$1M Invested to Start a Laundromat (Was It Worth It?)

Brian started this Ultra Cool laundromat laundry genius when he got laid off from Microsoft it was crazy 95 of the laundromats are successful what I wanted to do was get cash flow positive if you open a laundromat and you're considering a pickup and delivery go slow they can spin up to 450 G's so I save money on water it's a credit card if you choose a value you put your credit card in there it's gonna spit out a little card work hard only there's no coins at all no coins at all like once you invest in the machines as long as they're turning you're making money in this episode you're going to learn what it takes to start a laundromat and the key factors that Brian contributes to his amazing success which you can actually use in any business wow check this out I found some cash find out how to make all this all right Brian I'm excited to share your story on your business here so why don't we start off with when and why you got into the laundromat industry yeah why uh actually right before covet I got laid off from my job in Corporate America and did some soul searching and decided ultimately I wanted to be an entrepreneur take things into my own hands awesome so that created an opportunity but why do a laundromat business like who gave you the idea was it your research yeah it was random I heard about it on a podcast a long time before they're great businesses right and that just popped into my head and I was working with a business coach and we explored some opportunities and you really understand that they can be really really good businesses so I looked around and saw a gap in the area for a modern laundromat and figured that I might as well give a shot at it how many machines do you have here total this is a big place yeah uh four thousand square foot store 38 washers four different sizes and 32 dryers because we did interviews check out those as well that was smaller than this so I'm really excited to go through and understand how you operate this let's talk about the startup costs right like what did it cost to get this thing going and how did you finance it yeah it was a little little over a million dollars fortunately the folks that sell the machines are happy to finance the machines and sometimes part of the construction costs so about 75 of it I did that way the other 25 percent was I self-funded by using the rollover for business startups program that brought money from my IRA into a special purpose 401K that funded the business okay where can people find more about that I know there's probably more comp you know more steps to understanding it you can search for rollover for business startups on Google or go to a company called Guidance Financial that's the company I use that they're specialists in setting these things up for people that guide you through the whole process and make it super easy well let's go inside because I want to talk about the factors that you looked at when choosing this particular location yeah so tell us what's important to highlight about that Brian yeah so what I wanted this business to do was be a self-sufficient as a self-service laundromat right we can do full service and all that stuff but for a self-service laundromat what you're looking for is a high propensity of renters in the area like that that is the number one thing then when it comes down to looking for your laundromat location and why I love this location so much is I'm fortunate to have a standalone building right I was able to brand that entirely my own do it my way right I have tons of parking right up front on that stuff and I'm right here on a major arterio that people are passing by like all the time I had people during construction once we put the sign up coming in to say when are you going to open when are you going to open before we did a lick of marketing or anything else so how does that come about though I mean did you sit on Google and did your own research or how does one get that into information to make the right location decision so your commercial real estate broker has all the information that you'll need and all that stuff yeah so they look at traffic counts demographics I am you have seven pages of demographic information on this this location that helped us choose it it was the right one so do you lease the building or did you purchase it I do lease the building tried to purchase it but they weren't interested in it and uh so we leased it nice 15 year lease it was two five year options yeah with the amount of money you put in these places right you need to have a long lease like 10 years options is the minimum you know you can't up and move a bunch of a bunch of laundry machines right very simply to another location so long leaves was critical let's talk about how many of these machines you have and for someone starting a laundromat what's important about picking the right machine size anything about that yeah so I have 38 washers and four different sizes biggest one holds eight loads eight loads yeah and all my dryers hold five loads there's 32 of those on there like I built from the ground up so I had no other choice from going new like the things that were important to me were the distributor honestly they're going to be you know not your business partner but you're going to talk to no one else more than them because when your machines need to be serviced on a warranty those are the folks you're calling so service for the machines it's not in-house they do the servicing as well yeah if it breaks down right now everything's under warranty to do the services I'm not mechanically inclined so I'd probably continue that there's stuff that we do in general like deep cleaning and