Lessons to Getting to a Profitable Laundromat Business - Episode 48
We are joined by Jordan Berry, a laundromat business owner with nearly a decade of experience in the industry. Jordan shares his journey from being a pastor to venturing into the laundromat business. He shares his initial challenges with the first laundromat acquisition, including buying a fixer-upper that didn't meet the promised numbers. Jordan also talks about the importance of due diligence when acquiring laundromats, as they often have cash-based income, making valuation and verification critical. And while laundromats can relatively become passive, there are still responsibilities and problem-solving involved. Jordan highlights the flexibility in how laundromats can be run to align with your specific goals, whether it's creating more free time or generating significant income.
About our guest:
Jordan was a pastor for 15 years and transitioned out of full-time ministry into buying a laundromat. His experience buying his first laundromat was not a good one. Instead of replacing his salary, as he expected, his laundromat lost $2,000 dollars per month for well over a year. Desperate to find help to turn his business around, he frantically searched for someone to guide him to profitability. He found no rescue. After finally stopping the bleeding, he decided to share the hard-earned (and expensive) lessons he learned on a blog. And then on a YouTube channel. And then, on a quest to find out how the best laundromat owners operated their businesses, he started a podcast interviewing laundromat owners and other industry professionals. These platforms turned into Laundromat Resource, an education and community platform for laundromat owners and future laundromat owners to learn, share best practices, and connect with one another.
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TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] Naseema McElroy: Hey, what's up everybody. Welcome back to the financially intentional podcast. I'm excited to be joined by Jordan Barry and he is a laundromat aficionado. And laundromat businesses are something that people ask me about all the time in regards to starting a business, whether it's a side hustle kind of business, or it's just something that they want to invest in for a passive income people are looking for those passive income streams, but laundromat businesses have.
It's always been something that has been very intriguing to me, but I just did not know anything about. So I'm excited to have Jordan here to talk about his experience in the laundromat world. Hey, what's up Jordan?
[00:00:46] Jordan: Hey, what's up? I am excited to be here. Thanks for having me on. And I do need to say that I feel a little bit of pressure to really bring it today. Cause I know you have a water park day going on over there
[00:00:56] Naseema McElroy: Oh, yeah,
[00:00:58] Jordan: your interest. So you don't just boot me off so you can go to the water park.
[00:01:02] Naseema McElroy: oh, no, that's not going to happen, but I'm sure you're going to bring it. You're so experienced. I know you'll knock this out of the park, but I just want to talk about right now, where are you at as far as like your laundromat business and what you're doing right now?
How do you use it? Is it your main business? Is it a passive stream of income? Like, how is it working out for you?
[00:01:22] Jordan: Yeah. So you're catching me at a really interesting phase in my laundromat journey. So I own a couple laundromats for almost a decade now. And I just have sold one of them and I have, I'm down to one laundromat right now. The reason for that is that I am planning on scaling up the the portfolio to a much larger size.
And In order to do that, I'm kind of getting rid of the smaller stuff and looking to sort of build back up. So I've been in the business for about a decade and I'm sort of pruning the portfolio in order to really hopefully experience some accelerated growth
[00:02:02] Naseema McElroy: That's really, really cool. So you're at a transition point. And I think that's important for people to note. It sounds like it's not just like 1 thing set it and forget it. It's something that's constantly evolving and changing. And it sounds like it's a pretty exciting time.
[00:02:22] Jordan: Yeah it, what's interesting, I find, so like now I've done a ton of like consulting calls and, all that stuff. So I'm talking to people all the time who are both in the industry, trying to grow their portfolios and and also people who are trying to get in the business.
And a lot of what I find, it's not always what happens, but a lot of times what happens is people. Get into this industry looking for sort of that passive ish, kind of income coming in. And then they find out they really like the business and so they start thinking about, okay, how can I grow this thing and make it better and bigger?
And it's just, it can be a little addictive that way. So beware. Buyer beware.
[00:02:58] Naseema McElroy: Ah, we have been warned, but let's go back and talk about how you got interested in laundry mats.
