Jordan Berry [00:00:03]:
Hey, hey, what’s up guys? It’s Jordan with the Laundromat Resource Podcast. This is show 261, and I’m pumped you’re here today because today we have back on the show Ken Wimberly, who is doing big, big things, and he’s sharing exactly how he’s doing it. And, uh, listen, this is one of those ones where you want to pay attention. This is a high-performing operator Who’s doing big things in his own business and doing big things in the industry. And there’s a whole lot to learn from that. Speaking of which, before we jump back into it with Ken, uh, I want to just let you know, in case you haven’t checked it out yet, at laundromatresource.com, we have a free course on how to buy your first laundromat. So if you’re in the position where you’re looking to buy your first laundromat, uh, I will tell you the course is It’s short. It’s about an hour long total.

Jordan Berry [00:00:55]:
It’s 3 lessons long and it’s jam-packed full of really good information. And I say that because I’ve done now over 2,000 consulting calls. I’ve heard the questions you guys ask. I know the information that you are looking for, and I’ve bought my own laundromats and sold my own laundromats. I have brokered deals and obviously I’ve consulted with a whole lot of deals, so I understand What it is we need to know about buying your first laundromat. This one’s free. And head over to laundromatresource.com and check out that free course, How to Buy Your First Laundromat. All right.

Jordan Berry [00:01:27]:
Without further ado, let’s jump into it with Ken Wimberly, who’s talking Laundry Love. Ken Wimberly, you’re back. How you doing, man?

Ken Wimberly [00:01:37]:
6 years later and here we are.

Jordan Berry [00:01:40]:
Has it been 6 years?

Ken Wimberly [00:01:41]:
Can you believe it?

Jordan Berry [00:01:42]:
Man, you must have been— I should have looked up what episode you were a long time ago now. Uh, but you must have been pretty early. Uh, but yeah, man, 6 years, 6 years going. So, I mean, I’m super curious to hear what’s been going on over the last 6 years. I know a lot and I know some of it already, but, uh, we should talk about what’s been going on with you over the last 6 years. And, uh, you know, there’s big stuff going on in the industry over the last 6 years too. So maybe we can hit some of that as well.

Ken Wimberly [00:02:08]:
No doubt. No doubt. Lots to cover.

Jordan Berry [00:02:10]:
Well, give us, uh, give us a quick rundown. I mean, listen, we got a lot of new people listening to the podcast. stuff who, you know, are definitely going to go back and listen to all of them from 1 to 2. Oh, I’m

Ken Wimberly [00:02:20]:
certain,

Jordan Berry [00:02:20]:
whatever we’re at now. So they’ll hit you. But, you know, in the meantime, why don’t you give them a quick little background on you, and then we can jump into the update?

Ken Wimberly [00:02:29]:
Yeah. So, well, I’m clearly in the laundromat business these days. But that came, I just say as a refresher, from 25 years in the real estate business. I was in commercial real estate, mostly in the last 7 years of my career was in investment sales, so selling single-tenant triple-net type things, retail shopping centers, and bought a shopping center that had vacancy. And that’s the thing that led us to being in the laundromat industry. I’ve had a couple of mentors in my life that have had a tenant as a kind of built-in operating business that they use for to fund real estate. So meaning Like one of them that was in the family video business, they— which was like the last surviving—

Jordan Berry [00:03:16]:
Back in the day, huh?

Ken Wimberly [00:03:18]:
Last surviving. Yeah, they finally closed the last few a couple of years ago. And if you can believe it, they still had video rentals up until then. But, but what that business allowed them to do was to open, build, or develop retail centers in 700 locations around the country. And they had a built-in tenant that was in there. And so they usually weren’t single tenant, they’re multi-tenant, but they’d have their family video and half of it and then one or two other tenants in the other half. And what a great strategy for real estate acquisition. And so we looked at that in the laundromat business and thought, well, this can definitely be a great tenant from a real estate ownership perspective.

Ken Wimberly [00:03:54]:
And as I’ve gotten deeper into the laundry business, I tell people now, yes, and the and is just don’t let the real estate tail wag the dog. Because if you find an outstanding location that’s going to work for your laundromat and you can’t buy it, fine. As long as you can strike a good deal on the lease, strike the good deal on the lease.

Jordan Berry [00:04:10]:
Yeah. Well, hey, listen, that’s, uh, probably more controversial than you think. Uh, there are definitely people who are advocates of never lease, uh, only buy. I’m on the other side of the spectrum. And I think if you live on the coast, you almost kind of have to be on the other side where leasing’s okay. And my, my perspective on it, and I’m, I agree with you completely. Completely is laundromats are a cash flow business, right? You got the tax advantages too. Equity builds a little slower, so they’re primarily a cash flow vehicle.

Jordan Berry [00:04:37]:
And, you know, if you lease the space, like you said, as long as you got a solid lease in place, that cash flow is, you know, it’s there. But with that said, also in line with what you’re saying is if you can get the real estate and make it work, all the more powerful because you’re hitting all 3 legs of that wealth tripod with Equity, cash flow, tax advantages.

Ken Wimberly [00:05:00]:
You really are. And coming from where I came from and the triple net investments, right, if you’re going to be a laundromat, a 10-year triple net lease with extensions in place, you just added immediate value into that building. So you’ve got a couple of options. One is just hold it and keep the real estate. And there’s an argument to never sell real estate. There is certainly an argument, argument to be made for that. But there’s the other argument that you have immediately created maximum value in that asset, and, you know, let’s call it year 1 when you’re, you’re kind of in, into that lease and you’re now cash flowing in a successful business and you’ve got 9 years left on your lease, you’re at about max value assuming the market’s right on that lease. So you could go move through it and go rinse and repeat and do it again.

Jordan Berry [00:05:41]:
Yeah, yeah, you got lots of options. I mean, I, I work with people and I’ve done myself as well, uh, multiple different strategies where if you get the real estate and the laundromat, you can, like you said, you can turn around, you can You could keep the laundromat, keep the cash flow, sell the real estate, cash out, and go buy another property with the equity. Obviously you could refinance the property because like you said, you’ve created max value now in that real estate and chances are pretty good you’ve built some equity into it and take that capital and go redeploy it. You can, you know, sell the laundromat.

Ken Wimberly [00:06:11]:
Keep the real estate.

Jordan Berry [00:06:12]:
Keep the real estate. I mean, you got lots of levers to pull to figure out how to maximize your assets there. You can sell both, right? Like there’s a whole lot of things you could do. There. So it’s super powerful if you can do it. But with that said, leasing the space also super—

Ken Wimberly [00:06:27]:
Okay, look, we’re— I’ve got an LOI going out today. I won’t talk about the market where it is. But it’s, it’s a space in the elbow of a shopping center, which I don’t like elbow spaces at all.

Jordan Berry [00:06:42]:
Right.

Ken Wimberly [00:06:42]:
But this shopping center is exactly the kind of tenants that we want for co-tenancies. There’s probably a dozen Other tenants in there, including a Hispanic grocer, Hispanic pediatric dental. There’s just there’s lots and lots of the kinds of tenants like great restaurants in the center and in traffic. I was I was down there looking at it this week, and the shopping center is packed. And I’m like, so this is great. So visibility would be outstanding and get good signage in there. But it’s a wonky space. Okay, when you when you get in from the landlord’s perspective, it’s a wonky space.

Ken Wimberly [00:07:16]:
We, I think, can make it work. I think I’ve got a vision for it. We’re working on a space plan for it, but I’ve got an LOI going out on that. Okay, I’m going to say average rents in that center are, you know, low 20s plus nets in there. Our LOI will be in single digits. Okay, and if that— if we get that lease and that works, and I’ve got a 10-year lease with 4 or 5-year extensions. I control that space for 30 years with that kind of rent. That’s value.

Jordan Berry [00:07:49]:
Yeah, that’s tough to— tough to lose money on that. So this is a build-out space, not an existing laundromat?

Ken Wimberly [00:07:55]:
That’s right. That’s right. It’s— I don’t think it’s been occupied in 40 years, Jordan. I mean, I walked in, there was a sink in there, and I was like, look at this sink. I mean, it’s old school.

Jordan Berry [00:08:06]:
Yeah.

Ken Wimberly [00:08:06]:
And so I don’t know how long it’s been vacant, but that tells you it’s a wonky little space in the corner. And I’m like, well, I think we can make use of it. And but if we’re going to make it, it’s kind of what I told the broker. I said, if we’re going to make use of it, it’s got to be a screaming deal in rent for us. But if it is, it’s worth it to spend the money on marketing to build our customer base. That’s right. It’s not— it just wouldn’t make sense to pay market rent for that.

Jordan Berry [00:08:29]:
Yeah. What I like about that is, you know, I talk to people all the time who, you know, will rule out a space or a specific laundromat or something like that. When we like, we work with people You know, to help them get into their laundromat space, we say, hey, look, we’re going to look at everything initially because some stuff, yeah, it’s probably not going to work, at least at face value. But a lot of times there’s creative things you can do, like negotiate a better rent, uh, like, you know, different financing structures, you know, like adding a different type of business model than they’re doing right now, like cleaning the place, uh, keeping machines working. You know, so there’s lots of different things that you can do, lots of different levers you can pull there too, uh, to make it, make it work. And sometimes it just takes a little creativity, right? If that space has been vacant forever, just either nobody’s come around and said, okay, how would it work? Like, is there a scenario where it could work? Or the landlord’s like, nope, I need top of the market rent and I don’t need the revenue rented, you know? So,

Ken Wimberly [00:09:30]:
well, here’s the thing.

Jordan Berry [00:09:31]:
I guess you’ll find out.

Ken Wimberly [00:09:32]:
It helps to know real estate, right? Again, so I’ve known real estate a long time. And in this case, I’ve seen this shopping center has been rehabbed and redeveloped over the past couple years. It’s been retenanted. It looks great. They really— it was a kind of a— we’ll call it lipstick on the pig, in that they painted it, they put some new fascia up, new awnings out, made it look a little better. They made the signage more uniform on all of their monument signs. So it looks very clean. And so it does now look nice and uniform, and then they repave the whole parking lot.

Ken Wimberly [00:10:03]:
So it looks great. It looks—

Jordan Berry [00:10:04]:
Strip center special, right?

Ken Wimberly [00:10:06]:
Yeah. And, and, and so they’ve done all that, and it’s, it’s, you know, like I said, it’s, it’s a small grocery-anchored center. Um, and then they’ve done a really, really good job in retenanting the center. So they’ve made it— it’s a, it’s a good location. I mean, there’s, there’s heavy, heavy traffic counts on 2 major streets. And, um, so all that said, In this space, this particular space has been vacant, but I know that this happened to, uh, got some information on who owns the center, and they’re now 90-plus percent occupied with only a few different suites right there. So I know what’s going on, and I know that if we come in even at a very aggressive rate from our perspective, I know from their perspective they’re going to sell this thing eventually within the next couple years to a REIT, I’m sure. And, uh, our rent will be capped out at a, you know, 7 or 6 cap when they go to sell.