stuff on machines like I can take the front off of one of these and fix a drain but I still rely on them for the vast majority of stuff but in terms of choosing machines I think utilities like how much water are they using like one of your biggest costs is going to be utilities so the more energy efficient your machines can be on new machines the better off you're going to be on your overall cost structure right and then there's other stuff there's varying degrees of technology these machines are all called Soft Mount machines they're on shock absorbers the benefit of those oh wow they can spin up to 450 G's so when you pull something out of here it's actually pretty dry so I save money on water my customers save money on the dryers because where you might have spent 35 40 minutes drying before all right this dry time is 25 minutes on this stuff because they don't need to spend so much time do you find out all these details in the process of sitting down with the distributor and planning designing is that is that one of these things are talked about and sort of hey we can go with you know the shop or whatever you mentioned right because it'll save on the dryer or does that just experience so the Distributors are going to tell you this stuff okay but I validated it there's a couple of laundromat owner groups on Facebook where you know I sat there I learned I learned a ton but you also ask questions and you test what the manufacturers are telling you the first is what these owners experiences right have been on those machines like you said just that future alone causes a saving for your customer somewhere else yeah it's good for being good for my customers it's just awesome okay I want to take a peek in here I mean this is kind of your drop off yeah this is your attendance room this is where we fold all the laundry we take all the drop-off orders you know this is where we run the shop from okay you don't need a lot of space to do that right no I mean I wish I had more if I was to change one thing I would have allocated more space for this so we could get our drop-off business grow even more and not be so cramped how many people usually are operating here is it usually just one or two yeah so typically one on a weekday um two on a busy day on Sundays but usually it's really maybe one person in here and the other one is out there cleaning machines because that's core part of our value so what's what makes you stand apart as I said I remember we did an interview Los Angeles in Ferndale everyone offers a different level of service or experience what sets up laundry genius apart from your competitors um it's customer experience it's a modern customer experience I mean to this day people still walk in here and say wow right they have been in laundromat in years it's just different right we don't do quarters record only there's no coins at all no coins at all we'll trade your coin we get a lot of coins in that we trade because people okay you take a second oh yeah you got to give them bills you mean we're not going to turn you away because you brought quarters right but um we'll trade the quarters in give you a bill so you can go but the vast majority of our customers pay with credit card which is another one but then when you just look around the store like we are constantly cleaning like the soap dishes everything are always Immaculate and the other things that people appreciate is just the amount of room that they have to operate like our aisles are 10 and 11 feet wide so you're never going to bump into each other you can drive your car and go by good plan it's just light bright safe the entire front of the storage glass people can see it at night they feel safe when they're here so it's just like all that stuff and the customer experience plus just super friendly people our attendants are always here to help and that also helps maintain a safe environment in the store that's awesome I want to share with our audience about the services you offer what are the most profitable and really how you worked on the menu I would say menus right there on the wall so because there's quite a bit that you offer offer so walk us through the services here uh kind of what are the most profitable if you could care no we're like we're a full service laundry center right so that means you can come in and do your own laundry or have us do it for you the self-service business I'm saying probably is more profitable you know you have your customers are doing the labor and once you invest in the machines as long as they're training you're making money right then the full service side we do drop off right people bring their clothes in here and do them there and we also have a pickup and delivery business that we're that we're trying to grow trying to price it appropriately and the margins are different on the self-service side and because we're still growing they're probably not where I'm at but you know I'm comfortable with what we're doing and if we can get some volume then it'll feel a lot more a lot more comfortable doing the the full service stuff because it's it's a totally different practice right especially at pickup and delivery that's a logistics business I'm getting the stuff to and from the store right which is a lot of different than just handling everything right here yeah okay what's the best way to scale and grow a laundromat obviously you're limited by the size of the building right yep besides that fact how else do you grow and scale it I'd say number one is figure out what your value proposition is and religiously deliver on it so people will tell their friends but there's this whole opportunity because we are open from eight to nine on the weekends 99 on the weekdays