Logan Wuethrich and his father have accumulated 10 laundromats and are on the lookout for more. They started off in small towns and have since expanded into larger towns. This give Logan a great perspective for anyone looking to buy a laundromat in a small town and scale their business!

With solid laundromat business advice packed in, Logan tells the story of how his dad got into the laundromat business, expanded his laundromat portfolio, and roped Logan in to help him run the business. Now, Logan has laundromat fever and is actively looking to expand their laundromat empire!

Get ready to take some notes because we cover a lot of ground in this episode, including:

  • Logan’s dad’s story breaking into the business
  • Building a strip center with no capital
  • Tanning salons as a complementary business
  • Zombiemats and how to make them profitable
  • How to accumulate hard assets with little or no capital
  • Systems to run a scaled up business
  • Making a good offer on a laundromat business
  • Small town laundromats vs. big town laundromats
  • Systematic redundancy
  • When to cut corners and when not to

And a whole lot more!

Listen To The Podcast Here

Watch The Podcast Here

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Logan's Bio

I am 26 years old, born and raised in NW Indiana. Married my high school sweetheart at 19. She is a nurse, and in a short amount of time I bounced between several different jobs. We spent an amount of time overseas as teachers and school administrators, I drove a school bus, built high ropes courses, developed and ran extensive internship programs, was a director at a summer camp, and a youth minister. 

Currently, I am operating my fathers company, which consists of 10 Laundromats in NWI. We also operate a carwash, 2 check cashing locations, and a tanning salon. The company was founded by my father when I was 9 on a whim. We used to have several dozen rental properties but as of the end of last year we consolidated all investments into the laundry industry. We are in the stages of a buyout, as my dad’s goal has always been to sell and retire at 55. 

I also have a separate company of my own, (Washboard Laundry Solutions), that is the factory rep for Cryptopay laundry products. I plan to utilize this company to provide products and solutions for laundromat owners (when I can find the time!).

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    Episode Transcript

    hey what’s up guys it’s jordan with the
    laundromat resource podcast this is show
    number 47 and i’m pumped you’re here
    today we have an awesome episode with
    logan weetrick who’s got a bunch of
    laundromats
    and a bunch of diverse laundromats it’s
    kind of cool to hear the comparison
    and contrast of his different
    laundromats and also
    uh he talks a lot about his dad and how
    his dad originally got into the business
    and uh it’s just really really cool to
    hear his dad’s story too you’re gonna
    learn a ton
    i know i did so i can’t wait for you to
    meet
    logan and we’re going to jump into that
    in a second but first of all i want to
    remind you
    the forums are still going and they’re
    going strong so if you haven’t been over
    the forums in a little while
    head over to laundromat dot com slash
    forums
    links in the description or in the show
    notes which
    this link in every link in this episode
    will be at laundromat resource
    dot com show 47
    so check that out there but on the
    forums there’s a ton going on over there
    lately and
    a lot of people are getting a lot of
    help and connecting with each other
    very very cool one uh conversation i
    thought was a good one
    particularly good one and one to
    highlight was
    somebody was asking about the wash dry
    fold
    standards that you should train your
    attendance to and i thought that was a
    really great question
    especially for those owners who are
    looking to start a wash dry fold
    business
    and who are trying to figure out you
    know how do you fold clothes what
    uh what detergents do you use what do
    you package it in all those little
    questions
    that’s happening over there on the forum
    so if you got something to add to that
    or any of the other things
    that are all any of the other
    conversations happening over on the
    forums head over there and check those
    out
    also i want to remind you we do have a
    new members introduction forum so go
    over there and
    introduce yourself if you haven’t done
    that yet and if you have pop on over and
    welcome
    some newbies there’s a bunch of new ones
    from this last week i know we haven’t
    welcomed people in a while but
    hey you know just wanted to say a quick
    welcome to dan shawn
    james sherry jason shara
    robert scott trenton david elias james
    i mean just a bunch of people in this
    last week have uh come over and
    introduce themselves
    so go welcome them say hi introduce
    yourself
    and uh to them and to everybody else and
    go
    uh introduce yourself on that forum if
    you haven’t done that yet uh
    again community is where it’s at and
    when we’re working together we’re all
    a whole lot stronger that’s why that
    forum is there
    that’s why it’s free that’s why it will
    always be free
    so go check that out there’s forums for
    just general laundromat
    questions there’s a financing form
    there’s a repairs forum
    there’s another one too that you’ll have
    to go over and check it out
    uh because i can’t remember up top my
    head but uh
    yeah head over there and do that i want
    to also remind you that
    every week uh thursday every single
    thursday
    4 p.m pacific time which is best coach
    time
    7 p.m for you beast coast east coast
    timers
    uh we’re doing uh a different
    uh free webinar live webinar i’m doing
    it i’m jumping on there with
    a bunch of you guys we’ve had a ton of
    people showing up
    every single week um so you know this
    week i think we’re talking about
    how to buy your first laundromat so if
    that’s something that
    interests you uh head over to laundromat
    resource.com you’ll see right at the top
    of the home page there there’s a form
    that you can fill out just your name and
    your email address
    and that should get you right into the
    uh webinar cool uh man ton of stuff
    going on over here
    hopefully you’ve been over to laundromat
    resource.com lately
    and checked out all the different things
    going on there’s a ton more in the works
    like
    oh like i’m so excited about all these
    things happening so make sure you’re
    checking back there periodically and
    again
    spend some time in those forums getting
    to know each other cool all right well
    let’s jump into it with
    jogen wheat jogging i don’t know what
    i’m talking about today
    logan we trick uh today because i know
    you’re going to love this
    episode logan it was just a blast i
    could have talked to him for
    hours longer we’ll definitely have to
    have him back on down the line but
    i know you’re going to enjoy it so get
    out a pad of paper
    and a pencil and get ready to take some
    notes because he’s going to help you
    improve your business let’s do it
    logan i am super pumped that you’re on
    the podcast thanks for coming on man how
    you doing bet
    oh i’m pumped as well everybody says
    that but no
    super cool man uh yeah really excited
    i’ve been very hesitant to reach out and
    you kind of said hey here’s what i’m
    looking for
    as far as operators i’m like i fit
    couple of those categories maybe i ought
    to reach out and
    finally introduce myself yeah i mean i
    find that’s kind of common actually
    people feel like
    maybe i shouldn’t come on i only own one
    or i’d like own a small one or own some
    small ones or whatever like whatever the
    case may be but
    i do think like man it’s important even
    you know if you own one small
    laundromat you have a unique experience
    and there are other people
    listening to this podcast who are trying
    to get to where you’re at so
    kind of no matter where i know and i
    know your situation’s a little different
    than that but
    no matter where you are in that spectrum
    it’s really cool to come on and share
    your story how you got in the business
    what your experience has been like all
    that so
    i’m glad you took the leap and decided
    to come on i know we’re gonna have a
    blast today
    yeah yeah absolutely you know it’s funny
    there’s times i’ll be like
    i hate to admit this but i’ll look at
    i’ll look at the list of people that are
    you know that have done the podcast like
    ah
    they probably don’t have any you know
    they’re out in la yeah they played on
    how much to give me
    and i listened to it i’m like what i
    mean it’s like oh man that does totally
    relate to you know small town indiana so
    yeah
    yeah and you know what’s funny is that
    you know we’ve had we’ve had like the
    full spectrum we we had somebody who
    doesn’t even have a laundromat yet who’s
    in process on the podcast all the way up
    into
    you know multi-owners you know three
    four decades in the
    industry uh people on the podcast and
    you know some of these really
    experienced people you know when before
    they come on they’ll say you know what i
    listen
    to the podcast and it doesn’t matter
    who’s on there there’s always
    something to pull out and these are
    people who like know
    this industry forward backward inside
    outside and they’re still learning stuff
    so
    anyways all that to say hey you know
    what everybody’s got something to offer
    and their experience matters and can
    help other people
    so dude kudos to you you get bonus
    points today
    for coming on the podcast i appreciate
    that well let’s talk about i mean
    i want to hear about your experience
    because you do have a pretty uh unique
    experience i think in the industry but
    before we get into that
    why don’t you tell us a little bit about
    you and who are you who’s logan yeah
    let’s go deep you know let’s go into the
    surface and talk about who you are
    cut me off if i if i get too long
    because i’m 26 years old
    and i feel like between the between the
    age of 18
    and like late 1819 when i graduated high
    school and 26
    i went through so many things like
    there’s so many things that i bounced
    between and like
    all things that people held as have held
    as careers that i bounced you know that
    i bounced through
    and um and i i’ll give a uh i’ll get i
    gave you this warning before i’ll give
    everybody else this morning
    it’s been one of those weeks for me and
    one of those mornings for me so if i get
    a little scatter brain
    you know you might have to realize i’ll
    keep you focused don’t worry yeah
    so 26 years old uh married
    uh my high school sweetheart at 19 um
    like a month after i graduated high
    school
    i left the house or i left the house a
    day i graduated i walked
    loaded all my stuff up in my car like i
    had it loaded
    went to graduation ceremony helped my
    family goodbye and left the school
    for my you know for life as an adult wow
    a month later engaged my high school
    sweetheart
    who was a year ahead of me in nursing
    school and i got engaged
    at 19 and then married at 19 as well
    and um she was a nursing student at
    purdue she’s an incredibly
    uh brilliant woman she was third in her
    class at purdue
    and uh like garnished the highest award
    of nursing students
    um she keeps me grounded dude i mean
    she’s brilliant
    you stumbled on you stumbled on gold and
    you just locked it up right away
    oh i’m not gonna get any better than
    this i know i’m 19. but
    yeah beautiful downhill if i pass i knew
    i knew i had no other chance
    i screwed it up along the way but she
    stuck with me and i mean i couldn’t be
    happier i’ve got two girls two years old
    uh leah eight months old sayla i’m
    actually in the nursery right now
    because i’m supposed to be in my office
    but
    that got um you know you know how that
    goes yeah so
    um two young kids uh when a little bit
    of my history
    uh as far as what i did for work um i
    left high school
    and uh worked at a summer camp um during
    like it was a it was a it was a third or
    50 acre property
    it was a summer camp and like a
    conference center it was a
    christian-based organization and i was
    part of a two-year program that was
    really loose
    and um i spent a year in the states
    doing
    summer camp stuff doing like missions
    kind of stuff
    and then my wife and i we got married in
    uh 2014
    and three months later we flew to haiti
    uh for an eight month
    uh trip in haiti um oh yeah it was like
    it was like a year-long honeymoon not
    really
    as i said but but we were super pumped
    about it and and uh
    not to drag out the story but uh we were
    in contact with this organization
    um and for a long time we knew the
    people who ran it
    but we got down there and we realized
    things weren’t
    what they we thought they were and the
    americans who were running the
    organization
    left uh three days after we arrived um
    and to go like go back home for a month
    um and you’re on your own we’re on our
    own i had to learn to drive down there i
    had to learn to you know we split i mean
    we
    came we came like 80 fluent in the four
    months we were there so
    long story short um because this kind of
    plays into um kind of way that i’m wired
    and like
    my like the genetics of my of the men in
    my family the way we’re wired
    and even though i’m working for a
    non-profit and uh you know a
    christian-based organization
    i was i’m always very focused on the
    details and like
    a lot of people who are in this industry
    are or in ministry are really passionate
    but they’re terrible at the numbers and
    they’re terrible at
    management that’s what we learned they
    were just you know all and so i was like
    hammering them on management stuff
    things that they just weren’t you know
    they weren’t getting in so we ended up
    having to pull out a pull out of that
    organization uh
    within four months of our eight months
    trip that we were there we were at a
    uh we were in an orphanage um and a
    school uh
    a an elementary middle school there that
    we were administrators of and helped
    organize so anyway i got dengue fever
    the last week we were there we pulled
    out of that and we ended up flying to
    puerto rico
    to teach it to school so i spent my wife
    and i spent four months in puerto rico i
    taught
    11th grade there and my wife was a
    teacher’s aide
    and helped with the nursing department
    there and so um
    when i was in um puerto rico um
    i got a job offer to come back to the
    camp after that and actually and
    and actually develop a program they said
    you know you’ve had a vast
    amount of experience we like the way
    your organizational skills and those
    kind of things
    come back and actually develop a real
    program because i was kind of invited on
    to do
    an internship but it wasn’t really
    formal it’s like hey we like you just
    come on and then
    they hired me so i ran this i ran this
    program and in the meantime
    i was developing an internship program i
    was a programming director at this camp
    i was building high ropes courses i was
    inspecting high ropes courses
    uh like zip lines rock walls i was
    building that stuff i was traveling
    across the country
    um you know with like team team
    development leadership development
    i was doing corporate events with like
    salesmen of a huge bank uh
    a bank that had a bunch of branches i
    was bringing them all in like 100 people
    went to this whole day of leadership
    development with them and
    had grown men crying by the end of it
    really cool stuff when it came to team
    development and i drove a school bus for
    the local school during all that
    i want to get connected with the
    community so i drove a school bus well
    my time was coming to a head there my
    wife was a nurse at the time
    and um i i i kept getting job offers for
    different things my dad offered me a job
    to work for his company which we’re
    gonna get into
    uh but i was like so i was ready to move
    out of out of ministry-focused life
    and uh get into uh the secular world if
    you will as i would refer to you know
    get into
    business not uh not ministry and uh
    then i got another job offer from a um
    from a church in northwest indiana where
    close to where i was from about an hour
    from where i was from and the
    one of the pastors there was a
    missionary i was really close with in
    puerto rico he had moved up there
    so i was like oh man everything’s coming
    together so i go up there
    again i spent a year there and i was
    kind of like yeah this just ain’t
    working like i just
    i i was i was i was too focused on a lot
    of other things you know and i and like
    there’s always just churning inside of
    me
    like to just do business stuff and uh so
    anyway um that was uh 2018
    uh in 2017 2018
    and my dad offered me another job he’d
    offered me a job since i was 18.
