Hollywood screenwriter of films such as Saving Silverman and Mama’s Boy, and multi-laundromat owner Hank Nelken joins us on the show today to share about his experience getting into the laundromat business.
Hank owns the laundromat brand Half Price Laundry and shares his winding path into the laundry business and reveals the wisdom he has gained from owning multiple stores. Acquiring the fabled free laundromat, Hank started his small empire from scratch and built it into a thriving business.
From a slow start to having multiple “big days” a week, Hank shows how he steadily grew his businesses and exactly how he turned his slowest day into his second “big day” of the week, attracting customers from all over!
Hank is laid back, confident, and wise as he generously shares his story and his wisdom to help you succeed in the laundry business. Don’t miss this this one!
In this episode, Hank and Jordan discuss:
- Hollywood screenwriting
- Experiencing a slow start in business
- Maintaining steady growth over time
- Genius marketing techniques
- Pick-up and delivery- including his hard numbers in his fledgling pick-up and delivery business
- Success mindset
- The concept between his Half Price Laundry
- The FIRE movement- Financial Independence, Retire Early
- The importance of having a great staff
And much more!
Listen To The Podcast Here
Watch The Podcast Here
Today's Sponsor
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Links from the show
- Laundromat Investor Resources
- Join Laundromat Resource
- Laundromat Resource Forums
- Laundromat Resource Blog
- Be a guest on the podcast!
- Sell your laundromat
- Laundromat Resource Coaching
Connect with Hank
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.HalfPriceLaundry.com
Social Media Links:
https://www.facebook.com/halfpricelaundromat
Hank's Bio
As a single dad, my priority is to spend as much time with my two boys as I can, and doing laundry is yet another chore that takes me away from them. The cost in time and money is just too high. That is why I created Half Price Laundry.
Our mission is to provide the highest quality cleaning at the lowest possible price. That way, you can spend more money on the things you want and more time with the people you love.
Equally important is leaving my children with a world that is better than the one I inherited. That is why we use high-efficiency, commercial washers and dryers made by Continental. Designed to drive down water, electrical and gas costs while improving productivity, our high-performance washer-extractors deliver more performance using less labor, natural resources, and chemicals.
Founder and CEO Hank Nelken is a screenwriter / entrepreneur who works with communities in Los Angeles to provide high quality laundry at an affordable price. Hank believes quality, convenience, and impeccable customer service are the most important aspects of his or any business. Hank owns two laundromats in Arleta and Panorama City, CA. Hank is also a commercial real estate agent with Keller Williams, Beverly Hills. Hank’s screenwriting credits include Saving Silverman, Are We Done Yet?, and Mama’s Boy. Hank holds a BA from the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Join The Laundromat Resource Community!
Episode Transcript
hey what’s up guys it’s jordan with the
laundromat resource podcast this is show
number 30 and i am pumped that you’re
here today because today
we have on hollywood screenwriter
multi-store
owner hank nelkin and man he
shares his story of how he got into this
business
how it was a slow start for him and how
he kind of wiggled his way
up to profitability and beyond and it’s
an
awesome story filled with uh just a ton
of practical tips and wisdom
i know you’re going to get a ton out of
it and he’s just a good dude too
so you’re really really going to enjoy
this i can’t wait for you
to listen to it i already took away some
really cool stuff
and be sure to stick around to the very
end because at the end
i’ll give my big takeaway from this and
uh and encourage you to find a takeaway
to take
take away uh from this one too uh but
before we get there
a couple of things that i wanted to do
is number one hey welcome to all of you
who are here for the first time either
on youtube
on the podcast um if you’ve joined on
the website the community over there
man welcome to you and man we
really really believe that working
together and helping each other out
is going to lead to success uh
higher success quicker success better
success for all of us and it’ll make it
a lot more fun so that’s why we’re doing
what we’re doing here
we want to help you find financial
independence
through laundromat ownership and
one of the big ways that people are
connecting
right now is on our forums and there’s a
lot of activity this week on the forums
very cool to see so i wanted to take a
second to welcome all of you who are new
um and in particular uh john cooper who
hey welcome man i’m super pumped he’s a
wave max
franchisee and he came and joined us and
he introduced himself
himself on the introductions forum um
the forums by the way
laundermatresource.com forums we have a
few different forums there you can post
on
but the introduction forums is a place
for you to go introduce yourself
and go meet some other owners and start
networking so you can find success
faster so if you haven’t done that yet
head over there
introduce yourself let people know where
you’re at on your
journey with laundromats um so welcome
to john
uh also happening over there a really
really cool
thread in the financing the uh forum is
talking about robs which is if you’re
not familiar with robs
it’s uh like roll over
business something i don’t know but
essentially what it is is using
retirement funds to purchase
a small business and that is an awesome
way for
some people to get into this business
and a lot of people are doing it so if
you’re interested in
that or something like it head over to
the financing forum and jump in on that
conversation there’s a lot of buzz
happening on that forum thread right now
so
check that out and the other one i
wanted to highlight is
josh in the laundromats forms posted
about marketing
and he uh bought a laundromat did all
the basic marketing stuff but now he’s
interested in
and leveling up his marketing and so
taking that to the next level he wants
to
put together a group of people who want
to talk about intermediate
and advanced marketing techniques and i
knew some of you guys would really be
interested in that and some of you guys
probably have a lot of really good
things to add to that
um ways that you’ve done marketing that
you’ve seen really work
in in this business so if that’s
something that interests you
head over to the forums click on the
laundromats forums and find josh’s
thread on marketing i think the title is
just marketing
and uh you know let josh know that you
are interested in that
i’m interested in that i’m super pumped
about that our ceo of
modern resource marketing john he is
super interested
in that we’re going to be participating
so we want you to join us so head over
to that forum
let us know that you’re interested let
josh know you’re interested we’ll put
something together and that’ll be
awesome for all of us i think so hey
that was i so cool to see this week all
the action happening on the forums over
there and again that’s free
free forms always free will always be
free a
place for you to connect get questions
answered and
more um one final thing
that i just i wanted to actually ask
your help on something
and uh i get we have a buyer’s email
list you can sign up on the website
um right there on the home page there’s
a button for it
and i literally have multi multi
hundreds of people maybe
over a thousand people by now who are on
that buyer’s email list and one thing
that’s so important to me is helping
connect
buyers and sellers with great brokers to
work with i really believe that working
with great brokers
is a huge huge deal because i say this
all the time but if you get in this
business
correctly then the sky’s the limit for
you
if you get into it poorly it can be
really really hard to dig your
your way out and i’m speaking from
experience here so i really want to
connect people with that but the demand
is so overwhelming that i can’t keep up
anymore i can’t keep cold calling and
emailing brokers and trying to vet them
so i thought i’d reach out to you guys
and see
hey if you know a good broker or a good
agent maybe that you’ve worked with
who deals in laundromats who’s
knowledgeable who has a lot of integrity
who’s honest send me an email
introduction
and i would love to add them to the
network so that i can help
connect them with buyers and sellers
and my email is jordan
laundermyresource.com
launderman resource dot com and my
contact information is on the website
too uh i’ll put it all down in the
description or the link
uh or the uh show notes so hey
if you could do that that would be
awesome and again all over united states
canada and beyond i’m looking for
good good brokers or agents so connect
them up with me that would be helpful
for me
and for everyone else listening so
thank you guys for that without further
ado let’s get into it with hank
because he is bringing it today and
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[Music]
all right hank how’s it going man how
you doing great jordan how are you
i’m doing awesome thank you so much for
coming on i’m super excited to hear