from nine to the following morning these machines aren't running right so as I think about how I could really scale is what are the things I can do if I can get that pickup and delivery business going and do all the processing at night that's all these machines are running during more days and my payment on the machines is the same regardless are there aren't there like 24 7 laundromats too like you can walk in at 3am and do your own wash there are there are people that do that uh see how much more business you'd get between midnight I mean well it depends if you're in a larger City I mean there's guys that will tell you the stories that you know customers that come in also you're typically the only one that's open so you draw from a wide area right I just I don't want to have people in the store I don't want to get those calls in the middle of the night so I chose was to have kind of the the more traditional business operating hours how did you build brand awareness for laundry genius in the first opening days I mean I was fortunate with my location being right here on the major art chairs we branded the entire store and people were driving by and they came and had a good experience and they shared it online and told them friends okay we were just super fortunate we chose to go with a soft opening for a couple months where we weren't trying to drive demand but it came in It Happened people came and had a good experience you know we did start marketing a little bit later on but you know like so like the Awareness stuff really has been our customers telling our story that this is a great place to come do laundry all right how many employees do you have and how much do you pay in what's the structure look like typically yeah we have six employees so one manager and five attendants we try to start at 10 to 15 percent above minimum wage this is your base rate we also have a Monday incentive program where we take the tips from washer cold orders and we also have incentives for five star reviews and things like that so you know we had probably people last month that were making close to twenty dollars an hour with the incentive program on top of that yeah do you ask for reviews on that note or people just no I mean if you walk around you'll see that we have QR codes and things like that but you know we've never proactively got a fast we have a good volume most time people that want to share they share and you know that's fine so why start your own brand right because you can go and buy something that's already in operation existing but you started laundry genius there's no other locations but here not yet why why is that um I think when you have a brand that you can deliver on the values on it develops trust in our customers but from day one I think it enabled us to punch above our weight right when people came in here and they still do they're like where are the locations are you part of a national brand or something it's like no this is the first one it's there but when they see this stuff and we deliver on the experiences that we promise as part of our brand promise like I can't imagine any other way going without making up a brand that I could deliver on interesting so with what you know now in your current experience right how long has it been now since this is in operation uh 14 months 14 months so with what you know now Brian would you do anything different for your other location or you know for our viewers watching what are the pros of starting your own brand versus buying something existing what what can you share with experience the pros of the brand is literally it is what you want your expression to be it's not somebody else's expression you get to decide on everything in the store and how you want to deliver on it because it's just a little more work but honestly with resources out there like Fiverr and 99 designs and things like that you can go crowdsource a ton of great ideas from people that are expert in that area for a fairly affordable way so I it was a great way for me to take what was in my head but I didn't have the design skills to do that right and have a community and get all the best stuff back and bring it to my store awesome all right well let's check out the other side of the building because again you mentioned this high traffic Street really helps the business very much so what are your thoughts on this extra large washers cleaning so this pretty straightforward and simple yeah I mean we got all these people driving by sitting in the intersections like really want to figure out what are a few things that are different than other laundromats that we could highlight so put them up here that's awesome what is your biggest challenge right now as a business owner with the environment the economy what are you struggling with and how are you overcoming those things I think the biggest challenge is always people you know right now it's making sure we have enough and sometimes when you have enough it's making sure that you're delivering that consistent experience no matter what time of day right someone comes in the store we're always recruiting we try to document all our processes and expectations so at least we have something to go back to so you have a process yeah like it's just it's the only way to get any sort of scale to create life for me so I don't have to be here right and also because my manager a foundation to operate off of where the expectations are always always clearly set everybody gets trained the same way or at least we learn something and train them a little better the next time yeah but you know without those clear expectations I think it would be lot more difficult to deliver the customer experience and they all dressed