    and uh he what he had done is he started
    a company in 2003 uh
    based around the laundry industry at
    laundromats um
    and since i think he offered me a job at
    18 after the internship he offered me a
    job and then after that you know
    so he kept offering me this job saying
    anytime you want to come on i’m ready
    you’re
    getting chased down by the laundromat
    industry i was i was getting chased down
    by him
    um i had other people in ministry like
    hey come work at my church we love what
    you’re doing
    um you know i had other camps offering
    me jobs they wanted me to do some
    programming and internships hey can you
    run can you develop this internship
    program i can’t
    and um you know i just i i
    there’s always this drive inside of me
    and i’ve never had a conventional job
    i’ve always worked odd hours
    and you know it’s just the way my
    family’s wired so finally in 2017 2018
    i took the job with my dad uh to work in
    the laundry
    so that’s kind of me up to this you know
    up to this point now a couple years
    later
    and so um i’m working really
    closely with in my father’s company
    right now and um
    yeah so there’s my there’s my
    introduction getting up to the laundry
    industry
    yeah well let’s dig into that in a
    second but real briefly how did your dad
    get into
    laundromats yeah so um we
    my dad’s only lived in two houses his
    whole life
    um he grew up and won as a kid um
    and then and then um he moved when my
    grandparents built a new house so he
    moved with them to this new house when
    he graduated he bought the old house
    that he lived in
    and they moved and when i was a kid they
    moved and he lit and then he moved into
    their old house so he’s lived in two
    houses his whole life two houses twice
    what he trousers twice yeah that’s funny
    and um he’s
    uh he’s gonna be 55 years old um and so
    it’s a town of 800 people
    um rich history with our family there
    and um
    we were farmers uh so you probably know
    orville redenbacher
    yeah popcorn yeah so our family’s had a
    contract with orville rudenbacher for
    uh several uh generations where we so we
    we um they would buy from us as a
    contractor buy from us so we would
    uh plant popcorn pulaski county is one
    of the biggest producers
    of counties that produces popcorn so we
    we harvested popcorn and soybeans
    my dad had done a lot of other he’s a
    dave mintz is the first one to ever say
    it serial
    entrepreneur that i’ve ever heard i’m
    like oh my gosh that’s not my dad
    he raised hogs my mom was eight months
    pregnant shuffling hogs going to market
    you know
    um what a great image oh my mom’s a
    tough woman
    yeah so uh and uh so he raised hogs he
    built grain bins you know the big bins
    that stored rain he built those
    uh he was amway when amway was going he
    was a huge guy in amway
    he started his own mlm uh in his 20s
    he started he actually had two mlms and
    it grew so big and defunct because he
    couldn’t keep up with it like it just
    exploded
    he was advertising like usa today for
    his mlm so he was doing that uh he
    started
    my um my grandpa my great-grandfather
    were real estate agents
    so he got into real estate as well again
    it’s a small town it’s not like
    where it is like where i live now which
    is like you know dog eat dog
    you know i mean it was just really laid
    back my wife or my mom got her
    a real estate license they were spouses
    selling houses
    and um yeah and uh we trick realty so he
    did real estate
    so he’s always had his hands in a
    different pot in the meantime he was
    teaching um t-ball
    and he was a fire chief of the local
    fire department um actually has a has a
    patent
    on um a life-saving device that he that
    he manufactured you know in his 30s
    uh i mean he’s got he’s just he’s a very
    i mean you could sit and talk to the guy
    forever
    yeah and uh i like that so yeah so we’ve
    got i got four siblings i’m the middle
    child my older
    and my older sister right now is a
    chiropractor my oldest brother’s a
    firefighter my two youngest siblings are
    accountants
    um so in 2003 in our small town of 800
    people a laundromat came up for sale my
    dad’s
    second cousin or third cousin you know
    owned it you know she was real old and
    the place was a dump
    and my sister at the time was turning
    16. so he said i’m gonna
    buy this laundromat i can make a little
    bit money but um
    if i buy this laundromat i’ll have my
    kids clean you know how my kids take
    care of it it’ll be there for it’ll be
    one of their first jobs i’ve
    you know we i worked since i was nine
    years old all of our siblings did we
    worked on the farm we picked up rocks i
    don’t know if anybody knows what picking
    up rocks is but
    you walk through a field and you
    literally pick up rocks and put them in
    a wagon so that the
    plows don’t get destroyed and the
    combine doesn’t pick them up
    so you know when you’re nine years old
    expecting something a little more
    uh creative than when you said i don’t
    know if people know what pickup rocks
    means
    i was expecting it to be some euphemism
    for something but no it’s like picking
    up rocks it’s literally picking up rocks
    in the
    in the middle of the summer in the dead
    heat and i’d recruit like other fourth
    graders with me and like hey
    my dad will pay you four dollars an hour
    and we can go pick up rocks all day
    yeah so anyway genius yeah he bought
    this laundromat in 2003 my sister was
    turning 16.
    he said i’ll pay your car insurance i’ll
    pay your gas you got to buy your own car
    i’ll pay your car insurance i’ll pay
    your gas all you gotta do is on your way
    to school every morning spend 30 minutes
    and clean the laundromat
    just clean it up i think she lasted four
    months and got fired
    oh no because she lie i think she lied
    you know she said
    i cleaned this morning and she didn’t
    that happened a couple mornings and
    finally you know he fired her he’s like
    no you’re dead
    yeah so then he took you know he took
    care of it now when he bought this he
    completely you know
    renovated it um he had a distributor uh
    a maytag distributor
    a good guy but again my dad’s a very
    self-made man he wouldn’t ask anybody
    for help he just thought
    i’ll run the numbers myself and figure
    out what it’s going to do so then my
    brother turned 16 two years later he
    said okay
    same deal i’ll pay your insurance i’ll
    pay your gas which for a young kid is a
    pile of money
    you know insurance and gas it’s like oh
    yeah yeah what a deal 30 minutes a day
    he lasted a month he got fired
    so then he didn’t give me the chance he
    said i you know your
    your other two siblings failed you don’t
    even get the chance pay for your own gas
    and your own
    insurance i don’t care so um
    he had that laundromat couple and within
    two years he kind of went
    well this is pretty passive income it’s
    not bad uh i mean he wasn’t making a
    pile of money but he’s paying his
    you know he’s paying for the building he
    paid for his equipment note you know
    it’s like okay and you know i sho i got
    someone to clean it my you know
    my mom cleaned it and he’d go collect
    and do all that stuff
    he goes i’m gonna go to the next town
    which uh was a couple thousand
    and you know maybe maybe fifteen hundred
    or two thousand he said this place needs
    a laundromat
    which hindsight i’d never put a large
    amount
    you know that’s that size in my opinion
    you know just where i’m at now but
    he says this could use a laundromat well
    they didn’t didn’t have a laundromat to
    buy
    um there was no space to lease you know
    it wasn’t worth it the square footage
    you know for what we could do so finally
    he says i’ll just build a strip plaza
    um he had no i mean he had no capital i
    mean you know
    my you know my dad scraped and dug for
    everything he ever had and worked and it
    worked extremely hard
    um and i commend him for that but he had
    nothing so he found property
    on the edge of town right on the edge of
    town that was not city property so he
    could bypass a lot of
    city issues and the guy who owned the
    property
    it was just a big field a big cornfield
    so he said look let’s go let’s go two
    thirds and a third on this project
    he said that’s it basically said you
    provide the the real estate and the cash
    and a portion of the cash all front the
    other i’ll borrow the other
    other bit of cash and i will and i will
    build the whole thing out
    and i will be a tenant for this company
    you know so i will
    you know so i’ll put a laundromat here
    so he builds a strip plaza and i know
    how many square feet it is it’s a huge
    building
    it’s actually two separate buildings um
    that have
    upwards of 12 or 13 possible tenants
    in there he builds a laundromat in there
    about 2000 square feet
    um in the meantime 50 square feet for a
    town of
    1500 2000 people you’ll learn about
    indiana real quick
    yeah okay awesome yeah so yeah about
    2000 square feet including office space
    storage space
    okay yeah um and um
    in the meantime a lady puts a tanning
    salon in right next door
    okay she’s she started failing at it you
    know just terrible she
    she always wanted to run a business but
    never knew how and was failing at it so
    he says well how about i got an
    attendant on duty how about you
    all my tenant will take care of the
    transactions you know
    and clean the beds and all that stuff
    she said no i don’t want to do that well
    finally she just went back to him
    once later and says okay you want to buy
    it from me because i’m i can’t you know
    i can’t sustain this
    yeah sure i’ll buy this candy salon from
    you
    and this was pre-netflix um so he
    decided i’m going to open a movie store
    in this town
    so he opens a uh called the video mall
    so he opens it you know you would go and
    you rent dvds
    um and so uh he was three tenants of
    this 12 or you know
    15 tenant building he was three of those
    tenants and
    in a roundabout way paying himself you
    know as a tenant and
    and working in that direction and um you
    know to build that he basically borrowed
    everything i mean borrowed against the
    house
    uh anything he owned he borrowed against
    any i mean he had
    he was uh leveraged about you know about
    of his max uh most of his life he was
    leveraged and he always told himself he
    could go bankrupt before 440
    and he could still survive you know he
    could still dig out of that yeah and um
    so you know that whole plaza filled up
    um now most now we
    um uh now it’s mostly government
    contracts bmv
    uh dcs stuff like that which are great
    if you own rental property those are
    some of the best tenants you can have
    uh because you know they’re gonna like
    their anchor tenants there you know
    they’re gonna be there a long time and
    they’re not too picky
    about a lot of things and so they’re
    really yeah so actually
    um just the end of the last year we just
    got out of that uh
    we sold our third in that uh in that
    strip plaza
    so now we don’t have any ownership in
    that and i’ll circle back to that
    so bouncing forward uh he went to the
    next small town
    and said and found a laundromat there
    that was a piece of junk i mean and
    and someone had just bought it two years
    before uh like a banker and a lawyer or
    a doctor and a lawyer
    you know and they you know they had read
    the brochure that said all you got to do
    is
    worry about how you gotta carry all the
    quarters around you know what i mean and
    they just ran that thing in a hole
    and uh so he came in bought the real
    estate uh
    bought the business and uh in four weeks
    uh did a complete flip on that um and i
    was
    15 at the time or 14 and my brother was
    16 because i remember getting up at 5
    o’clock every morning and driving the
    hour to that store and working in there
    with him um they had pits i remember
    digging out pits
    and uh you know ripping down walls we
    cut out uh 30 foot of block to put
    windows in
    uh all we did ourselves you know as him
    and and uh
    yeah yeah i mean that’s just the way you
    do it and so i i distinctly remember
    one eating burger king because i never
    got fast food couldn’t have fast food
    where you’re from
    and i remember pushing the big block
    wall over a brick wall over when we put
    windows in
    so finally he’s going okay well these
    are kind of doing all right so then he
    goes north
    uh so that was east a town so then he
    went back to
    uh the the where he put the strip claws
    and go directly north and he
    about about five or ten miles and he put
    in a he tore down
    bought a dairy queen pour down the dairy
    queen and built new
    a laundromat about two thousand square
    feet a town of 7 500 people
    um and um and a car wash a single bay
    automatic car wash
    on the back end they had enough room on
    the property so he built the laundromat
    in the car wash
    uh again extended himself upon that but
    you know you go a couple years start
    everything starts paying for itself okay
    now you got some stuff to borrow against
    them
    um these are awesome you know these are
    all small towns 800 people
    um you know about two to three thousand
    people and then five to six you know
    five to eight thousand people you know
    that’s what these towns are
    yeah so it’s kind of okay you know and
    so he’s like uh you know i’m doing well
    in the meantime he’s still farming
    still doing real estate still coaching
    t-ball and um
    and still fire chief of art of the town
    um
    i mean i don’t hardly ever see the guy
    you know what i mean but
    you know he made it when it counts um
    and uh so anyway
    then there’s a town north of them down
    down the main highway called valparaiso
    which is where i currently live um this
    was in 2009
    uh a town of 35 000 people found a
    laundromat there and a dry cleaner
    laundromat dry cleaner 4 000 square feet
    uh 4500 square feet
    and um it was again just a crap hole i
    mean just uh
    i mean just you know everybody seen him
    this one was probably the most extended
    he ever made himself he bought this one
    for a pile of money
    um did a uh and did a full renovation
    again
    um ripped all that you know ripped all
    the old equipment out and i think his
    uh i think his equipment note was three
    or four thousand dollars and
    up to this point this we’ve done all
    maytag everything was made tagged
    um so this this one was maytag this was
    2009.
    uh got all new equipment and and he ran
    it for maybe a month or two with the old
    equipment before he got the new
    equipment in
    we got his new equipment in his note was
    three or four thousand dollars
    and his utility savings were more than
    his equipment notes
    so he paid for his equipment with the
    utility savings you got
    because it was so old uh gas bills water
    bill everything went down so much
    and uh in that in that purchase he
    bought a dry cleaning plant
    so then we became dry cleaners um and at
    that point we moved from
    ladybug laundry we were ladybug laundry
    to ladybug cleaners
    uh so that was um that was when he
    decided to sell the farm
    we had a big uh i was 15 or 16. we had a
    big auction
    farm auction sold all of our tractors um
    you know
    pickup trucks grain uh grain trucks um
    and then the land uh that he didn’t own
    any of his land
    it was all within my family so that went
    back to the trust of the other family
    and
    other people were in a department uh so
    he decided i could make a living now i
    want to
    i’ll sell the farm and you know i i he
    was tired all of his kids were in high
    school at this point a lot of kids are
    in high school at this point in sports
    and he’s like i just couldn’t i want to
    i was never there for anything you know
    he’s so busy
    when you’re when you’re in real estate
    when are you looking at houses in the
    evenings
    you know what i mean you know and and
    when you’re farming
    you’re farming in the fall in the spring
    during football season
    and baseball season track season you
    know and so he couldn’t beat any of
    these things
    yeah finally said i could make enough
    money i could make a comfortable living
    he never
    never really wanted to get rich just
    wanted to you know just make a
    comfortable living
    and that was in 2009 well the recession
    hit real hard on us
    and he’s overextended as much as he
    could be and now we have a dry cleaning
    business
    which he completely ripped everything
    old out and put new all new dry cleaning
    stuff in
    and the dry cleaning i think dropped
    about 70 percent
    business dropped about 70 it’s very
    similar to what we’re in right now yeah
    drag cleaning yeah and um he we he put
    everything up for sale
    he had a laundromat broker and put
    everything up for sale he couldn’t
    scrape by
    uh he was i mean he was bleeding
    everywhere um
    but what that did was it made him look
    at all of his numbers again
    and hold tight to things started cutting
    employees who he realized some employees
    had been stealing from him
    he realized he had employees that
    fabricated a job
    we had a general manager basically she
    fabricated this general manager position
    always acted like she was really busy my
    dad trusted her with his life
    and realized that at 10 o’clock in the
    morning he needed to solve a problem and
    she was drunk at her house
    you know what i mean so it’s like oh so
    you know you cut out that you cut your
    expenses way back and
    uh you pull out he pulled out a
    recession and we pulled out strong
    um and then there was a uh five or six
    year period where that we didn’t we
    didn’t grow we just maintained
    you know trying to pay pay everything
    off and then he uh
    he bought another one in a town of 30
    000 people again uh
    yep just moving on up man yeah this
    trajectory
    i mean oh it’s yeah it’s at a good pace
    you’re going to one of those cities in
    china that have like
    two billion people in i don’t know about
    that yeah i don’t know about that
    uh and so yeah so i i know i’m really
    uh really dragging this out but moved to
    a town of 30 000 people
    again uh zombie mat i mean you know
    a third of the machines running
    everything junky
    so he buys that one he
    renovates it and then the year that i
    moved to valpo so that was the
    where the dry cleaner was the year i
    moved up there to work at a church
    um is when he bought another one in a
    town of 35 40
    000 people he bought another one and see
    those those three were all within 15
    minutes of me
    so it’s kind of like okay i kind of
    moved into where his business was moving
    no for another job so then we moved
    there the year i took a job in valpo he
    bought this other one and then that was
    the last
    of what he did before i stepped into the
    company basically so there’s
    there’s everything leading up to uh
    before i got involved in 2018.