Ken Wimberly [00:11:00]:
And there’s real value to them for us to come in to an otherwise dark vacant space.

Jordan Berry [00:11:04]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and it’s, it’s more value to— like, it’s a little bit of a double-edged sword, right, when you’re working? This is interesting because, you know, the commercial real estate perspective— and I do some commercial real estate also, uh, both owning and, and brokering, uh, deals in California, um, But, you know, getting into the mindset of a landlord is like there’s immediate value. Like even if it’s, you know, technically an under-market rent, there’s immediate value to the landlord in getting the space leased, especially in a long-term lease. But that’s gotta be balanced in the landlord’s mind with, okay, well if I’m gonna go with $9 a square foot and everything else is $20 a square foot. Yeah. You look at the spread between those two and the equity potential you’re losing, that’s a trade-off for the landlord, right? So, It helps to kind of know what’s going through the landlord’s head when you’re negotiating these leases and to know what’s important to them. Because if they’re looking to sell or refinance, you know, maybe getting the quick equity is a big win to them.

Ken Wimberly [00:12:06]:
Well, like, I’m looking at this to the point, Jordan, on commercial real estate, it’s really the importance of having a great person on your team that understands commercial real estate. So whether you’ve got a great commercial real estate broker or partner or whatever, someone that understands commercial real estate, because it is important. But here’s what I know is that they can even pay me a pretty good allowance for tenant improvements. So I can also get dollars from them for TI because they can go to their lender, they can finance those TI dollars. That’s— I guarantee you they’ve already got that in their budget. So they’ve got TI dollars financed, they can give that to me. Still, they’ll cap out my rent when they get to sell within a year or 2, and it’s a huge win to them. So

Jordan Berry [00:12:46]:
yeah, yeah, which, which is, uh, is massive, especially if you have to build out, right? Because there’s a lot of cost to building out, a lot of infrastructure, sometimes upgrading utilities, permits, all that stuff, uh, can get spendy pretty quickly.

Ken Wimberly [00:13:01]:
Really quickly. Yeah, really quickly. Yeah, and it’s not going down. You know, that, that, uh, that elevator seems to only go up.

Jordan Berry [00:13:09]:
That’s— it seems like all elevators only seem to go up except for maybe some tech stuff, uh, that tends to go down. But other than that, man, all the elevators are only up elevators.

Ken Wimberly [00:13:22]:
Yeah, well, certainly my equipment and my build-out costs, which are my 2 big ones right there, those, those continue trending up.

Jordan Berry [00:13:29]:
Utilities, labor after the fact.

Ken Wimberly [00:13:33]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:13:34]:
Yeah. Okay, awesome. So tell us a little bit about what you— what— where do you— where are you at in the, in the industry right now? Like, where are you at? Laundromat? Laundromats? Tell us a little bit about what you’ve built over the last, like, 6+ years.

Ken Wimberly [00:13:50]:
Yeah, well, so we opened our first in 2019, and we went with a larger format. Again, we bought a shopping center. It had 2 vacancies in that center. One was 14,000 and one was 6,200. And so our first store was 6,200 square feet. We opened that in—

Jordan Berry [00:14:05]:
Big boy. Texas size.

Ken Wimberly [00:14:07]:
October 2019. Well, just wait till we get to the next. So we opened that October 2019. And then yeah, 3 months later, 4 months later, COVID hits. And we got to navigate through that mess. And it, it really forced us to become a a strong competitor because as we were opening our first store, we knew there was one good strong competitor in the market. Well, they opened up a second location before we got our first one open, and so they flanked us. So we went in with, um, you had 2 strong headwinds of a strong competitor with 2 locations and COVID.

Ken Wimberly [00:14:44]:
But we made it through. We ended up really starting to thrive as COVID wound down and then ended up opening our second and third store in 2022. So So Abilene, Texas was our first. San Angelo, Texas was our second and third. We opened up those stores in 2022. One of those was 7,000 square feet. The other was another 6,000 square feet. So these— we’ve got 3 mega stores, if you will.

Jordan Berry [00:15:11]:
Mm-hmm.

Ken Wimberly [00:15:12]:
And then last year— or not last year, this year, a few months ago, we opened up our 4th location, a smaller location at just, just right around 3,000 square feet, smallest one we’ve ever done, which honestly is too small. We would not do a location like that if we didn’t already have 2 massive stores in that market. Because we already do have 2 massive stores in that market, we didn’t need another large store, but we did want a location in the other part of town. And because what I’m really trying to prevent— and my partner, whom I think you met, Skyler, is, uh, he’s, you know, he’s an Army guy, former West Point Army Ranger. And Skyler is very tactical and strategic and said, I want another pin on the map to make sure that no one is going to come in and try to—

Jordan Berry [00:15:55]:
Secure the perimeter. Yeah. Yep.

Ken Wimberly [00:15:57]:
Yep. So we’re kind of securing up the rear perimeter there. And, um, so now we’ve got 3 stores in that market, 1 in Abilene, and we are currently under construction in Abilene. So our first store at 6,200 square feet, we were getting so busy in that location that we started getting, um, a couple of 1-star reviews, which are terrible. But while we’re getting the 1-star reviews, it’s just because we’re so busy they couldn’t get a machine on the weekends. And so we, I told you we bought the center and this was 6 years ago. It had 2 vacancies, a 6,000 and a 14,000. We’ve had 1 tenant in that 14,000 for 6 months.

Ken Wimberly [00:16:37]:
Other than that, it’s been vacant almost the entire time we’ve owned it. And so we are now expanding Laundry Love into 8,000 of that 4,000 feet. Mm-hmm. And so that store will now be a 14,000 square foot store. It’s gonna be the largest laundromat in Texas. And it will be open in about 30 days.

Jordan Berry [00:16:54]:
Whoa, that’s big. I will say that that is the exact opposite experience of my very first laundromat where people would tell me, we love coming to the, to your laundromat because there’s never anybody here. That was my— I was like, thank you, I guess. Thank you for that. So no, but I mean, that’s, that’s massive. That’s a big, It’s a big undertaking, a big laundromat, and pretty exciting to see how that’s gonna go.

Ken Wimberly [00:17:22]:
It’s really exciting. And, you know, we do a children’s play area. And unlike— yeah, look, I’m grateful when I see a play area in any laundromat, because let me start by saying that, but often I see it as an afterthought. I mean, well, often I don’t see it at all. But I’ve just been in a couple recently, where literally they’ve got like a piece of carpet on the ground and a couple of chairs and a bookshelf.

Jordan Berry [00:17:46]:
Yeah.

Ken Wimberly [00:17:46]:
And so it’s an afterthought. Well, ours, from store number 1, it was built in like a room. Yeah. It had a pony wall room with a TV up and soft dedicated tile, children’s tile in there. Anyway, it looks very nice and big. But in this expansion, we’re doing a second child’s play area and it’s the biggest one we’ve ever done. We’re doing an entire wall of dry erase marker wall with magnetic dry erase markers so they can put letters and objects on there and then they can draw and have a little artist wall that they can do. So I’m excited to do something like that.

Ken Wimberly [00:18:22]:
And then we’re, we’re increasing washer dryer capacity by a little over 50%. So we’ll end up with 90-some-odd washers and 90-some-odd dryers in there.

Jordan Berry [00:18:31]:
Yeah, I was gonna ask about capacity too, with that you were expanding out. Uh, that’s a lot, man. That’s a lot. I

Ken Wimberly [00:18:38]:
think we got 62 or 64 washers in the, in there currently. And, and we’re, you know, increasing by 50% capacity.

Jordan Berry [00:18:45]:
Woo. Yeah. Well, that’s exciting, man. I mean, I think it’s a testament to the business that you built, obviously. And also, it’s just exciting when the feedback you get is positive and literally overwhelming. Yeah. And the negative feedback you get is basically how much people like your store. That’s pretty cool to build something like that.

Jordan Berry [00:19:13]:
Because I mean, I think And, and to hear that, because I think, you know, well, we all know, let’s just face it, our industry does not have the best reputation. Um,

Ken Wimberly [00:19:22]:
no.

Jordan Berry [00:19:22]:
Currently helping a few different people source build-out locations. And I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been turned away because a landlord doesn’t want a laundromat in the location. It’s because we in the industry, I mean, I’m gonna just say it, we in the industry traditionally have sucked at taking care of our communities because we’ve had these kind of, I mean, we alluded to it before, but we had these sort of old school mindsets of, hey, let’s just put machines in, run those machines into the ground, be there as little as possible. And, uh, whatever happens happens as long as I’m making money. And, you know, landlords and our, our co-tenants don’t love that mindset. Um, and they—

Ken Wimberly [00:20:03]:
Nor should they.

Jordan Berry [00:20:04]:
Nor should they.

Ken Wimberly [00:20:05]:
Nor should they. Like, you want a great tenant in there that’s going to drive the right kind of traffic. into the center. Yeah. Um, this one I mentioned that we’re negotiating on right now, um, they kind of said the same thing. They said, eh, we’re not really interested in the laundromat. And, uh, our broker— it’s funny, I’m in the commercial real estate business for 25 years and we have a broker we use. So that’s another piece of expertise I would give someone, you know, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you need to do it yourself.

Jordan Berry [00:20:30]:
Yeah.

Ken Wimberly [00:20:31]:
Uh, so anyway, our broker sent them to our website and they got right back to them. They’re like, whoa, No, we’d be interested in having these guys in our, in our, in our center here.

Jordan Berry [00:20:39]:
Yeah. Well, and yeah, and that’s the, that’s the pitch, right? You really got to sell the vision when you’re coming in. If you’re, if you’re a savvy investor, you’re looking to, you know, build, build a professional business, uh, in, in a center, you’ve got to sell that vision because the vision’s not there by default. People think laundromats, they think of dark, dirty, homeless people, unattended, you know, not well managed, you know, and something that brings their center down. And you’ve got to show them, hey, that’s not what I have in mind. And that’s not who you’re going to be working with, right? But it’s a great battle.

Ken Wimberly [00:21:14]:
There are, you know, we talked before, there are definitely the opposite of that coming into the industry and

Jordan Berry [00:21:21]:
more and more,

Ken Wimberly [00:21:22]:
those are the people to associate with, right? The people that are absolutely doing it right, making a a splash when they come to town. Like, look, this book right here, I know, I know Brian Grill talks about that all the time, Fans First, Jesse Cole, right?

Jordan Berry [00:21:37]:
Mm-hmm.

Ken Wimberly [00:21:37]:
For anyone, if you haven’t read that book, it is the, I’ll call it one of the, I’ll call it one of the 3, I’ll call it the holy trinity on the customer experience. And that’s the business we ought to be in is customer experience. When people come through the door, wow them, make them feel special, make them feel like I love it, Jordan. People will walk in sometimes, I’m sure they’ll look up and around like, this is a laundromat? Like, well, yes ma’am, it is. And that’s how you want people to feel when they come into your location.