the same right I noticed yeah I mean we have T-shirts right kind of like is there mandatory you have to wear them yeah as branding yeah I mean what we have to do is we have to be easy to spot within the store right so we have all right now they're light blue t-shirts some change colors every now and then but yeah it's really is the T-shirt other than that we want them to be comfortable and they're on their feet all the time so um as long as we're wearing the T-shirt customers can spot them we're good anything you want to highlight on this menu so that our audience can kind of rip off and duplicate a little bit about what they're doing yeah I would say over here is everything on the self-serve side and really what it says is what are the prices per machine for hot cold whatever type of stuff my advice here is don't be afraid to be more expensive than your competitors right that allows us to deliver this experience right of having people in the store all the time keeping it clean of having new machines that are well maintained so you know there's a laundromat on a mile on each side of me I'm definitely more expensive than them and I'm not going to compete with them on price yeah on the full service side um it's core it's funny we started off just doing Drop Off full service wash dry fold and I had a customer come in with a stack of laundry after a baseball tournament they've done they just didn't want to fold it so we have people that come in they just have us foldable laundry they've done we have others that I call it the college student special right they just take a bag we do the laundry we throw it in a bag and they take it home yeah but most of the people come in for the full service wash dry and fold and then there's a good mix of folks that bring in the special items like you know you can see kind of after the winter we do a lot of blankets and comforters for people so those special items are another place that people bring out because we have the big machines and they don't want to spend time here so they they give it to us to do it for them and we'll share about you the tech that you use here because it's all pretty sophisticated unlike laundromats what 30 even 10 years ago yeah it was funny there's the vast majority of laundromats out there are still coins yeah some are hybrid wow there's reasons why I chose to go card only on the marketing though let's talk about that what's your typical budget per month how do you spend it on what platforms and so on yeah I mean it ranges like from kind of 500 up to about 2 000 a month one to such they spread sometimes well yeah there's the core like just an agency managing our social account doing some ads and things like that most of the time pushing the full service stuff but I came across a company that does a geofence marketing I can serve ads up to people whether in other laundromats in the area and that's just a little more expensive and we're experimenting with that so that's what's Driven the higher costs recently you're still kind of like you said experimenting what brings in more of what doesn't do so well I mean 14 months in right you're still learning it's like yeah exactly the geolocation is the first time I've really spent on trying to drive self-serve I see stuff like looking with that outcome in mind how's it doing so far I mean are you I mean there's it's interesting that there's new there's new customers coming in we can prove that the thing that I hope that my card system will do a little bit better job with a new feature is I can give those people a code when they get that ad so they can plug it in the machine so I can do attribution all the way down the line but you know when you look at the patterns like there's definitely new people coming to the store I just don't know who they are right now and like how much they're spending if they're coming back in those things but you know software upgrades come into my card system in a month or so and that should enable that and load even better let's talk about the relationship uh with the distributor like what is their role and what can you highlight to our viewers on the importance of finding the right partner distributor slash and so on yeah I mean outside of your location probably nothing more important especially if you're going to build new in a lot of Industries Distributors are just people that sell you the things so you would think that the distributor is just selling the machines totally different in this world that's what I thought yeah no the guy that uh from cesco equipment Rich Boyd awesome guy he has built you know hundreds of laundromats so they actually helped me design the store they manage the entire construction process and everything that all the way up to the opening and then you know they're my ongoing support for servicing the machines and the warranties and things like that but you got to have a great distributor partner sounds like the process of building this out was pretty hands-off for you yeah and other than inputting on design stuff and things like that like I spend a lot of time doing construction like waiting for permits and twiddling my thumbs right so that you know I was like I'm a business guy so I tried to find business stuff to focus on during that time period why don't you show us where the hot water tanks are or kind of the equipment room yeah yeah the hot water tanks um fairly fairly check that out I mean how many do you have for what 30 plus machines uh two like we have two hot water heaters oh right now yeah two for all that I mean they're they're really really big but you know they're they're running on a recirculation pump so the hot water is constantly getting cycled through through the day so you're