[00:03:07] Jordan: Yeah. So it it's a weird story. I mean, nobody really is, sitting, at the dining room table when they're a kid saying, mom, I want to be a laundromat owner when I grew up. Right. I actually was a pastor for almost 15 years and then was. Just ready to transition out of doing that as a job, I'm trying to figure out what to do, and I had a great idea.
What I thought was a great idea, which was to buy a, so we live in Southern California here, own a house. And I was like, why don't we rent out our house and take the money we have in the bank, go buy a condo on the beach in Hawaii. And live in Hawaii with our young kids. And then when they're school aged, if we want to come back, we can come back.
And my wife said we could do that or we could buy a laundromat. And that's how we bought a laundromat.
[00:03:58] Naseema McElroy: Most people do, you just buy a condo in Hawaii okay,
[00:04:03] Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. So my, I mean, my, listen, my wife was like, let's buy a laundromat. And I was like what, what, what? And kind of how that came about was my wife's parents, friends, son, and, If you can follow that he worked a tech job in the San Francisco bay area and he was making good money, but he was working 70, 80 hours a week.
And he ended up buying a laundromat and leaving, he replaced his tech income and leaving that job and was working 5 hours a week at his laundromat and. We saw that and we're like, that sounds really good. Why don't we, why don't we do that? And so that is the path that we started. Now, it did not work out like that for us initially.
[00:04:44] Naseema McElroy: Huh.
[00:04:45] Jordan: but that was the idea behind it.
[00:04:48] Naseema McElroy: Wow, I mean, to be able to replace and tech income is not anything like, that is very it's not easy to do right. Tech incomes are pretty, pretty lucrative. So he sounds like he hit the jackpot on his first try, but, results. Very as you said, but.
[00:05:14] Jordan: from his.
[00:05:15] Naseema McElroy: So cool. So how, what was your first purchase?
[00:05:19] Jordan: So I bought a, I ended up buying a laundromat. It was a fixer upper laundromat. We call that a zombie mat in our industry. And it was a fixer upper laundromat. And the broker who helped me out with that did me no favors. He was just trying to make the sale, this was almost a decade ago and there really wasn't.
A whole lot of information out there or a lot of research to be done on how to buy a laundromat, how to value it, what red flags to look for, and then also how to run a laundromat successfully. So it really wasn't a whole lot of information out there about it, but I did the best I could. And that broker, he essentially sold me a pipe dream.
That was never going to happen. And I didn't know any better. And he sold me a laundromat that he projected the proforma numbers look really good. I think, I don't remember off the top of my head, but I want to say proforma said, Hey, you're going to be, you're going to be netting five to 6, 000 a month from this laundromat.
And when I took over, it was losing a couple grand a month. For a couple years. So it was a pretty big swing and it was a pretty big punch to the gut,
[00:06:32] Naseema McElroy: So how, so when did you get like the real numbers? Did he like sell a facade of numbers like that, weren't really what's happening. And then after you buy it, you found out that it wasn't doing as well as he said it was.
[00:06:48] Jordan: Okay, I, let me just preface it this way. So I knew Zero about business at the time. I knew zero about real estate investing. I didn't know anything about anything at that time. So let me just, because it's gonna get real embarrassing real fast here. I learned a lot of very expensive lessons
[00:07:05] Naseema McElroy: Oh, we have all learned extensive lessons. So
[00:07:08] Jordan: so
[00:07:08] Naseema McElroy: at all.
[00:07:09] Jordan: yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm not embarrassed anymore, but you know, at the time it was rough. Essentially the broker was like, look, this is a fixer upper laundromat, it's just breaking even. You really don't need to do any due diligence, because the plan is it's, it's breaking even. So we're going to put some new equipment in here and then the business will blow up and then you'll hit your pro forma numbers. I was like, okay, that makes sense. I'm not sure why I would need their numbers since it's going to be a totally different place made sense in my mind. But it turned out that it wasn't breaking even, it was losing money from the get go.
So I was already started off underwater and was not prepared for that. And 150, 000 worth of equipment. And it business did improve dramatically percentage wise, but I was already underwater and now I had also loan payments on top of that. So I, I stayed underwater for, for a really long time without a snorkel.