Jordan Berry [00:22:06]:
Yeah, that’s it. And I’ll throw another one in the hat, which I’ve mentioned a bunch of times here too, but a favorite of mine is, uh, um, unreasonable hospitality.

Ken Wimberly [00:22:14]:
That’s my second in the trinity.

Jordan Berry [00:22:16]:
Okay. Oh, what’s number 3? You gotta—

Ken Wimberly [00:22:18]:
yeah, you gotta— And number 3, so, uh, I call it the Holy Trinity of customer service, Unreasonable Hospitality, Fans First, and the third is mentioned in Fans First, which is how I found it. It’s called They Ask, You Answer by Marcus Sheridan.

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

Ken Wimberly [00:22:30]:
And so those 3 books, I think if you’ll read those 3 books, if you just implemented the ideas you found in those 3, you’re, you’re almost assured of success.

Jordan Berry [00:22:39]:
Yeah. And let me, let me just pause this just for a second because, uh, number one, I end every single episode by saying, hey, take some sort of action, uh, pick something, take some action on it. You know, because that’s what’s going to help you move forward. Listen, if you’re out there and you own a laundromat, your action— I’ll just say it right now— your action, if you haven’t read any one of those books, pick at least one of them, read it. Don’t go on to reading the next book or anything like that. Start putting it into action. Start implementing some of that stuff before you go on to the next book of whatever it is, one of these, you know, the Holy Trinity or whatever book you’re going to read next. Implement it because that is money in your pocket right there.

Jordan Berry [00:23:20]:
I mean, Ken is just putting money into your pocket. And the reason I think that he does that is because when, when we as owners start implementing this stuff and start raising the perceived value of our industry and raising the reputation of our industry, we’re— we all benefit from that.

Ken Wimberly [00:23:39]:
It benefits everyone. And I, you know, man, there’s We were talking, I think, off air. There’s somewhere, you know, there— it’s, it’s opaque a little bit on how many laundromats there are across the United States. Somewhere between— they’ll say— I’ve read reports from as low as 17,500 to as many as, you know, 35,000.

Jordan Berry [00:23:58]:
Mm-hmm.

Ken Wimberly [00:23:59]:
But there’s that many laundromats across, and I’ve walked into, I mean, hundreds myself. Not— I haven’t made it thousands yet, but I’ve walked into hundreds of laundromats and Many are really rough locally where I hear. I’ll walk into some and I’m like, these are terrible. Um, so when, when I walk into some that are special— I toured some of some other people in the industry that I met recently and they’re awesome. I was so happy to see it, what they’re doing.

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

Ken Wimberly [00:24:25]:
When I see that, it makes my heart smile. And so I hope anyone listening here that’s getting into the business will, will do that. Go in and make a difference in the store that you open. Make a difference in your community. in the lives of every person that comes through the door and in the lives of the team members that you’re going to hire that are your frontline folks working with those people.

Jordan Berry [00:24:45]:
Yeah. And I’ll say too, like, that doesn’t necessarily mean you got to have a giant store or you’ve got to have all brand new equipment or anything like that. It means, hey, take care, take care of the business, right? Take care, keep your machines running, keep everything clean, do all the basics, you know, make sure you’re Any staff you have know what they’re supposed to do and they have a way to see that they’re successful and, you know, all of that, manage them well, you know, all that stuff, do all the basic stuff and then just take care of your customer. If you obsess over taking care of your customers, you could be the smallest store in town and you’ll be competitive with anybody else in town because customers will love coming to you. They’ll love the experience, right? You can wow them. In multiple different ways, uh, out there. So if you own a small auto out there, yeah.

Ken Wimberly [00:25:35]:
You know, look, what I’ll give you, the simplest way to wow someone, the simplest, just learn their name.

Jordan Berry [00:25:42]:
I was gonna say exactly that. Yeah.

Ken Wimberly [00:25:44]:
Learn their name and just something about their story. Tell me, tell me your story. Yeah, yeah, simplest little thing. But, but yeah, many of us fail to, you know, to do that simple fact.

Jordan Berry [00:25:56]:
Yeah, listen, I’ve done a lot of episodes. And so, you know, sometimes they all kind of like run together for me and stuff like that. But every now and then things like stand out. And way back, maybe even before our first episode, I was talking with Luke Williford. And one thing that he said that I still tell people, hey, this is really great advice, is he has his staff members learn, you know, 3, 3 names a day, just learn 3 names a day. That’s your main role. Keep the place clean, do your main chores, but you’re Your main thing is like, hey, learn 3 names a day and, uh, and remember them. And if you do that, or if your staff does that, uh, it’s gonna make a— it’s gonna make a big difference.

Jordan Berry [00:26:34]:
Because when people feel known and cared about and that you care enough to remember them, yeah, uh, it’s that— that develops loyalty that no card can develop.

Ken Wimberly [00:26:46]:
100%. That’s— they will often come back because they, they feel Seen, really. That’s it. I just feel seen. So yeah, yeah, that’s all we need. That’s it. Honestly, your people, if folks listen, we’ll take that out. That’d be one of the biggest things.

Ken Wimberly [00:27:02]:
But you are correct, you don’t have to have the biggest, brightest, newest anything. Our model is we want to be the Buc-ee’s of laundromat, right? That’s what we want to be. We want to be big, bright, you know, the, the one that wows you when you walk in. But You’re exactly right. You could be small and running old machines that are just kept very well maintained and kept up. And you just take care of customer service. And it would, it would absolutely fulfill your mission in life.

Jordan Berry [00:27:28]:
Yeah, a lot. I mean, it’s one of the beauties of this business, right? I say this a lot. But there’s— and it was one of the surprising things when I started the podcast is like, there’s a lot of different ways to run this business and do it successfully and to build a life that you want to build with this business. And one model can be, be the Buc-ee’s, you know, one model can be, be Chevron, which is like a premium, you know, I don’t know, I’m just making up gas station stuff now. One is, you know, whatever, right? You could be the, you could be the, you know, cheaper one, but gives good service or smaller one and gives good service, community base or, you know, whatever. Like there’s a lot of different ways, uh, to run this business. Um, speaking of which, your laundromats, are they all self-serve only? Are you doing wash and fold or pickup and delivery or anything? What’s, what’s the model you’re running?

Ken Wimberly [00:28:13]:
Yeah, we’re doing 5 lines of revenue in every one of our stores. So certainly self-service is, is the predominant line and what we, what we start with. But we’re also doing wash, dry, fold. So drop-off wash, dry, fold. We’re doing pickup and delivery and running routes. We’re now starting to do that with the kind of buy-the-bag weekly service. So in fact, we’re launching a couple of markets. We’ve announced what markets we’re coming into to start with pickup and delivery to incubate the markets and then grow into that.

Ken Wimberly [00:28:45]:
And then, um, but then we do commercial laundry, quite a bit of commercial. We’re doing, um, everything from, uh, you know, we’ll do daycares, summer camps, massage studios, fitness centers, et cetera, on commercial laundry and then vended services. So what you’d normally expect. And so, but every one of our stores got 5 lines.

Jordan Berry [00:29:01]:
Yeah. Which is huge, right? I, I went on, uh, the Side Hustle Show podcast a while back and I was like, listen, if you’re looking for a side hustle, you know, Number one, like, you can run laundromat as like a side— you can do it. Lots of people do run it. Beware, you’re competing with the Ken Wimberlys of the world who are, you know, focusing all their attention, but you can do it. But within laundromats, you can have the, you know, quote unquote side hustles within your quote unquote side hustle, right? Which is again, kind of one of the powers of laundromats and it being a cash flow business is there’s lots of different streams of revenue that you can have. So I know there’s a lot of people out there that are in this sort of like side hustle culture where they’re trying 10 different things. I mean, my perspective on this is like, hey, pick one thing that has a couple different streams that you can build into it, and now you’re focused and, you know, can crush it like Ken.

Ken Wimberly [00:30:00]:
Well, cool thing about the laundromat, just thinking in Vending services alone, right? So certainly your soft drink and snack machines. Yes. There’s games for kids to play. Check. There’s, um, like water and ice. Check. You can add a little water and you can either do that through a lease or do it on your own and maybe buy one and have right there. And then there’s dog wash, right? You can set up a whole dog wash station and set— I mean, these are—

Jordan Berry [00:30:24]:
ATMs.

Ken Wimberly [00:30:26]:
Some

Jordan Berry [00:30:26]:
people have showers, you know, like Yeah, lots of different, lots of different things that you can do, you know. And, and, uh, I mean, I’m curious for you, um, because I know some owners who, you know, will focus— like, like Luke Wilford and Lee Williford, right? They do, you know, they don’t do wash and fold, they don’t do pickup, they just self-serve only, right? Yeah. So like I said, there’s lots of different ways to be successful in this industry. Um, one thing, you know, going back to kind of commercial real estate is Looking at ways to be efficient with your square footage usage, right? You’re paying for every square foot that you have. And that balance of, I mean, we could chock-full a laundromat full of video games and vending machines and claw games. And one laundromat I bought had like one of those horses that you ride.

Ken Wimberly [00:31:24]:
Yep.

Jordan Berry [00:31:25]:
I was gonna say that kids ride, but, you know, I jump on that thing and ride it too. So, yeah, uh, right. So I mean, you can put lots of different massage chairs, like all that stuff you can put in there. I’m curious if you have a way that you particularly think of, you know, how you utilize square footage with revenue-generating streams, I guess, in, in your stores.

Ken Wimberly [00:31:46]:
We’ve actually thought a lot about that in over the number of years and Because I’ve seen the same thing. I’ve seen it where it’s just packed. You’ve got, including, um, sublease tenants inside of your store. Maybe you’ve got a Western Union or a financial services check cashing kind of business inside. There’s, there’s— I’ve seen a barber, a shoeshine guy. I’ve seen different things. So you can—

Jordan Berry [00:32:10]:
Casino games.

Ken Wimberly [00:32:12]:
So you can have all of that. What we have modeled our stores at, like our stores are doing I mean, they’re doing great volume. I believe if you select the right location, you’ve done the right competitor analysis, because that’s a big one. You can go open up in a location that’s got another strong competitor, or you could accidentally open up and a competitor opens up. You both accidentally sign leases at the same time across the street from each other. You just didn’t know it.

Jordan Berry [00:32:38]:
Yep.

Ken Wimberly [00:32:39]:
That’s a bummer because you’re cutting, you’re cutting the pot in half. And so that is, that is a bummer right there. But if you’ve done a good job on your competitor analysis and you’ve you’ve kind of got the right mix in there, you can build a million-dollar-plus store in top-line revenue. And so our philosophy on it— and that’s in laundry services, I’m not talking about in— from the other pickup delivery, washer fold, and self-service, but, um, I’m not talking about from sublease revenue and from having a bunch of games and stuff like that. So our philosophy is on the customer experience inside the store. So We have like big comfortable rocking chairs inside of our store. And so they take up a lot of room. These are 30-inch wide rocking chairs and with cup holders on there.