not you know when you come in you're not getting a bunch of cold water in the machine right before the hot um yeah but you know two machine two hot water vacuums kicking out them all day long buying used does that make sense oh for a lot of people it it does and you know it kind of one of it depends on what you want to offer in your store these machines last forever if they're properly maintained so you know there's probably if you look at me probably 10 years down the road I'll look at refreshing my machines just to get newer technology in here but those machines are going to have like another 10 5 10 15 years of life I mean you would be blown away with what some laundromat owners are still running on their machines because they're designed well in their workhorses but you know there's a thriving Market of people who will buy those seven ten year old machines and they'll bring them new to their store you'll see owners posting on those Facebook groups online that they're selling machines and there's a couple companies they're really they're back East mostly that specialize in selling used machines yeah when you started this location um what was your plan on recouping your initial investment can you share a little bit about that is it a do you get your money back in a year three years or how do you look at that as a business owner overall investment I never really thought about a lot about that what I wanted to do was get cash flow positive right and if I knew I was cash flow positive then I would be on the right path and delivering the return I needed to to live my life what kind of profit margins are you shooting for and what's the industry industry standard yeah the industry standard varies because you get a lot of different formats from unintended small large intended full serve all sorts of things like my goal in my head is a 20 margin and I'm not there yet in year one um but I think we're gonna get there okay 20 that's not bad yeah all right Blitz Time with Brian let's go through these questions really quick if you could go back in time and tell your younger self don't do this what would it be don't stay in one place forever I'm a local boy I wish when I was in Corporate America I would have taken the opportunity to go live in another city because you can always come back that's awesome okay if something happens to you what will happen to your business hopefully it'll keep running really well I have an awesome manager that knows how to run the place and then I have a lot of stuff documented for my life and she can decide if she wants to keep it or sell it okay can you tell us about the most bizarre business encounter if anything laundromats are an interesting place for a lot of stuff it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when so um you know we've had people relieve themselves right outside the store and we had to clean it up okay last question if aliens take over the world tomorrow how are you going to convince them to keep your business open and running if they're worried about making money as aliens I'm going to show them my numbers good what's important about the opening day that one should know whether it's the right marketing do you send out flyers two days before the doors open let's talk about that probably I say three things number one is your people right get your hiring in order and have your people ready at least for an attended laundromat I guess we're going to do number two think about how you want to have your operations done what do you want your people to do when they're working in the store what experience do you want to deliver and really outline those things so they know the expectations and we can you know no matter when you come in here you're going to get the same experience regardless of who's worth like when can we get in right and doing that right but then you know I focus on getting my website in up an order okay get your Google business profile up in order like that's a better investment of time than your website just how people are finding you and then figuring out what kind of marketing that I wanted to do is there did you do some kind of blast out a day or two before or um yeah well it was just my first laundromat right I mean so I didn't know what to expect I had to get my people trained up and all this stuff and we were still sorting stuff out so we knew that for at least a couple months we would just let things grow organically you know in a restaurant they call it a soft open yeah we just was fortunate with the reception you know people see good reviews online so they come in and the marketing we do spend the majority of it is focused on how do we drive demand for our drop-off and our pickup and delivery services wow that's pretty cool you guys keep watching because Brian's going to share more insights on how he continues to Market his business 14 months in a lot of supplies obviously you go through right any tips tricks and advice on where to get best supplies best pricing like what does it look like for you amazingly enough the best prices we've got now we buy most of our supplies Amazon yeah I mean I tried we had a specialized distributor to start and once we were looking at prices it was just like you know those where I can get the best prices on and they have great stuff so what you're basically saying a lot of the supplies you don't need to have a supply partner you can just literally go to Walmart Costco and it works yeah I mean for um I think for the general detergents and things like that I mean those are the places we go it's just crazy like but the purchasing power that they have they get such great prices you would see it it's not uncommon for laundromat owners to buy the products they