Today’s episode explores the idea behind laundromat franchises. A common question that new investors often have is whether they should strike out on their own or if they should become a franchisee. This growing trend isn’t for everyone, but it perfectly suits some investors and today’s guest, Jim Williams of WaveMAX, comes on the show to shed some light on laundromat franchising.

The laundromat franchise model has been around in various forms for a while, but some believe that all of the proper tools are in place to make laundromat franchises scalable, manageable, and economical. Jim talks through reasons he believes the franchise model is the way to go for many owners.

This episode is jam packed full of great insight. Even if you’re not currently a franchisee or if you have no desire to own a franchise, there is still a TON of information in this episode that will help you run your business more efficiently and retain more profit.

In this episode, Jim and I discuss:

  • Why franchises never caught on and why they might see more success now.
  • Why a new owner should consider a franchise.
  • How technology is evolving in the laundry industry and the implications on the laundromat owner.
  • The 4 categories of changes in the laundromat industry.
  • The complete process to owning your own franchise laundromat.
  • Systems that make franchise laundromats more effective and efficient.
  • Who is a good candidate for a franchise laundromat.
  • The importance of providing value to the customer.
  • Getting the right location for your laundromat.

And much more!

You definitely don’t want to miss this as aerospace industry veteran turned laundromat franchisee shares his business wisdom to help you succeed faster in your business!

Listen To The Podcast Here

Watch The Podcast Here

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    Episode Transcript

    hey everyone what’s up it’s jordan with
    the laundromat resource podcast this is
    show number 27 and i am pumped
    that you are here today because today
    we’re delving into
    a world that i knew very little about
    before
    this interview with jim williams from
    wave max we are delving into the world
    of
    laundromat franchises and i get asked
    this question
    all the time about is it worth it to do
    laundromat franchises should you do it
    shouldn’t you do it what are the pros
    what are the cons who is it for
    i asked jim all of these questions today
    and more
    and even if franchising is not what you
    are uh excited about it’s not what
    you’re doing or maybe you already own
    some
    and you’re not looking to buy a
    franchise there is a ton of value today
    with jim
    he brings a lot of wisdom and in fact
    one of the things that i
    really loved about this episode is we
    talked a lot about technology
    in the industry right now and obviously
    if you’re using a franchise model
    technology plays a huge role in that
    um and and i think technology is one of
    those things that
    is making franchising a little more
    accessible a little more possible in our
    industry so we talk
    a lot about technology in a way that i
    think will benefit everyone so make sure
    you tune into this one you’re not going
    to want to miss it i want to point out t
    donnelly on the forums this week he had
    an interesting thing that he did that i
    thought would benefit some of you guys
    he went out and did a direct mail
    marketing campaign
    for laundromats for sale in his area
    and he got such a great response that he
    has
    more leads of laundromat owners who want
    to sell then he knows what to do with
    and he’s trying to figure out if there’s
    a
    way to uh you know spread the wealth in
    a way that kind of benefits him also
    similar to like wholesaling or something
    and if that is something that you know
    something about or maybe
    you want to connect up with him because
    you’re looking for a laundromat
    hey you know head over to the forums go
    help t donnelly out and
    give him some of your wisdom also if
    you’re brand new around here
    you got to go to laundromat resource dot
    com slash forums again
    link is in the show notes or if you’re
    on youtube description below
    go introduce yourself we’re growing by
    like 8 to 10 people
    every single day growing like weeds
    right now it’s been
    very very cool to see but man we got to
    start getting to know each other because
    that’s where the real power is so head
    over to those introduction forums
    click on it introduce yourself let
    people know who you are where you are
    and where you’re at in your journey and
    then go say hi to someone else who’s
    already done that
    just so cool to get to know people it’s
    one of my favorite things with what i’m
    doing here
    and i want you to be a part of that
    so man today’s episode is awesome the
    last few episodes have been
    incredible if you haven’t listened to
    those yet
    go back and check them out and i already
    have lined up and recorded the next
    couple episodes and they
    also are mind-blowing so if you haven’t
    done it yet
    make sure you subscribe whether you’re
    on a podcast player you’re on youtube
    whatever the case may be make sure you
    subscribe you don’t want to miss this
    there’s tons
    tons tons of value coming your way
    and let’s speaking of which let’s just
    get into it
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    the description
    [Music]
    well hey jim thanks for coming on the
    show today how you doing
    i’m doing very good how are you doing
    i’m doing awesome awesome i’m really
    really
    excited to talk to you today because you
    have a very unique
    uh perspective on the industry and i get
    asked questions about this all the time
    so i’m really really
    excited to hear uh you know straight
    from the horse’s mouth uh all about
    franchising in laundromats so but before
    we
    get into that can you tell us a little
    bit about yourself who are you and maybe
    how did you
    make your way to this strange industry
    sure um i’ve been in and out of the
    several industries my whole
    career usually at a executive level and
    i
    uh i bought a franchise finally uh
    well i don’t know about 15 years ago or
    so uh
    and uh it was good for a few years i got
    tired of it and sold it to one of the
    employees
    uh kind of slipped back into aerospace
    just to have something to do for a while
    and uh
    after about eight years of that
    six-month contract
    i just i had enough had to walk away and
    again
    and so i started looking for another
    franchise
    and uh longer maths weren’t on the radar
    at all i was i was looking more at the
    construction products and finance
    products and that’s
    more of what my background is and uh
    running running operations running
    departments and things so
    i was looking for something i had a few
    employees not too many
    and uh and i was probably more in the
    financial area but
    uh one of these uh
    one of these uh franchise coaches found
    me
    and asked if they could
    [Music]
    ask if they could uh interview me and
    propose some ideas that they might have
    so i said sure i’m pretty pretty much
    have my mind made up but
    uh i don’t i don’t mind looking at other
    things so there’s an interview process
    and
    somehow one of the things on there was a
    laundromat
    and my wife had asked me about owning a
    laundromat a few times in our
    32 34 whatever
    years of marriage and uh i’ve always
    kind of
    didn’t want to be a laundromat owner i
    it was
    you know in industry and i had
    pretty respectful positions and stuff i
    just i didn’t think that was a small
    business i wanted
    um but as luck would have it i got into
    a pretty bad car accident a couple years
    ago
    so i had narrowed my search down about
    four or five items
    for and i started really digging into
    them
    the more i dug into the wanderman
    business i was doing research in the
    background i wasn’t
    i wasn’t doing any uh any directly with
    a wave max chip but i was looking into
    into the industry itself and i called
    pretty much every business that was for
    sale at that time couple years ago
    in orange county in l.a county around me
    to uh to see uh
    if it would be something for me and i i
    discovered pretty quickly
    that if you’re running it right the
    margins are very high
    uh that was exciting because the margins
    were higher than
    you know pretty much everything else you
    could get on one or two laundromats and
    make
    the amount of money you think you need
    to make or you could have
    seven or eight subways and that means
    lots of lots of employees lots of
    problems lots of management yeah lots of
    problems is right yeah yeah
    just so uh i kind of like this
    semi absentee owner approach
    so i started investigating a laundromat