Ken Wimberly [00:33:24]:
Really nice. So we’ve got rocking chairs in our stores. We have comfortable seating in our stores. We do have a couple of games for arcade games for kids to play. Typically in each store, we’ll put, you know, a handful of games in there. But we were, yeah, we could add a lot more and we’ve just chosen not to do it. We’ve chosen to add more. Frankly, comfortable seating.

Ken Wimberly [00:33:45]:
And also, like, we’ve got really wide— we have design guidelines for every one of our stores. And we have very wide aisles in our stores to make it super comfortable when people are walking, that you can have the doors open and people passing each other as they’re walking through with wide aisles. And so we’ve— What I think is important there is, again, on rent per square foot, negotiating a good rent or from your purchase right there so that you can afford to do that. You don’t feel so pressured to utilize every, every inch of the square footage. Um, but I think the customer experience for us is the more important thing with the use of the property.

Jordan Berry [00:34:23]:
Yeah, yeah. And I, I want to throw in a little bit of a caveat here, uh, because we all know everything’s bigger in Texas. And, uh, work with a lot of people in markets like New York or LA or San Francisco where The model is probably just going to be different. You’re probably not going to have wide aisles in Manhattan, right?

Ken Wimberly [00:34:45]:
Although, Jordan, I will say this. I met someone at— I was at an event in Hilton Head. So one of the Laundry Association events in Hilton Head last year, met a guy from New York City that just opened an 11,000-square-foot location in New York City. So yes, you are correct. There’s lots of smaller local mom-and-pop And there are some big ones too. Even there are.

Jordan Berry [00:35:13]:
You’re right. You’re right. And it’s, and I think that’s the point, right? It’s like there’s not a one-size-fits-all model. And especially if you’re buying an existing mat, they just didn’t build them like that. Right. In a lot of these markets. So if you’re, you know, you’re building out from scratch, you got a little more leeway. If you’re buying an existing one, sometimes you can remove a row and reconfigure stuff and, you know, things like that.

Jordan Berry [00:35:35]:
But a lot of times you don’t have the luxury of having rocking chairs in your store.

Ken Wimberly [00:35:41]:
You know, like, if you’ve got the space, but if you can’t, our people love them. And so we do design our spaces to where we have between 4 and 10 of them in every one of our stores. And yeah, I’ve got videos of some of our clients and they’re like, we love these rocking chairs. So it’s pretty great.

Jordan Berry [00:36:00]:
I love that. I love that. You mentioned Competitor analysis. I’m curious, like, what do you, what are you looking at when you’re doing a competitor analysis? Can you give us, uh, you know, at least a 1,000-foot view?

Ken Wimberly [00:36:13]:
Yeah, I mean, look, I’m doing a deep dive into where our proposed, like, location is to where every single laundromat competitor— I don’t pay attention to dry cleaners except for from an environmental issue, gotta pay attention to dry cleaners, but, but any self-serve laundromat That is in— really, I’m looking at about a 2-mile radius. Mm-hmm. And, and not always a radius. I’m looking at, you know, drive times. And, and, but I’m looking at around 2 miles from the store, self-serve laundromats. And I mean, it starts first with their Google reviews. I’m looking, okay, who’s got a 4.7 or higher? If they’re 4.7 or higher, probably running a pretty good store. And But I, I just had a 4.6 show up yesterday in this review I was doing.

Ken Wimberly [00:37:02]:
And I was like, ooh, this could be good. And I went and looked and man, it’s like standards have lowered for what people are willing to give a good review to. So, but I start top level with Google reviews and I’m looking to kind of map ’em out against this top level Google reviews. Then I will go do, you know, the beauty of online research right now is you can see so much. I’ll go look at the, all the photos that are online for people. Mm-hmm. And then I’ll start reviewing the, actual words in the reviews. What are people saying? Not just the stars, but what are people saying on it? And especially with the more recent ones, are they getting some bad recent reviews? And if they are, what are they saying? But then ultimately is I’m doing the drive-by and I’m going and looking, boots on the ground, drive-by.

Ken Wimberly [00:37:41]:
What’s their parking lot look like? I’ll go walk inside of them. Is there an attendant? Was I greeted? What’s their— Yeah. Just looking at everything from what’s their machines like? Are they kept up? Are they clean? Are they not? Is it trending up, trending down? And it’s a lot of, it’s a lot of legwork, but it’s one of the most important things we can do.

Jordan Berry [00:38:00]:
Yeah. Yeah, it is. And I mean, I think one of the, one of the points, right, this is like Real Estate 101, but I think maybe even more important than laundromats is like location, location, location. And you can’t really move a laundromat. So once you pick the location, you’re there come hell or high water. So if somebody signed the lease across the street,

Ken Wimberly [00:38:19]:
you’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in build-out tenant improvements, more than likely. And hundreds of thousands of dollars in like to open up a store like we’re doing, it’s, you know, $1.2 to $2+ million to go open a store. Yeah. And get to your point, you can’t just easily move that. It’s, it is a real cost. And so you’re looking at something that you’re likely to be there 20 to 30 years. So you’ve got to make a really wise decision Since you’re betting on the next 20 to 30 years.

Jordan Berry [00:38:52]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a big deal. I mean, it’s something you definitely, uh, have to know what you’re walking into. And, you know, when I, when I’m talking with people, I, I also have, um, we, we created just a, you know, pretty basic, uh, spreadsheet, for lack of a better word.

Ken Wimberly [00:39:06]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:39:07]:
Uh, where we have, you know, clients go into those nearest competitors, you know, jot down subtly, you know, how many machines of each size they have, what their VIN price is, and like an overall impression of the store too. Like you said, You might see 4.6 stars and then you go in there and you’re like, well, it’s small, it’s dingy.

Ken Wimberly [00:39:25]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:39:26]:
You know, and I’ll say that just as valuable of the star rating is how many of those reviews or ratings. That’s right.

Ken Wimberly [00:39:35]:
If there’s, you know, 20 reviews, that’s one thing. If there’s 700, that’s, that’s very different. If there’s 2,000, you’re like, there’s some people that have been going through there.

Jordan Berry [00:39:44]:
Yeah. Or they’ve been buying. Reviews.

Ken Wimberly [00:39:46]:
You know, I look, we’ve, you know, we incentivize our team members to get reviews, and which I think is smart. I first of all give a shout out to Laundromat Max, okay, one of a local competitor here in Fort Worth. When our kitchen was getting remodeled a couple years ago, I had to go use local laundromats, and I’d gone to the local Laundromat Max, and their attendant was awesome, came up, greeted me. Showed me how to use machines, got me a car, did all this. And then after she had helped me and got all my stuff, and I’d gone from washer to dryer, she came by and she said, hey, would you mind giving us a review? And had a QR code to scan right there. And I did. I gave them a 5-star review. We encourage our people to do the same thing.

Ken Wimberly [00:40:30]:
But I say all that to say, Google will shut you down if you get too many reviews too quickly.

Jordan Berry [00:40:35]:
Mm-hmm.

Ken Wimberly [00:40:35]:
And, um, it’s very frustrating when you’re getting these great reviews just from trying to do some effort and you’re not You’re not cheating. You’re just asking people to, you know, being proactive and ask people to leave them. But you got to be, you got to be careful, Google, trying to get too many too fast.

Jordan Berry [00:40:48]:
Yeah. Well, and that, that’s because there’s a lot of people who are cheating.

Ken Wimberly [00:40:51]:
Are cheating. I get it.

Jordan Berry [00:40:52]:
Yeah. It’s hard for them to tell, right? But I mean, it’s something to just be aware of. And I definitely don’t recommend you doing it because like you said, you’ll get shut down. Google and having a complete Google profile, business profile, and having a lot of good reviews. Literally puts money in your pocket. So—

Ken Wimberly [00:41:10]:
Can’t agree more. One of the most important things we ask people to this day, you know, I do customer surveys every time I’m in our stores. And one of the questions on our customer surveys is, how did you find us? And number one by far is location drive-by, right? I saw you here at location. But number 2, always number 2, is Google, Google Maps. And so it’s so important that you have a strong Google My Business profile, that you’re actively getting great reviews, and that you’re constantly staying on top of that to get them.

Jordan Berry [00:41:46]:
Yeah. Yeah. And it doesn’t have to be like crazy, but even if you’re just posting a post or a picture or 2 or 3 a week, it doesn’t have to be crazy, but just kind of keeping things updated, making sure your hours are on top when holidays roll around and stuff like that. You got to keep all that stuff updated. Um, but it’s massive and it, it helps you show up higher, uh, on Google searches and it helps you pop up on, on Maps when people are searching on the Maps too. So that SEO is massive. And, you know, it also is helping people pop up on AI searches, which is happening more and more now.

Ken Wimberly [00:42:25]:
We get a lot of business coming in and on our franchise side, when people come in talking to us like, how’d you find us? AI. Like, well, I guess we’re doing something right there. And, uh, but the same thing, people coming into our stores and, how’d you find us? And AI. And that’s how— that’s the new Google today is the different chatbots.

Jordan Berry [00:42:44]:
Yeah, it’s coming up, it’s coming up, it’s happening, uh, already. So we got to be paying attention to it. It’s one of the many changes I think that’s going on, uh, in the industry. Maybe we could talk a little bit about that here in a second.

Ken Wimberly [00:42:56]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:42:57]:
Um, but You know, one thing I just wanted to bring up and, and give you an opportunity to speak to is, uh, you guys are, are moving into a, a new kind of phase in your, your business as well, where you’re not necessarily looking to own every single one. You’re, you’re going towards the franchising route too, right?

Ken Wimberly [00:43:16]:
We are.

Jordan Berry [00:43:17]:
Tell us a little bit about that.

Ken Wimberly [00:43:18]:
Yeah, we made that decision, uh, a year and a half, 2 years ago, just for, for growth. It is, I mean, as you know, or I just mentioned, right, to open up a new store for the way that we do it, it’s over $1 million, sometimes up to $2 million plus to open one of these new stores and 30% equity on that. We’ll call it on, yeah, if you look at $1.5 million, you’re looking at $450,000 equity per store. I don’t have a money tree that’s just stamping out $450,000 every couple of weeks. as much as I love. So, um, Likewise. You know, one way we thought to help people get into it is, you know, we looked at joint venturing with people, and we’ve looked at doing some of those, but we have people approaching us about getting in. And, and if we wanted people to follow our brand guidelines, um, the advice I got from many people, including attorneys, were like, hey, if you’re going to do that, you’re basically going to set up a franchise.

Ken Wimberly [00:44:10]:
And so we did, and we’re now doing that. And there’s, there’s a lot of people today in the coaching business in the laundromat. Hey, I’m going to coach you how to get it done, or you follow my program and do this. And We’re, we just look at, we’re in essence in the partnership program with people in a franchise, because, like, we truly, our success depends on our franchise partner success. So we’ve spent the last 2 years just building out all of the infrastructure. So I’ve got a 350-point, I won’t call it checklist, because, but it’s a guide and step where our client success team holds your hand and walks you through from everything from entity formation and making sure that you set up the right kind of entity and the EINs and everything you need from that through site selection, through architectural, through engineering, through all the way through the grand opening and the beyond. We’ve just, you know, we’ve learned now through 4 stores we’ve done on our own. We’re about to do number 5 and 6 for us.