    that was awesome like just such a
    whirlwind like he
    your dad is just i mean he’s done so
    much and he’s oh it’s incredible covered
    like a lot of ground
    in yeah a relatively short amount of
    time
    yeah and so to give you a breakdown of
    where the layout was francisville town
    of 800 people
    head north east 30 minutes winamac that
    was the second one with the shopping
    plaza
    from there head directly east at half
    hour and that’s where and there’s
    another one and then if you go back to
    the shopping plaza directly north
    uh 20 minutes you get the car wash in
    the laundromat
    and then you head northwest 45 minutes
    and you get valpo and then within there
    from 30 minutes
    is michigan city and uh laporte so the
    three biggest ones up north
    and that’s when that’s when it kind of
    clicked for him uh he goes oh
    i can do i can do a little more than
    make a living off of this
    uh this you know there’s more to there’s
    more to laundromats than what
    everybody’s ever
    you know whatever he’s ever thought
    about them yeah
    yeah okay so 2018
    what what does he own at that point when
    you step in what where
    where are we at what’s our count at yeah
    um so the count was six
    six laundromats one two three four five
    six
    seven when i stepped in we had seven
    sorry eight he bought another small town
    laundromat
    that’s five minutes from his house he
    just bought it and renovated it so we we
    were at eight at that point by the time
    i stepped in we officially had eight
    but two of them were brand new so we had
    six and then two of them were just brand
    spanking new
    okay so you’re yeah six eight like right
    when you started
    right and did you did he still own the
    tanning he did salon okay still on the
    tanning salon
    we closed the video the video store
    years ago um
    still owned uh a third share in that
    shopping plaza
    um and i didn’t mention we had two dozen
    rental properties at the time
    we owned uh what was called town square
    apartments so we owned an old apartment
    complex
    we had trailers we had small 800 square
    foot houses
    we had tons of rental properties so he
    was again always digging i mean one time
    he bought a trailer
    moved it to and physically moved the
    trailer to another property that he
    owned
    like an acre you know what i mean he was
    always wheeling and dealing and getting
    good
    good deals on stuff and again going back
    i remember being 10 years old and he’d
    buy a house to put us in rental
    and i remember going there 10 years old
    ripping the carpet out just me and my
    brother
    you know what i mean and stuff like that
    so yeah so at this time he
    he had started selling some of his
    rental properties and he probably had 10
    mineral properties left and eight
    launder mats and a tanning salon in a
    car wash
    okay oh and and two check cashing
    businesses sorry
    and we had and so the one that had the
    car wash also check cash checks
    and one of the other laundromats cash
    checks as well so we had check cashing
    it within a laundromat and
    what else you got going on in that back
    pocket over there it’s hard to keep
    track of
    uh yeah when you really think about it
    it’s like it just grows
    yeah i’m kind of curious and maybe you
    don’t really even know and that’s
    totally fine but i’m just kind of
    curious i mean you mentioned like
    he he didn’t really have a ton of
    capital at least starting out
    right and i know he he used how is he
    how is he acute i mean when you say like
    he doesn’t have a lot of capital
    which i think a lot of people can relate
    with right and then you say
    oh he owns six laundromats no seven no
    eight oh and a tanning salon
    oh and two check cashing oh and a car
    wash oh and rental properties
    oh and you know like so you say all that
    right and
    i think a lot of people are like okay
    well like how did he do that
    right like how in the world i mean
    obviously he was hustling
    obviously he was leveraging everything
    you know that he could and obviously he
    was putting a lot of time and effort
    into it
    i mean you mentioned like hey he was all
    over the place he was there for the big
    stuff but maybe not for some of the
    smaller stuff
    and you know that’s kind of the nature
    of like hey if you want to be successful
    you got to put
    100 110 into it right but i don’t know i
    mean do you have any insight into like
    yeah so the first thing is i think he
    probably he probably mortgaged the house
    three times in total i’d imagine you
    know that’s a big one
    um but but i’ll tell you i’ll tell you
    what did it
    there’s a couple big factors one the
    dude the dude can make a deal like
    nobody else
    i mean he just he just it’s a lot of
    years of experience a lot of doing the
    wrong thing but also
    just understanding a lot of people don’t
    realize they have the upper hand
    in a negotiation they’re too passionate
    about it so they’ll con
    they’ll consign to something they don’t
    want or that’s not that you know that’s
    not their perfect um
    that’s not the perfect ordeal so a lot
    of times you know he always told me when
    i was a kid
    and i wanted to go buy a new bike you
    know from somebody he said
    don’t be don’t want that bike so bad
    that you can’t walk away
    if if he won’t come down on his price
    okay
    and he took that into his business you
    know i sometimes it drives me nuts
    because he’s so stingy
    but unless the deal’s perfect he won’t
    he won’t get into it so that’s the first
    thing
    the second thing was we caught the
    people who owned the laundromats we
    caught them
    at the at the very end and even though
    we’re buying the real estate
    um they knew their business was not
    worth anything
    and so basically all we were purchasing
    was a property and maybe a little bit of
    cash to say
    here’s a good faith you know to say we
    appreciate you working with us
    never used a realtor for any of these um
    which is another thing
    you can negotiate so much better if you
    don’t have a realtor um and no offense
    to realtors and some people need them
    but um yeah
    yeah yeah i know that’s what you’re
    where you come i’m totally kidding
    but he was a realtor so he knew all that
    you know he knew all the legal jargon
    um and that was never a big issue but
    what it does is it
    it allows it allows us to negotiate much
    better and not
    have an intermediary in that whole
    process and you can be a little more
    creative than
    you can with most realtors right like
    there’s not going to be too many
    realtors that are going to find
    a farmer with land and say hey let’s do
    a two-third one-third split
    i’ll build like that kind of thing
    because the realtor
    doesn’t get paid like that right like
    they to they want exactly
    they want a traditional kind of
    transaction generally speaking unless
    you’re
    exactly good realtor so you can be a
    little more creative you can
    you know you can wheel and deal a little
    bit more and you can negotiate the way
    you want to negotiate if you’re putting
    it in the realtors hands
    then you know you better have a realtor
    who’s a really good negotiator
    too right at the same point right and so
    we bought on uh i know he bought stuff
    on contract
    a lot of stuff he bought on contract um
    you know which helps you don’t leverage
    a bunch
    but we’re also in a small town where uh
    his banker was the person he went to
    high school with
    um and in a small town you know
    it’s funny because i see so many people
    struggling with their banks i saw
    someone you know say they had to pay
    they had to pay to have their cash taken
    i mean and i like that is the stupidest
    thing i’ve ever heard of you know i
    you know that before we threatened to
    pull our accounts from the bank they’re
    like whoa
    whoa you know we’ll take care of this
    for you so that’s another that’s another
    thing
    the banks would never let us over um
    overextend ourselves
    but they knew what we were doing and
    they knew that
    for the most part we were borrowing on
    property that was probably worth
    that was worth more so they’re like you
    know what’s yeah sure
    you take that you got a good down
    payment you’ve got a good business
    history my dad’s always had good credit
    uh good business history you you tandem
    that with buying some stuff on contract
    building capital and all your other
    stuff and we always borrow you know we
    always borrowed against everything else
    that’s just what you did but i think
    what really
    i mean what really uh set it all in
    motion was um
    he did have he did have equity in
    property
    and so you know even if it was if it was
    a 40 000
    house you know what i mean he still had
    equity in that and at any point
    you get to a point when i think the bank
    just realizes okay i can just take
    everything this guy owns
    you know what i mean it will be fine and
    so he bought a lot on contract but most
    of it
    most of it came down to we never paid
    for anybody’s physical business
    we always flipped it and uh my dad just
    knew how knew the art of the deal i mean
    he knew how to negotiate the deal
    and i tell you what he yeah he’s good
    i mean i’ve watched him go into a
    conversation and i go out like
    you fly dog you sly dog so i know in the
    beginning we bought a lot on contract or
    you just got creative yeah you traded a
    small track to land you know guys
    you know there’s a lot of tax advantages
    the trading that you know trading that
    way
    he’s very good with that um so we traded
    you know we trade properties we buy on
    contract
    uh and then just fight and dig and you
    know and a lot of this the reason he
    still had a farm but he never
    he could never pay himself in any of
    this in his mind the laundry rats were
    just build equity
    we’re just we’re just the pride and the
    end game was the own property own
    property yeah
    and then i’ll be i’ll sell it all right
    i’ll sell my property i can retire on
    that that was the end gate
    i mean so you know he didn’t make a dime
    but he was still at the car wash at one
    o’clock in the morning fixing a
    hydraulic line
    you know what i mean or you know this
    this and that so uh never paid himself
    in that that process to begin with
    i mean my dad not to jump forward my dad
    never had didn’t say for retirement i
    was
    probably 45 45 or 50. he never saved for
    retirement
    yeah well and you know there’s something
    to be said for having cash flowing
    businesses
    that in property that are your
    retirement right like
    oh absolutely yeah i mean that’s that’s
    what his savings was for retirement was
    all the stuff he was sitting on
    yeah yeah yeah real quick uh just
    everybody’s on the same page what do you
    mean by
    buying on contract uh so yeah so buying
    a property on contract so basically just
    saying
    um look i don’t a lot of times what i
    say
    you know what we’ll say is um i want to
    keep my cash flow open
    so i don’t want to tie up all my
    reserves uh you know i’ve negotiated
    that deal personally they
    you know i i keep my cash flow open in
    case something else comes
    comes up it’s a huge tax advantage for
    you if i can pay you over the next five
    years for this
    so you write up a simple contract well
    not so simple but
    uh you know you write up a contract that
    says um instead of buying
    instead of purchasing this you know
    borrowing to purchase this whole
    property
    or using my cash reserves for that um
    over the next five years i will pay you
    um i your you are loan you are giving me
    that one essentially so i will give you
    x amount of payments which equals what
    you’re asking for this property plus the
    six percent
    you know interest or or sometimes you
    can go eight percent if you know you can
    cover it
    you know a guy would say but but but
    most of the time we can get under six
    percent what the bank will give us
    you know you can say look four percent
