management, you know, you have to put things in place to do that. And again, I think that if you start with one good store and build that out, you know, first of all, to go out and find 3 new stores as a beginner is expensive. You’re going to pay top dollar, you’re anxious, you know, it’s just, you’re going to make mistakes and things like this.

Chuck Post [00:57:01]:
If you buy one store and you know how to grow it, you know, it won’t take you any more than a year, maybe not even that long before you’ve got the handle in order to go out and find another store.

Chris Mason [00:57:12]:
Yeah.

Chuck Post [00:57:12]:
But the fact is, is that once you’re in the business, stores come your way. You know, I mean, that’s just a fact. You’re not always out there just looking for things all the time. You know, you’re letting people know you’re interested, but things— you start hearing about things and knowing about things. So finding Santa Fe the Second, it’s like your first million they used to talk about. It’s hard to make the first million. After that, they come easy, you know.

Jordan Berry [00:57:33]:
That’s right.

Chuck Post [00:57:34]:
But that’s the way it is with these stores too. But there are different kinds of stores too. You know, and I wanted to touch on that a little bit. We have the community store, you know, which can be 1,500 feet or 1,200 feet or 2,000 feet, but it services a community. And your ring of influence is primarily in a half mile or so. You know, if you’re in a populated area, in a store like that, may go out a little bit farther, but you need to focus in tight. So you need to know that market. But there are destination stores out there too.

Chuck Post [00:58:07]:
If you’re in an area that’s larger, expanded, you have shopping centers and things like this, you know, you have good parking and all those benefits. Your reach is deep. You know what you can accomplish there? You can go out 2 miles, 3 miles in a lot of cases, even in populated areas. If you’ve got a Safeway or a Wilco or whatever store you have and you’re anchored to them, how big is their influence? How big? How far are they pulling from? Because that’s That’s now your market area. So understanding what kind of a store you have can make a difference too, because I found that there’s very little variance in the old stores from a store of 3,000 square feet in a shopping center to a store that’s in a smaller community of 2,000 square feet, or on a standalone with all kinds of parking around it at an intersection. And they all kind of build them the same way. The same kind of a mix and that sort of stuff. You know, you need to know what you’re trying to accomplish and build the store accordingly and figure out what your turn level should be and do what you need to do to get it there.

Chuck Post [00:59:19]:
I would promote somebody doing whatever’s necessary to build up their customer base first rather than worry about the dollars in their pocket. You know, it’s really important that you’re creating that market in that business for yourself to go forward. And you’ll find that it’s not difficult to raise prices when the customers are happy with it. When they’re calling up, that’s my laundry, that’s where I go. It creates a habit. So unless you do anything to disappoint them or you take too big of a bite— let’s face it, on pay systems, we’re not raising prices by a quarter, we’re going 11 cents, you know, things like this. Promotions are easy to do. So, you know, it’s our habit to implement a new promotion every time we raise prices.

Chuck Post [01:00:05]:
I never take anything away without giving something back, you know, and that’s, that’s worked really well. It’s common for us to actually grow customer base at the same time we raise prices because of using that system. It’s very common. So there’s a lot of ways to do that, but you have to know your store and how it fits into the marketplace. If you were to build a store and you’re going to reach out 2 miles and you’re in a small strip center somewhere on a busy street or a side street, you know, you may not have the same success that you would hope for. So it’s good to get to know each store individually. And everything Chris was saying about customer service is right on. You know, I didn’t.

Chuck Post [01:00:56]:
And he said it himself, and I’m the same way. I travel quite a bit, you know, and when I do and I need to use the laundry, I don’t even consider I’m going to attend upon it. I just, you know, first of all, probably going to leave it there for them to do anyway. But, but I, you know, I want to even if I am doing it myself, I don’t want to go in those dirty places. You know, I’m going to put my clothes in a machine that was just used by. Who knows who, you know? People come in with things like cockroaches and stuff. And, you know, I want to make sure when I go in, it’s nice and clean. In fact, I’ll usually call the laundry and, you know, get a feel for the place before I take my stuff in.

Chuck Post [01:01:35]:
No, I’m not the average laundry person, and neither is Grits. You know, it’s more of an occasional thing for us. But it is for a lot of people, and they have their own flaws in the same manner.