Ken Wimberly [00:45:08]:
And now we’re starting to help our first franchise partners. So just a different model to help grow is we’re looking at that. So now instead of having, you know, our money, we’re— it’s someone else putting their capital on the line and we’re holding their hand through the process.

Jordan Berry [00:45:22]:
Yeah.

Ken Wimberly [00:45:22]:
And then I, I will point this out because when we got into franchising, um, I would read on some Facebook groups, which I don’t read on Facebook groups. You can’t believe anything you read on most of those things. But when I would go on and, um, I saw naysayers on the franchise and like, yeah, well, if you get in the laundromat business, you don’t make any money in the business once you start taking away a franchise fee and an advertising fee on it. Then you end up with zero Net profit, and I’m going. Is that true? So you know, I we have to publish our financials in in our FTD and our item nineteen. I can tell you from I’m looking at my item nineteen from last year. Our operating margin, EBITDA operating margin, net of franchise fee, net of advertising, was thirty percent, twenty eight percent, and fourteen percent. I’ll tell you on our fourteen percent.

Ken Wimberly [00:46:14]:
It’s the lowest volume, highest rent store we had open. I was like, well, it shows you what happens. So it’s a lesson.

Jordan Berry [00:46:20]:
There’s a lesson there.

Ken Wimberly [00:46:21]:
To people on watch your rent right now. That’ll start to balance out when the volume continues. But that’s our— that was our newest store when our FTD was produced in 2025. But yeah, I mean, we’ve got a 30% operating margin, 28% on the other, 14% on that. So that’s, that’s net of fees. So it’s— the naysayers are not always correct.

Jordan Berry [00:46:39]:
Yeah, well, and I’m again kind of going back to lots of different ways to do this, uh, do this business. You know, when you’re, when you’re doing a franchise, you’re, you’re basically buying the shortcut, right? And there’s different mindsets on this, right? And there’s a lot of, you know, people who are like, hey, do it yourself. And, and, uh, you know, the business is not that hard and, you know, you can figure it out yourself, which is fine. And, and some people, lots of people can, right? Lots of people have and can.

Ken Wimberly [00:47:06]:
Can I do—

Jordan Berry [00:47:06]:
I will, I will say, you know, and you know, this industry, and we’ve already talked about this a lot, this industry is getting more serious. It’s getting more professional. The bar is raising rapidly. And people who get into this industry and kind of to your point of the Facebook groups, they’re kind of like a blessing and a curse. It’s nice to have a place for, to talk to people who know what you’re going through and all that stuff, but you’re going to, You don’t know who you’re exactly, you’re talking to and what advice you’re getting and where they’re coming from. Because there’s a lot of people still in this industry that haven’t seen the writing on the wall about how things are changing. And if you’re taking advice from somebody who has got, you know, a quote unquote old school mindset, you’re, you’re putting your business at risk. Right.

Jordan Berry [00:47:56]:
And so one of the benefits I would say of of, you know, partnering with, you know, someone like you guys is, number one, there’s already some data to back up, you know, here’s how you should run the store, um, and there’s some models to base it off of. Um, and so you’re, you’re really buying the shortcut there to, okay, here’s exactly how you set it up and here’s exactly how you run it.

Ken Wimberly [00:48:17]:
Yeah, there are, look, you know, I both talk, there are many paths to victory, right? There’s lots of different ways and models and things to do and, and I agree. In the franchise, you’re, you’re buying a shortcut. But I also think you got to just— you know, there’s multiple people doing laundromat franchises right now. And so it’s important to talk with each of the different folks and figure out who you really jive with, right? Who’s got the philosophy, the values, the business acumen, the just mindset that, that seems to make sense for you. And that’s what we did when we got in. We evaluated a franchise versus doing it on our own. Back in 2019, we decided to do it on our own. There weren’t a lot of options at the time on the franchise side, and it’s, it’s worked out for us.

Ken Wimberly [00:49:01]:
I’ve seen it work, you know, good and bad. And so, yeah, it’s just, it’s one model that works for some people. I think the franchising business in general, outside of the laundromat, just franchising, it’s a great model, right? It’s like you’re taking a proven concept that’s validated work, you’re getting support from an organization that’s supporting you. So I like it as a business model in general, but, you know, in this business, folks just have to look at and see what makes sense for them.

Jordan Berry [00:49:26]:
Yeah. Do you have a, do you have like a, any thoughts or opinions on like, who is, who is this a good fit for versus maybe who it’s not a good fit for?

Ken Wimberly [00:49:36]:
Yeah, I can tell you some of the people like that we’ve said no to. Right. Um, and it’s—

Jordan Berry [00:49:41]:
Name some names. Tell us who you said no to.

Ken Wimberly [00:49:44]:
No, but look, Okay, for us in Laundry Love particular, okay, I’ll say in Laundry Love particular, our we are very mission and service based. So again, every store has got a dedicated children’s area. Every store does some kind of community event every month. Our we’re fully staffed, and our staff needs one of our core values is you know having a loving staff lead with love is core. So for us, if people don’t align with our core values and our mission, and there’s plenty of those people that want to come. I just want to make money. Great. You know, I don’t want any of that kids’ play area and that stuff.

Ken Wimberly [00:50:19]:
I’m not giving away books in your— in my store. Great. Because as we’ve talked, there’s many paths to victory, right? You don’t have to do that. But for us, that was absolutely not a fit. And but I think for someone that’s looking for— there’s a lot of people that are team-oriented. Like, I want a team to work with. And that’s kind of what a franchise provides. It provides you an organizational structure.

Ken Wimberly [00:50:39]:
a team that you get. Like, we have weekly calls with everyone across all store leadership. We’ve got weekly— this is the one great thing that came out of, uh, the COVID time period was what we’re doing right now, this digital world of being able to talk. And so, you know, we have weekly team meetings with every kind of person in management in the organization. And so people that want that, that want that camaraderie, that want that infrastructure I think that’s a really good fit for people, for folks that are like, man, I got this. I can— give me the manual, I’ll figure it out. I’ll know how to do it. For people that don’t want accountability, franchise is not your thing, right? Because there is like some accountability that comes along with it.

Ken Wimberly [00:51:21]:
Um, there, there is some guidelines that, that we hold people accountable to. It’s like if you’re coming, you get— not only are you gonna have brand standards, but you’ve got— metrics to hit, right? There’s— we’re gonna, we’re gonna show you on a month-to-month basis, where are you in relation to everyone else in the organization? You know, where are you performing on your labor? Where are you performing on your revenue? Where are you performing on these different key metrics? Um, not to, you know, to, to be difficult, but to help you become the kind of best version of the store that you can become.

Jordan Berry [00:51:52]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that’s a good, uh, some good frameworks to think through, like, hey, is franchising right for me or not? Right?

Ken Wimberly [00:52:03]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [00:52:03]:
If you’re the one who likes to go rogue, and like, I think I have like one client that I work with who is one of the more creative people that I know. And he’s got all kinds of like great, super creative ideas that he’s gonna try a bunch of, and most of them are not gonna work. And maybe a couple of them will stick, right? Like somebody like that, probably not a good fit for a franchise because he just wants to experiment and try some crazy stuff and have fun doing it, right? But if you’re looking— And, and the one thing I like about what you said too is, um, you know, kind of that service side. And I, I see more and more people coming into this business recognizing the opportunity to serve the community, um, and to make an impact, which I love. Like, I would love if our industry reputation was, you know, forget nice new big stores or whatever. That’s nice and all, but I would love it if it was like, hey, laundromats are somewhere you can go to, yes, get your laundry done, but you know, you’re gonna feel like the laundromat owner cares about you and cares about your community and what’s going on in the community. And if that was our reputation, I think we would be hitting our pinnacle, right?

Ken Wimberly [00:53:15]:
Yeah,

Jordan Berry [00:53:15]:
because it, it’s such a unique opportunity that we have as laundromats, as these community businesses, to, to make a difference in the community. Uh, not just because we have a space where people are gathering, but also because we’re a business and businesses are incentivized to, to give back and, and to do that too.

Ken Wimberly [00:53:34]:
Look, Jordan, I, I call it doing good by doing good. Okay? I say this all the time. And The reality is, and I want people to hear this, because there’s still a lot of people, I just want to make money. I’m going to tell you, the more good you do in your community, the more money you’re going to make. Okay? We don’t do good because we want to go make more money, but we make more money because we do more good.

Jordan Berry [00:54:00]:
I

Ken Wimberly [00:54:01]:
mean, that’s a fact.

Jordan Berry [00:54:02]:
Yeah. And go ahead, keep going. Yeah.

Ken Wimberly [00:54:04]:
I just say, and the reality is, if you’re not running a profitable business, You’re not going to be able to do good for very long. You’re going to go out of business. Then people lose their jobs, people lose their place to do laundry, you know, you lose your, your, your, your welfare and what you’re able to— your, your income that you’re making for your family. So you’ve got to run a profitable business. Um, but I’ll just tell people, you will get more and more profitable by doing things inside for you and caring. And I know it sounds a little counterintuitive, right? It’s like, but the more money we spend and time we spend inside of our communities serving them, the more profitable and, you know, the better our businesses do.

Jordan Berry [00:54:45]:
Yeah. I mean, it reminds me of, man, I want to say it’s Jim Rohn, could be Tony Robbins or, you know, one of those, you know, Zig Ziglar or somebody.

Ken Wimberly [00:54:54]:
I think Zig Ziglar. The more you can’t help.

Jordan Berry [00:54:57]:
Yeah. But the whole quote of like, you know, you can have anything you want in your life. You just help enough people get what they want.

Ken Wimberly [00:55:03]:
I think that’s a Zig Ziglar, maybe a Jim Rohn, but you’re right. You’re right.

Jordan Berry [00:55:04]:
It’s in that area.

Ken Wimberly [00:55:07]:
And that’s, and that’s so true.

Jordan Berry [00:55:08]:
One of those, one of those wise—

Ken Wimberly [00:55:10]:
But this industry is, is, in fact, many industries are like that, right? It’s like, hey, just serve people. The books we talked about are all about that, right? They’re all about that. Fans first. Okay, let’s just talk about Savannah Bananas right there. Those guys, I’ve never been to— I’ve been to a Savannah Bananas game, but in a major league ballpark. So it was by major league ballpark pricing and things. But if you go to a a game in Savannah, your ticket price includes an all-you-can-eat ticket. You go in and so you pay whatever, $40, $50 for your ticket.

Ken Wimberly [00:55:42]:
You go in, you get free hot dogs and nachos or whatever. And you go in and there’s zero corporate sponsors and banners up, right? Because they want it to be all about the experience. And guess what they have? They have 2 million people on their waiting list to go buy tickets to their games.