    fan
    franchises only to find out there are
    zero
    or there were zero um so
    i was interested in why all of a sudden
    there’s a land
    laundry franchise there hadn’t been
    before that was my main probe
    next and uh what i discovered
    was the reason there weren’t
    franchises before us because it was a
    cash business
    and cash businesses still make good
    franchises you can’t
    you can’t track the sales and you can’t
    be sure that all of the franchisees are
    going to report their sales accurately
    so
    uh enter technology into the industry
    it hasn’t stopped since technology has
    hit this industry and
    and now we’re seeing it the same way
    we’re seeing technology
    in everything so so technology is what
    has
    made the wavemax be able to be a
    franchise
    and i know there’s a second one out
    there that might have a couple of stores
    open
    i think that’s it i really don’t know of
    any there’s a lot of folks that are
    trying to sell licenses or
    sell a process or something but as far
    as a real franchise product that
    it’s well thought out and and uh
    you know helps you from womb to tomb
    there really aren’t
    uh really any choices out there
    besides what max and uh and so
    i went on the discovery day and i met
    the owner and i met the business
    development executive who had done
    several other franchises um
    so uh they had a decent track record uh
    the
    the ceo uh mike roberts he’d been in
    franchising for many years on the
    operation side of it
    he decided to get out and open a
    laundromat
    for similar reasons i guess um
    and five years into it he said you know
    we can franchise this
    i know but he came up with a proprietary
    way
    before technology to
    determine uh how much volume was going
    through the stores
    so that’s what they launched it on but
    shortly after that
    technology came into play and and you
    can just track everything now
    on it so so that’s how i got into the
    that’s how i got started on it very cool
    well let me back you up for a second
    what i mean you were looking at all
    kinds of different franchises
    when you know before you found wavemax
    so
    what what is it about the franchise
    model in general not specifically
    laundromats necessarily but
    franchise model in general that that
    attracted you
    well when you’re starting a small
    business you make a lot of mistakes at
    first you got to learn
    um and having run operations for many
    years i’ve
    found it’s always easier to pledge your
    eyes than to invent
    you can improve the process and usually
    do improve the process but
    it’s always nice to let somebody else uh
    you know
    lay the groundwork for it
    and make all the mistakes that you don’t
    want to
    make yourself that are so expensive to
    make yeah
    there’s nothing scientific about the
    laundry business and you can call up any
    broker and
    get you started in it but there’s
    definitely advantages
    uh to uh to doing it through a franchise
    that
    you can’t realize uh on your own
    yeah i love that okay so you’re looking
    for
    different franchise through different
    franchise models you stumble on
    laundry mats you start to dig in a
    little deeper and uh
    you know because of assuming injuries
    from the car
    the car wreck had kind of limited you or
    is that
    yeah i was i was in a easy chair for
    about six months so
    yeah yeah i uh i had a lot of time to
    be on a phone and do internet searching
    and
    and uh you know put put spreadsheets
    together and pro formas and stuff
    so um and and it
    really got boiled down to two and i
    honestly thought i was going the other
    direction
    and then i i met the owners of both
    both great uh both great people
    but i uh i i connected better
    with with the fran with the uh
    wavemax team um and i like the fact that
    you can run a laundromat with very few
    employees
    involved of your own time if you if
    that’s what you choose to do
    yeah and the other one is going to be
    the opposite a lot of
    ways a lot of your time
    yeah well i mean i think that’s that’s a
    big part of the appeal of the industry
    in general is the you know the good
    returns
    the lack of you know a lot of management
    and you still do have to obviously
    manage
    your business but uh it’s you know it’s
    a lot less than
    normal regular businesses uh or other
    businesses i should say
    um yeah so wow okay so you met the wave
    max guys and
    what was that what was that process like
    once you decided okay i’m going to jump
    into owning a laundromat through this
    this franchise what
    what is the process it goes pretty fast
    you go through the contracts and sign
    them and
    and you pay a franchise fee and off off
    you go you know first thing it is
    is uh meet with meet with the folks that
    are supposed to be coaching you
    uh in my case i bought a an entire
    territory
    so i’m not all of southern california um
    so i’ll be the one helping develop that
    area
    for uh the company uh and i i liked it
    because it was a
    it was a brand new concept meaning
    franchises in
    in longer events and they’re in the
    water map business
    and southern california has the most
    laundry mass in the country
    yeah um in the prime territory or like i
    did i was able to make a pretty decent
    deal
    to get in and uh so so
    um so i thought i just gotta you know
    sit back and sell some franchises and
    let the checks roll in but the more i
    got into it the more
    i really realized this industry is
    changing
    and and i want to be part of the change
    i think this industry needs to change
    i think you’re uh you’re
    um open 24 hour nobody there watching
    what’s going on
    dirty insecure
    [Music]
    laundromats are a thing of the past
    they’re all going out of business
    every one of them um
    and and what’s coming in
    is um more professionalism a lot
    it still can be mom and pop but
    to survive now you have to
    you have to have a clean store it has to
    feel safe
    you have to have security you have to
    have nice
    uh uh amenities inside the store
    and or a nice ambiance inside the store
    but it
    it feels you know good because you your
    customers are going there and they’re
    spending a couple hours out of their day
    um less now than they did before but
    they’re spending time out of their day
    to
    uh you know to do their laundry every
    single week or every other week
    and it’s it should be a place that they
    look forward to coming to not a place
    that they dread
    coming to so our stores always have an
    attendant on duty
    and we have a fold and fluff service we
    have a pick-up and delivery service
    and we have the self-service and they
    come in do their own laundry
    we don’t go overboard on on
    [Music]
    vending machines and things like that we
    have been there for
    uh so folks can grab a beverage and a
    snack or whatever
    play a game maybe but it’s not an arcade
    approach it’s it’s a professional
    operation
    uh with with uh uniformed employees and
    and uh and uh our
    return rates very high in all of our
    stores uh that are open
    we’ve sold 100 franchises so far we’ve
    got 17
    uh 18 open for business
    and we’ve got 20
    22 or 23 uh currently in some stage of
    opening
    we’re opening one about every uh four
    weeks
    and then we’ve got a backlog of about 60
    right now
    um that are most of them are second and
    third
    stores that a frenchie franchisee has
    purchased
    um we got a couple of key markets that
    we’re doing our most of our testing in
    right now that’s
    phoenix market uh dallas market denver
    market
    uh and knoxville tennessee
    we’re doing some testing on the pickup
    and delivery business and
    and it’s it’s not like we’re reinventing
    everything but we’re honing it
    and we’re making it uh precise and
    profitable
    and and um we’re listening to the
    customer giving the customer what
    the customer wants uh and and the
    customer’s changing
    it’s it’s uh it’s evolving
    now just because the drop off business
    and because of the pickup and delivery
    business
    we’re seeing uh older folks and younger
    folks both
    uh coming into the into the mix now
    where you know in the past it was mostly
    the
    you know 20 something through 40
    something
    or something that was a big hunk of your
    business but
    but uh the youngest generations now uh
    my kids include it they don’t want to
    wash their clothes so
    they they call somebody up to come pick
    them up at their door
    you know bring them back folded like mom
    used to do
    exactly just replacing mom on that one
    that’s
    that’s replacing mom yeah