about you and your story and what you
got going on you have like a unique
uh thing you’re doing with your
laundromat and i i’m excited to hear
about it but before we get into it
tell us a little bit about who you are
yeah um i am uh
originally from the south from uh
mississippi in texas
and then i um came out to la to go to
usc film school
and um i’d always want to make movies
and be a filmmaker so i came out
uh and went to film school and then um
started
writing uh and uh i’ve been a
screenwriter actually
ever since so professional screenwriter
for 20-plus
years and um uh anything
anything that we would recognize uh
depending on your taste in movies yeah
um so i wrote a movie called saving
silverman
which is yeah silly comedy with uh
jack black and uh jason biggs and all
that and then um
a family comedy called are we done yet
which was with ice cube which was
sequel to rv there yet um and then a
movie called mom’s boy which
um not a lot of people saw but it was
warner brothers made it but it just
didn’t get
for some reason out there but uh a diane
keaton was in it jeff daniels on the
ferris
those amazing cats wow yeah yeah so that
was
a cool experience man that’s pretty
awesome
yeah yeah and i’ve been writing you know
i mean it’s been my job
my day job for you know years right you
know writing rewriting and
uh to you know adapt books i’ve done
animation
so it’s been it’s been a lot i mean i’ve
really enjoyed it
yeah that’s so cool and i think you’re
kind of living well we haven’t mentioned
this yet but
where do you live where are you from
like where i live now
yeah yeah terminus yeah yeah yeah
yeah so you’re right you’re right there
in the thick of it with uh with all the
movie stuff and everything going on so
it’s kind of yeah i always want to be in
la
you know this is where everything is
although now things are moving
to other places
yeah cool okay so keep going
[Music]
okay so uh so i’ve been doing that for
forever and um
just really have always been you know
creative and enjoyed that process
and um and then about you know five
or so years ago i got into i started
getting into real estate actually
um and i started getting into commercial
real estate i’ve still been writing
um but i kind of started to do that on
the side and i was
getting interested in it enjoying it um
apartment buildings and that sort of
thing uh
you know as investments and really
starting to understand
and we’ll get back to this but uh the
book rich dad poor dad
um i’ve read a ton of books and your
your uh list is great and i’ve read
a bunch of them on your list i got some
from your list also
um but all those books are great
resources and uh it just
because i’ve been in the creative side
of it for so long
you know i hadn’t really thought about
the financial stuff that much i mean
i’ve been
i had a you know pension plan that i was
investing in but i wasn’t
you know thinking about too much um so
once i started in real estate
i started starting to understand oh
building wealth you know this is how you
do it
um you know it’s not just about your
income and so i started getting really
kind of fascinated with spreadsheets and
how it looked on paper and how
we value you know department building
that the value was based on the revenue
right you know
and if you did some improvements then
the revenue went up and the value went
up exponential
uh and leverage you know so so i got my
uh
license my agent uh my real estate
license um
during that time and when i so
originally so when i got it i was super
excited it’s like when you get driver’s
licenses like
i’m an agent now yeah so i was like
going around telling everybody i’m an
agent if you got anything you know
and i was at this uh restaurant that i
go to all
the time with my like kid where i would
drop him over to school and i knew that
the owner just because i’ve been there
so many times every morning
and i told him that and he goes oh i got
a guy over here who’s um
who’s selling his uh who wants to sell
this dry cleaner
right clear business and i’m like hmm
okay i don’t you know
i don’t know anything about that but
maybe i could help him um
i ended up calling a friend of mine
who’s a wealth manager
and i was trying to broker some kind of
deal between him i said do you have any
clients who want to buy a dry cleaner
he said no so that didn’t go anywhere
and i just kind of like
left it and went back to my normal life
about two months later my buddy called
and goes didn’t you didn’t you call me
didn’t you uh say something about a dry
cleaner
you know he said didn’t you didn’t you
ask me something about a laundromat
i said no it was dry cleaner because
well i got that i got something about a
laundry room i gotta go with biology
and i said okay i mean i just i mean
i’ve in my life i’ve pretty much kind of
tried to say yes to things and go
forward to see what yes yes yes you know
yeah
because you never know just open the
door and see and you know so he said yes
lawyer
beverly hills he really wants to uh you
know buy laundromats
and i said okay i’ll let’s have lunch so
i have lunch with him
and he was like yeah i’m a lawyer and
i’m just i don’t want to be a lawyer
anymore and i want to
research this and laundromats are the
best you know passive income
and i just want to buy them and get out
of you i said all right well let me i’ll
help you i don’t know
i’ll investigate see what i can do so i
started calling around
and uh i ended up with every number of
people told me
the guy you want to talk to is david
dang i don’t know
david i know david yeah yeah yeah of
course so i called david
just cold call him and uh he’s like yeah
it’s great well i’ve got
i’ve got stuff to show you so i took my
this
lawyer you know guy out we looked at a
couple laundromats that um
that david had for sale and i started
getting into it but i started
researching it and uh i started looking
at the numbers and looking at the
business
and i sort of like it so then i said to
the guy you know hey you know maybe we
could partner up and maybe what’s going
together
said okay maybe and so so david had this
one location that was
a store that had been in laundromat for
25 years a little strip mall
uh but it had been closed for about a
year year and a half and everything in
it was
all the equipment was old and had to be
replaced it was kind of like opening a
brand new store but
you know with all the plumbing and
people knew it
and i was really interested in that i
like the idea of building something from
scratch kind of
and learning from beginning so anyway i
said i think this is a really good deal
you want to go in together and he said
i think i’m out i’m not gonna okay
change his mind i don’t know so i said
okay so i’m gonna do it
so that i just did it i decided to do it
and i bought it and i
i actually didn’t buy it because it
wasn’t gonna buy but i um
you know lease the space got a loan
bought all the equipment
built it didn’t build out and open the
store uh about three years ago
so that long story to get to one event
it was a very tribute
route yeah well i found that a lot of
people
take that kind of route to get into
laundromats
which is how i would imagine because
it’s not unless it’s in your family or
something it’s it’s you know
it’s an odd one to find totally yeah
yeah i don’t know about you but every
time i tell somebody almost
they’re like that’s random that’s really
weird well what’s funny about in me too
is you know every time i say this they
go oh my god i gotta write a script
about that you know
your show about that and truthfully you
know i think there’s a lot there too oh
my gosh
i have thought about writing multiple
movie scripts about
the weird things that you couldn’t even
make up you know that happened in my
laundromat
it’s an interesting world yeah yeah
that’s pretty funny well that is
that’s a really interesting way to get
into the business i’m
curious about that first deal okay so
you had a broker who brought you and
showed you a location that
was not no longer operational is that
right it was it had been closed the the
owner of the strip mall had run
and on the laundromat for 20 years okay
and
they’ve apparently done good business
over the years but you know
for whatever reason uh they just they
got busy they also had a restaurant in
the strip mall
so they just got busy the restaurant and
just didn’t want to do the watermelon
anymore to kind of just
one day just close the doors and so um
all the equipment that was there was you
know 20 plus years old
right i know that it really were i mean
it just kind of run down and they just
decided to close it up so
um it was just you know it was a shell
with plumbing and everything ready to go
but nothing
inside you know yeah yeah well
hey man the the infamous free laundromat
right yeah well that’s what i also liked
about it i like the idea of not buying
someone else’s business
yeah uh you know i was especially the
laundry
you know it’s you never you don’t know
what they’re doing and i never heard you
talking different people on this
podcast but it’s i mean obviously
there’s ways to check and try to
make sure their books are right but it’s
especially with the cash
business it’s hard to really know what
their numbers are and i just didn’t want
to take over someone’s business
hey i didn’t you know i don’t know what
their customer service was i didn’t know
what their numbers really were
their machines i just want to take you
know take over their problems
right so yeah okay so i’m assuming the