use in the store vending stuff a little harder to find so like my single serve stuff and things like that so I buy most of that from a company called cleaner Supply online it's great they deliver within three days so it's all perfect okay awesome tell us more about the drop-off and delivery like when it comes to that experience I've never used that service myself so a lot of logistics going on but how do you maintain the client's happiness in that service yeah um don't lose our clothes like that's the that's the that's the number one thing happens we do our best I don't think we've lost anything that we couldn't find I think one time we had a piece get between orders when people weren't adhering to our processes but you know people want their stuff back they trust you with things of a lot of value to this they do right but then just consistency like they they expect you to be expert right so they expect you to their stuff to come back smelling great folded properly and all those things so if you deliver you deliver on that consistent experience where it's as good or better than they would get at home you should be fine yeah because and I noticed this trend you're always coming back to customer experience customer experience right yep um that's that's great I can't think of anything else more important than that yeah it's not what people expect from laundromats and um it's happening in other parts of the country it just wasn't happening here so we decided to give it a shot and the community around here we've been very well received from super important you're disrupting the market in a very positive way yes that's awesome how does a laundromat boner make their business Stand Out specifically on Yelp and Google any tips hacks tricks there that you can share spend your time on getting the right information there your hours answer questions and things like that upload your own photos and then you know you really rely on your customers but make sure that you're present on there on those reviews when you get a negative review right respond we don't contest it we're like basically we say you clearly didn't get the experience that was expected please follow up with us so we can we can make it right is it important for a laundromat business to have a website in 2022 and if so what kind of information is the most valuable to the customer on the website yeah I think so because when you look at the data we get back from the search engines and stuff like that is the number one action people take if it's not going to a map as they go to your website once they click on those things so the key things that customers are looking for they're looking for where you at when are you open what are your pricing like those are the core things and then we try to also show off our experience and pictures of the stores and things like that so people can see that we're not your typical laundromat that they're used to going to and why they should choose US versus others that are just a mile away on either side so if I don't have a million bucks or you know a good amount in my 401k but I want to get into this business what advice do you have for me where can I get started well so the million dollars like you said this is a bigger store than the ones you've been in right there's laundromats of all shapes and sizes with all different kind of recipes on how people want to do it one of the easier ways I mean you might go about it is find an existing laundromat that may have been run down and the owners are ready to retirely manage yourself yeah and you could you know you can usually buy that and sometimes you just need to rehab the place look at the machines what you need to do and then you know once you get a little bit under your feet trust me these machine manufacturers they will finance new machines if they think you can run your business well so that might be the the way I might go into it that way is look for a smaller format one that I could buy and Rehab so as a new customer I show up first time walk me through the process and also mention all the systems that you have in place here so if you're a self-served customer you're going to come over here this is a launderworks card system it's a stored value card system you can use credit Carter bills to load money on your laundry card that operates all the machines the washers the dryers and even is what you need to get into the into the bathroom it's a credit card if you choose a value you put your credit card in there it's going to spit out a little card oh seriously okay a lot of people will register their card that way if they lose it we can move the value over to another cart you can pay with a smartphone yeah we just recently added that and it's uh customers love that uh some of them do the more technology Advance they don't have to worry about remembering their card and another thing we found out they like is our dryers we price our dryers at five minutes at a time to give people lots of flexibility okay but that means for 25 minutes you're swiping it five times like the phone users found out that you can do 15 minutes in a shot so I have a couple people that switch their phone just so they can turn the dryers on faster they can sit for 15 minutes rather than you know whatever you can load it all at the front it's just like standing there and waiting waiting and they're like and then they're off and it saves them probably 35 seconds but you know it's 35 seconds they'd rather not stand there that's pretty cool is this part of the setup with the distributor the computer's name yeah everything is set up yeah they set up all the readers and things in the machine do all the programming and all that stuff all done by the distributor at