    so i mean that’s that’s kind of what the
    dynamic is now
    [Music]
    yeah i mean you just you said so much in
    there that i think is so
    so good i just want to touch on a couple
    things and i have some like follow-up
    questions for you
    but i mean i love the mindset of hey
    you know you can still be mom and pop
    but you gotta up the level of
    professionalism and i think that’s the
    name of the game in the business right
    now
    is upping that professionalism you know
    i think the days of
    you know getting a store and
    you know basically letting it run itself
    and coming in collecting quarters and
    basically running the
    running the machines into the ground and
    then trying to dump it you know at the
    end i think
    i think those days are are quickly
    coming to a close
    and you know now if you’re not
    reinvesting into your business
    then your business is probably going to
    die it’s probably not going to survive
    um and that’s what customers want too
    right and those big you know nice new
    stores that are
    coming in everywhere they’re going to
    start taking all the business from
    the stores that don’t up their
    professionalism don’t run it like a
    like a actual business and so i love
    that you’re
    saying that i think that’s one of the
    big recipes for success in our industry
    right now is
    up and up in that level of
    professionalism keeping things clean
    keeping things tidy
    keeping machines running and keeping
    customers happy
    so i love i love that um you talked
    uh you talked a lot about changes in the
    industry do you
    can can you talk a little more
    specifically i mean you kind of mention
    technology uh changing
    are there any other changes or what
    technology in particular
    are you seeing that’s effective yeah
    well um
    i think i think he break the categories
    into a couple
    or three categories i guess if you want
    definitely technical logical advances
    uh uh for both the consumer and the
    uh and the uh owner and then there’s
    a management um aspects that benefit
    both the consumer and the owner then
    certainly there’s the
    the economic factor and an environmental
    factor
    that that affects everybody
    so um i’m not sure how which
    attacks but i think the easiest might be
    the environmental
    yeah um so the newer machines
    uh run much the cycle time is much
    much smaller much shorter much shorter
    cycle time so
    uh that gets somebody in and out
    of uh of the store very quickly
    and the shorter cycle time uses less
    energy so
    we’re using less electricity less water
    less gas
    and we’re putting less uh polluted water
    gray water down the animal sewer also
    um so those are those are all really
    positive
    beneficial things that help both the
    consumer and and the
    uh and the owner as well as
    as as everybody the environment the
    community uh
    benefits from uh from uh these
    uh more efficient machines so um
    i mean they’re they’re getting to the
    point where uh you can literally do a
    double load or triple load in 20 minutes
    with some of our fastest machines and uh
    we use electrolux as the brand that we
    use
    exclusively but you can get cycle times
    on a wash in the dry down to 20 minutes
    each
    and so you can literally be sitting on
    your couch
    and then uh you got an hour breaking
    your tv programming or whatever and
    you can you can take technology look on
    your smartphone
    find out if the machine you like to use
    is free
    and then head on down to the laundromat
    and uh you know 40 minutes without
    folding and
    you’re back home sitting on the couch
    fill in your laundry while you’re
    watching
    the show you want to watch anyway so uh
    it
    it’s it’s not the three hour visit
    uh to the laundromat anymore if you’re
    if if your owners are keeping up on the
    technology if they’re putting in the new
    machines
    and uh and we’re finding
    with our new stores that that uh
    i’m not sure there’s more people washing
    laundry
    but they’re they’re migrating to the to
    the more efficient store
    that the you know that has a nicer
    ambiance makes them feel better
    uh is well managed uh those kind of
    things
    they don’t have to if there’s a problem
    there’s an attendant there to help with
    it they don’t have to find a
    number on the wall leave a message and
    you know get their reporters back
    someday
    it’s taken care of right away um
    [Music]
    another way technology is really uh
    making it better for the consumer
    aside from the smart apps that you can
    download on your phone
    they tell you when your laundry is done
    so you can put your laundry in and
    go to the bookstore next door go to the
    bar next door i don’t know what
    budgie but whatever you want to do and
    then it’ll tell you when you’re when
    your load’s done you come back and
    and and you’ve got that also for the
    owners it helps out because i can
    literally look on a phone and i could be
    across the street or across the country
    my employees don’t know where i’m at but
    i can tell what’s going on on every
    single machine
    in that store and i have video camera
    also so
    so i know what’s going on in the store
    so
    as an owner you can literally run your
    store
    from your phone anywhere that you want
    to run it
    and if you’re app based only you’re not
    even in there every
    every other day collecting coins or
    moving coins around you know
    so uh um so there’s a lot of advantages
    to the
    to the newer technology uh with regard
    to that
    so you’ve got you’ve got reduced cycle
    times you’ve got the app base that you
    can do you can pay with the app
    you can manage with the app you can run
    reports with the apps
    [Music]
    the machines tell you every single penny
    that goes through that thing and every
    single refund that
    that’s issued by the machine and and
    um it and it tells you when it’s down
    it tells you when it needs maintenance
    it’s a heck of a lot easier than
    you know then calling out the repair guy
    and having him
    look at your machine for after tell you
    oh it needs the thousand dollar bearing
    which you were hoping it wasn’t gonna be
    the
    you know so and then there’s waiting
    lists for it so
    that the technology’s just just uh
    really changing the industry a lot um
    yeah i mean i see that i mean that
    that’s huge
    we just had uh thomas landenberger on uh
    you know an episode or two ago and he’s
    in italy
    with a he lives in in tuscany in the
    tuscan
    countryside with a laundromat in florida
    and
    you know just it’s incredible what
    technology allows you to do
    these days and i think that it’s about
    time that our industry is catching up on
    that technology and starting to utilize
    it um but it really does open up a lot
    of exciting
    opportunities you know for us
    yeah i i use my phone probably 90
    of the time on the computer probably 10
    percent time
    i mostly use the computer when i want to
    have a bigger screen for a
    presentation or something like that but
    outside that you can you can literally
    do it all
    with the phone yeah crazy
    crazy so well you mentioned
    uh just brief i mean you mentioned
    economic change do you want to touch on
    that
    at all uh sure um
    [Music]
    uh well from a franchise standpoint
    um you or i any of us
    that wants to open up watermelon we can
    call the local
    distributor and they’ll take a meeting
    with us and
    we’ll show them the store we have and
    then they’ll decide
    how much equipment needs to go in there
    and what i found
    is usually they help you just pack it
    full of equipment
    that’s not really what the customer
    wants it’s not really in your best
    interest
    um but
    to be blunt they get compensated by some
    equipment
    right that’s how they make their money
    you have an extra five machines
    they fit uh looks decent in there but
    you probably don’t need those extra five
    machines or
    or what have you so uh in our franchise
    we look at
    demographics and and
    some algorithms that we have and we use
    that to determine
    [Music]
    based on the population and the
    car count and a few other things that we
    use that we don’t disclose that
    to determine how many machines we really
    need in there so
    if it’s a 30 by 30 or a 30 30 store 30
    washers 30 dryers
    um typically in that store you could
    probably fit 35
    37 washers and dryers we don’t do it we
    give a little space
    more to folding um
    and and
    we don’t worry about uh machine turns on
    the machine
    that’s what the they’re always trying to
    sell you machine turns when you finances
    machine turns
    we don’t really care nobody should care
    about what the machine terms are and