    because because one they’re cutting
    there’s some tax advantages of that for
    them they’re not having to pay that lump
    sum
    and two now they’re garnishing interest
    on on something that you know they’d
    have to invest somewhere else to try to
    get interest on that so
    sometimes you can negotiate a lower
    interest rate and it’s and it’s backed
    by a hard asset that they already know
    too and exactly you know so i just
    wanted to real quick uh
    you might you you might know buying on
    contracts as
    seller financing it’s just another way
    of saying seller financing so just i
    want to make sure everybody’s on the
    same page so we all we all say
    you buy on contract that’s just that we
    always say around here and you know
    another thing that he did
    again art of the deal he approached some
    wealthy people in our town
    you know that again he’s friends with
    farmers real estate guys you know big
    moguls
    and um he never needed to borrow the
    money for a new project from them
    but he’d say look i’ve already got it
    financed the bank’s giving me six
    percent
    what are you making on the you know what
    are you making on the cash you have now
    then they’d be like
    oh half a percent okay i’ll give you
    i’ll give you three and a half percent
    you know what i mean if you can if you
    can buy my buy my loan and they’d be
    like bingo
    done so then all of a sudden you just
    you know again you just you’ve just
    taken your payments way down
    and now you’re paying somebody else off
    uh you know for a lot less interest so
    i know i know um i thought that was when
    i was younger and i heard that i’m like
    dude that’s brilliant
    yeah i’ve never thought about that so
    again you just fight you just fight
    everything you can and think okay how
    can i cut you know how can i cut this
    out how can i cut these people out
    and make it you know make it happen well
    i mean i’ve been taking notes
    and i just wrote down i don’t know eight
    or nine
    different things that he’s doing in
    order to
    accumulate these assets with little or
    or no money right and
    i just wanted to ask you that because i
    think a lot of i do a lot of coaching
    calls with people who
    are like i want to get into this
    business i don’t have a ton of money is
    it possible
    you know how can i do it and you know
    you’re only limited by
    the amount of work you’re willing to do
    and the amount of creativity you’re
    willing to
    conjure up and how to get this done
    right and there’s probably
    a hundred other small or big things that
    your dad did
    to you know make these deals happen yeah
    and going
    going back to that i don’t want to um
    you know he was able to cut some pretty
    massive expenses
    in these things by being the plumber and
    by being the electrician and by being a
    contractor
    he my dad used to build houses um he
    does all of his own renovations he
    he went to a trade school to be a
    mechanic so um
    you know it doesn’t seem like much but
    if i can cut out five thousand dollars
    out of a build out
    you know that’s five thousand dollars
    that i’m not extended on or if i can cut
    out ten thousand dollars so
    he would always leverage his um you know
    he’d always leverage his abilities as
    well
    skill set yeah yeah and his skill set
    and a lot of these towns we moved into
    um you know we could do that in uh it
    wasn’t a big deal to work side by side
    with the plumber
    uh which he went to high school with you
    know our license plumber he went to high
    school with you know to
    help him out you know and work with him
    and hey i’ll go buy the tank i’ll bring
    the tank here i’ll put the tank you know
    i’ll set the tank up i’ll buy the water
    here i’ll put the water heaters in you
    know that kind of stuff you just come
    and plumb it for me so it’s those kind
    of things that’s like
    you know um build ups can be very very
    expensive and every dollar you can cut
    out of those
    for small town guys it means the world
    i mean i mean it means from being like
    staying up at night if you can pay your
    bills to being like
    i know i can rest a little bit easier
    because i did some of this work and you
    know i know things are going to be okay
    yeah totally and i think a lot of people
    uh
    you know are very anti that
    and for for good reason in certain
    circumstances but i think when people
    are starting out
    and especially if you don’t have a whole
    lot of money to work with
    that’s the way to go right small town
    big town doesn’t matter like you need to
    put in
    some sweat equity you know you want to
    get to a point where you don’t need to
    do that maybe
    or maybe you don’t i don’t know it
    depends on the person but
    you know you might want to get to a
    point but a lot of times if you’re
    starting out especially if you don’t
    have money
    you need to figure out ways to do
    exactly that right reduce your expenses
    put more work in
    you know i hear a lot of high achievers
    which i really i
    i resonate with and i agree with but a
    lot of high achievers are like
    you know hey if you know you don’t want
    to do your own repairs in your
    laundromat because
    you know you can go use that time to go
    do something else
    maybe but maybe not you know if you’re
    starting off what’s your time worth yeah
    they say
    and your budget’s real squeezing you
    don’t have a lot of money to work with
    and you’re
    you know not making a whole lot of money
    in your laundromat yet well maybe you
    need to go get your
    your hands dirty a little bit and do
    some repairs until you get to the point
    where you can
    right or to hire that plumber and they
    say what’s your time worth
    yeah i always say not worth anything if
    i’m not making money that’s exactly
    my time’s not worth anything and you
    know in 2009 2010
    time’s not worth anything if you can’t
    make money if he’s going broke yeah yeah
    very true no it’s very true and and
    everybody operates differently that’s
    one thing i love
    is you get so many hard-headed opinions
    in this industry
    but then you make them understand that
    real estate in one place is so much
    different than real estate in another
    place and like oh maybe there’s
    different ways to operate maybe
    maybe there is different ways to do
    things and uh you know
    and and my the only reason our company
    is where it’s at is because of all the
    sweat equity my dad had to put in
    because it’s time for in some aspects
    wasn’t worth much
    but now his time’s worth more than
    anybody would ever pay for it because
    he’s been in florida the last two months
    fishing
    which is awesome yeah awesome well and
    that’s one of the cool things about this
    podcast right
    is like this business is such a simple
    business you know compared to
    so many other businesses out there right
    but
    there’s so many different ways that
    people approach the laundromat business
    that i’ve i’ve been blown away by the
    diversity of the ways that people
    approach and run their businesses so
    it’s been really cool for me to hear
    stories you know like like yours and
    your dad wait i mean we haven’t even
    gotten to you yet we’re
    gonna get into you man it’s even worse
    well let’s jump into it i mean okay 2018
    or so you got 800 mats and a thousand
    other businesses so
    what’s what’s going on here now when you
    enter the picture i’m ready to um so
    so um both uh the the
    that live 10 years in puerto rico that i
    spent time with down there we were both
    working at this church
    and um it was very unhealthy um
    for those of you working church may have
    experienced things like that i know you
    got a similar background
    i was a youth minister there and and um
    things were just not very healthy and
    and both of us were ready to get into
    business
    um we we you know we wanted to get in
    that his uh wife’s
    uncle uh was a big fuel mogul he had a
    big company that
    that sold fuel to gas stations and job
    sites and stuff like that
    he’s been recruiting him to be a
    salesman my dad’s been recruiting me to
    come work for the
    business so um i i you know um
    about six months before that my dad
    offered me a job again so hey look
    you can work at the church and you can
    work for me there’s enough time to do
    both
    so that i approached church said hey
    i’ll work for free for the church as
    long as i can go work for my dad
    and i didn’t really like that idea so
    anyway i i i quit fully at the church
    uh i told my dad i needed a week off to
    remodel my bathrooms with my wife she
    was begging me to remodel the bathroom
    yeah i got to take care of the wife
    first yeah oh yeah absolutely
    and i was terrible about that you know
    i’m seven years of marriage now and
    finally
    it’s like i feel like i’ve learned that
    more than anything through what i’m
    doing now but
    um so um he said well do you want to
    meet talk money
    what are you going to make you want to
    talk about the job details i said come
    on over
    so um it’s the day after i you know the
    day after i resigned from the church
    uh he sits in he sits in my he sits in
    my living room
    on my furniture that’s falling in
    because i was poor
    um and well poor’s the wrong way to put
    it i was very uh fiscally responsible so
    i wasn’t poor
    but i lived like i was poor because i
    was saying yeah i was saving every
    dollar in a street life man yeah
    yeah but but i was saying whatever
    dollar i made because i knew one day i
    had to buy a company
    i had to buy some kind of business so um
    so he sits there and says
    i’ll pay you and i’ll tell you the
    numbers he said i’ll pay you forty
    thousand dollars
    um he said he said you’ll probably work
    less than you did at the church 40 hours
    a week
    you know i just need you to repair my
    equipment is basically it
    i just need to drive around and repair
    my equipment at the time i drove a
    volkswagen jetta 2000 or 1999 volkswagen
    jetta with 270 thousand miles on it
    diesel sticks
    nice great car great car um
    he said you can drive your jet you can
    use your data you know you get from
    store to store
    and you just need to fix stuff and this
    is the this was this was the um
    one conversation that changed our whole
    relationship and i said how about this
    so i started i ought to immediately
    start negotiating with my dad right back
    at him yeah right back in him i said how
    about this
    how about you pay me 30 000 oh you’re
    going the wrong way man what’s happening
    and i said but but you buy and you buy a
    company vehicle
    a truck said i’m going to need a truck i
    mean i’m gonna be hauling plumbing
    around i’m gonna be on tools around
    parts around
    uh you know plywood and all this kind of
    stuff build
    said you buy a company truck you save
    that ten thousand dollars that you would
    have to pay into my social security
    and all that stuff and you save all that
    and you have a company asset
    you know what i mean so i i i framed it
    a way that makes sense to him
    yeah but but i said but i got to use it
    for personal use too
    he goes first time has ever said this to
    me in my life you know what that’s a
    good idea
    and we made a deal right there i didn’t
    make anything my wife was working at the
    time so no big deal no no kids
    uh i knew i could afford it um it was it
    was a paid
    it’s still a pay decrease actually the
    first thing 40 000 was a pay decrease
    from what i was i was making
    but i knew i could live with it because
    i’d be living a much happier life right
    so deal is done we shake hands i find a
    truck
    um with 100 000 miles on it you know 10
    grand you know i told them about you
    know buy a 1000
    truck to cover that you know what would
    have paid me a year
    um and we began he you know there’d be a
    repair
    we’d go fix it together he’d show me
    what to do and really that lasted about
    three days
    um before it’s kind of like i’m no