the broker then sold you the equipment
because i’m trying to figure out how
else they would make money
off of introducing you so i’m assuming
they sold the equipment from there
yes so he was he’s also a distributor
for the time right
yeah yeah yeah okay so the equipment
yeah
good okay so you got new equipment in
there and you did a build out
um did you personally pay for the
build out or did you get funding for it
or how did that all work out
basically the uh the uh
the the capital investment really was a
down payment on the machines and then
the build out
so that came out of my pocket the you
know and then the loan was for the
equipment so i mean
it was about i’d say 20 of the total
project you know was out of my pocket
and the rest was long for the equipment
yeah but yeah
the the build-out was was the biggest
you know kind of hard costs
um because it was just i mean we had to
you know put everything in
redo everything yeah totally what i mean
that’s a pretty typical
scenario that i see is you know people
don’t reinvest back into their
businesses
and they end up with the you know the
so-called zombie laundromat
where there’s really not anything to
sell anymore even
you know people try to squeeze out a
little bit you know selling a customer
base or
the infrastructure but there’s really
not a whole lot of value
left in it because they haven’t
reinvested in it so
yeah or just some equipment or whatever
and that’s usually not worth much at
that point
right yeah yeah okay so you got in how
long was that process
from like when you first you know
secured that location to when you were
able to open back up
um it was uh
it was about six months you know um i
mean it’s always a little bit longer
than you know expected but around six
months from when we
you know signed the lease um got the
loan got all the numbers in place
started the build out
we opened in april 2018
and that’s right um and so it’s it
started the process started basically
like the fall of 2017. okay
okay and then did you uh
did you negotiate the lease or did the
broker do it for you
he had already negotiated the lease okay
so it was
it was really a good lease it was long
term and the you know price was
really reasonable so good good man
because it you know those leases
they can make you a break yeah yeah well
that was a good one and also and then
the key too is the lead because you
wanna
especially spending money in there like
i did to build it out
you know that’s his property ultimately
right so um
you know i want to make sure there’s 20
plus years of
lease yeah
okay so you took you about six months
give or take a little bit to open up
you open up finally you have this
laundromat that kind of randomly
you know for you were trying to get it
for a client and
you ended up getting it yourself so you
you
throw open the doors what was that
experience like
i mean it was so interesting because it
also for me it was just so different
than what i’d
what i’ve been doing for 20 years you
know when you write them you know
writing a movie it’s like
you know it’s all about coming up with a
concept going on pitching into
executives and then they
say well they like it they don’t and
they buy it they don’t they buy it you
write it and they write it and
they make it or they don’t a lot of
things are out of your control and
and and you just kind of put it into the
world and then
you know you don’t know what’s going to
happen this is you know this for me was
so different because there’s a lot of
control
you know there’s a lot of levers i can
pull and um you know it’s a physical
place
i can advertise it i can lower prices
you know there’s ways to get people to
come in
and and build it um so the control i i
really liked a lot
when we opened um we had um
we could do a soft open where we just
opened the doors you know without
having any marketing or anything just to
let people come in and start to
debug the you know equipment and see how
everything was working
so we did that for i don’t know two or
three or four weeks and then we decided
to have a grand opening
um number one it was in the summer which
i don’t
which is the worst time for laundromats
anyway yeah
it’s super hot so we
did a grand opening in july august
and nobody should know it was like
there’s just nobody um but my uh
so that was an interesting lesson too in
in
something do you think it was because it
was so this is not true everywhere but
at least here in california i think in a
lot of places but not everywhere
summer is the slowest season for
laundromats and business
typically is down so that’s what he’s
referring to
but do you think it’s because of that in
the weather or what do you think the
reason was do you have any idea
i think i think yeah big part of it was
it was 110 degrees you know
and so really
you know at 110 degrees and i you know i
think
um i just don’t think we had enough uh
uh
presence in the community i just we’ve
done some marketing we’ve sent out some
flyers but
i just don’t think people knew we were
really there yet you know and what
really happened was
as you know the lesson was i mean i
thought okay we’re gonna open and have a
great opening and then people are a
bunch of people going to come and then
it’s gonna sort of
but really what happened was it was much
more of a slow gradual build
um and so uh you know it took
it really took 12 to 18 months
to real i mean we were six months in was
doing well but
12 18 months to really start hitting
projected numbers
um and so it just wasn’t growing every
month we would just see it
increasing in slowly increasingly
increasing you know word of mouth
people you know return customers and and
just build
um but it took it was not a
a explosive you know thing it was a
gradual thing
was that did that make you panic
like when that happened or how did you
feel when it was like oh man we’re not
hitting projected numbers and we’re six
months in and we’re a year in you know
well you know i didn’t i mean i didn’t
know if we ever would i mean i
was the first one i’ve done and you know
i wasn’t sure
these projected numbers were real you
know and so i thought
god if we can just get if the projected
numbers were really good
and if we did less than that it would be
fine you know
so i thought i don’t know if i already
hit those but we’ll
hopefully we’ll hit the other ones to
break even and go above you know right
and it was scary it was scary because
you know it starts off and you’re
you know 20 of where you want to be and
then you’re 25 and then you’re 30 and
then you’re 40 and you’re half you know
like okay that’s better but still half
of work yeah
and it’s you know it’s scary but then it
builds it builds and then you start once
it got to 60 70 i’m like oh this is it’s
it’s gonna happen you know and then it
went to 80 90 and then
it hit um it hit 100 it hit the numbers
that
we had projected it to hit the really
good numbers
in um january february march of this
year
so basically like three years in it
really hit the really good numbers and
then covered it
the next month april it was like we were
doing our best we’ve done it and then
april
and then it dropped 25 but then it’s
come back
yeah yeah that that was a punch in the
gut for
a lot of people not just obviously not
just in our industry but
well i mean the thing is we were all
able to be open and uh so many
businesses
most weren’t so i was felt lucky that we
could remain open
yeah and do business so you know and you
know
luckily the uh you know the bank the
lender you know gave us a deferment on
the
loan during from that time so that
really
yeah that’s nice that that definitely
helps a lot
well you own more than one
right yes so how did you pick up that
next one
so that one um in
uh i guess about a year ago now um
uh i got a call from uh
david dang who uh and so david’s son
madison
uh has been my manager uh so he really
has been a key part of the
original store opening it running it and
because
he has a lot of knowledge and his dad
has a lot of knowledge and his mom
they’re all in the business and they all
have homeowner mats and they do
you know distribution so they’re kind of
in my gurus um so
they um so they madison and and david
call and said
hey we’ve got the store um
that uh basically the owner defaulted on
everything the bank needs someone to
come in and take over
um there’s a big discount on you know on
what was owed on the equipment
it’s a really great store it’s a great
location really busy area
um so i was like right i’m gonna check
you know check it out and it’d been
closed
just like my the first one um but it was
it was in much better shape um in terms
of the inside you know interior
everything
someone looked at it and i’m like great
let’s do it i was just ready to go
because it would seem like an
opportunity
you know like i said i’d like to you
know i like to say yes to stuff if i can
if it
makes sense and just go for it and um so
it was a quick one because it was like
you know you got to do this now the
landlord like
had other people who wanted the spay to
do it
again the least had been negotiated um
so
it all looked good and uh it was the
same lender had from the original
you know store so um they were great
and this is eastern funding
and they’ve been great and they were and
i was you know they were helping each
other on this one because they really
needed someone to
take you know to take this loan because
it was just sitting there um
so i did so basically i again didn’t buy
the store
um and in fact
[Music]