    what you should care about
    is this is your customer account growing
    and are you providing a
    good enough service to grow your
    customer account um
    but but back to the money part any of us
    can go out there and
    meet with a dealer and we can negotiate
    a discount with them and
    they may give us a 10 or 15 or 20
    percent off depending on how many we buy
    um and that sounds like a good deal
    because these are expensive right
    outfit of stores a half million dollars
    worth of machines that
    that’s that’s a lot of money um
    but with our franchise we get a gigantic
    discount north of 40
    and no broker can touch that uh
    at all so right out of the gate you know
    we’re saving
    tens of thousands of more dollars than
    anybody else has
    and our franchise can be financed up to
    80
    uh so you’re really coming out of pocket
    with
    much less than
    much less than you typically do when
    you’re working directly with a broker
    and then our store design is relatively
    standardized
    so we have a designer layout that
    that lays out the uh layout for you
    and the machine count and whatnot and
    now we
    turn over to a number of different
    architects that
    that have the wave max feel down pretty
    well
    and uh um we have some very good looking
    stores the newer ones
    each store i think looks better than
    last one because there’s just uh
    something little more that we decided to
    add
    now that we didn’t have in the last
    store uh and
    and they really help a lot and they look
    you know they look inviting
    and they feel safe when you uh when you
    go into them
    um so you save money on the design you
    save money on the build out
    the whole thing is financed um if you
    choose the red machines
    which we do that’s part of our package
    uh then you’re saving a lot of money
    just in utility bills
    shorter cycle times the machines are
    smart enough now to
    detect what the size of the load is and
    use the right amount of water
    use the right amount of spin washing
    machines actually do part of the drying
    process in the machine because because
    using the right amount of water
    when they go through the spin they can
    they can be
    you know lightly damp instead of wet
    and then you throw them in the dryer the
    dryer times much less also so
    but the machines these days they have a
    lot of
    uh a lot of uh technology in it to help
    assist manage the the energy and the
    time
    uh and those are important on several
    different levels to everybody
    yeah i mean i think that’s
    i think it’s well put and it’s really a
    good explanation of
    what uh you know how it benefits you to
    you know buy a franchise as opposed to
    kind of doing it on
    on its own because i mean i think that’s
    one of the big questions i get a lot i
    see it on different forums a lot
    is why why go with the franchise model
    and not just do it
    on your own i’m guilty of it yeah
    give it myself i i thought i could you
    know
    i was a professional procurement person
    for many years decades and
    and i know how to buy right i know how
    to negotiate i’ve been like
    well i can i can get as good a deal as
    anybody can it’s not true you can’t
    because i’m not buying 2 000 washing
    machines this month i’m buying
    30. yeah i mean manufacturer’s not gonna
    give me the same discount
    yeah you know as a company that’s
    bringing them
    hundreds and hundreds of washers a month
    as opposed to
    thirty thirty yeah right yeah i mean i
    think the bulk discount is one
    you know and you’ve mentioned already
    kind of throughout just the different
    systems that you guys
    you know wave max has in place and uh
    and how those kind of continue to get
    better because it’s not
    a single operator you know tinkering
    with their system it’s multiple
    operators
    tinkering with their systems and
    everybody kind of benefits from
    that i’m assuming is that is that the
    case yeah
    that’s a good point i probably should
    have brought it up with one of the
    reasons i like franchises
    and i discovered this when i owned my
    last franchise
    um the the
    entrepreneur the the mike roberts he had
    a great concept and he put it in place
    and
    and we follow the basic rules on it but
    we’re continually improving the product
    and we’re doing it because uh all of the
    area reps like myself
    they used to be called master
    franchisees but that’s a nice title
    yeah that’s kind of gone away now at
    least in california you’re not even
    allowed to
    call it that anymore in your ftd but um
    but the uh the other area reps they’re
    they’re like-minded they’re
    they’ve you know had a career and
    they’ve we’re successful in it and
    they have some that specialize in
    advertising and some in development some
    in marketing
    and we get together every couple of
    weeks and and
    we talk about uh we talk about uh what
    went well what went wrong
    and what we’d like to see improve uh
    every
    every couple of weeks and i think
    i’d say probably in last year every
    single thing we have changed have come
    from that
    that group of folks uh
    saying we’d like to see this change
    presenting it to
    uh to the uh ownership
    and uh i let’s have a little coaching
    here and there i can’t think of anything
    that they
    they really uh didn’t accept and
    and for good reason because uh because
    we’ve got a lot of talent
    in the in the area rep pool that has a
    lot of great ideas
    they come from a lot of great companies
    that that
    taught them how to manage well and how
    to operate well and
    we don’t forget the stuff you bring it
    with you when you come right
    interesting that you share with other
    franchisees so so the the
    the camaraderie between owners is really
    really important we do the same thing
    for franchisees we have a franchisee
    call
    once a month and so any of the
    franchisees
    that are not area reps uh can get them a
    call
    and uh and ask the same kind of
    questions
    and if you have a stumbling block or a
    question or a situation
    put on our chat line and somebody has
    the answer for you
    it’s it’s right there you don’t have to
    figure it out yourself
    so it’s a huge benefit of
    of uh franchising yeah
    well can you do this for me if you
    would uh let’s say that i am
    in the market for a laundromat and i’m
    interested
    in buying a franchise what’s that can
    you walk me through that process of
    you know what it what is gonna happen
    what do i need to do
    what do you guys do to get me from hey
    i’m interested to
    okay i’m a franchisee and i’m throwing
    open the doors to my
    wavemax laundromat um
    it’s a relatively straightforward simple
    process
    but uh they they uh
    first thing we do is we share with you
    what the real costs are that are
    associated with it
    um i
    one of the brokers that i was dealing
    with originally myself
    before i made the call
    was they were kind of just now i wasn’t
    understanding what
    the full amount of expenses were that i
    was going to have to come up with
    and then and uh and so they just kind of
    give you the information you need to
    know
    to keep you on the hook we don’t we
    don’t do that we’re more all up front
    you know we’ll tell you right up front
    your franchise fee is
    for your first store is going to be 50
    000 you’re gonna need another 150
    000 in real cash that you’re gonna have
    to
    spend to get your store and your
    equipment and get running and be able to
    operate for the first
    uh you know for the first three months
    or so and
    um and we tell them up front and then we
    also say
    you can’t open a store for 200 you can
    open a store for 900 or 750 or
    depending on where you’re at and how
    much your rent is and and
    and stuff like that but 750 is probably
    750 800 probably what it costs in
    southern california
    to open up a franchise and have a nice
    build out and have the security you need
    have the right mix of machines um
    and and the financing that we have in
    place to to be able to do that
    so so you know
    if you have the half of that you’re not
    gonna be able to open the store
    and when we try to be upfront with
    everybody let them know so
    we we work on the finance part of it
    first
    and and for me that was a little
    frustrating because you know i kind of
    had this
    idea of how much money i wanted to throw
    into it
    um but then there was the hidden
    a hidden thing i never even knew about
    until i bought this franchise which was
    the
    uh my 401k from my company that i had
    worked at
    uh in aerospace uh i was able to
    use that money to buy my franchise
    so rather than finance i was able to pay