Jordan Berry [00:55:59]:
Yeah, imagine that. We’ve been on a waiting list for a long time over here.

Ken Wimberly [00:56:04]:
Yeah, we got lucky, you know, because as you know, if you’ve been on the waiting list, then they do these drawings to see if you’re able to buy tickets. And we got lucky the first time we applied. One of our names got drawn like, oh my gosh, we bought 4 tickets and went to one of their games, which was sold out at Minute Maid Park in Houston.

Jordan Berry [00:56:23]:
Yeah, well, and it’s— here’s, here’s the other thing about Savannah. And if you, if you’re not familiar with Savannah Bananas, it’s a baseball team and league and they’ve kind of changed some rules and made it fun. And they’re all about the fan experience. Do, do a quick YouTube search after this and, and look up Savannah Bananas and you’ll see like they get, you know, points for doing spectacular catches, plays, backflips while catching the ball. You know, fans can catch a ball and it’ll be an out in the stand. Yeah. Stuff like that. So really fun.

Jordan Berry [00:56:52]:
Really cool. But I think it’s an interesting case study. I’ve never heard anybody put it this way, but I think it’s an interesting case study in taking an old traditional model and breathing new life into it. And guess what industry is ripe for that? Laundromats. An old traditional model, baseball, Major League Baseball, still great. Laundromats, still great. But I think there’s big opportunity to come change some of the rules and breathe new life into it. And I think the Savannah Bananas have really struck on some things that have really resonated with America.

Jordan Berry [00:57:32]:
It’s really like bringing a lot of people back to baseball or new people who never were baseball fans are fans of Savannah Bananas and crew, the other crazy teams they got over there. So it’s party animals. Yeah, exactly. Uh,

Ken Wimberly [00:57:52]:
if, if, if you’re listening and you’ve never seen it, do what Jordan suggested. Go YouTube, watch some videos. And it was— the game we went to, Jordan, it was entertainment from the moment we got out of the parking lot, like blocks away from the stadium. There was a line blocks away, and there was entertainment in the line, entertainment from the moment we got in until we were fully out of the stadium. And it was Just magical, incredible. Took my, my son at the time was I think 8 and his, and his cousin with him and my wife. And we had such a great evening. And, um, but they’re all about the customer experience.

Ken Wimberly [00:58:30]:
And so that’s right. In our little, you know, humble laundromat locations, what can we do to elevate the fan experience? The customer, what can we do to change a customer into a fan?

Jordan Berry [00:58:41]:
Yeah.

Ken Wimberly [00:58:42]:
Right.

Jordan Berry [00:58:42]:
Yeah.

Ken Wimberly [00:58:43]:
And we’ve talked about some of them.

Jordan Berry [00:58:44]:
Yeah. I love that. I love that. Well, I feel like you should probably roll into your laundromat on stilts or randomly break into song and dance at your laundromat. Juggling. Yeah, that’s right. Uh, uh, all things that happen at Savannah Banana Games, by the way.

Ken Wimberly [00:58:59]:
Correct.

Jordan Berry [00:59:00]:
Um, uh, yeah. Awesome. Okay. Well, I mean, kind of along these lines, uh, maybe we could just chat for a couple minutes about, well, okay. First of all, anything else that we need to talk about in terms of your business franchise, any of that stuff?

Ken Wimberly [00:59:16]:
No, no, no, no. Just like, I mean, look, anyone that wants to learn about us, you can same thing, Google us and learn more about what we’re doing. But, you know, we’re— I look, I, I guess I’ll tell you this, just we’re in growth mode. Like, we’re, we’re seeking to grow. We’re at 4 right now. We have real estate for number 5. I told you we’re, you know, looking at launching a pickup delivery only model in a couple of markets. Our first franchisees are rolling out.

Ken Wimberly [00:59:41]:
And so Our, our vision for anyone that cares to join us is to grow to 20 corporate stores and 100 franchise partners. And we would love to support all of our franchise partners to grow to 3, 5 units or more so that we can really make an impact. So imagine what I’m telling you we’re doing in each one of these little stores right now, multiplied across 300, 500 stores across America. It makes a big impact. And if there’s just a handful of us that are doing that, that each are doing that in all of our stores, That’s a cool vision for me to see. It’s really exciting.

Jordan Berry [01:00:14]:
Yeah. Well, and if somebody is interested, where should they go to find more info?

Ken Wimberly [01:00:19]:
LaundryLove.com. Like, literally, they can go to LaundryLove.com and find all the information. There’s a— if they’re interested in franchising with us, there’s LaundryLoveFranchise.com, but that link’s on our website. But you can learn, you can like see what it looks like in our stores and what we’re about and the community events and the giveaways and the, the things we do.

Jordan Berry [01:00:34]:
Yeah. And I’ll, I’ll make sure we have links, uh, in the show notes. If you’re on YouTube, it’ll be down below, but Love, L-U-V.

Ken Wimberly [01:00:42]:
L-U-V. Yeah, laundryluv.com.

Jordan Berry [01:00:45]:
Good. Um, okay, so, uh, thank you for that. Um, I just want to just chat for a couple minutes. I mean, as somebody who is in growth mode and is kind of keeping your finger on the pulse of stuff, like, what are you seeing happening in this industry right now? What’s, what’s, uh, what direction are we heading? What do we need to know about, uh, in terms of If we’re running laundromats or trying to get into this business, uh, any, any big trends or anything you’re seeing?

Ken Wimberly [01:01:12]:
I mean, you’ve been on top of some of it. People are listening to your podcast. You’re seeing consolidation is a big trend that’s happening, uh, across the industry and distributors, manufacturers. Um, yeah, even in, in operators, there’s some consolidation going on in operators and I see there is a a move towards professionalization in this industry. In the operators, you’re seeing some, you know, people get big, some, some good-sized operators that are, that are really rolling up, getting big. I’ve seen some of that from even with— I met a guy at an event last week, never seen him before, never seen him at an event, owns 35 laundromats. That’s not nothing. That’s not— and most of his are, his are a mixture of smaller to 4,000 feet.

Ken Wimberly [01:02:04]:
And, um, most of his are unattended, but he’s got— he’s branded. So I, I do see this as a trend, right? People that are branding themselves. We’ve done it. Lots of others are doing it. Um, I don’t know if you’ve seen, um, uh, is it Dirty Britches Laundromat in Florida? Yeah, I know. I love their brand and branding. Beautiful stores. Um, really well done, uh, what they’ve done.

Ken Wimberly [01:02:30]:
Super loungy kind of inside. Their children’s play area is beautiful. But so I am seeing an elevation in professionalization across the industry, which is— I love that. Now, it’s as we’ve talked, if there’s, you know, 20,000, 30,000 laundromats across the United States, it’s going to take a while for that professionalism to really become the majority of what’s out there. But I do see that consolidation, professionalization, growth happening throughout the industry.

Jordan Berry [01:03:01]:
Yeah, yeah, I’ve definitely seen a lot of that. Uh, we’ve definitely hit a lot on like the branding stuff. You know, I think traditionally, again, I mean, kind of that old school mentality. And actually, we talked about this a little bit before we hit record, uh, of when it comes to branding, the traditional was like, don’t bother, it doesn’t matter, just put laundromat on your signage or things like that. And I think you got that advice early on.

Ken Wimberly [01:03:27]:
Yeah, I Some bad advice we got in, in 2 of our big store locations, the signage we put up said wash dry. It had our logo up front, but it didn’t say Laundry Love. It’s got the logo, but it said wash dry on it because, you know, say some of the advice we got from the industry was like, no, no, no, don’t waste space with your branding. You know, put this up. That’s what’s important. And yet those are the last 2 stores that will ever have that happen in our brand, I can tell you.

Jordan Berry [01:03:54]:
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think that that’s only going to become more and more predominant, right? Especially as like different franchises are coming up, their branding, uh, there’s some strong branding there. And, you know, the big—

Ken Wimberly [01:04:08]:
Even the non-franchise ones that are the, you know, Spin Express is a great example. There’s, um, uh, Laundromat that I just kind of talked about. I went to visit. So there’s, there’s some, there, you know, People will know, hey, they’ll start to figure that out, right? When you have 20, 30, 40, 100 locations, um, you know, Spin Express is already, you know, 20 to 30 right now. Laundromat has, I think, 60 locations. And so people start to affiliate, create this in the brand, and then you start having, uh, the cards that work across the different locations, and it’s— it starts to work like it’s supposed to.

Jordan Berry [01:04:45]:
Yeah. Yeah. And I, I would say it’s even worth it if you have a, you know, 2, 3 store portfolio.

Ken Wimberly [01:04:51]:
Uh, I, I would say so.

Jordan Berry [01:04:53]:
Yeah. Keep it, keep it branded and, and do it. Because, you know, how in my— here’s, here’s how I think of brand. Branding, in my view, is your opportunity to shape the way people think about you and your business. If you don’t do that proactively, they’re going to do it on their own, or somebody else is going to do it for you. And you don’t have any say in that. So you’ve got to be proactive about it. That’s why I think, you know, yes, having a name and a logo and color scheme is all part of branding.

Jordan Berry [01:05:26]:
It’s important, helps people associate with your store. But the things like the mission, the values, those are the things that really can separate you and you know, going back to sort of the hospitality thing, those are, you know, when, when you look at how do I, how do I create a fan, you’re looking at it through the values, whether you have stated them or not. And so if you intentionally think through your values, your mission, what are we trying to do here? How are we trying to do it? And that’s the lens you’re looking at how you serve your customers through, uh, that is where Branding becomes very, very powerful. And the brand package, the colors, the logo, the name, all very important to help all of that stick and for the customer to remember you. But really what they’re gonna remember, what’s how, how you make them feel when they come in the store.

Ken Wimberly [01:06:20]:
That’s exactly right. And yeah, so many small businesses don’t do that because look, they’re just in the grind of running.

Jordan Berry [01:06:28]:
Yeah, totally.

Ken Wimberly [01:06:29]:
The day-to-day. But when you come in and really put together the mission, vision, values component to it, that’s when it really starts to matter. And the mistake I’ve seen people make, the mistake I have made in the past, is me setting that. Oh, this is our mission. This is our vision. This is our values. I, as the leader, have set that. Where it really works and where we’ve done it right finally in this business that we’re in is when you bring in your team.

Ken Wimberly [01:06:56]:
To set those core values. And when you bring in your key people, because then there’s buy-in. It’s like, man, I helped craft this. I helped craft this vision. I helped craft these values. So, it’s a great exercise to be able to go through and do with your team. And not only does it establish buy-in, but I think it really launches you out into the market appropriately together. Gets everyone excited about what you’re building.

Jordan Berry [01:07:24]:
Yeah, absolutely. And gets everybody on the same page, right? Everybody’s pulling the same direction. Yeah, all that. And you’ll quickly find out who’s a good fit for your business too. I mean, that’s a huge thing that I know a lot of owners are, are trying to figure out right now is how do I find the right employees, you know, to work in my company, which can be difficult to find people and to find the right people. But if you know who you are as a company and what you’re all about, it’s really easy to find out who’s not a good fit.