    whether it’s nice i’m gonna go fishing
    you just you know make sure things are
    on it well the way i’m wired
    um i you know everybody’s like oh
    logan’s new boss you know
    at the time we had we had 40 employees
    about at this time with 40 employees
    so everybody’s like oh logan’s about new
    boss logan’s the new boss i’d be like
    i’m not the new boss i’m just here to
    fix things don’t ask me these questions
    you know yeah yeah
    well soon uh and within six months um he
    gave me two pay raises
    and um and i was um
    basically uh he would call once a week
    and say
    you need anything from me they know
    things are going well you know and
    you know he’d go back fishing or hunting
    or doing whatever he did
    right and so so basically i just what i
    saw was
    here was my end game since i was 18
    years
    old was was to buy my father’s company i
    knew since i was 18 but i just kept
    having all these other things that i
    knew i want to do i knew one day i’m
    coming back i would buy like my dad’s
    company
    i just knew that’s what i was going to
    do so what i started seeing was he’s at
    the end of his run he’s 53 years old he
    always said he’s going to be retired by
    55 that’s still his goal when he turns
    55 this year
    so i was looking at his company going
    he’s at the end of his run he’s not
    putting a lot of
    um he’s not put a lot of heart and soul
    into the company structure
    his laundromats look great they’re clean
    everything’s functional
    but he’s not putting much into this as
    if he’s got 25 years left in the
    business
    and i’m going i’ve got 25 years left in
    this business
    if i want to retire the age i want to
    retire i said um
    i said that’s gonna change i started
    writing handbooks company policies
    uh manager handbooks um um you know
    operation procedures i started i started
    developing all this in my spare time
    sent to him and he’s going hey looks
    great you know they had company policy
    before they had a hand before
    i was just tidying all that up i was um
    i was training the managers hands on
    making sure they were treating their
    people correctly
    developing our web presence developing
    our google presence all the stuff that
    he just
    didn’t have time for started developing
    all that in the meantime fixing stuff
    and then in my in my gut i’m going we
    need to buy another laundry map you need
    to buy another laundry mat you know i’m
    just like i’m just hungry
    um you know just hungry for it and um
    you know i kind of know what his
    strategy was we were looking around we
    were looking around
    um we’re you know uh there’s one in a
    town 10 minutes away that i really
    wanted really really bad
    we both did like we wanted one of that
    town and we about
    didn’t walk away from the deal but she
    just went she thought she was on a gold
    mine it was worth nothing
    yeah we walked away from that one so um
    i’m i’m finally settled into the into
    the uh corporate life of my with my dad
    on you know running this business with
    him and
    um he’s pretty well like i mean one time
    he called me and apologized he said i’m
    sorry
    um you know i know we’re not really
    talking much and you’re basically
    running this thing
    you need anything from me i know man i’m
    loving it you know
    it’s it’s great i’m really enjoying it
    so um we scout a couple towns that we
    want to move into
    and we find a couple things we walk into
    one like okay we think this is the one
    and uh nothing really happens he doesn’t
    make any moves on it so i go in there
    i say hey uh so it was split in half
    half of it was laundry it used to be a
    full laundry he cut it in half and tried
    to
    rent out the other space it’s 4000
    square feet total
    2 000 and 2 000. big yeah
    yeah uh big to you guys
    yeah and i walk in i leave my phone
    number with the attendant
    my dad was actually coming up north
    we’re gonna go over some um some
    uh some business together and uh
    i get back and i’m working on a drain
    valve and an old maytag
    mfr and and i’m 10 minutes it’s 10
    minutes from when i handed my number
    and i got a phone call i don’t recognize
    this number
    get up hey i hear you’re interested in
    renting out this other part of this i
    said well i’m gonna i’m gonna
    i’m gonna cut to the chase but i’m not
    interested in that i wanna buy your
    laundry match
    he goes i’m so tired of this thing
    you know i just where are you at right
    now i’m in valpo
    i live in val i’ll be there i’ll be
    there in five minutes
    he comes there in five minutes not two
    minutes of talking to the guys he was 30
    some years old
    not not within two minutes of talking to
    the guy on site at
    my at my facility we drive to that town
    30 minutes away
    drive to that town we talked there
    within within 30 minutes we had a
    handshake agreement on friday i mean on
    a price and a deal done
    and uh closed in 30 days uh
    flipped it in five weeks so i’m a full
    demo
    me and my dad and two guys uh
    which was terrible i mean one o’clock in
    the morning
    or like up at five in the morning there
    until one o’clock in the morning for
    three weeks long days yeah
    um and you know gutted the whole place
    all the i sold
    i sold the equipment to a guy in quincy
    illinois uh he didn’t have enough cash
    because corona this was during um
    coronavirus so this was 2020. we bought
    this one
    um he didn’t have enough cash because he
    had night clubs that were shut down
    but um he had a 57 chevy bel air
    so i traded him or he gave me cash in a
    chevy 57 chevy bel air for a bunch of
    washing machines and dryers i just had
    to get it out of there i had to get it
    out of there
    my dad likes classic cars so basically i
    negotiated that whole deal
    um you know i negotiated the property
    negotiated i mean i worked on i did the
    permitting i did our subcontractors
    basically that whole project and he just
    showed up and did a little work and gave
    it some advice
    you know and signed the paperwork uh
    that’s awesome
    yeah and there was um i remember i mean
    i remember us both
    um you gotta forgive me
    my relationship my dad got real close i
    i remember getting
    i mean being in tears um it was like the
    day we you know we put the final
    sign on the wall and we were ready to
    open
    and i remember crying and hugging and
    saying you know another one done
    you know what i mean it was just like
    there’s so much pride and when you’re
    doing that hands-on work
    we enjoy that yeah you know part of me
    enjoys
    working that late at night and doing
    that kind of stuff and you know we could
    have paid somebody to do all that been
    closed for three months but you lose a
    lot of money in that process and we
    enjoyed doing that
    and the pride you feel after doing that
    i mean we’re talking brand new
    uh signs out front brand new parking lot
    brand new roof uh and then
    a complete i mean this drop ceiling down
    and go into the brick walls
    i mean and all new plumbing everything
    and the pride you feel after doing that
    and it’s like boom
    and then um we open up no no promos
    we’ve tried grand openings in the past
    you know and they never worked out
    so we just open okay you know you’re
    busy all right
    okay it’s like whoa we’re we’re busy
    whoa we are really busy and there was
    four uh three other laundromats
    and we and we made it all and we made an
    offer to all three of them actually
    with all three owners one one had two
    stores and he was like i’m not afraid of
    competition blah blah blah
    my water heaters don’t work and my
    customers don’t know any different and
    i’m like
    this guy’s this guy’s kind of scumbag
    yeah i gotta hear me saying this if you
    listen to this i doubt he does
    like i really don’t want his properties
    he’s really just kind of trashy the
    other guy was
    over a basement with concrete pillows
    that held the machines i’m like i don’t
    want this properly
    yeah that’s yeah oh they were they were
    both a mess
    um and this one was a mess too but it
    was it was i knew i could do something
    so all of a sudden it was like and we
    had projections for what this store
    could do
    um and we hit them within a month i mean
    in a month’s time we were at that
    projection
    yeah with no grand opening or anything
    just kind of opening the doors
    and that was another question i saw
    someone ask so
    i get a lot of phone calls and i talk to
    a lot of people in the industry like how
    long before you know they just opened
    their store in a week how long before
    you get profitable
    and one of the things you asked about um
    you know how do we get the money all
    this kind of stuff
    uh we’ve not opened a store yet that we
    have been we haven’t paid our
    notes in the first month from from that
    store um
    we’ve been immediately profitable um
    which is like i didn’t realize it’s
    unusual but for us
    what do you attribute that to um
    location
    i mean we always but you know um we
    almost always buy an existing laundry
    um and so there’s already clientele
    there and you know really i attribute it
    to
    um i attribute it to uh
    there’s that store is already making a
    decent amount of money
    um you know and i know what my my
    multiplier is if i can make it nicer
    and so almost always within the first
    month you know the notes come and if we
    can’t pay them
    you know from that store then i know we
    i mean we’re almost there so basically
    and we see profits in six months um
    which is i mean it’s just
    it’s incredible i mean i can you can’t i
    mean i can’t say how blessed we are to
    see that
    um so you know all of a sudden in a
    month’s time this hits his projections
    and this is the biggest this is the
    biggest
    most populated area we’ve ever been in
    and see dad and i realized when he
    when we were at six stores or i’m sorry
    when we were at eight stores
    we realized um the populated areas was
    where it was at you know what i mean we
    just you mean it’s like
    you never thought about that it’s like
    it went from i can make a living to i
    can
    one day have all my kids working for me
    and with me you know we can build
    something we can actually build
    something
    so we did that one and immediately it’s
    like oh my gosh this is doing real well
    holy cow look around us look at all the
    crap around us you know
    and we’re like oh let’s let’s hit it
    again so we closed like may 1st on that
    property
    opened june 5th on that property and i
    had somebody i had a lady call me
    um who want to put an atm in there i
    don’t do atms very often
    uh they’re just i’m 24 hours unattended
    at night and i don’t do atms they
    usually
    are problems but at this store the
    clientele needed an atm
    so i’ll tell you what she goes you have
    a really nice facility i’ve never seen
    anything like it can i put an atm in
    there and i said i don’t really do atms
    she goes you looking for other
    laundromats i said ah you know we’re
    always open love to make something
    happen you know again
    our you know our um reserves
    got flushed on this you know usually we
    finance the building
    and the equipment and then we pay cash
    for the build-outs we fork out all the
    cash for the build out we don’t borrow
    on the build out
    so our reserves were you know were
    depleted our operating note um you know
    was about depleted
    um because we we hold an operating note
    most time and
    so she says can i put you know looking
    for the laundromats i said i’ll tell you
    what
    you can find me another laundromat you
    can put an atm in this story and that
    store she calls me two days later
    i got someone on the phone she passes
    over to an old man
    uh yeah hello he says hello i said she
    says this guy’s looking to buy your
    laundromat
    you want to sell it yeah well let’s meet
    a week later my dad’s on
    vacation i go meet with the guy he goes
    well we’re just looking to leash right
    now a dollar a square foot