that that had to be proven to the uh dwp
because
when i took over the store there was
like a 25 000
bill from the department one our power
previous owner who would like
kind of skip town whatever he did so
i said well i don’t know that you know
that’s that’s the previous owner and
they said no you do own that you bought
the business and i said no he didn’t buy
the business and
that was a really you know that that was
a month
we couldn’t turn the power on for a
month because
they kept saying that you know i owed
this money finally
we showed enough documentation that they
understood it was not a
um i didn’t purchase the business so
they
released me from that and then we got
the power
holy cow man i have well i probably
shouldn’t bash the
department of water and power but man
i’ve
i’ve had my tussles with them also
yeah well this is a bureaucracy you know
and it just
it was just took a month to get to the
right person and convinced i am
so but we did and during that time
we were doing some build-out work anyway
um
so we did you know more than cosmetic
but
not nearly as much we did the first one
it was ceiling work and lighting and
you know really spiffed it up but um
uh so that took that time anyway yeah
kind of worked out by the time that was
done
we got the power on and water and you
know yeah
that time that was good yeah so that was
april so basically that was much
that was quicker because it was like
december you know i got the call about
it and we were opening
oh yeah that’s that’s definitely quicker
so what’s that been like now having two
did was it a big jump or was it pretty
much the same or
well it um
you know what’s wrong with having two
kids i’ve got two kids and it’s like
the first one is like the big one right
that one’s like i don’t know what i’m
doing i don’t know anything about this
the second is like yeah it’ll be fine
yeah
you know and it’s it’s it’s so i’m just
less stressed about it unless
you know the same thing’s happening you
know where you know we open the doors of
course we open in april
right when code hits yeah i mean there’s
a huge school across the street from
this
store which tons of business came in
from that
the school closed i mean it was like so
it was even slower to start than the
original one but i knew
based on my experience it was going to
happen and come so i wasn’t
worried i think um so yeah i had
infrastructure
my madison you know the manager
managed this store as well so we had our
thing going in our rhythm
um i think the hardest part has been um
staff
because if the first story took you know
a good period of time to get the right
people
and now they’re amazing and the same
with this new store it kind of took
we just kind of made it work the last
couple of months so it’s taken about you
know
six months to get the right people we
went through some different people that
didn’t work out so well
and now we’ve got a good team so i think
that was that was the hard part
yeah and i think your staff can make or
break your business right like if you
have bad staff
they’re not reliable or customers don’t
like them
or they don’t they refuse to clean or
they’re not good at it or whatever
like man your business is going to be
hurting all the above yeah i mean it
really is key
uh that they because i mean you know if
they don’t open in the morning
but then people show up with their
laundry and then they never come back
like well the doors are closed you know
yeah i mean and if they’re rude
they’ll come back you know and if they
don’t clean them yet so it’s it’s
fine and you know it’s the right
temperament too because you know
everyone has their
whatever their their philosophy is about
their place and you know
how they want their people to have to be
in terms of like friendliness
in terms of you know returns or credits
or you know
money and how they deal with that um so
finding people that are on the same page
you know
as as us but we we have it now in both
stores
so that’s been that’s a huge relief
you know that’s a big load off yeah oh
i’m sure
was it was it mostly trial and error
just like trying to find the right
people or did you
find something that kind of helps you
narrow that down at all or
or no it was probably her i mean yeah i
mean it was like
yeah just you know you just go you know
how people you think are
good and then you see what happens and
then you know pretty soon you can tell
um and then it’s also they have to kind
of work together
even though they’re not always on the
same ship but they leave work for each
other you know and if
one’s leaving something dirty the other
one’s upset so they have to
work together too so it’s it’s you know
it’s like casting actually i mean you
know it’s like
you know you want to cast the right
person the right role but you also have
them to get the chemistry with the rest
of the
ensemble
yeah well you know it’s like i found a
lot of
similarities and a lot of commonalities
actually because you are it’s a
production you’re building something it
has to run and work
and um and certainly with the marketing
sales and stuff that’s been
for me has been a lot of fun being
having the creative looking for
how to market in taglines and posters
and that kind of stuff
yeah how what what kind of marketing are
you doing
i mean mostly you know it’s been um
instagram and facebook
you know trying to do for you know kind
of as much free social media and
marketing as i can
i mean obviously it’s you know google
and yelp
uh you know making sure those sites are
up to date and everything’s
um looking good on that um you know the
website
trying to drive traffic to the website
um and then we’ve done
so there’s basically you know there’s
really two businesses here as you’ve
been talking
to people about the pickup and delivery
and wash and fall
versus the self-service i mean there
really are two different businesses so
advertising for the self-service is all
local you know so we’ve done
um you know these mailers the direct
marketing mailers that went out of
neighborhood
and we had we’d say come bring this in
and you get you know five dollars
towards your next watch plus a little
bag of soap
and that’s brought in a lot of people
you know in the neighborhood for the
self-service
um and then it’s word of mouth you know
for that um
and good signage you know one of the big
you know nice streets without making
sure people could see it
but then there’s the marketing for the
pickup and the livery and the washable
which is totally
separate and it’s a much wider area in
la you know
it’s i’m trying to do the whole valley
um san fernando valley so it’s it’s uh
and marketing to different demographics
so it’s about
it’s not been trial and error too how do
i reach them you know which ads work
the best get the most clicks you know
i’ve tried a bunch of different ads and
i do the same um you know i’ll pay 25
bucks to let’s say instagram
so it’ll run five days i’ll spend five
dollars a day
and that’s my template and then i’ll see
how many clicks each one gets you know
you can see
someone get you know 25 clicks a dollar
a click
so i’m getting five so i’m getting more
right so right it kind of helps me see
what’s
what people are engaging with yeah
you’re running some good testing there
for those ads and stuff that’s pretty
cool
well i wanted to hear a little bit about
your pick up and delivery
business too how did you get into that
and how’s that going and
tell me a little bit about it um well so
you know the the wash and folds is the
beginning of it and
you know i knew i wanted to do that um
you know as soon as we open you know
both stores because it’s just it’s such
a
it’s just such a great revenue to stream
and it’s you know the profit margin is
really high and you already have the
infrastructure
you have someone there working at the
machines you have everything there you
may as well
you know pick up a do do wash and fold
so we started with that
staff got really good at it you know we
started building a custom base for just
drop-offs um
and then uh in may with copa dead you
know
i saw the numbers drop you know 25
and i thought okay this is time to pick
and deliver i mean because
everyone’s doing you know that’s what
the head of everyone’s getting every
service now
and um so i just kind of
cobbled together something and got it
going i just want to get it started
so it was just um it was i had a guy who
was
already kind of working the store and he
was he was dry he would drive and pick
stuff up um i basically just did
marketing on like
you know social media just started that
way also reached out to customers we
already had
emailed them and sent out you know
campaign with that
um and uh it was just really simple just
if we got an order you know we come
through the website
um i set up a square real basic uh
booking site so you could book a time
and then um if the order came in he
would get a text
he’d go pick it up bring the store
they’d do it you take it back
um so i was looking like i was looking
back at the numbers so in may we started
we did seven orders
um and so and it was like you know
it was great because it was a way to
just try it out see how it works
um and see if people were you know happy
with it
then in june we did 15 orders uh so we
doubled in june
uh you know we started some return
customers some new customers
july and august which was the summer
anyway dropped to like nine or
eight or nine for both months it kind of
went down a little bit
but then september october november had
gone from 14 to 26 to 30.