    cash or
    for a with my 401k through rob’s program
    but
    uh wavemax helped walk me through that
    process also they hooked me up with
    with a vendor guidance financial
    that helps you with the rubs process and
    don’t ask me what rob
    stands for but it has to do with your
    role over turning it into a business
    or a business basically so your 401k
    goes from
    the stocks that you were then and going
    up and down and up and down every year
    and never really increasing it
    at a great rate just kind of losing
    along to
    you turn it into a laundromat and
    whatever profit margin you can maintain
    twenty percent thirty percent forty
    percent
    your wise high you know
    what way higher than you were getting
    with with your uh 401k
    yeah with your mutual fund or your index
    shot
    yeah so um so we’re up front about
    people about that and then we
    we pretty much open our kimono to
    use a cliche and and we let them ask any
    question they want they can call any
    franchisee they want and every
    franchisee
    pretty much will talk to them i haven’t
    heard of one that wouldn’t
    um and uh if they’re still interested in
    going forward
    after we use they usually have a talk
    kind of like we’re having
    today and i ask all these kind of
    questions but if they’re still a nursing
    going forward then
    we send them the fdd for their state and
    uh
    a franchise disclosure document for
    their
    and then um we give him a couple of
    weeks to read through it thoroughly and
    then
    we put him online with her his dev
    executive and he answers
    every single question form we give him a
    copy of the contract up front too so
    they
    there’s no surprises so they can see
    everything in one package
    they they answer all the questions and
    [Music]
    and then if they want to move forward we
    schedule a discovery day
    where we actually show them some stores
    we have some of our preferred vendors
    come in and make a presentation um and
    they’re
    usually very interested in in how you
    launch
    the advertising campaign and
    [Music]
    how much does it cost and you make money
    right away
    and things like that so all that stuff
    comes out in discovery day
    and um we have if they
    discovery day we usually have a pretty
    good
    [Music]
    close rate people are pretty pretty
    interested in the product after that
    because
    because our franchisees are very nice
    the owners are
    great um they
    if there’s something important to you
    they let you add it to the contract or
    take it out of the contract
    within reason um and uh it
    it’s just a very comfortable
    friendly family kind of
    feeling and and um
    i think my stress level in the last two
    years has gone to like zero
    from me well say no more yeah it’s
    it’s won us all over right there yeah so
    you know you’re your own boss they they
    have a procedure you follow procedure
    you make money
    you don’t follow the procedure you don’t
    make money it’s you know it’s like
    everything else
    um the franchise fee hasn’t got a bunch
    of
    extra stuff all buried in it that you
    know six percent
    they don’t you know grab a bunch of
    other things and
    throw it in there um you know some of
    the branches i
    looked at it was a seven percent
    franchise fee and one percent
    more for uh national advertising and
    then you had to join your local
    co-op advertising and by the time you’re
    done one of the companies i looked at
    as a as a new owner brand name company
    i was gonna have to spend 50 000 my
    first year
    because of the market i’m in just for
    advertising
    because i had to join the pool and the
    pool here in southern california
    uses television and so
    you know i had to pay my equal share of
    that that that’s a lot of money for
    you know your franchisee to suck up
    and our company the initial package
    actually comes from the manufacturer
    because wavemax gets a rebate
    based on the amount of uh sales that we
    do and
    that could keep money if they wanted to
    at corporate but they
    don’t they and 100 of that over to the
    franchise
    advertising company that we use and uh
    that company puts the
    that money toward their launch campaign
    so
    instead of you know spending 50 000 the
    first year people spend four or five
    thousand dollars
    that’s a it’s a a huge difference
    and palatable and they hit the ground
    running with customers that come back
    right oh so after that discovery day
    is that like okay full steam ahead if
    well you said
    yeah we used to fly out to uh the
    corporate
    office in florida for it but with covet
    here we
    we’ve been doing that uh same will you
    and i are talking today so we’ve been
    doing a virtual one
    and i attended my first virtual one
    last week and it was very good i was i
    was impressed it was actually
    much better than what i had gone through
    face-to-face face
    um but technology again i know
    it’s all around it you can’t escape it i
    i i
    you know i’d like to be a mountain man
    just stuck up there and
    plan but you can’t escape it if you’re
    not in the mountains that’s for sure
    yeah or just embrace it or deserve it i
    don’t know but
    at any rate yeah it’s all around us and
    it was a very good
    um a very good presentation and we had
    really great feedback from it
    um because because we had the
    advertising vendor was there the
    uh the equipment vendor was there the
    uh construction vendor
    was there so uh
    we had folks talk about how you find
    your location the right location
    things like that so it it it answers the
    questions that people have
    uh in a very good presentation uh and
    and we’re not a hard push sales company
    if it’s not for you
    it’s not for you if it is uh and you’ve
    made it that far chances are
    you wanna you wanna finish it out and
    finishing it up from theirs
    is really uh meeting with the executives
    and
    and having them answer any last
    questions you might have
    and then um signing the contract and
    and then your area rep takes over with
    you and
    first thing you do is go look for
    property so are you guys
    building from the ground up are you
    taking over existing ones and re-hauling
    overhauling them or how do you how are
    you doing that
    yeah there’s a lot of different there’s
    a lot of different ways to do it um
    pretty much any way that
    you can think of i prefer to take over
    existing laundry mats or ones that have
    been
    but i do that mainly because of what
    the conditions are in california for me
    and it’s
    usually environmental related or are
    governmental related
    so a lot of cities in southern
    california have
    impact fees that they require you
    to pay per machine because you’re going
    to be dumping a lot of
    um a lot of grey water into the system
    and our stores go through about 180 000
    gallons
    a month for a 30 30 store
    so um there’s a lot of water going in
    it’s less water than the equivalent
    number of households
    would be dumping in because they don’t
    have as efficient machines by any
    stretch
    and and the cycle times are much longer
    and they tend to do more loads at homes
    more smaller loads than than doing one
    or two loads in a laundromat
    so um
    so yeah is there can you give us
    a little just like uh maybe like a
    general glimpse of uh
    any kind of like systems that are in
    place
    for the franchisee uh
    you know to kind of help them either
    manage their business or
    or even kind of build their business or
    i just know that
    systems are a big reason that people get
    into
    franchises because like you said those
    are all in place
    and they’ve already made the mistakes
    and they’ve created these systems
    in order to eliminate those mistakes for
    the franchisees and kind of fast-track
    everybody
    can you give us like a little bit i
    probably glaze over that
    but every step of the way is documented
    so um you look for you look for real
    estate
    wave max will help you negotiate the
    lease
    with the landlord if you want them to
    we’ve got
    we’ve got in-house legal representation
    that you’re welcome to
    welcome to talk to uh if you want um or
    you can use your own
    uh and you get you get the lease sign
    and then uh
    first thing you do is you know you meet
    with the city make sure that uh
    you usually have a grace period in your
    lease but you make sure that
    the city doesn’t have any issues that
    you haven’t already discovered
    uh and make sure you can go forward with
    it
    and then the next thing we do is we
    have a if there isn’t a set of as built
    already done we have a
    set of as built created uh and hand that
    over to