    what what i’ve never heard of a dollar
    square foot now we’re talking
    um a dollar a square foot not a month
    we’re talking
    a year a year a year
    because we had to put 20 grand in the
    parking lot 20 grand on the roof
    and i mean there’s you know it was like
    he’s basically saying if you put the
    improvements in i’ll give it to a dollar
    square foot a year
    you know what i mean holy cow yeah but
    still i said i’m not gonna
    i’m not gonna put i’m not gonna put the
    um investment in this without owning the
    property
    well we’re just looking to lease this
    the laundromat closed a year and a half
    um there’s a four thousand square foot
    building or 3200 square foot building
    closed a year and a half um and uh this
    was like in september this happened
    and uh he said well i’m looking at elise
    i said okay call me when you change your
    mind a week later he calls me
    all right here’s the price i want for it
    i’m like oh
    now i know i wanted to give it to me for
    a dollar square foot you know
    you know you wanted nothing for it yeah
    so we
    negotiated that down a little bit and um
    we first
    we purchased the property um and that
    was so that was
    in like four months after opening this
    other one because like when opportunity
    knocks man
    you gotta be the one to answer the door
    that’s right so i said dad you ready to
    do another one
    and he’s like i’m tired of working he
    says all the time
    i’m tired of working and i said he said
    but it looks good let’s do it
    so before and typically before we close
    our deals this is really important for
    us
    the longer your clothes the more
    clientele you lose so before we
    typically before we close the deal i’ve
    got everything arranged i’ve got my
    subcontractors walked through the
    building
    i’ve got submitted for permits i’ve got
    everything lined out i don’t wait until
    we close for that
    but i know a deal is going to happen i
    make sure everything’s taken care of
    ahead of time most of my deals are
    subject to permits
    so i i i say i don’t want to buy it
    until i have my permits
    um so you know i make the deal subject
    permits there
    so we did that one uh in five weeks no
    sorry that was i take that back that was
    three months it’s been closed for a year
    and a half i thought
    we can afford to take our time spend
    more time with our families and spend
    three months
    so the first month um i got it we gutted
    it down to the block
    um i didn’t pay i didn’t pay for any of
    that to be done i hired some local
    scrappers and there’s enough
    enough machines and copper left in there
    that that was their payday they stripped
    the whole thing they took everything to
    scrap yards stripped all the way down
    the block walls
    and their payday was the copper and the
    machines you know
    weren’t worth anything so the first
    month was completely free you didn’t
    have to pay for anything got down to
    block walls
    and i got a contractor and my my subs in
    there and uh
    you know again you cut the corners where
    you can dad and i get in there we cut
    the concrete out for new plumbing they
    need all new plum intellectuals
    we cut the concrete for that we haul
    that concrete away and dump it in our
    you know dump in our backyard not
    you know on a farm somewhere right um
    you know um and then you just make it
    happen boom one thing after another boom
    boom boom i said dad let’s try grand
    opening i see everybody on facebook
    doing grand openings let’s try it
    two weeks free wash and the reason i did
    that was i had two other comp
    two other people who were might have
    been in competition and it’s been closed
    for a year and a half so i didn’t have
    clientele
    let’s just slam people in here facebook
    ads
    giant banner open for you know we’re
    free wash two weeks
    um never could we have been prepared for
    what happened
    um our grand opening averaged 20 turns a
    day
    20 turns a day i mean i’m telling you
    [Music]
    and obviously it’s all free yeah right i
    mean i i was like
    um i mean i i was blown away
    um i mean we were emptying our dryers
    because you saw to pay for your dryers
    we were emptying those things non-stop
    because they were just filling to the
    brim and um yeah so so the first week i
    take that back first week was 10 turns a
    day second week was 20 times a day
    the two weeks because i mean and people
    and never my life have i heard anybody
    complain that we didn’t give the dry
    away for free as well
    i can’t give everything away come on
    yeah so so i was in and this is 24 hours
    mind you we were doing this
    free wash 24 hours that’s why we were
    able to hit 20 turns a day you know
    it was just packed in there i mean slam
    pack and so we just opened that february
    1st that was february 1st
    of this year so we’ve been open a month
    a month and a half
    and we’re again we’ve already we’ve hit
    our projections uh on that store
    um and um uh i’m trying to buy another
    one in that town right now i’m getting
    ready to make an offer on one in that
    same town because
    it just that unfortunately it’s where
    michael jack it’s gary indiana where
    michael jackson’s from um and um
    when it’s gone downhill really bad uh
    unfortunately and they’re trying to
    rebuild the town and so it just needs
    nice facilities in there yeah so yeah
    trying to make something trying to make
    some more moves happen there and um
    and that has been the most challenging
    story by far but that brings you up to
    date
    um other than that i um i had a site
    review yesterday i’m trying to rebuild
    our wanted valpo actually trying to move
    the location there i got remediation to
    do because of the old dry cleaner there
    but yeah 10 laundromats um five
    urban five roll and
    um uh my dad’s been on vacation for the
    last two weeks
    of two months last two months yeah
    that’s awesome
    well real quick about the grand opening
    i mean
    what’s the ver i mean i know it’s still
    pretty early what’s the verdict do you
    think
    it helped your i mean i know obviously
    you got a ton of people in there the
    first two weeks
    has it helped your business since then
    are you gonna do it next time
    i’m gonna do it differently next time uh
    i’ll tell you that right now
    um because um i think it hurt
    my unpreparedness hurt us um
    we were so busy that story got so dirty
    so quickly
    and our i mean our our um our business
    model is based around cleanliness that’s
    what’s made us successful
    yeah um and that’s what made everybody
    successful is cleanliness
    um and it was embarrassing some mornings
    to walk in there
    um you know none of my 20 i i all of
    them are 24 hours now all 10 or 24 hours
    and i’m and i’m not attended from 6 p.m
    to
    7 a.m i have no attendant there and
    they operate great this one i’m actually
    uh heading back there tonight at six at
    six o’clock to train
    to train a night attendant uh myself
    because i’ve over extended my my
    managers over at that store
    and so i’m going over there to train
    them tonight uh because it’s just been
    problem after problem there they’re so
    busy it gets so dirty
    and at my other stores
    my clientele is different and they take
    care of their store they pick up their
    dryer sheets
    you know they take a paper towel and
    wipe up their soap when they pick up
    their dryer sheets
    how’d you get that to happen man that
    never happens because
    because i’m i’m semi roll semi-roll
    still and it’s just good old i mean
    indiana people are just good old home
    folks you know what i mean and they’re
    just nice people
    and they feel you know they have
    hoosiers yeah they apologize if you know
    if uh they spill a little bit of water
    on the floor yeah i mean i mean hoosiers
    are great people
    so they you know they’ll get dirty on a
    busy weekend totally yeah but but this
    one i’m i mean i’m saying so bad that it
    looks like
    it looks like someone hasn’t been there
    in a week and so my grand opening may
    have you know i had somebody call me
    being dramatic but you know i’m going to
    call the town attorney and i’m gonna
    call the mayor and i’m gonna call the
    governor because
    this is not up to you know i’m gonna
    call the health department blah blah
    blah
    blah blah blah you know and it’s true i
    was embarrassed to walk in there as bad
    as it was
    and i went i can’t go unattended i i
    can’t do that that’s not gonna work
    so uh the numbers will work out so i’m
    actually gonna be
    that that’s all within the last couple
    weeks you know what i mean i’ve been
    i’ve been just real and trying to
    every every market is different yeah
    every market is different and what and
    the strategy i thought we had it nailed
    down
    i thought we had laundromats to a t then
    we moved into this town and it’s like
    yep this ain’t going to work you know we
    got to try something else
    and the crime that talent really really
    bad so even developing a position to
    protect your employees
    is very tough so i’ve got a pretty good
    idea we’ll see how it works
    wow i mean that’s it’s kind of it’s kind
    of cool to hear
    like just the amount of experience you
    guys have had and that you’re still
    evolving and you’re still you know
    learning and like you said every mark is
    different
    and so you know you you’re just gonna
    keep keep kind of tweaking things
    feeling things out
    until you find out what works for that
    market and
    and apply the lessons probably to your
    next i don’t know however many
    i’m kind of curious about what do you
    see as some of the big differences
    between
    you know small town rural laundromats
    and
    your kind of bigger town more urban
    areas obviously other than income you
    know you know i mean that’s just a huge
    factor there i mean it really is
    and that influences what you can do in
    that store how often you can put new
    equipment in there
    um how much you can pay people how long
    you can be attended
    um um and what else you need to produce
    to be able to make a store pay for you
    know
    be able to have an income that’s why i
    have check cashing at two locations
    now that is even taking a big downturn i
    never do that again but i already have
    all the equipment there
    is you know um the attendant you know
    the store is not busy so it doesn’t get
    really dirty in the rural areas
    so you can maximize what your what your
    attendant and your employees do
    at my at my big stores i could never do
    chick cashing because they’re cleaning
    all the time and helping customers
    that’s the other one they’d be sitting
    around twiddling their thumbs for a long
    time but they cash checks so
    there’s extra income for us keeps my
    employees occupied and i’m already
    paying the overhead for the employee
    there
    saying that’s why i got a car wash i
    have the space for it uh my there’s
    already somebody there who can attend it
    and can help that if there’s problems
    you know so i do that same with tanning
    i’ve already tanning beds over there
    i’ve already got the tenant on duty so
    you maximize that what i find in the
    rural areas is
    you’ve got to find more ways to maximize
    on your real estate and on your
    employees you know your overhead costs
    and since you know overhead costs don’t
    change much
    from being being uh 12 hours a day to 24
    hours a day
    you know other than keeping the lights
    on your overhead doesn’t really change
    so
    we started going 24 hours one more door
    lock ropes which i think someone just
    said
    a couple podcasts ago yeah um yeah so
    our door locks broke automatically locks
    broke we said i just leave it open
    and it’s like oh man people are really
    respectful at night let’s just leave it
    open
    so the other thing is i’m not i am not
    afraid to go 24 hours in rural areas
    because people are so much more
    respectful of all our equipment um you
    know the people are just nicer in rural
    areas i mean that’s just the nature of