the install so 14 months in as a laundromat business owner uh what is your typical day look like right now how many hours do you spend and what do you do exactly yeah um it's funny I I spend less and less time here in the laundromat like a lot of time is spent like how do I grow the business driving around scouting for new locations and things like that I am super fortunate that I have a great manager and a great team but inevitably stuff comes up you know so I come in here you know probably two or three times a week help out with processing orders maintenance really I just asked my manager and team like how how can I help because they know what they need to do and I just want to remove roadblocks and help them get their stuff done and have a good employee experience as well that's awesome any tips on finding employees like that that are awesome and stay with you for a while it seems like the ones that have stayed are the ones that were customers in the store so they know what the experience that we offer and they've watched our people and up that they know that it's not just standing behind the counter and trading money and things like that my people are on the floor most of the time um you know cleaning machines we have the cleanest soap dishes of anybody around here you do man I could I could almost see my face in the floor I mean I'm not joking guys make sure you check out the upflip Vlog for more real world advice from other business owners you will greatly benefit where do you see yourself five ten years from here how did you come to that yeah thinking and so on five years if we are not at like at least three stores maybe five by then like that's that's delicious yeah no I mean that's that's why I mean I by Nature want to grow it and that's where I think I can grow it to you for this phase and honestly I haven't really thought a ton past that because right now it's just like getting store number two is open it's hard to find real estate of the size and has all these attributes so you know that's the long term but I'm much more focused on how do I grow this place and then how do I find location number two to bring the customer experience to a different part of this area that's pretty cool well I didn't ask you earlier but I'm curious as a real estate agent myself here in Everett what is the lease payment for a building like this in this location oh wow I'm probably yeah no I'm thinking of probably paying like eight thousand dollars a month with the triple net gotcha on that so I think so maybe nine somewhere in there but definitely you know that's a big expense yeah yeah but you're looking for like Class C type of space like this was a Payless shoe store that was vacant like we gutted it and things like that and it's you know that's the that's the challenge at least in this area for something this size I'm competing with marijuana shops yeah most of the time yeah there's just not stuff popping up um that isn't newer because my business model really is I want to pay lower rent right I want to I want to manage that cost as much as I can you're looking for other locations right 14 months into the business how do you know it's the right time Brian and that you're not doing it too quickly and what else you can share on that I feel comfortable in how we operate and that I understand as much as I can understand that's part of it customers continually ask like we have people drive here from further distance than I would expect and you know my aspirations are there so I guess I would say I finally feel operationally comfortable that we could do that it's kind of your company basically yeah exactly guide book by which says 14 months go get no no no no no I say the only thing I would tell people is if you open a laundromat and you're considering pickup and delivery go slow I'm super slow on that because it is a logistics business it's totally totally different and it requires you know some investment to to Really turn around we're just fortunate that we use things like doordash and other partners to to run the trucks for us when we need them so right now you're hiring them but at some point you're going to do that in-house won't you yeah definitely I mean it's just um like a branded laundry however many it takes to service the area coming back to machines show us the POS and kind of yeah what it costs you on the monthly basis for the drop-off pickup service yeah so I use the point of sale from a company called cents they're um I've never heard of them before yeah they're they've been in the laundromat industry for 18 months they're really taking it by storm oh wow yeah it's been great for us cost me a couple hundred dollars a month for the software um we use this to manage all the whole entire process for a drop-off order so it takes away from the scale track the stages machine use all that stuff when you click on the end it notifies the customer via text message everything through this yeah and the cool things are the way sense works is they actually have an integration with doordash so if you drop your stuff off here and you're not I don't have the time to pick it up right then when you get the text message notification that your laundry is done there's a link in there that you can schedule a delivery from doordash to come and come and take it in there for you that's pretty cool on a side note you guys ever want to interview I look at them but you're so tall I know I'm gonna have a I have that effect on people how tall are you oh six seven or so yeah it used to be a lot taller but I'm old now you can play basketball NFL I played a small NBA NFL oh my gosh yeah no small college basketball a long long time now I'm a high school basketball official that's where