    the design team so they can do the
    layout
    and then from the lab we get the
    equipment uh the
    equipment specs then we hand that over
    to the
    architect who puts the wave max
    flavor on it and and all these steps you
    could use your own people if you wanted
    to or you could
    use you know the company’s arrangements
    that they have
    usually the company arrangements a
    pretty good deal because of the volume
    so from designer we hire
    a general contractor we break ground
    it takes about three months of
    construction to
    uh uh to get it if it was not
    an existing laundromat if it wasn’t
    existing longer man
    it can cut 60 days out of that and the
    reason being is the
    the utility requirements right so
    um unless it was a laundromat before
    it’s not going to have a 2
    inch water line coming in or three
    line coming in depending on how many
    machines you have that
    you need to handle um it’s not going to
    have uh
    with that many machines we prefer three
    phase
    400 amp panel
    usually that doesn’t exist and
    uh and then the gas is not that big of a
    deal because
    we use uh tankless water heaters which a
    lot of
    of watermelons do not do that but uh
    they’re very
    very efficient and satisfactory we have
    to uh a two unit system uh
    to uh to heat the water um so
    bring bringing all the utilities in is
    expensive if it was a longer map
    there’s no cost to bringing the
    utilities in they’re already there
    and we verify that up front and when i
    say it’s expensive we’ve had quotes as
    high as
    two hundred thousand 000 to bring a
    water pipe in
    right we’ve had uh we’re in the wrong
    business we should be bringing water
    lines in
    that’s crazy yeah usually it’s around 25
    30 but even that’s
    crazy yeah and if you have the if you
    have the land uh um i’ve explored using
    the uh
    using holding tanks instead so i could
    trickle feed the tanks overnight
    with just a regular commercial water
    line
    and then i don’t have to worry about you
    know bringing that in
    um so we distribute
    and we have a relationship with the
    distributor of tanks also so we can do
    we can do that approach um and then
    so the water ones the usually the most
    expensive one second one
    is usually the impact fees um and
    all over the country they charge impact
    fees some of them are
    as high as you know six thousand dollars
    per washer
    for impact fees let’s see it’s a
    thousand ish
    but you know that’s a lot of money that
    you’re kicking out if you go with an
    existing laundry map
    those fees are already paid you’re just
    you’re just taking over the laundromat
    and you’re
    upgrading the equipment so
    you can usually uh you know avoid all
    those costs
    we have had success in one of the cities
    in michigan
    i believe it was then they wanted to
    charge a very high
    uh fee for um for it being a new store
    the impact phase but we were able to
    demonstrate
    that machines that we use
    use significantly less water than
    than the previous generation of machines
    and we were able to get a pretty decent
    reduction in the impact fee based on
    presenting that analysis but without the
    help of the manufacturer we wouldn’t
    we wouldn’t have been able to put that
    together they had a lot
    a lot of data we needed to generate
    so anyway so you have your impact fees
    you have your built
    and then you you finally get built out
    and then you have a
    soft launch with your friends and family
    and you put signs up and say we’re
    opened and
    and folks will um you know mosey on
    in and then we have the grand opening
    about a week after that
    yeah we make sure everybody’s trained
    right we make sure we have all the kinks
    out of the
    operation itself fun they’re everybody
    get trained adequately
    and then we have the the grand opening
    with
    you know balloons and banners and food
    and we make a big deal out of it and
    and coupons and in the neighborhood uh
    usually reacts very favorably uh to
    the grand opening and uh we keep
    quite a quite a large number of the
    folks that attended it
    uh come back the
    return rate’s very high on the on the
    grand opening
    so usually our stores uh since
    a year ago october it’s been one year
    now so
    so for the last year our stores have
    been launching their grand openings and
    hitting the ground running on day one
    with with profitability
    and you know not not running in the red
    [Music]
    contributed to to a great marketing
    program to
    to uh good training and friendly people
    and
    and welcoming environment and and
    treat people like you want to be treated
    and and
    they’ll want to do business with you yep
    i mean it seems like that’s
    that’s the recipe for success you know
    in in this business and probably in most
    businesses and
    it’s as simple as that but it’s also
    easier
    said than done you know and i i think i
    can see where the value would come from
    in a franchise model of
    of having you know good training
    already in place and ways to implement
    that in the most effective
    ways and how that could you know kind of
    shortcut your
    shortcut your time to profitability and
    to having a good experience because you
    know profitability is one thing but if
    you’re hating it
    you know sometimes it doesn’t matter how
    profitable you are you know it’s not
    you know it’s not fun you don’t want to
    do it for long so
    and we sent our trainers to your store
    they you train in your own store you
    don’t go to a training center
    um uh and
    and uh and if you know the trainer
    sees kinks in in the process they they
    help you work it out right there
    but it shouldn’t shouldn’t be too bad
    because we’ve been holding
    we’ve been holding the franchisee’s hand
    as much as they want
    the entire throughout the entire process
    cool
    i love that um i have a couple other
    questions uh
    you mentioned a couple times financing
    do you guys do financing
    through a third party lender is it part
    of wave max how does that work it’s
    through the manufacturer
    themselves okay and the reason they
    do it is because they help us finance
    the equipment
    and the build out and operating
    capital for the first three months um
    and the reason they do that and
    they’ve just up the percentage up to 80
    now and and sometimes higher if you’re
    on the second or third store
    but the reason they do that is because
    we’ve
    uh you know on a track record of success
    now
    so they haven’t lost any money on us
    and uh and uh we pay a fair rate
    and uh we get very good financing
    and and uh they walk us through the
    process
    and a little bit um i don’t want to make
    it sound like you can’t get financing
    from your distributor because
    distributors offer financing most of the
    time
    it’s just that you have to finance more
    because you know
    the discounts you get as um bear with me
    one second here
    the discounts you get are not as
    as lucrative as they are with the deals
    that we have in place
    for franchising yeah awesome i i mean i
    like that going direct
    kind of to the source and getting your
    financing
    there uh let me ask you this who who’s a
    good candidate for a franchise
    uh you know there’s there’s lots of
    kinds of people i talk to and i
    you know i feel like i have a decent
    idea of who’s a good good candidate but
    maybe you could spell it out for me
    who’s a good candidate
    for this franchise i don’t know i think
    i think people uh in laundromats they
    they are like every reason you can
    imagine but
    most of them want to have a you know
    better quality of life
    because you don’t have to live at your
    company
    24 7 or 10 hours a day or whatever i
    mean it
    it’s literally a couple hours of work
    if that’s as little as you want to do
    and
    and and you can you know you can have a
    very successful honor not doing that
    um you got to keep an eye on everything
    you gotta
    you have to uh you know make sure it’s
    neat and clean yeah make sure it’s safe
    to make sure your equipment doesn’t have
    out of order signs on it
    and you know things like that but it’s
    just kind of like common sense as to how
    to run it
    on anybody that
    wants to have a better quality life i
    think as a good candidate for this
    and sadly you have to have some money
    to do it um
    but um you threw at that that 200
    reasonable amount
    uh figure earlier is that is that a
    general number is that
    what you need yeah it’s not hard or it’s
    not hard and fast it’s it’s
    it’s based on it’s based on
    one component is the franchise fee so
    with wavemax if you buy one store it’s
    49.95 i think for 995.