um so that’s what i felt like we were
finally getting our groove in terms of
like really
getting the word out a lot of repeat
customers um
and uh and a lot of new customers
starting to come in and that’s look
that’s there that’s one a day
we’re getting this month i mean you’ve
had guys on and they’re doing 50 a day
so we’re just at the beginning of this
but what i’ve done is
i bought curbside i know you’ve had
those guys on yeah
that’s my next thing so we’re in process
on that right now
um real quick too just
you know for anybody listening that uh
i’ll link to
matt simmons’s interview uh in the show
notes
or if you’re on youtube in the
descriptions uh that is one of the most
popular episodes
out there uh matt simmons with with
curbside laundry so
check that out i’ve been dealing with
ken there has been great um
they’re they’re yeah those uh now
they had a webinar maybe that’s the same
thing you’re talking about
but man it was uh i it was so
i was like i’m in i was just sold and um
i called them and
i’m about to do this and i’ve been
looking at i knew about it anyway for
the last couple of years but
you know it’s an investment and it
already had kind of the square machine
and i have the way we do things so it’s
a big
you know change but i felt like okay
we’re growing this thing and that’s the
way to scale it because also
what i was doing is so mom and pop it’s
like you know
the way the texts come in and the
communication and the orders is very
like
we’re able to do 30 a month for sure but
to do 60 80 120
so actually so right now um actually at
11 o’clock i’m doing curbside training
online like for the software stuff um
the equipment’s all coming in um i built
out cabinets in both stores
to hold the clothes because we you know
running out of room in the sports and
these laundry mats typically don’t have
a lot of storage space right yeah
so we’re like building shelves in the
back trying to squeeze back
so we built um two big cabinets uh in
both a big cabin each store to hold
and sort of organize on shelves and
where everything’s gonna go
um and then i think with this with the
new software we’ll be able to
the really the i mean all of it’s
important but it’s the website and the
booking
for me too because my website i created
myself which is fine but it just can’t
do very much
and the booking site all i can do is
book a time you can’t i really said
and with their website you can do all
your
you know what kind of soap do you want
when all the scheduling of really
specific detailed stuff
um you know you pay online all that
stuff which it’s just
much more advanced um so
and the website’s more is better
designed to funnel in
you know your customer comes in it looks
they look at it then they end up
scheduling a pickup
so i’m excited about all that i’m hoping
that that will help me scale in the next
six months to a year
yeah huge uh so you have you haven’t
really been operating with the software
up until
now is that no no not even now yeah i
mean we’re gonna
uh i think i mean hopefully by
december 1st maybe we’ll be kind of
running running it
um yeah but you know right now it’s just
square
and kind of doing it yeah oh my gosh i
mean it’s gonna
it’s gonna make things so much easier
for you i think uh
and for the customer too to make those
orders so i think you’ll be
you’ll be pretty excited about it yeah
i’m sorry
cool well man that’s that’s awesome i i
love
that you i mean i i kind of love your
philosophy of just like
let’s say yes and then let’s figure it
out and you kind of did that with
you know becoming an agent and then you
know
yeah i’ll try to sell your dry cleaner
you know
yeah i’ll try to help your guy find a
laundromat to buy
okay you’re not gonna buy yeah i’ll buy
it that sounds good to me
like okay yeah i’ll take another one
okay i’ll do
you know pick up a delivery bit like i
love that because
i do think good things happen when you
say yes
even when bad things happen when you say
yes i i agree i think it’s
you know and you know i learned this
from hollywood because you know
it’s such a tough business and with so
much projection you know and so
but you you know and so it’s hard and
it’s barrier to entry is really
challenging you know but you know you go
for it you do
you got to put your stuff out there you
gotta it’s like you want to have i mean
you want to calculate
i’m not i’m not advocating like you know
just go out and buy the first thing you
see
spend all your money and hope for the
best you do all your homework
but you got to pull the trigger on
something
and if it’s not this deal look for the
next one but i if you don’t pull the
trigger you just you don’t do anything i
think
that’s where the rich dad poor dad and
that you know five so years ago
looking at this wealth building and
understanding like i gotta pull the
trigger on some things because
it’s the building of that that 5 10 20
years from now suddenly
you’ve got multiple businesses you pay
down the you know
you’ve got equity in them the revenue’s
up the value’s up you can sell them you
can you know
run them i can buy real estate with
money you know just continue that
process so
you gotta get in yeah that that’s
exactly
how you build wealth right you take that
first
step and that’s the hardest one i mean
it really is the hardest one because
i mean i i talk to coaching clients all
the time who
you know who are like i’ve been doing
this you know i’ve been looking into
laundromats for years or decades or
whatever
and i’ve never taken that step because
that first step is so scary
you know there’s like you mentioned
before like you don’t know
how it’s supposed to perform like you
don’t know how it’s gonna go
you just kind of have to take that step
and
maybe it flops completely and you lose
everything you work so hard for that’s
scary right but maybe it doesn’t
and and i like what you said that you
know with the laundromats
as opposed to screenwriting in
particular you said you know you have
some element of control you have the
ability to kind of control that
yeah i in a way i feel like this it’s
less risky
to do this than because um
because you can i guess i felt like i’m
not gonna fail because i’m gonna make it
work
like no matter what it’s a laundromat
it’s not
you know i’m not you know i’m not elon
musk sending a rocket to mars
these are yeah it’s watching your
clothes yeah
yeah i’m not sending a rocket to mars
yet that’s right when he calls and wants
to
depart and i’ll say yes um
but you know so these are like
you wash your clothes people do it
there’s a zillion of them it’s putting
on business
so you can make it work you know and if
it’s
so you learn on the fly and you learn
what works and doesn’t but you just got
to put in the time to have to make sure
it works you know what i mean i don’t
want to lose my
investment and all that my time so i
knew
that no matter what i know unless
something catastrophic i guess happens
but you know that
that you just keep working harder and
harder marketing whatever you do to get
people to come in
and once you enter people in then you’ve
got a business you know and then
you can grow it or not but at least
you’re not losing you know that’s
yeah awesome philosophy i’m a big fan of
that
um you know i know some people take a
little more conservative approach but
i’m a big fan of that so
kudos from me to you
uh hey i wanted to ask you too uh so we
we kind of got connected just on
instagram uh i think randomly i think
yeah and your your
instagram really stood out to me because
your laundromat
i don’t know if both of them are just
one of them is half price laundromat
right yeah that’s the whole brand yeah
yeah the brand so i mean i would love
to hear about that concept and how you
came up with that
and and what that looks like what that
means
and how that’s working out yeah so
you know i mean again i had no idea what
i was doing when i started
but i um with that first store
um i really wanted once i found out that
there were you could have a card store
and not a coin store i really wanted a
card store because
uh that’s the one thing that was kind of
always a turn thing to turn off to me
thinking about london it’s like
collecting those coins buckets of coins
and how do you weigh them and then
people steal them and break in so and
how do you track it all
um so once i realized we could put
make it a card store then i was like oh
this is great you can actually you know
change the pricing obviously you can
make it
doesn’t have to be by the quarter it can
be 99 cents or whatever
and you can change the pricing time of
day pricing right you can look and see
what your
you know high traffic low traffic areas
are and the low traffic you can
lower the price to try to get people in
so i thought well that’s a really
that seems kind of unique to this
business because i don’t see that very
much
it’s mostly just you know it’s what it
is and what 98
or 95 percent are all coins are still
all coin swords
yeah percentage yeah so i thought okay
well if i
if i can control that um maybe that
could be my
hook my you know concept so i thought
well
if i you know originally i thought i’ll
do time of day pricing so every day
there’d be times where the machines
would just
drop to half price like in the low
traffic times
which we actually tried at the beginning
um so anyway but i thought okay
well if it’s if it’s going to drop to
half price
but i just call it half price laundry
like and let that be
the concept and um because i thought
well
what are you going along with that for
you i mean why would you pick one
obviously location right to be close to
you
but beyond that it’s price and
cleanliness
right so you can either call it you know
clean town laundry or whatever