Ken Wimberly [01:07:55]:
That’s right. You screen to your core values. You start screening to your core values and people will, when you start doing that, people will deselect themselves. They’ll realize this is probably not where I’m meant to be. The other thing I’d say, if folks have not, are not familiar with the EOS concept, Entrepreneurial Operating System from Traction, Gino Wickman. Incredible framework and way to run a successful business. We pivoted probably 2 years ago now and started running on EOS and have actually— we pay every quarter to bring in an implementer, which I highly recommend that for folks. It seems like a high dollar amount to go and do that, but I will tell you that at least in our experience, having an implementer every quarter come in and help us run the EOS playbook is invaluable.

Ken Wimberly [01:08:43]:
So something to look into for folks.

Jordan Berry [01:08:45]:
Yeah. And I’ll just, I’ll just mention, I’m trying to look up what episode it was. I can’t. Oh, it’s 218. So, uh, Amanda Barkey, who is an EOS implementer, uh, came on the podcast, uh, episode 218. Go listen to it. Uh, and that comes out of the book Traction, in case you’re unfamiliar. There’s another book we’ll throw at you, but don’t pick up all these books at once.

Jordan Berry [01:09:07]:
Pick one up and start implementing some stuff. Um, but you can hire, like you said, an EOS implementer, uh, to help you set up this operating system in your business. And it is powerful. I mean, it really is.

Ken Wimberly [01:09:21]:
So here’s what I’ll say about that. Like, I read the book Traction in 2018. And so it was, that was a long time ago when I read that book and I understood it. It makes sense when you read it. It’s pretty simple, to be quite honest. You read it and go, oh, okay, I got this. This is, fairly simple, but to go and then actually put into place the tools and run your business on the tools, that’s where it comes in. And so I, I, for a long time, I had little pieces of different tools that I would use, but now today we run all of the tools, the full playbook.

Ken Wimberly [01:09:53]:
We run everything. That’s, that’s how we run the business. And, um, it’s, it’s a game changer on how it gets you to focus on what’s really important and not to focus on all the other distractions.

Jordan Berry [01:10:05]:
Yeah. Well, I know both of us have, uh, you know, been in GoBundance and I’ve been, I’ve, you know, talked about that a little bit here. It’s like a mastermind group and stuff. Yeah. But there’s a lot of, I’d say there’s a lot of guys in that group who are successful in business that run their businesses on EOS. And I’ll just, I’ll just say there’s almost nobody in our industry running their businesses on EOS and it will give you a massive advantage. If you’re running your business on EOS.

Ken Wimberly [01:10:32]:
And it will show you, to your point, where your holes are in your leadership team, right? Because one of the first things you do in there is define the accountability chart. And that’s not looking at people, it’s looking at roles and seats in your organization. And then you’ll know who you have and who you don’t have and who’s maybe in the wrong seat. And the process will help you really to grow an organization.

Jordan Berry [01:10:53]:
Yeah, yeah, massive. Man, that’s gold. There’s almost too much in this episode to go implement now.

Ken Wimberly [01:11:03]:
Sorry.

Jordan Berry [01:11:04]:
Pick one thing, pick one thing, put it into action, then pick another. Okay. This might be one that people have to come back to this episode and listen to a couple of times. What about, one thing I’m seeing, I’m just curious just from your perspective, as you’re in this kind of growth mode, I’m sure you’re at least doing a little bit of evaluation of some of this. There’s a lot going on, excuse me, there’s a lot going on in our industry right now with, you know, uh, technology and new manufacturers trying to break into the market. You know, we’ve got Alliance who’s solidifying with their IPO. And then, you know, I, I’d say kind of the big 3 are like Alliance, like Speed Queen, Hitch. You know, you got Dexter and you got Electrolux.

Jordan Berry [01:11:48]:
Those are kind of like the big 3, but, but there’s also some other ones kind of coming in and just some new technology we have available that we haven’t had before. Any thoughts on any of that stuff going on in our industry right now as somebody who’s in growth mode?

Ken Wimberly [01:12:01]:
Like, I can just tell you, for me, I’m intrigued by it. And I was, I was at an event last week. I was a couple events last week, laundry events. And yeah, I was talking with all the different manufacturers that were there And they’re rolling in. And there was, there was a lot of vendors at this event. And so talking to everyone from lenders, manufacturers, technology suppliers, you know, we’ve, we pivoted technology, and we spent a significant amount of money per store to do it. But we ended up pivoting, going with the Sense Laundry Works platform. Mm-hmm.

Ken Wimberly [01:12:36]:
Just because I felt like they were on the cutting edge of things. And I felt like they were going to continue investing heavily into being at the forefront. And so it’s, I think it’s been good. But then there’s the technology that’s not like directly in the industry. All right. And if you are a power user of AI tools, and you’re starting to learn how to use, I mean, I’m telling you, Jordan, we just this week saved $2,000 per year per location, just this week from replacing one of our tech platforms with something we built in-house. And Guess what? It’s not like a coder that went and built this. It’s someone that is an end user that understands technology that said, here’s what I want, and use tools to go build that thing.

Ken Wimberly [01:13:24]:
And it’s impressive. It’s, it’s really impressive. And so we’re, we’re starting to replace a little bit of technology on our own with the tools that we’ve been able to just build in-house.

Jordan Berry [01:13:35]:
Yeah, I did an episode, I was looking to see what number it was. Man, which one was it? Oh, 259. Yeah. And listen, I think not just in our industry, I think there’s a huge shift coming. It used to be when we talk about assets, we’re talking about capital, talking about employees, we’re talking about code. It used to all be leverage and assets that we could utilize. Code as an asset is going away, and I will be very interested to see what happens with these software platforms. We just had a guest on who he built his own using a combination of a developer, he’s a developer, and AI together.

Jordan Berry [01:14:35]:
And it’s open source. Anybody can use it and you can take it and modify it however you want to, to fit specifically your business. And it’s free. It’s free. He’ll host it for you for $50 a month, but you can host it yourself and it’s free. He gives it away to you and he gives you the link. And I think, you know, and now I’ve said this a couple times on the podcast already. Now, you know, we built a proprietary platform to help us source deals and serve our clients and all that.

Jordan Berry [01:15:02]:
And it’s Crazy what you can do with that.

Ken Wimberly [01:15:04]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:15:04]:
Um, whenever I have a software need now, my initial instinct is no longer who has that. It’s let me just go build it. Because it’s so cheap, it’s so fast, it’s so easy. It’s super easy to modify if I need to add a feature or a capability, or if there’s a problem, I can just tell, you know, Claude Code or, or the code, you know, ChatGPT Codex or whoever, right? Like, hey, I’m having this problem. Can you fix it? And it’ll fix it immediately. And we’ll have problems while I’m on a call with a client. They’ll have a problem with something and I’ll, it’ll be fixed before the, before the call’s over. Uh, right.

Jordan Berry [01:15:43]:
Whereas I don’t have to go through a support ticket or any of that. So, I mean, I think there’s a lot of capability there and you can basically say, hey, here’s the software I want to use. Can you build me a custom version of it and tell it what you want?

Ken Wimberly [01:15:58]:
I can tell you, we just did it. It’s a superpower.

Jordan Berry [01:16:01]:
Now, it’s a superpower.

Ken Wimberly [01:16:03]:
Now, you need to understand how to use this stuff. And there’s a lot of people that’s crazy that are just now dipping their toe into it. I’ve been, you know, 4 years now using it every day and using multiple platforms every day. But when you start to understand how to use it, it’s, it is a superpower. So, you know, I said, if you have domain expertise, that’s the key, right? You can just say, oh, go build me this. If you don’t know what you’re doing, You’re gonna get, you know, it’s always been garbage in, garbage out, right? There’s always been that. But if you’ve got domain expertise and now these tools that you can use, um, just think in your life the things you pay for, right? Just get out of the laundromat business for just a second. Just think in your life about all the different things you pay for and the services you pay for on a monthly subscription basis, and you can start eliminating them and getting honestly the features just that you want.

Ken Wimberly [01:16:54]:
And not all the other junk that you never needed anyway. You get just the features you want built just for you with a little bit of work, right? It takes a little bit of technical, but not a great deal. Not much. Because it does most of the technical work. You just got to answer, you have to think through second, third, fourth order consequences and answer them, right? And go through that. But when you can do that, it can figure out the solution for you. And then to your point, right? If you figure out, oh, well, that didn’t work, I ran into a bug or a problem, It can help you fix it. It’s, it’s pretty baffling.

Jordan Berry [01:17:25]:
Yeah. Yeah. And the way, the way I use it when I’m building is I’ll use one and say, here’s what I’m trying to build. I need help. First of all, thinking through what exactly do I need here and ask me some questions to help me figure out exactly what I need. And then I’ll say, okay, let’s break that into some steps and it’ll break it into steps for me. And then I’ll say, okay, for every step, create a comprehensive prompt that I can give to the code. To, to do.

Jordan Berry [01:17:49]:
And, and it gives a comprehensive prompt, and I just feed that in there and just, it spits out what exactly what I need, right? And to your point, it’s all the features you want. The ones that you don’t want, you don’t have to have, or the ones that you’ve always wanted that the company won’t give you behind the paywall. Yeah, you can, you can add it and, and build it yourself. It’s pretty incredible what you can do.

Ken Wimberly [01:18:12]:
Yeah, yeah. So it will be Really interesting, kind of like you said, to see how things go in, in the future, um, with technology in the industry. Mm-hmm. Like I said, for us right now, recreating dashboards and features and functionality and onboarding and all of this other stuff that used to be third-party software, that’s, that’s quickly going away. And it’s changed just so much in the last 6 months. Okay. In the last 6 months, it changed massively.

Jordan Berry [01:18:43]:
Massively. I mean, it changes every day. I feel like something new is happening, uh, every day, which, I don’t know, it’s exciting. And, but it, you know, it’s like—

Ken Wimberly [01:18:55]:
Don’t go down the road. It’s terrifying if you go too far down.

Jordan Berry [01:18:58]:
It’s like, where, yeah, where’s this gonna lead? Right? Like, is every software company just going out of business? Did, you know, ChatGPT and Claude just replace them all? Or what’s, you know, where’s it going? I don’t know. Like, where does the end of the road go? It’s interesting.

Ken Wimberly [01:19:13]:
It is. It is interesting. I think there’s certainly certain things and certain security that’s going to— I mean, this is where it’s a little worrisome, right, is when it gets to the security of it, because that’s something that, you know, probably you and I don’t under— I’m not a cybersecurity guy, right? I don’t understand. I know it can build this stuff, but are there backdoor security issues that we need to worry about? And so there is, there is Plenty to think through and contemplate.