Jordan Berry [01:01:46]:
Yeah.

Chuck Post [01:01:47]:
So, and it’s just good to remember that. And that’s what we want to get to is we know there are a lot of people out there that understand all of what we’re talking about. We’re not telling them anything real new. They’re hearing it everywhere. But how do you get started? How do I believe my salesman from the equipment company is telling me the right stuff?

Jordan Berry [01:02:12]:
Yeah.

Chuck Post [01:02:13]:
Personally, and, you know, I’ll be happy to argue this with anybody, we don’t like the 30-pound machine. We think that it takes business away from the 40-pound machine. It ends up using more maintenance because they overfill them too much. And it’s just, you know, you’re better off stepping from 20 to 40 or 45 or something, you know, right away and skipping that mix. And that improves income quite a bit. Right there, it increases capacity. The same with the 60s and 80s, you know, most stores need more of those. So as you shift your market to larger machines, you also have to back it up with more market.

Chuck Post [01:02:53]:
And most stores don’t have enough large machines, you know, even today. As shown, the store that we’re building now is 54-pound average. You know, it’s, it’s this, and I see that as more normal today. You know, reduces parking needs, you know, for income, cuts down on crowded stores. If you’re using off-hour promotions and other systems, you’re dividing up markets, making it more comfortable for the more evening crowds, the lower, the people with smaller families and stuff like this to come in. You’re creating— you’re already creating proof of fiction. You’re gonna grow your store. And they keep growing, you know.

Chuck Post [01:03:38]:
So, like I said, the one guy has gotten to 75. Our first influx, our first improvements got him up to about— from 17,000 up to almost 40, about 36,000, 38,000. Now, we only did a few machines and changed the operating system that he was using and things like this. And he hired people and trained them and did all the other things right. The machines weren’t that old, they just weren’t good machines. So once we had that proof, we replaced the rest of the stuff. And he’s grown every year, he has grown significantly up to about 75,000 this last season. So that’s self-service only.

Chuck Post [01:04:17]:
He’s also developed a huge full-service program with Amsler recently. And Buffett especially, he’s in the, you know, over 20, you know, so that, which is highly profitable. So, and that’s a real enterprise. So when you can grow your store like that, you know, to move on to store number 2 too soon, maybe you’re hurting yourself. Maybe you’re hurting yourself pretty hard. You know, wait until you’ve gotten your growth and you’re on a plan And you’re continuing, then you can free yourself up to focus on store number 2 and then take a look at those same eyes, those better trained eyes as to how you’re gonna do it and what equipment you need. So a big part of key to starting is just understanding what you have to do first. And the first thing is the education on your store and the competition and the market area.

Chuck Post [01:05:14]:
And the exit strategy is, you can’t do anything without making sure you— and I’m not— I can’t speak for you, but it would be my guess you’re in the same boat, is that it’s pretty rare that we touch the laundry without touching the lease. You know, in almost every case, we’re going to go to the landlord and get it extended or get something, get better signage, get more parking benefits and stuff.

Chris Mason [01:05:40]:
Yeah.

Chuck Post [01:05:40]:
You know, and you don’t always have to have parking right in front, but like there’s one place and there’s, there’s all the parking is out on an island near the store. It’s certainly walk potential, but it’s all, it’s all just open to anybody. You know, it’s a large center and people are going there and the employees from the other end, they’re going and parking there all day and stuff. So just by having a landlord change that to a 90-minute zone cuts that down and gives us More ample parking, 14 more spots that are largely available now to laundry customers and other people when they’re coming in and going out. So there’s a lot of things that can be done to improve the center. Your threshold needs to be looked at. You know, what is the experience when people are walking in? If it looks dirty on the outside, they don’t expect it to be a great store. You know, you want that to look nice.

Chuck Post [01:06:33]:
When they’re walking in, greet them. I like plants. I like good pictures. I like signs on the windows that don’t cover up the window, but say what you want to say with nice graphics. When you open the door, I want it to be clean and open. You don’t want to walk in right to a basket of clothes right in front of you here. You want to be able to see that the place is comfort. You don’t want to be locked into going to the first machine.