    the game unfortunately where i’m where
    i’m at
    um so there’s a huge difference there um
    and you know i’ve looked at doing ups
    drop stores at those locations
    um you know there’s other there’s other
    things i’ve looked at you to maximize
    those locations
    you know even selling detergents over
    but i don’t want to deal with inventory
    but
    you know if i was only in rural areas
    i’d be selling detergents over the
    counter
    you know i would be selling hangers i’d
    be selling um you know
    bag the bag holders i sell bags but i’ll
    be selling bag holders um
    but the other thing and the reason that
    we weren’t afraid to get the dry
    cleaning was we knew the dry cleaning
    could pay for the attendance
    if i can pay for the if i can pay
    payroll just by what i make in dry
    cleaning
    you know i’m afraid to call it a zero
    you know zero game there
    yeah so yeah i think that’s really good
    i think you know i i get
    asked a lot by people in smaller towns
    like hey you know
    is it doable in smaller towns and and
    how do you make it work you know in a
    town that has
    2 000 people 5 000 people or whatever
    and i think that’s
    i think you hit the nail on the head
    right you’re always looking at ways to
    maximize your income
    you know so whether that’s adding a
    little storefront whether that’s adding
    a dry cleaner or tanning but whatever it
    is you know like you said your overhead
    is going to be
    what your overhead’s going to be so you
    know wring out as much
    as you can and go ahead go ahead no no
    go ahead yeah
    well i was gonna say that i always
    because i get a lot of calls from
    small-time
    small-time guys as well and uh you know
    what i always say is
    your business is gonna be better if you
    have an attendant find a way to pay for
    that attendant
    yeah not using your coin your coin
    income find a way to pay for that
    attendance yeah
    and uh you know and and i always
    recommend talk to your local dry cleaner
    they probably want more business
    you know you got somebody there let’s
    you know make it happen just just do
    that
    without much space you don’t need much
    space a hallway is all you need a little
    hallway or a little corner
    i mean hang a dry cleaning and lock it
    up and so it’s it’s those things that
    you can just you can use
    and you can say okay if i can just take
    care of payroll
    by doing something other than coin that
    means everything that comes in
    for my coin my coin op is going to be to
    pay
    for you know everything else yeah yeah
    looking at it genius love it
    what’s i mean do you what’s your do you
    have like a goal
    like what you’re what you want to do
    i mean it sounds like you’re building an
    empire out there my goal my goal is um
    and they better watch out my goal is um
    to
    if luke wilford’s gonna try to own every
    laundromat in the world and i’m going to
    own half
    so he can and so we’re going to be
    battling now oh yeah like it’s like a
    big
    a game of risk
    i hate risk i’m more of a monopoly guy
    i’m going to hole up in australia and
    see if you can penetrate my
    you know um i love what luke’s doing
    i’ve talked to luke once i can’t wait to
    meet the guy uh
    love his faith love his fa the way he
    treats his family love the way he treats
    his employees love the way he does
    business
    great dude um my goal
    one of my goals to be with my family
    more um my goal is to retire at 45
    um and when i say when i say retire what
    i mean is not
    have to be actively involved in
    something you want your kids running the
    business so you can be fishing for two
    months
    or somebody else you know somebody else
    i trust yeah i want to
    i want to be retired my dad was always
    55 so i want to beat him by 10 years
    yeah that’s what i’m talking about but i
    also want i also want something that
    might
    that my kids don’t feel pressure to get
    involved in
    um but there’s the opportunity for each
    one of my and i want to have a big
    family that each one of my kids can have
    a hand in
    if they want to be in uh five i want
    five kids
    okay my wife doesn’t want that video but
    we’ll see what happens just get it
    get another wife tell her hey if you
    don’t want more i’m going to add another
    wife
    don’t tell her that i’m just kidding
    we’ll probably end up adopting if she
    doesn’t want to have another kid but
    she’s a champ so
    um but really my goals um
    from a young from a young from a young
    adulthood um
    the moment i stepped foot in puerto rico
    i saw a need that i
    of a lifestyle that i really enjoyed and
    my real my real goals are more
    philanthropic than they are
    than they are business-minded um i i
    love
    i love philanthropy i love um helping
    people
    biblically speaking god said he owns
    owns a cattle on a thousand hills
    and um and i think what what the bible
    really speaks to
    is um god puts other people in care of
    those cattle
    so i want to own as many cattle as i can
    so that he can call him when he needs to
    to give to organizations that need that
    help
    um you know because there’s so many
    passionate people and and non-profits
    fire departments and children’s homes
    and you know
    uh orphanages um you know even even even
    outside mission organizations uh and
    third world countries
    that i’ve been in contact with um you
    know who are just like me if i just have
    the resources they’re so passionate
    they’re very they do a great job they
    just need resources and i want to be the
    person to be able to step in with
    resources to make something happen
    and my real end goal is to be able to
    build a build a separate camp in puerto
    rico
    i’ve got a property uh there i’ve been
    watching forever
    and my real goal is to actually put a
    couple laundry mats in puerto rico
    um and then build uh and build a um and
    build a
    summer camp there but but sky’s the
    limit i i i i don’t have a number in
    mind i take the opportunities
    as they come uh just i just chase after
    them and you know i want to be ready for
    any opportunity that hits and
    i’ll build as many as like as many as i
    can i’m trying to set up the company
    right now in a way that
    um that um is not hindered by our growth
    but that is excelled by our growth so
    trying to make sure we’re in a place to
    do that
    that’s awesome i love that and i love uh
    i don’t know i just i love the
    philanthropy goal and
    you know just thinking a little bit
    outside of the business right and using
    the the businesses as the tool to
    to build the life that you want to build
    right for you for your family and for
    communities right whether that’s here
    you know in indiana or
    in puerto rico or wherever that might be
    so i love i love that and i love
    i don’t know i just i like thinking of
    my businesses as as
    a path for me to build out what i
    what i’m my real goals right my my real
    ambitions and
    yeah and so i like that you’re thinking
    that way i wanted to be an extension of
    my lifestyle and what’s you know what
    you know
    and and when the rubber meets the road
    you
    you can’t sacrifice the business for
    other things but i told my wife i said
    basically what i want to do at 45 is i
    want to start a new career she rolled
    her eyes at me she hates the things i
    say sometimes
    at 45 i want to start another career and
    i want to be a philanthropic one i don’t
    care if i’m
    uh you know i i want to be the head of
    an organization or i want to build
    my own non-profit i want to do something
    else that i can take the resources
    from what i’m currently doing in my
    investments and be able to funnel that
    without
    without without demolishing what i’m
    already you know what i’ve built up
    and take what my dad is uh my dad is a
    huge a huge giver as well he has been in
    his personal life and his business life
    and i want to extend that my dad’s work
    i feel um i feel like i’ve cheated the
    system a little bit in some ways
    um and you know it’s like i want to be
    able to be an extension of what my
    dad’s generosity as well yeah well i
    don’t i don’t think it’s cheating the
    system i think it’s
    you know standing on the shoulders of
    giants right it’s like yeah you know
    that whole
    yeah that whole thing right and you can
    take it to even another level like
    your dad laid an awesome foundation
    for you and for you know that business
    but
    you know there’s more to go like the
    sky’s the limit like you said so
    love it man well i want to take a couple
    seconds to get down to business
    and talk a little bit about your actual
    some some of the details about your
    businesses
    that’s cool with you absolutely okay
    well
    we know you are in indiana right
    can you give me like an idea of like how
    many
    square miles are your laundromats within
    how far apart are they from the
    northwest to the southeast
    uh it’s kind of where my quadrants are
    like um
    it takes me two hours drive time that’s
    highways all highways basically
    so um so basically i’m at a radius of i
    think um
    50 miles maybe okay if i go to the
    center point radius of 50 miles
    uh i used to be able to get if i did
    like if i did like a 30 minute repair at
    every store
    a day i could get every store in a day i
    can in like a 10-hour day you know i
    mean it’s like
    bouncing around you know right um but um
    but i split up in a region so then my
    north my north which in my urban region
    those are all within um basically 10
    miles
    and then my south those are all real
    spread out they’re all within a half
    hour
    you know or um if you go to the if you
    go like the center one of those they’re
    within a half hour of each other two
    that are ten minutes away two that are
    ten minutes or twenty minutes away and
    then
    two that are 30 minutes away yeah
    they’re kind of you know kind of split
    up into two different zones
    okay cool that’s pretty good i mean it’s
    enough distance especially with some of
    the smaller town ones like they
    obviously can’t be too close together
    because right you know there’s not
    enough people for that so
    yeah my my laundromats pulled from a lot
    of smaller smaller
    those the the town of 3000 is big
    compared to all the 500 and 400 towns
    around it
    yeah right yeah so and you guys right
    now you’re at
    ten laundromats but looking maybe to add
    some more
    yeah i’m always i’ve got an accepted
    offer on a new
    building that i’m trying to build out on
    but the city i’m in is very difficult
    and it’s to replace the current one
    that’s got some contamination from the
    old dry cleaner
    so that’s part of my tin that i already
    have i’m trying to rebuild and then
    um there are a couple locations i’m
    currently scouting and i’m in contact
    with owners there to try to keep
    building that up
    we’re just at a place in our company
    where we can we can see some serious
    growth
    yeah exciting about that yeah yeah
    and so okay so you’ve you’ve kind of
    been on the periphery of the
    of the business for like 18 years or
    something right
    yeah yeah but yeah since 2003 i’ve been
    i’ve been working i’ve been
    stripping paint off of floors when i
    feel like that was a bad idea
    and yeah yeah i remember pressure
    washington the car wash at one o’clock
    in the morning when i was like 13 years
    old
    freezing cold oh yeah fun
    good memories but you’ve been you’ve
    been full-on in it since about 2018 or
    so so
    three years or so yeah three years it
    feels like a lifetime already
    yeah i bet i mean you’ve gone you’ve
    done a lot in those three years so
    um all right what what does it cost to
    do do laundry in indiana
    yeah we we um we we try to stick to a
    very mcdonald’s style of business
    whereas you walk into our facility and
    you know it’s a ladybug
    um which by the way i didn’t i didn’t
    elaborate on that sorry to
    backtrack uh my sister is the one who
    named ladybug
    um when she was like 13 or 14 or 14 or
    15.