or something to do with the
affordability of it i think
um to me anyway so anyway i thought
who wouldn’t want to go to a place
called happer’s laundry like
right yeah totally it seems like yeah
yeah
so um so that’s kind of where that came
from we came out of it being a card
store to be able to control the pricing
and then we um we tried that time of day
and it was just too complicated it was
too complicated to market it to tell
people like
okay on mondays you know it’s gonna be
half price from 9am to 11
30. it just was you know it was too much
um
so what we ended up doing was uh having
a half price thursday that was our
lowest traffic day and um so every
thursday is half price thursday
um and then uh
so um and then we’re also doing running
half price specials
during the month just on a set of
machines would be always half price
um so you know we’re trying to make sure
we live up to the name
um but the ability to change that is so
easy
you know and change that pricing it’s so
easy so that’s where it came from
yeah i love the the card system just the
flexibility you have to be able to do
different things like that promotional
things that customers really love
um i’m curious how how did it affect
your traffic
on like on thursdays
is it better than sunday yeah
that makes sense it wasn’t the worst day
the best day yeah i mean and it took
it took a while it’s starting to get
both stores are on the same trajectory
you know we’re like six months into the
new store and
the revenue has been going about 30 you
know a month
and uh thursdays are like the beginning
like you know a handful of people
a little bit more you know one thing new
you’re gonna need to know it’s there
and it’s consistent um now thursdays are
super busy the new store just like
they’re at the first door
um i mean we to the point where like you
know
we’re building these cabinets i was
telling you like to hold the washing
fold stuff
and last week the guys were in there
building the cabinets and it was
thursday
and my staff was like you cannot let
people do work on thursdays we can’t
visit you know that we can’t handle it
there’s just too much going on
yeah so from now on the mandate is no
you know no work gets done on a thursday
you know
um so it’s been great i mean it seems
that really works
yeah thursday’s a new sunday over there
i love it
yeah well it really gives you two big
days because sunday’s
still a huge day yeah but now thursday
is a little bit better so you get really
and then saturday obviously but those
thursday sunday for us yeah
yeah i like that i like that did did you
see a significant drop in any of the
other days
no that was the thing you know i wasn’t
sure if i was gonna cut into business
from other days but it really didn’t
seem to do that at all um
it seemed to just raise thursday and
everything else pretty much stayed the
same
i mean if anything i think it probably
helped
increase business overall just because
it’s more awareness and people
and you know it was so busy that if you
came on thursday and you couldn’t get in
or you had to wait you know you found
the store
right and you come back yeah
yeah that’s awesome i love that as you
know from a marketing perspective that’s
genius man money money talk so
[Music]
yeah so
yeah yeah i love that um
the uh man i had one more question i was
going to ask you
but you know i’m getting old over here i
just
you gotta i don’t know how you do it
it’s a tough job you gotta listen you
gotta oh god you know she’s prepared for
the next question but you gotta be in
the moment you know
that’s right that’s right uh all right
well maybe it’ll come back to me
in a little bit but for right now i
would love to get
down to
[Applause]
and business of business just a little
bit
and here a little bit of like just the
details of your business i mean we’ve
talked about
some of those already but a couple of
little more details
uh number one where where so you’re in
sherman oaks
right so i live your laundromats located
so
and yeah for those i mean sure moses so
there’s la is there’s
the city in the valley the city is
beverly hills and you know
all that santa monica and the valleys
and san fernando valley um
so sherman oaks is kind of new whatever
i did the laundromats are in panorama
city and
arlida which are like kind of north
north
valley um
yeah okay yeah no that’s good that’s
good
so uh so you have two laundromats you
you
started talking about real estate do you
have any investment real estate or no
i don’t at this moment um i uh
there was a deal i’m looking at that
would be
buying the building and then putting
watermelon in it
which i’m really interested in doing
that yeah
you know the building that i had the
store in um
so i don’t know that this particularly
was gonna happen but that i’m looking at
that
so part of it was i felt like this
business was a way to get cash flow i
know you talked about that you know the
cash flow of this business is much
higher than it is in real estate
typically
um so my idea was let me get some let me
get cash flow going
and then i’ll take the cash flow and
start investing in real estate
um but i didn’t want to do it in the
reverse because yeah then i don’t have
any cash flow invest in anything else
you know for a while yeah it is
i mean i love i say this all the time
but i love the relationship between
real estate and laundromats for that
reason
really and it’s kind of funny because
it’s a little bit backwards from
the normal model the normal model is
create a bunch of equity
or save a bunch of money or whatever and
then with that
go by cash flow essentially with it and
but i love kind of flipping that
because if you can get that cash flow
and you take away
you know just those the basic pressure
and the basic
needs that you have for just you know
daily cash flow
then you can really focus on doing more
and doing bigger stuff so
yeah that was really appealing to me to
sort of have enough money flowing in
that i
wouldn’t be as concerned about you know
just
living in the basics and then you really
can zoom out and start to
save and then then when you’re you know
and also with this business i mean the
the idea of the washington pickup
delivery adding to it is
such a there’s so much room to add
revenue there that
um it’s kind of limitless so with all
that money that i hope to bring
in as this thing grows that’s the
leftover
after i pay for my expenses then you
start investing you know in
other other things so that was exciting
totally
i love that and i know too you know with
laundromats another huge perk of it and
we
you know you kind of we talked about
this a little bit too but it
it does help you free up that time when
you have that cash flow
helps you free up that time and it’s
like a parent you get more time with the
kids and you know
we all know that time’s super limited
that time goes by really fast and
trying to make the most of it is you
know
optimal and it’s hard to do when you’re
you know you’re working
all the time which a lot of us have to
do i’ve been so interested in this whole
you know fire movement of the financial
let’s retire early i mean yeah
because you know this whole outdated
concept of work my whole life and then
when i’m eating now
we’re trying to go to me like you know
who wasn’t
that you know and then you look back and
like oh i missed all my time with my
kids and my family because i was at the
office
you know so uh yeah for me it’s it’s
finding a way around that and uh
freeing up the time this business
definitely seems to do that i mean
there’s there’s certainly an investment
of time at the beginning and for no you
know
the setup to get it going to open and
then
from open to getting the business really
on its feet there’s a lot of investment
time in that
but once it’s going then you’ve got
it’s going and then i feel like years
you know it can just go on that way
forever so it’s really
investments from the beginning yeah yeah
and that’s
you know that’s a pretty typical
quote-unquote
passive income model right where you
invest a lot of time up front
and then it i mean it’s not going to run
itself it’s still a business and you’re
still dealing with people so there will
be problems but
relatively speaking especially relative
to like a full-time job
you know you’re going to have a lot more
time it’s a lot more passive than that
if you want it to be yeah and you can
you know
but you can also spend your time in a
way that’s
more valuable i mean on the business you
know if you’re zoomed out and you’re
working on marketing and you’re working
on increasing pickup and delivery
you know by major percentage points i
mean that’s
you know that’s well rewarded time spent
you know
yeah huge huge big return on your
investment
yeah okay uh so i i think i remember
you saying you got in the business in
2018 is that right
yeah 17 was like when it started in 18
yeah
you opened it okay it’s 2020 right now
in case you’re listening to this in
2150 or something uh
by that point yeah if you’re listening
in 2015
man the immortal podcast episode right
here
going on forever uh talk to you okay so
you got
i mean you’re the half prize laundromat
here talk to me a little bit like give
me ballparks of
what have been prices cost i think
people are always surprised
you know in new york la you know how low
prices can be compared to some of these
like midwest cities who are charging
yeah i don’t know like an arm and a leg
i feel like but what are your prices
looking like
uh both stores are very similar i mean
they’re in the same general area they’re
only like 10 minutes apart so
it’s um but they range from like two
the top loader is like 225 um
and then they go up to like the uh 70
pounders are um
750 775. they’re under eight dollars