Jordan Berry [01:19:42]:
Yeah. Well, some of the nefarious AI users are finding backdoor. I mean, I just saw, I think last week, they just used AI to basically jailbreak every single video game ever in existence. Like AI can just recreate it. And then they started merging them together where Mario is in Call of Duty or, you know, like

Ken Wimberly [01:20:05]:
interesting,

Jordan Berry [01:20:05]:
interesting stuff. Interesting stuff, and AI is doing it. And, and, you know, that’s kind of fun and funny or whatever, and might disrupt the video game industry too. I don’t know. But I mean, I think there’s other implications that are a little more serious, uh, with that. And it doesn’t have to do necessarily with the AI coders’ backdoors or anything like that. It’s just it’s able to get in there now and find holes and, you know, Do stuff for themselves.

Ken Wimberly [01:20:33]:
There’s a lot of industries that will be severely impacted. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, I’ve heard it postulated for a long time, just in the movie industry, right? That eventually the AI will be able to create your version of whatever movie you want, which is, I don’t know, some of that is, it’s fascinating that can be done. And the other, I’m like, kind of like want to see what someone else created right now. So, but yeah, so those tools and what can be done in our world is rather fascinating. super useful today. Like I said, as far as eliminating costs that we’re spending on things. And, and so we just looked at, you know, every single store that we have or our franchise partners have is we limited $2,000 a year. That’s a great deal.

Jordan Berry [01:21:14]:
It’s a great deal. That’s a great deal. Pennies on the dollar too, for sure.

Ken Wimberly [01:21:18]:
That’s today.

Jordan Berry [01:21:19]:
I know, I know. Well, and that’s, and, you know, I, I’ve been saying this a lot, but I want to just keep saying it because that is why it’s so important that you keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on in this industry and the world in general. Um, but this industry, if you’re in it, you— it’s no longer an industry where you set it and forget it. Like, you can’t do that. That used to be like a badge of honor in this industry. Like, I only spend an hour a week in my store, or, you know, my machines are 30 years old and still, you know, kicking. And that was— those were badges of honor in this, in the industry, right? And if that’s what you’re still bragging about, Today, you’re a dinosaur, man. You’re, you got a foot in the grave because you got people like Ken and other people who’ve been on the podcast and, and not been on the podcast out there who are building these businesses that have their finger on the pulse of where this industry is going and what technology is available and what’s—

Ken Wimberly [01:22:20]:
How many episodes have you done now?

Jordan Berry [01:22:23]:
Uh, I think we’re up around 260.

Ken Wimberly [01:22:26]:
Now, 260 episodes. You’ve talked to a lot of people in all different aspects of the industry.

Jordan Berry [01:22:33]:
Yeah.

Ken Wimberly [01:22:34]:
So what do you see next? What we, you know, looking like, turn the tables on you.

Jordan Berry [01:22:37]:
Yeah.

Ken Wimberly [01:22:38]:
Looking forward the next— I mean, I won’t look further than 5 years because, God, in my case, 5 years, it seems like a long time. What do you see happening in the next 5 years?

Jordan Berry [01:22:48]:
Yeah, I guess I’ll throw out some bold predictions that You know, I don’t— no crystal ball over here, and I don’t have any special insight that anybody else, you know, doesn’t have or has. But number one, I mean, I think I’ll predict that there’s going to be a decline in some of these software— not a decline necessarily in the usage of them. I think pricing will come down because there’s going to be more pressure on them because I do think more people will start building their own stuff. I’ve already seen it. It’s already been hap— I’ve already had somebody on the podcast doing it, right? Like, and he’s not the only one. So I think there’s going to be downward pressure on the software prices, which maybe is just good for the industry in general. It’d be interesting to see how that plays out for players like Sense that you mentioned. Yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:23:39]:
Which I haven’t had a conversation with, with those guys yet about this. That’d be interesting to do that and see how they’re thinking about it. But I, you know, I think one of the smartest things they did was buy Laundroworks because hardware’s, at least at the moment, more difficult. Yeah. To replicate. Yeah. I think in, in, I’ll be very interested in manufacturing and how that goes. Obviously, like I see more, you know, Chinese players trying to come in lower cost, basically dupes of Speed Queen and stuff like that.

Jordan Berry [01:24:12]:
Same parts, same everything. And You know, two-thirds of the price. I see a lot of chatter around that. I don’t know too many people who are building out whole stores, but I’ve seen people trying to pick up some machines to kind of dip their toe in the water. You know, I was kind of courting a Japanese company for a little while who’s got washer commercial washer dryer combo that it’s been out 15 years in Japan and is super intriguing product to be honest with you. Their main issue right now in penetrating the US, in my opinion. 2, 2 things. One’s pricing and the other one is infrastructure, right? When you have a washer dryer combo, the infrastructure’s a little bit different than how a lot of stores are set up right now.

Jordan Berry [01:24:57]:
But I wouldn’t be surprised. And we saw some of those at the Clean Show, right? The, the different manufacturers are coming out with washer dryer combos, which I think would be interesting. I’ll be curious to see, you know, one thing I’ve never heard anybody talk about in this industry yet, maybe because it’s commercial and it’s not quite viable yet, but I wonder if in the next 5 years it might be, is commercially viable 3D printing so that we can 3D print some of our parts for our machines, some of the manufacturers, you know, building machines in a way that You know, parts can be 3D printed. I’ve never heard anybody talk about that, but I could definitely see that being a possibility. Robotics is making— I, I could see robotics, you know, right now it’s kind of funny watching things fold. And I had the Monster Laundry people out in Sacramento, they were on the podcast a little while back talking about they have the folding robots.

Ken Wimberly [01:25:53]:
Yeah.

Jordan Berry [01:25:53]:
Which are clumsy and slow and not practical right now, but AI was too, maybe like 18 months ago. Or less, right? And so I think—

Ken Wimberly [01:26:03]:
I think 5 years is a long horizon to get there.

Jordan Berry [01:26:05]:
Yeah, yeah, I agree. So I mean, I think there’s a lot of— and all that kind of contributes to this, you know, you mentioned consolidation. I think consolidation is happening in multiple ways, you know, less owners owning more stores. I think that’s going to accelerate because of these tools and resources, not to mention the data that we can have access to now. And especially if we’re able to build our own softwares and tracking and dashboards and all that. Um, but also there’s consolidation happening with, you know, EVI buying distributors, Alliance buying distributors. You know, there’s multiple consolidation threads happening in our industry right now. So I, I don’t know, man.

Jordan Berry [01:26:46]:
I think it’s really interesting time to see the next 5 years could look very different than it does today.

Ken Wimberly [01:26:53]:
Yes, it could. Well, I’m excited to be in it and I guess I’m excited that, you know, we got in it, what, 7 years ago now? And, uh, that, that it’s, I think that inadvertently gave us a big leg up for the future.

Jordan Berry [01:27:06]:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, you know, I get asked a lot now too, like, is it too late? Like there’s obviously laundromats are having a little bit of a heyday right now with the boring business stuff. And a lot of people are very, you know, interested in getting in the industry and people are asking like, is it too late? Do we miss the boat? And My answer to that is no, I don’t think too late at all. I think this is a great time to get into the industry. Like I said, we’re on the precipice of a lot of change. I know multiples have gone up if you’re buying existing and like construction costs have gone up a little bit and all that.

Jordan Berry [01:27:39]:
Honestly, another kind of bold prediction, I think multiples will go up even higher, especially for people who have small portfolios or large portfolios. Because what we haven’t really seen super successfully yet is a whole lot of private equity coming in, but we’ve seen it in a lot of other industries. And now that we’re getting the technology that we need and we’re starting to see consolidation, those portfolios are getting up to the values that private equity and family offices and funds and things like that need them to be at in order for it to make sense for their investment portfolios. And I think we might get there maybe in the next 5 years. We’ll see.

Ken Wimberly [01:28:21]:
Exciting times ahead.

Jordan Berry [01:28:23]:
Big predictions over here. Uh, we’ll see if any of them are, are right or not. Maybe I’ll be way off.

Ken Wimberly [01:28:29]:
Look, it’s been 6 years. We’ll come back in 5 years and we’ll watch this episode before we, uh, record.

Jordan Berry [01:28:34]:
That’s right. And I’ll hide my head in shame. All the stores got smaller and, you know, I mean, I think we’ll

Ken Wimberly [01:28:40]:
see more.

Jordan Berry [01:28:41]:
Yeah. Yeah,

Ken Wimberly [01:28:42]:
that’s right.

Jordan Berry [01:28:42]:
Laundromats are just gone. They’re just gone. Uh, I think pickup and delivery is going to grow and, and drop-off. I think that’s an expanding side of the business that’s going to continue to grow. I think we might see stores that are fully unattended, fully automated, where there’s customer service tablets on the wall. It’s just basically vending machines.

Ken Wimberly [01:29:01]:
The McDonald’s version.

Jordan Berry [01:29:02]:
McDonald’s. Yeah. Like, I don’t know, man. I think there’s a lot of interesting things happening. So probably keep going, but I won’t. I’ll see you.

Ken Wimberly [01:29:09]:
We live in interesting times.

Jordan Berry [01:29:10]:
Yeah. Well, listen, Ken, uh, this has been awesome as always. Uh, can’t believe it’s been 6 years. Uh, maybe we should do 1 or 2 before that 5-year mark. Uh, maybe so there and just get, get the update. Uh, but again, check out Laundry Love if, uh, you just want to see how they’re running their business and, and especially if you’re interested in that, that franchising option, uh, they got going on there, hear more about that. Um, make sure you check them out, but I appreciate you taking the time to come on, man.

Ken Wimberly [01:29:37]:
Hey, thank you. Like, I’ve been listening to some of your episodes. Thanks for continuing to do the deep dives and talk about some things that sometimes other people won’t talk about. So keep that going.

Jordan Berry [01:29:46]:
Yeah, no, I appreciate it. And, uh, listen, if you or anybody else out there listening’s got something that you’re like, hey, I’d love to hear more about this, or we should— somebody should do a deep dive on this, let me know. I, I’m like I said, I like kind of keeping my finger on the pulse a little bit here, uh, to see where we’re heading as an industry because it’s exciting times.

Ken Wimberly [01:30:03]:
Thanks again. All

Jordan Berry [01:30:04]:
right, appreciate it. All right, I hope you guys love that episode with Ken Wimberly. So much good stuff there, and can’t wait to hear how his franchise develops and how this helps progress our industry. There’s a lot going on in the industry right now, and, uh, keep your finger on the pulse. Stay subscribed, uh, that way you can check out the news episodes that we got coming out, you know, every week-ish. Uh, with news from all over the industry because things are changing quickly. And, uh, don’t forget, go check out that free course over at laundromatresource.com, How to Buy Your First Laundromat. All right, without further ado, get out there and take some action.

Jordan Berry [01:30:43]:
That’s what’s going to help you achieve your goals. You got to pick something in this episode, put it into action. Maybe for you, it’s going to check out the course. I don’t know, maybe for you it’s calling up Ken Wimberly and talking about, uh, getting your first laundromat. Whatever it is, get out there and take some action, and we’ll see you in the next one. Peace.