Chuck Post [01:07:01]:
You want to be comfortable enough to be able to walk towards the back or the other parts of the store to use those machines. You want there to be enough folding space to do the work that you need to do afterwards. There should be seating in the store, comfortable seating. We like sofas, we like covered chairs and, you know, first-quality stuff and making it really nice to The lobbies that we create are designed to be really great, like a hotel lobby or something like that, so that they’re really comfortable for the customers when they’re waiting. And just having that builds confidence for them. Once they walk in and halfway through their first load, they’re sold. They’re not going to go back to using their washer at the apartment building unless it’s the most convenient thing for them to do at the time. So all these things really pay off.

Chuck Post [01:07:54]:
The most important thing is to know what the steps are that you need to take and how to go about it. Get a good cost out, figuring out what your costs are going to be, how much your equipment is, picking the best equipment that you can. You know, we, we like the, the great— You know, we, we see those increments that come directly, you know, with the upsells and things like this.

Jordan Berry [01:08:20]:
They’re convenient.

Chris Mason [01:08:21]:
Convenient.

Chuck Post [01:08:23]:
Everything’s more user-friendly. And the conventions that are baked into the basement schemes and how the free dry works and things like this. The free dry has to be managed. You know, we provide a certain amount of time for each size washer. It’s free. And then there’s a card store. You know, and if they select to separate their clothes more or dry it more and things like this, then if they overuse that amount, then they pay. So our records show that we get almost 6% and even more in some cases of dryer income compared to washing income anyway, even though we’re doing that, even though we’re building the pricing.

Chuck Post [01:09:11]:
In through the front of the store at the machine. So there’s just a whole lot of opportunities now to design your store. You can be in a marketplace and be very different from the other stores, no matter what you’re doing, you know, not just in the equipment, but in your operations and how you approach the market and the customers and serve stuff. There’s a lot of business to be had by getting to know the other business owners in your center and in the area. You know, a lot of times you can do promotions, you know.

Chris Mason [01:09:47]:
Yeah.

Chuck Post [01:09:48]:
If you have a guy that has a hamburger shop or something like this near there, you know, he could give a free Coke card out. So people come in, you hand them a free Coke, they go down there and get a free book. Just do a swap book from And maybe they’d buy something else there. You know, there’s lots of different things you can do that help build that business up. And for that reason, I think that being hands-on is more in the background than it is in the cleaning the store or working with the attendants and that sort of stuff.

Jordan Berry [01:10:27]:
So, so much. Good stuff, guys. I mean, we, I know we could do this all day long. We could do this. I mean, Chris and I can stare at Chuck as he talks.

Chris Mason [01:10:38]:
Thanks.

Jordan Berry [01:10:38]:
No, I, I know any of the 3 of us could talk laundromats all day long. So much good stuff. But I got one more question for you before we wrap this thing up. Somebody’s like, hey, yes, I would love to come to a workshop. How do they find out more information about that? Where do they, where do they go? Where are you sending them?

Chuck Post [01:10:57]:
Well, you can register at pbilaundry.com. That’s P like in Paul, B like in Bob, I like in Ice, laundry.com. And register for our workshops there. Look over our menu of services that we provide. Obviously, we provide consultation in every way, shape, and form, hourly or packages or whatever system, customize them based on your needs. And you can do that. First, attend the workshop, get to know us. Let’s talk about some of your issues.

Chuck Post [01:11:30]:
And then when you feel like you want to start approaching it, call us or Jordan too, or somebody that you trust to help you work through all these issues because it is complicated. There’s a lot to— well, a lot of decisions to make and a lot of A lot of things to prepare, and doing it wrong can be costly. And by using someone like us and Jordan, you’re going to minimize those costs and you’re going to maximize your returns because we’re going to be able to teach you what kinds of things you can do to increase the income regardless of where you’re at. And then give yourself time to get to know the store. You know, don’t be in such a hurry to be done and out. The old philosophy was, let’s get the story told and then, you know, 30 days later I don’t have to go there anymore. And that’s just not the attitude to have in today’s environment. Money’s big today.

Chuck Post [01:12:29]:
You know, we have a lot of people making $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 profit a month. You know, I mean, that’s some pretty serious money. You’re making a quarter and a half million dollars a year. off of a business like this. It’s a whole new program. And in order to take advantage of that, you need to get your head into it and understand your market, understand your opportunities, and take responsibility for their opportunities. PBIlaundry.com.