okay so between two and eight bucks and
then on half price days
it’s one in four dollars you know a huge
difference i mean
think about doing a wash for for a 70
pound machine for four bucks
you know it’s it’s a bargain yeah that’s
i’m gonna come do my pick up and
delivery at your laundromat
on thursdays
just kidding uh okay are you fully
attended
partially attended what are you what are
you running right now
yeah so we’re fully attended um you know
that was one of the things too at the
beginning i wasn’t sure
you know it’s like the idea of like hey
how great would it be just to have
automatic doors and nobody shows up and
run you know but the reality is it’s got
to be clean and it’s gotta
you gotta have customer service
especially i think these days as
as i’ve heard a lot of guests talking
about you know the businesses you know
is is is evolving and i think you know
so
anyway they’re both fully attended um uh
from you know
open close and i think that’s key to
have someone there to be
friendly to greet them when they come in
hey i’m here if you need me
you know and and because there’s always
something it’s always oh there’s too
much soap and the
the door got locked i mean there’s you
know a million little things that go on
i don’t know how to
in the card system like how do i you
know use that so having someone there
has just
been really key yeah so fully attended
what kind of hours
are you guys uh we’re 16 to 10 p.m okay
yeah pretty pretty typical and you’re
are you card only or do you also accept
coin
we’re card only on both stores nice i
love that
i love that did you feel like there was
any
resistance from customers for doing card
only
i think it i think probably the
beginning there was i don’t know how
much resistance but i think
it was it was different and i don’t
think they were used to it you know yeah
maybe that accounted for a little bit
extra time it took to get
to get rolling and get people in there
um just because
that wasn’t what they’re used to doing
um but it seems like once
they got once they tried it they really
liked it i mean because one of the
stores
um you know would do a 10 bonus so if
you put in 10 bucks you get 11
you just get a free dollar every right
so i mean
that’s pretty good in itself um and uh
you know the idea that they can uh keep
the card
and also bonus points that you know they
automatically accrue and then you get
free washes so
a lot of benefits to it yeah huge
benefits to the
card system yeah i love that was it was
it super expensive to put in
um i mean you know it’s yeah
yeah i guess i mean
the original store you know it was part
of the equipment order right i mean so
yeah it was uh let’s see
another like an additional 10
to the total cost okay of the equipment
and then
the new store already had it so
yeah the reason i asked i get asked that
question all the time do you feel like
the
the investment was worth it though i do
because
uh i mean i don’t know how you keep
track of it otherwise i mean
everything’s
on the you know i can go online in one
second see exactly how
everything’s doing um day to day the
store i can pull up a report in two
seconds it shows me the month the year i
mean
i you know it really helps me otherwise
you’re just
always behind always i guess counting i
don’t know it seems
uh challenging yeah also you know where
it allows us to um
you know take credit cards or take um
debit cards so
that money goes straight into a bank
account you know so
it’s still mostly cash and 75 percent
cash but that 25 percent is like
immediate in your bank account so that
helps
yeah super nice i mean i think card
system is awesome
i highly recommend it highly and i’m
jealous
because i don’t have cards yet gosh no
how is it coins is it
how is it counting them and all that is
it challenging or is it
no i mean it’s not channel i i use a
scale and i weigh them
right it’s a counter scale so it tells
me how many quarters there are
so i mean it’s pretty quick and easy but
you know it’s still a
hassle i got to go in the coin boxes get
full or the changers empty
or you know a bill gets jammed and it
shuts down
one of the change or i don’t you know
there’s always like
stuff like that so keeping track of it
in terms of your numbers i mean
so i i just created a
semi-elaborate spreadsheet that keeps
track of stuff in fact
you can download it if you have a coin
store and you have a headache
just like i did you can download it at
laundromat resource.com
check out i believe you gotta sign up
for the free membership
and get the go to the member resources
but you can download that spreadsheet
for free right there look at that good
little plug there
that’s nice i think i’m gonna check it
out i’m always looking for room
you don’t need it but well you got the
data
that you need that’s awesome um all
right one more question and down to
business
how like give me a ballpark how many
hours you spending on these two
laundromats a week
um so you know
in the beginning um
and that you know getting it going and
putting in the time to get it started
the first number of months
uh is very different than the later
months so
in the beginning but even then i feel
like i’d spend
you know maybe maybe two hours a day you
know
you know um maybe maybe two or three
hours a day five days a week or
something at the very beginning getting
it
really up and running um and then it
just starts to diminish you know then it
starts to be like
you know an hour a day there’d be like
you know a phone call to deal with or
something or
it’s really it’s really the time that
i’m the expansion stuff like the
the the pick of the delivery and new
things and website stuff that’s really
bourbon spending the time
but i don’t know yeah two hours a day i
guess
you know at the most some days one hour
some days none
but never and you know like we’ve been
having staff meetings so you know i go
in that’s a couple hours you know
um but it’s not a full-time job
at all yeah i mean yeah that’s awesome i
i think it’s just helpful for people to
get an idea of how much time
owners are spending you know at their
stores and working on it you know a lot
of people come into it with like
hey i’m here once a week i collect
quarters
or take the bills out of the card you
know the changer
or the uh the card loader and
roll out you know there’s a little bit
more to it than that but
like you said it’s not significant you
know after you get things going and
enrolling it’s yeah you certainly can
sit back and just
you know do the books and and keep it
really simple
but i also think it you know then it
stagnates and
you know i’m interested in growing it so
and i enjoy that part of it so
that’s been fun for me to spend time
doing awesome
all right well we got another section we
like to call
the secret sauce listen up it’s the
secret sauce
the secret sauce is you know what’s one
thing that you feel like is really
working for your business right now
that other owners can implement to help
them improve their business
um i mean we were talking about but i
think like really it’s staff
you know um having the right people
there is just so key it’s key to getting
good reviews the reviews on the outdoor
key to getting business the
you know the the google pages um the
reviews
are so key so um and i feel like so many
reviews are based on customer service so
to me getting the right people in there
and if someone’s not right
you know it’s hard to fire someone but
just you got to move forward
and try to find that right person in
that right team
as i said earlier um and then um
the right camera the right cast you
gotta get really fantastic
it’s an ensemble you know it’s uh it’s
it’s not a it’s not a not a one-hander
um
and uh and then the second thing is
really this this washington delivery
business i think if you if you’ve got
your self-service thing kind of rolling
i mean it’s it just makes sense you’ve
already got the investment
um you may as well maximize it and
they’re summing down ways with
technology to uh
to do that and it just
as opposed to buying another store
[Music]
just invest a little bit you know
spending a lot of how to do a whole new
store
spend a little bit to invest in the
store you already got and expand that
into those services to me to me that
makes the most sense
at this point yeah i think both of those
are awesome
secret sauces i found with reviews
most of my good reviews are
because of really good staff most of my
bad reviews are because
you know something was dirty or a
machine was busted right so
having a good staff there that’s gonna
encourage those good reviews
and also keep things clean to discourage
the bad reviews and let you know when
you need to be
working on these machines if they go
down uh
man having a great staff is it’s
money in your pocket it’s key really
yeah yeah
yeah i think you’re right about the
delivery business the pickup and
delivery
you know you have the you have the stuff
if you can
if you can figure out a way to get it
going you know even if you’re just doing
it yourself
you know before and after work or
whatever like get it going
i mean it just seemed to me like even if
i’m doing you know i deliver one a day
that’s just for i’m still bringing in
that’s his business that wouldn’t be
there
it’s at a premium because it’s the you
know watching full prices
got the machines i’ve got someone to do
you know it just makes sense
totally yeah i love that and makes
it just makes a lot of sense so cool
next section is called
pro tips pro tips
pro tips is for the newbie the person
who doesn’t own a laundromat yet but
maybe is looking to buy their first one
you got any advice for them
i guess you know we were talking about
those a little bit before but i think
you know