    if you buy two the second one is half
    price
    and if you buy three the third one is 19
    000 and and that’s the price
    for the fee from there out um
    [Music]
    a lot of that goes to the to the broker
    that
    introduced you to the system uh and then
    the rest of it
    is actually you used to
    help you get up and running you know we
    use it for traffic use it for
    setting up meetings we use it for just
    helping you so there isn’t really
    anything left
    out of that when we’re done yeah running
    the business
    yeah yeah it gets pretty well consumed
    but then the rest
    of it the second component is the 20
    of what it costs to build out the design
    that you signed off on so
    if you get a gigantic store it might be
    a million dollar loan you may need
    250 000 if it’s a like a 30 30
    it’s probably gonna your build out and
    operating capital is probably going to
    come in around 700
    800 so yeah
    you need to have that other 20 there and
    then and then you have to have something
    to run
    your advertising and something to to uh
    pay your employees for the first you
    know three months while you’re becoming
    uh self-sufficient and that number the
    three months has really been shrinking
    uh
    we’re really closer to a month now if
    people follow the rules so
    nice um yeah we do the right amount
    advertising to get the volume up
    to be able to uh
    hit black faster than mine that’s the
    goal
    what about uh what about somebody who’s
    working a full-time job i mean i talk to
    a lot of
    you know doctors dentists engineers you
    know
    software engineers you know who don’t
    necessarily want to
    quit their jobs but they also want to
    have something going on the side
    especially now as you know things are
    just uncertain it’s nice to have
    you know your own thing going because
    nobody knows what’s happening right with
    the world right now right so
    um is is that a good candidate
    uh if they have a full-time job no we
    cater to
    we cater to that if somebody wants to
    put no time in
    uh there’s a way to do it you know if
    they just want to put money in there’s a
    way to do it
    um we do have uh one professional group
    uh out of the north uh
    north midwest i guess is the best way to
    put it
    that is it’s basically a syndicated
    group that
    that has a chunk of money and they’re
    a group of doctors and they don’t they
    don’t want to manage it or build it or
    anything else so
    we put a manager in place for him and
    uh and that person is helping him get
    the
    first store up and the second store
    started already so
    um so yeah there are ways to do it
    without without
    leaving your job at all but most of our
    folks that
    uh are going to keep a job and which is
    most of the folks
    uh they put in you know two hours
    three hours every other day
    so you know eight hours a week 10 hours
    a week
    can easily be done and the
    most of that time is spent you know just
    getting reading your reports making sure
    that
    the cash is flowing and folks are
    showing up on time and you got your
    scheduling up and
    and moving your quarters around you know
    pulling them out of the machine put them
    back in the change maker
    um that’s it it’s pretty much that easy
    and and so any any level of
    of participation you want to have
    we can make it for you the more you
    participate the more you make the
    less you participate or you have to pay
    somebody else to
    to help you out you know it’s it’s
    it’s a give and take but even if you
    only want to work eight hours a week on
    it
    you can still make a really nice return
    on your investment
    awesome well i know there’s implications
    on financing but does wave max
    have any like experience requirements
    credit requirements any other like
    requirements of
    prospective owners
    well from a financial standpoint you
    have to
    you have to have the cash and you have
    to be able to qualify for
    financing the financing route right
    if you’re gonna do it all cash you you
    don’t need to
    you know qualify from an experience
    standpoint
    it’s almost better you don’t have
    experience running a laundromat
    because you had experience from a lot
    around you were great at it
    already and you knew all the ins and
    outs unless you were just buying the
    franchise because
    of the deep discounts we got which is a
    great reason to buy it but
    if that’s the only reason you’re buying
    it and then then
    um you probably don’t know how to run it
    so
    yeah yeah so
    [Music]
    and and and if we have people that that
    come in with no
    watermelon experience myself included
    i don’t bring any bad habits with me you
    know
    i don’t want my store open 24 hours
    because i’ve been in stores they’re
    open 24 hours and some of them work but
    most of them they don’t seem
    to work to me i go in hundreds of stores
    every month i’m checking out the
    competition and
    and seeing if uh honestly i i go into
    the competition to see if i can take
    their customers from them
    because if there’s none attended there
    and if it’s dirty
    or there’s a bunch of out of order
    signs on machines i i know i get their
    customers
    we just people people would rather go to
    where service is better
    than where it’s not totally absolutely
    uh well we have a couple little segments
    on the podcast one of them is called the
    secret sauce
    listen up it’s the secret sauce
    i wonder if you share something that you
    think maybe if you have one tip
    uh that’s making your franchisees
    successful i think in this business
    whether it’s a franchise or not the
    secret sauce is
    customer service and and just
    provide a level of customer service that
    nobody’s seen in this industry
    and and uh you’ll be ahead of the game
    and if you can afford to keep up with
    the technology
    you got a home run love that
    yeah i love it i think that’s great
    secret sauce and i think you know we
    kind of
    it’s kind of been a running theme
    throughout this whole interview of that
    customer service
    uh being that secret sauce and being
    just so vital
    you know to you not only you know
    maintaining your customer base but
    growing your customer base
    uh as well as you know operators
    around you aren’t operating at the same
    level professionalism like we were
    talking about
    so awesome secret sauce uh i got
    another section we call pro tips pro
    tips and pro tips is for uh
    the newbies the person who maybe doesn’t
    own one yet
    um who’s maybe looking to buy their
    first one you got any good tips
    for them besides i mean i think the best
    pro tip right is
    hey give you a call talk to wave max
    well you know i i i’m not like i said
    we’re not a hard sell
    if the franchise sounded good to you go
    to weightmaxlaundry.com and
    and find the phone number of whoever’s
    nearest you
    and talk to them but if it’s not if it’s
    not
    that the secret sauce in this business
    is
    is the right location no matter what
    the the hot tip is get the right
    location
    and uh and and don’t lock yourself into
    something being a good location because
    it’s available
    get a good location based on whatever
    intelligence you can dig