Chris Mason [01:13:06]:
Awesome.

Jordan Berry [01:13:06]:
Yeah, there’s a long answer to a simple question. I’m just kidding.

Chuck Post [01:13:12]:
One more. No.

Jordan Berry [01:13:14]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen guys, this has been awesome. Make sure you go check out pbilaundry.com. Lots of good stuff over there. And especially if you’re looking to get into this business or if you just wanted to improve your business, they, like I said, they’ve got 60+ years between the two of them and are Ready to help you. And, you know, I appreciate you guys taking the time coming on here, sharing your wisdom. Both you guys have such great insights. And I know, Chuck, we rag on you a lot for, you know, talking, but it really is an overflow of just how much knowledge and experience you have in the industry.

Jordan Berry [01:13:52]:
And Chris, I know you don’t get to get as many words in edgewise, but You know, just your breadth of wisdom and knowledge and experience in this industry is massive too. So.

Chris Mason [01:14:05]:
Thank you.

Jordan Berry [01:14:06]:
Appreciate you guys, what you guys are doing for this industry, and appreciate you guys. One thing that I really, really appreciate you guys doing is it’s easy for people who’ve been in the industry a long time to get in a rut, to get, you know, to stay stuck in how you’re doing things. And you guys do not operate that way. You’re looking To where is this industry now? Where is it heading? What tools are available to us? And you’re genuinely trying to, you know, help people with, with where the industry’s going and with what tools we have now and what’s coming down the pipeline. So I appreciate all the work you guys put into that. I know that doesn’t just happen. I know personally it takes a lot of work to keep up with all that stuff and to help people, you know, launch in the right direction. So I appreciate you guys.

Jordan Berry [01:14:52]:
And again, thank you for taking the time to come on. And share some more wisdom with us. Love to do it again.

Chuck Post [01:14:58]:
Yeah. And we really appreciate you too, Jordan, for providing this forum, you know, and other things that you do. You’ve been one of the most dedicated guys to the business over the years. And keeping that up, I know, is difficult, you know, because you’ve been doing it for a long time now. And you’re very good at it. And a lot of people are benefiting from your experience all the time. We hear from our clients, they’ve seen you on one podcast or another, and everybody says wonderful things. So we appreciate the opportunity to come on your show once in a while and to talk to you and the people that join you and share the experience.

Chuck Post [01:15:40]:
It was a terrific industry. So thank you.

Chris Mason [01:15:42]:
Yeah, thank you, Jordan. Jordan, we appreciate you. We absolutely do, and what you bring to the table as well. So thank you for having us on.

Jordan Berry [01:15:50]:
Thanks, guys. I know we’re going to have a little love fest to wrap this thing up. That was— look at us, man. We’re so nice. Look at us.

Chuck Post [01:15:58]:
Well, we only get an opportunity once in a while, I was saying.

Jordan Berry [01:16:02]:
Yeah, I agree, man. Well, I appreciate you guys and we’ll definitely do this again, but check out pbilaundry.com and say what’s up to Chuck and Chris on one of their workshops and see what they got to offer. Maybe they can help you out too. All right, guys, we’ll, we’ll talk soon.

Chuck Post [01:16:18]:
Real good.

Chris Mason [01:16:19]:
Awesome. Take care.

Jordan Berry [01:16:20]:
All right, guys. All right. Hope you love that episode with Chris and Chuck. So much good stuff. Like I said, don’t forget, pick something and put it into action today if you can do it today. Uh, but if not today, then do it this week for sure. Let’s stack all those actions every single week and move you towards your goals.

Chuck Post [01:16:38]:
All right.

Jordan Berry [01:16:39]:
All right. Uh, check out lawofmyresource.com and if you haven’t done it, Yet, I would really, really love you just take 30 seconds and head over to wherever you listen to, you know, this Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever, and leave us a review and just let people know what you think about it. And if you really hate this show, maybe email me first and I’ll see if I can improve it for you before you go do that.

Chuck Post [01:17:04]:
How about that?

Jordan Berry [01:17:05]:
All right. All right. We’ll see you next week.

Chuck Post [01:17:07]:
Peace.