    my dad said the motto needs to be we get
    the brown out
    and my sister’s like how about we get
    the spots out ladybug
    so we became ladybug cleaners so um our
    our our thing is always it’s probably
    better than we get the brown out
    wow well it does have a nice ring to it
    you know it does yeah
    so um so we try to make it where our
    facilities you know the floors are the
    same the walls are the same signs the
    same machines are the same
    we want it to be branded with that going
    we only we only carry three sizes of
    machines
    uh washing machines and one size of
    dryers um
    what sizes do you do so i do 20s
    i do 40s and i do 60s okay i’m second
    guessing maybe going higher and that
    carrying a fourth size of 80 or 90
    now that i’m moving into some bigger
    area areas yeah again you just
    because we were on the soft mount model
    with 20s you know
    because it’s like they were getting so
    little turns per day
    for half the price heck yeah yeah i mean
    i’m going soft mount
    yeah so 20s uh 40s and 60s uh
    20s are three three dollars or 325 um
    well 275 3 or 325 depending on
    where i’m at my roll areas three 275
    my semi-urban r3 in my urban areas
    are 325. um
    and my 40s and uh 60s are the same
    everywhere
    40s are five dollars uh 60s are 750.
    cool yeah then my dryers i’ve got a
    couple locations that have different
    sizes but i moved to a single size
    uh because i realized my biggest ones
    were ones being used and not my small
    ones
    um people would be waiting on the big
    ones i said i with the space i have and
    the capacity i’m running i need to just
    do all big stuff
    so my i’ve got um i always do the
    biggest size
    of a stack dryer uh which is 45 or 50
    depending on your manufacturer
    right yeah five minutes a quarter five
    minutes a quarter
    yeah wow awesome i mean those
    yeah those are good those are good solid
    midwest prices right there
    oh yeah i like that was like what’s that
    compared to the west coast
    that yeah yeah no dude the west coast is
    cheaper man
    that’s what i thought i thought i’m like
    man i don’t want to move out there it’s
    crazy
    when i started doing the podcast i
    hadn’t really talked to a ton of people
    in the midwest
    and they’re like yeah we’re charging
    like 14 i’m like
    what holy cow man we gotta have like a
    thousand pound washer to charge for
    that’s what you call a shirt four
    quarters you know when you’re stacking
    yeah
    yeah that’s a lot of quarters uh are
    are you running them well before i ask
    that what
    can you give me i mean i’m sure it
    varies super widely
    but can you give me like ballparks of
    like turns per day what kind of turns
    per day are you doing in these
    different mats or maybe like a rural
    versus an urban
    i don’t know how they break down but
    like right um i really wish i could um
    we could go back in time and redo it
    because the first laundry mats we put up
    we had six
    high capacity which was anywhere from 35
    to 60. we had like six in a store
    but then we had about 24 20 pounders
    right you know we replaced all the top
    loaders but we only put 20 pounders in
    we’re like that’s all people are going
    to use
    so the turns per day can be can on the
    stainless on those big machines
    what we call the stainless you know the
    stainless machines in those stores
    um turns per day can be four or five in
    those rural areas
    there’s only six of them you know what i
    mean in a town of three thousand people
    so i need to put some new i mean we’ve
    kind of reevaluated that and realized we
    need to put new stuff in there we just
    we got other adventures that we’re in
    right now so um
    but really i mean in my urban area in my
    town of 800 people
    um i’m not we’re not really making any
    money there anymore i hate to say it
    that way
    um but um we make we do make money there
    not like we used to uh because people
    people travel more than they used to
    they’re not afraid to go farther
    i i mean the the nearest walmart to us
    is a half hour away
    um you know so everybody has to travel
    anyway so some people just travel into
    their lawn
    and that store probably does it’s
    luckily does it you know does five turns
    a week
    or i you know or four turns a week you
    know it’s lucky you know i mean most of
    those machines just don’t get used
    right um whereas my other urban areas
    are probably two
    uh one and a half to two turns a day um
    on the bulk of my machines and then my
    busiest store
    uh is person um pushing eight turns uh
    eight turns a day
    on a weekend uh
    oh you’re there did i lose you yep nope
    you’re back okay
    yeah yeah so i was like i was like eight
    or nine turns a day on the weekend
    um and uh you know it depends on the day
    but you know
    average of four or five uh you know four
    or five three
    three to four four to five at my busiest
    store the most average three to two to
    three three to four turns a day
    yeah so they all do more of that
    exactly well and that goes back to that
    goes back to where the future is for us
    yeah um when i bought i’m actually not
    gonna be buying
    every part of my father’s company uh-oh
    you there again i can’t hear you okay if
    you can hear me good i don’t know if
    that’s my internet uh
    rule indiana you know how that goes yeah
    um so
    that goes back to i won’t be buying my
    whole my father’s full company out um
    i’m probably gonna have him sell
    individually several of the rural areas
    and i’m gonna stay locked into some of
    the urban areas
    yeah um you know that’s just where it’s
    at and and what’s your time worth
    well at this point uh you know when i
    was building out that other store
    the week the equipment came and what we
    do is we have them set the equipment
    and um we do the hookups for it i was in
    the middle of hookups and i get a call
    that
    one of my uh my hot water line under the
    concrete burst up i for the store
    i go pick up plumbing supplies drive two
    hours i was there until two in the
    morning
    running hot water lines you know over
    the ceiling to get to my machines
    and it’s like when you’re looking at the
    return you get at that store at that
    store i do as much in a month as i do at
    this other store in a week
    yeah so it’s just you know at that point
    you go okay
    i told dad i said you just go ahead and
    sell those and uh and that comes the
    other part
    uh i wish i wish i could be like a lot
    of other people my dad could just hand
    me things but
    uh he’s gonna bring an outside appraiser
    for all this whole this whole system and
    uh i got to buy them out at a fair price
    legitimate i don’t know what i want yeah
    i told them i won’t be buying those
    you know you have to make other
    arrangements for those smart just
    yeah just i mean yeah that’s the natural
    flow of business right you’ve scaled
    beyond those yeah and peter mayberry is
    the one uh
    when i heard his podcast we’ve been
    debating and i’m like but
    just do it stop second guessing yourself
    you know what i mean just just get you
    know just uh you scale the business well
    so just make make your time work more
    valuable
    yeah love it uh what’s your
    attended unattended hybrid
    what’s your what are you what are you
    doing yeah um
    the town of 800 people is actually the
    only laundromat it’s not open 24 hours
    um just because it’s not busy enough to
    be uh everywhere everywhere else
    the standard is nine a.m to six pm
    attended
    the rest of the hours unattended um
    my busy locations my two bus two of my
    busy locations are eight a.m
    to 6 p.m so i just opened an hour
    earlier and then my two busiest
    locations
    are 7am to 6pm and one of those busy
    locations is the one
    i’m i’m doing a night shift so i’m going
    to try a night shift because i looked at
    my i i pulled my reports from my
    machines and see what i’m doing and i’m
    watching the cameras and all that kind
    of stuff to see where my busy times are
    and when the store gets dirty i’m going
    to try to run a night shift from 6 p.m
    to 12 p to midnight
    and then 4 am to 8 am
    yeah i’ll have a four-hour gap which is
    which is the slowest part of the night
    and it’s not you know i could pay this
    to have someone to be there
    but they’ll just end up falling asleep
    or something and i’ll spyro you know
    what i mean so
    two four hour shifts um you know with
    two different people and that gives me
    more employees to pull from when i have
    issues
    so yeah i kind of like to be over
    stocked on employees
    it’s smart it’s always a good thing yeah
    yeah i’ve had i’ve had multiple times
    where i’ve had to go cover a shift
    because
    an employee was sick or whatever and i
    just didn’t have enough
    a big enough pool of employees to pull
    from right to get somebody else out
    there
    so and for the most part i like my i
    have so i have store managers at every
    store and i have two general managers
    east district and west district um
    and uh i i our stores are getting so
    close together they could share
    employees
    and i i always tell my managers when i
    hire them
    treat the store like it’s your own and
    make decisions like it’s your own
    and if you can’t get a hold of me to
    make a decision you make it
    and i said i won’t be mad at you for
    making the decision it was a bad one
    we’ll just go from there i give that i i
    trust them with a lot of decisions
    and one of those things they wanted to
    make a decision on was their employees
    their hometown will get employees so can
    we share employees i said
    here’s my advice no i said because when
    one employee quits three stores
    three stores hurt but you can make that
    decision well they made the decision to
    go ahead and share employees
    and and i fired one because they stole
    from us i caught them stealing from us
    and the second one
    um quit and so three stores were down
    two employees
    each and it was like oh i was like well
    not to say i told you so but uh so but
    you get you you trust your you trust
    your people to make those decisions and