    up to determine that’s a good location
    [Music]
    awesome awesome pro tip yeah and if
    you’re looking for more
    uh resources on good location there’s
    tons out there
    go check out in the forums we have a
    blog post a while back on good locations
    there’s
    there’s a lot of resources out there for
    good locations so if that’s
    if that’s you if you’re new and you’re
    looking maybe to buy your first one you
    know check out a good location i think
    it’s a great pro tip because you can’t
    really move your location so if you buy
    in a bad location
    you’re in a world of hurt it’s tough to
    recover from that one do you have any
    you may not but we are laundromat
    resource after all do you have any
    resources that you’d recommend
    you know for owners either to grow their
    business or to grow themselves
    personally
    well what was probably the biggest help
    for me
    to get into the business was talking to
    people that were selling their companies
    and uh they were you know they were
    they’re very expensive ones
    and they were the very cheap ones the
    very cheap ones you could tell were the
    ones going out of business
    no matter what the price was if it you
    know if it’s under 150 000
    that store’s going out of business um
    because the successful store is not
    going to sell it to you for that price
    but
    with the equipment but then there’s a
    very expensive ones usually over a
    million
    dollars and uh they spent their
    800 900 000 to get all their equipment
    and get it built out
    and uh and um and they
    got a good clientele it’s up and running
    and they got numbers to support the
    ridiculous price they’re asking
    um i wouldn’t buy either one of those
    personally
    but i would look at the ones that are
    going out of business
    let’s see if you can pick up their lease
    or make a deal with them
    you know for uh leasing our equipment or
    something
    and uh you can get your foot in the door
    that way while you’re
    while you’re building it out you can you
    know have a little bit of business
    uh maybe drop off service or something
    to get it
    yeah awesome awesome resource there’s
    there’s great
    great information on laundromats in
    in google in uh
    [Music]
    in video uh you know youtube yeah
    youtube uh there’s there’s so many good
    uh clips your stuff i mean there’s some
    really good
    information out there uh for people that
    want to help other people succeed in
    and there’s enough business that uh that
    if
    if you’re gonna do good business there’s
    enough there’s enough opportunity out
    there that you can
    i don’t know if it’ll be that way
    forever and i think we’ll probably see a
    lot more franchises come into this
    industry
    in the next five years because um
    because you can manage it like a
    professional company now
    um and uh and so
    you know look at look at everything
    that’s available to you
    save as much money as you can because
    more you save going in
    easier it’s going to be to have a nice
    return on your investment
    awesome awesome advice well jim this has
    been uh
    really awesome i get again i get asked
    all the time about franchise model
    and people want to know you know if it’s
    something that they should look into or
    not
    and this has been helpful for me to kind
    of understand uh
    you know what what’s happening in the in
    the industry
    uh franchise wise and it’s really really
    intriguing i think you’re right i think
    there’s a lot of
    technology that really makes it uh a
    viable option
    for the right person and so appreciate
    you coming on
    one more quick question for you if
    people are listening to this and they
    have
    questions that they want to ask you or
    they want to get in contact with you
    somehow is there is there a good way to
    do that
    i talk i love talking about this topic
    and i do it every day
    usually with folks interested in joining
    us but
    uh i don’t mind answering anybody’s
    question if they want to get a hold of
    me on
    on my uh my email address on our for
    is a gmw jmw
    at wavemaxlaundry.com
    all right get ahold of me they’re
    welcome to do that and
    if i’m not in their area i’ll still
    answer their questions and then
    refer them to the to the person that can
    help them more than i can
    in our company in their area um but
    but anybody has a question about laundry
    i love talking about this because
    it’s it’s going to continue to grow the
    technology is great
    some of the things i couldn’t tell you
    about but i will shortly
    we’re going to blow your mind in this
    industry and uh
    i’m just trying to get vendors in place
    so that we can
    we can do some beta testing all right
    well that sounds like a
    teaser that means we need to have it’s a
    teaser i’m telling you this yeah
    this industry is going to be on fire in
    the next five years
    awesome well it’s an exciting place to
    be and i will link to
    uh wavemax uh his website and
    i’ll put your email if you’re watching
    on youtube it’ll be down in the
    description
    and links to everything and if you’re
    listening on the podcast
    um check the show notes for uh for the
    email address and the links to
    everything including
    wavemax’s website jim thank you so much
    again for coming on brought so much
    value and so much information and
    insight into
    this industry i really really appreciate
    it thanks man
    i love doing that thanks a lot for
    having me all right we’ll talk to you
    again soon
    all right man jim was so awesome i just
    i love his mindset i love his
    willingness to just share what he knows
    to share the information he has i
    loved that he uh was just
    you know he’s just given he said he just
    loves to talk to people about this stuff
    and uh and and was super willing to do
    that so if franchising laundromat is
    something that you’re interested in
    doing make sure
    that you shoot him an email and connect
    up with him because he is an
    awesome resource for you um even if
    you’re not sure
    man talk with he’s not hard selling you
    on anything so go talk with him it’s not
    going to hurt
    man but super awesome episode i loved
    what he was saying
    uh particularly about the technology
    stuff that stuff is very intriguing to
    me right now and seeing where our
    industry’s going
    technology wise but there was so much i
    took a full page of notes
    uh from just all the things that he was
    saying so so much cool stuff going on
    there
    and uh i just want to remind you like i
    do every week
    make sure you pick at least one thing
    put it into action
    in your business or in your life this
    week because as we start to stack these
    things up every episode and we’re
    learning from these successful people
    we’re implementing what they’re doing
    we’re going to be more successful
    also and we’re also going to be able to
    help more people along the way so make
    sure you’re doing that
    so so excited that you’re here so
    excited for everything that’s going on
    right now with laundromat resource
    hope that your business is doing awesome
    and can’t wait
    to see you again next week peace
    [Music]

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