my contribution to the game comes gotcha that's cool if you could go back Brian and start this business again would you do anything differently and if so what would that be a lot of people say it's crazy but I would get a bigger building wow yeah like these are already at the bigger you started too small is what you're saying I mean at 4 000 square feet we thought it was enough but um you know we could use a little room more room for storage but I would love to have more room in the back there for when the drop off and full service business really really starts going that we're not stacking it on top of everything so the advice that you want to give to our viewers most likely is don't think too small right I mean think bigger yeah I mean I understand what you're asking questions are and you think through like what the operations are to support your aspirations yes I never opened the laundromat before so I was relying on advice and you know the just even since covid the whole industry laundromats are doing a lot more full-service business so um you know that's just the dynamic that's changed so my next door will definitely have more room for a processing pickup and delivery orders all right good lesson learned foreign why do you think some I wouldn't say most but a lot of laundromats fail what one or two reason you think that happens well it's crazy 95 of the laundromats are successful 95. yeah I would say um probably two years one is if you start new you may have chosen a bad location and over invested in and the other one is you just don't take care of your store and let it just Decline and someone else comes in and either buys your store and takes it over you know for a song or they open up something nearby and the customers go the other direction got it so here's another thought of mine if you have three locations for a location that expansion can cause your customer service experience to start to fluctuate yep what do you have planned to make sure it's consistent uh it's funny it's it's what we do now right we've actually documented things religiously since day one and when we make changes right and that's just to orchestrate the work of six people on the same level but really honestly orchestrating that work at the expectations you want whether it's six people or 30 or three in one store or three stores it's all the same because it's one experience that you want to deliver to your customers then the other part is trying to find find great people that right are going to be patient with you right will you grow but also have aspirations to do more the more I can have the person managing the store right now managing three stores and have a little way attendance get promoted to be a store manager like that that's what I want to do I want to provide an opportunity for them to grow as well that's awesome you guys if you're enjoying it we would greatly appreciate it take a second hit that like button and subscribe thank you so much once you acquire a customer are they ultimately a repeat at that point or is it a one-time visit and then they're gone like what are the numbers on that so statistically speaking our mix because what I can do is with our card system I can see if a card has been used before or not yeah right yeah and so in a typical month like 60 to 65 to 70 percent of the cards have been seen before so I call those my creepy customers you know the other 25 you can argue you know some people they don't want to keep their card they don't register they just get a new one every time yeah but you know and there's people that only come in like once they do their big stuff and we might not see them again for another year yeah I look for I'm trying to maintain about 70 return customers in a given month not a bad number well in conclusion Brian it's been awesome I learned a lot even though it's my third laundromat interview they're all different right yeah they're all different and and it's pretty cool to learn all the differences but for our viewers in conclusion what would your advice be just in general if they're looking to get into the laundromat industry what's at the top of your mind as far as advice suggestions yeah I see the the number one thing if you're looking to get in there's probably two uh laundromat groups on Facebook that I would go join one is the laundromat millionaires group the other is the laundromat Owners Group and there's a website called laundromatresource right if you go to those three places they have all the resources you need to learn stuff you'll see owners of all different types of stores discussing their operations and then they have podcasts where they interview the owners like I spent you know one of the things I spent all the time waiting for the store to do open with listening to other owners talk about their stores and figuring out what could I leverage from them to make my store great amazing what you can learn from a podcast yeah the the amount of information that is grown out there in two years and these communities are sharing with people it's it's just amazing like if if you don't take advantage of it it's it's your own wrongdoing because you can learn a ton from people and they will tell you what mistakes not to make cool all right Ryan it's been a pleasure thanks for having me thank you so much yeah well that's a wrap with Brian the owner of laundry genius I hope you guys really learned a lot enjoyed it thank you so much for watching and make sure you check out other videos we've done with laundromat owners so that you can be successful as well take a second to like subscribe and hit that Bell so that you don't miss any videos thank you guys

2022-10-18 18:06

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