in general the advice is take the leap
you know at some point
make you know pull the trigger um
but not without doing you know all your
research
i think you got to look at a bunch of
them and you gotta look at your area and
you gotta do you gotta do your homework
so you know
what to expect you know and uh and then
lower your expectations and just hope
you know before you get into one make
sure that
it doesn’t take your absolute highest
projection for you create a break even
like you want to
make sure that even if you do okay not
you know half your projection will still
be okay um
so uh you know be pragmatic and and be
um and do your research but once you
sort of in that zone where you’re like
okay it looks good but i don’t know then
that’s your fear then i think you got to
just jump in
and actually you guys you got to do it
and then just know that
you can make it work you know if if you
need to put in more time to make it work
you can
and awesome yeah
awesome awesome pro tip because i mean
like we talked about taking that leap is
it’s
hard to do uh but
you know you’re never going to get
somewhere unless you take that first
step right you’re going to be
where you’re at forever if unless you
take that first step so you got to take
that leap at some point yeah there’s
really the
analysis parallelism paralysis you know
you know so you want to analyze and do
it and then
but you you can feel it i think and
you’re that point where you keep looking
over the same numbers in the same
spreadsheet and then you’re adjusting it
by
one dollar here two dollars there that’s
the point at which you’re paralyzed you
know then you go all right i gotta do it
yeah i spent my fair share of time doing
that earlier oh i i spend a lot of time
yeah i love spreadsheets but uh
but you know yeah you know you gotta do
it yeah i’ve got
i’ve got all kinds of spreadsheets i
created that show me how i’m going to be
like a multi-multi-millionaire yes i
love those spreadsheets yeah
if i just do this this and this yeah
it’s going to be this
if i just get this return and i can say
that’s this much money every month
hey if you’re interested in those
spreadsheets hit me up i’ll i’ll send
them over and show you how you too
can have 30 million dollars in the next
20 years
yeah with laundromats
um all right well awesome pro tip we are
laundromat resource so
i would love to ask do you have any
resources that you would recommend
to help people improve themselves or
their business um
yeah i i think uh i think books are the
way to go and you’ve got a great list of
books on your
site um i would just go to that
go to your list and uh and read them all
the one that
really for me was was a game trader was
rich dad poor dad
you know i mean it’s not a bestseller
for a million years for no reason it’s
just
it was an eye-opening book that
made me understand oh this is how rich
people get rich and wealthier and this
is why i’m not
it’s not happening because it’s you have
to do certain things
um and i would start with that if you
haven’t read that book
um it’s really great just financial 101
i think
and then you can go you know advance
that but i think books i think you just
you get all those
the great books that are on your site
get into them and read them
yeah awesome advice and i you know i
really
couldn’t agree more with the rich dad
poor dad definitely a life changer for
me
also uh some people love it some people
hate it
but man i you know on this podcast and
i’m a lot of the other entrepreneur and
real estate investor
podcast that i listen to when this
question gets asked rich dad poor dad is
by far
the most answered question
that i have seen and so that just tells
me something get in there and
and learn something from it it’s an easy
read it’s fun
yes you learn a lot yeah it’s narrative
it’s
it’s awesome um i wanted to sneak in uh
another question and because you had
mentioned earlier the fire
movement
yeah yeah uh you had mentioned earlier
about the
fire movement the financial independence
retire early for those
who aren’t familiar with it i’m
wondering if you have any resources
for that uh to point people to maybe to
introduce them if they don’t know
anything about it
there are i read a couple of books and i
don’t if you just google fire
you know um i can’t recommend a
particular book but there were two or
three that popped up
you know fire
[Music]
whatever i read the first couple that i
saw
were enough to give you the idea of it
um
so i would just you know google that and
find a couple of those books
uh only new ones called
you just google it you’ll see them um
but i thought they were great because it
kind of gives you
um a new strategy new philosophy instead
of
you know waiting for years and years to
hopefully retire
with something you know you really start
now and you really start building it
today and have the life you want
as soon as you can you know
yeah i love that philosophy and i think
one good place that i’ve seen
to get an introduction of it is um
if you google mr money mustache oh yeah
he’s got a he’s got a blog on it there’s
a there’s a couple other
really good blogs and there’s some other
podcasts i’ll link that one
um in case you want to kind of go get a
little intro
because he’s got everything from there
you can go you know all kinds of links
yeah he he wrote a blog post i think
that put him on the map
a while back that’s basically like the
simple math of
retiring early or something like that
and it basically tells you
hey if you’re this old and you want to
retire in this many years here’s how
much you have to save every month
and it really just breaks it down and
makes it really simple right
and that you know the idea of taking
control of your
financial situation is is you know
it’s so key because we just spend we
spend on stuff and it’s gone
and we’re like oh i don’t i don’t have
enough to i think we all say well i
don’t have enough to do that
i don’t have to buy a partner why don’t
i buy a laundromat you know
but the truth is is that you know you
can start small you can
start saving small um uh and uh you know
and
build it up and then start small with
the investment you have
um but it’s all about starting and
saving and getting that
habit going you know and then if you and
then suddenly you’re building you know i
got 500 bucks
built up a thousand bucks you know now i
constructed new things
you know yeah love that and
i mean it goes right back to your pro
tip so you know get started
get started with something well hank man
this has been
awesome i am i i really appreciate you
coming on you’ve been sharing a ton of
awesome information i think it’s going
to help a lot of people inspire a lot of
owners
and soon-to-be owners in how to improve
their businesses and how to get into the
business
really really appreciate you coming on i
have one more question for you
if there are people out there that were
inspired by you and they want to
connect with you maybe ask you some
questions about you know
how you got in the business a little
more or uh
or how you’re running your business
what’s the best way they can connect
with you
uh you call my people i’ll have my
people you know call your people got
no emails are great it’s great just
email me and uh
i’d love to hear from people and talk to
people and expand my network
and and meet some folks so i’m very open
i love to collaborate i love to
share and hear stuff so awesome what’s
your email address
it’s uh uh it’s
hank.havepricelaundry.com
awesome
yeah and i’ll put that in the show notes
in the description
uh if you’re on the podcaster on youtube
hank man
this has been incredible i really again
i really appreciate you coming on it’s
so good to actually finally connect with
you
uh you know face to face uh well sort of
you know the way we connect face to face
these days um
yeah looking forward to connecting in
person someday soon since we’re so close
i know i know me too well thank you
jordan i really appreciate you having me
on
and keep doing what you’re doing because
it’s uh it is a great resource you’ve
named it correctly
it is a great reason to support all
things laundromats
well i appreciate that a lot and we will
talk to you
soon sounds great thanks all right that
was
awesome hank man so good so good thank
you for coming on
and sharing so much wisdom as promised
for me the big takeaway from me was
actually a mindset takeaway i loved he
said this quote he said i’m not going to
fail
because i’m going to make it work and i
love that mindset and i just want to
ingram like brainwash myself
with that quote i’m going to make it
work
so i refuse to fail and i just
in everything i do that’s the mindset i
want to have because adversity will come
bumps in the road will come and it will
be difficult
to navigate those but if you can
just decide and bet on yourself and say
i will make it work
man i think the sky’s the limit for you
so that was my takeaway but i encourage
you as
always every single week take one thing
away from this
interview with hank today and apply it
to your life
and or to your business and watch as you
do that
every week how big your business is
gonna grow
it’s ah man it’s gonna be awesome we’re
all going to get better and do it
together so make sure you head over to
the forums
and get better together over there and
as always if you’re interested in being
on the podcast check out laundromat
resource.com
podcast guest again link
for that and everything else from the
episode in the description or the show
notes
and man i i i can’t wait to see you guys
next week you’re gonna be blown away by
next week’s episode you’re gonna
love it all right we’ll see you peace
[Music]
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