That's what
[00:08:08] Naseema McElroy: Yeah.
Yeah, because you, you started in the red.
Let me just ask as far as okay, no financial background, nothing like trying to start a laundry business. What is the overhead typically? Like the investment and there's that's huge equipment. Right? And I just kind of like, how do you how'd you go from 0 experience to now taking on these massive loans?
To purchase equipment for this business, and that's not even that's just 1 of the cost, right? You have equipment costs. You have your real estate cause you bought it. Was it it's commercial real estate. Right?
[00:08:42] Jordan: The first one, I just leased the space. The next one I did by the. Also, but it's pretty common in this business to lease the space.
[00:08:51] Naseema McElroy: Okay.
[00:08:52] Jordan: so yeah, so it's not, it's not a big deal either way. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's how I did it. I mean, I just, I didn't stop. That's the only, that's the only explanation I have is I just didn't give up and I didn't quit.
Listen, we're, we're connecting here. So I'm just going to be real with you. If we're honest, people, a lot of times are like, man, good on you having the tenacity to keep going when, things were looking so bleak.
And yes, there's a tiny little bit of that. Part of it was, there's this stat that floats around. I'm not sure exactly where it comes from even to this day, but you know, it basically says, laundromats have a 95 percent success rate and I just. Could not comprehend how I was in the 5 percent that couldn't figure this stupid, easy business out.
And and, and big part of me was just like, I. I'm not going to walk away being in the 5%. Like I'm just not going to do it. But then the other part of it too, was I, I legitimately just didn't even know how to get out. Like I had just sunk a bunch of money into a business that was underwater. It was losing money.
Who was going to buy that? Who's going to buy that business for me?
[00:10:04] Naseema McElroy: Yeah. It's first of all, now that you've been in the industry for so long, is, do you feel like that statistics is even true?
[00:10:14] Jordan: I think it's probably a little bit exaggerated. I mean, I think the success rate is super high. This is a pretty stable business, you just got to buy it the right way, one of the things that I truly believe is that if I, if me back then could have a 15 minute conversation with me now.
It would have saved me six figures plus, right? Just 15 minutes, that's all it would have taken. And now, there's a lot more information out there for people who are trying to get into this business. There's a lot more resources, like I do consulting and have a little consulting team, that, so at least there's somebody to talk to I was so desperate.
I was just like grasping everywhere, trying to find somebody who could help me figure out. I felt, I was like, I see all these other people succeeding in this business. I know 95 out of a hundred people are succeeding. So I'm, I feel like I'm just missing like one key piece of information or something.
Right. That's I'm just not getting me there. It's very frustrating.
[00:11:11] Naseema McElroy: Yes. I, I understand that feeling. But yeah, it's just we were like how did you get through it? You just I just did it right. It was just like, day by day, you knew you couldn't fail. So you just kept on moving. But you know, sometimes that's what it takes. And, I always tell people, like, when it comes to gaining knowledge or getting really good at something.
Yeah. You're going to do it one of two ways. You're going to either pay for it in your time and blood, sweat and tears and labor, or you're going to pay somebody to help you shortcut it. But oftentimes there aren't people out there that can do that, or there's a lot of people selling snake oil, so it's kind of hard to differentiate but.
I think some of those early lessons really help shape you, as far as you being able to come from a place where you had zero experience to now, having multiple laundromats spinning that off to get bigger laundromats being in this for a decade. So your experience is super, super valuable to help shortcut other people who want.
to help provide other people a shortcut who want to get into the business, but still like an understanding the laundromat business. I'm super intrigued to kind of just know financially, like for financing when you first get started, is there like leasing through the, the.
Washer and dryer
[00:12:41] Jordan: Yeah.
[00:12:41] Naseema McElroy: Companies or do, yeah. Yeah. Or do you just have to like, take out a big bank loan? Like how did you finance it yourself, personally, in the beginning? And was that the right way?
[00:12:51] Jordan: Yeah. So I, the way that I did my, the first deal was I bought it all cash. I want to say, I mean, this is like a decade ago and I'm like, listen, I'm getting old now, so my memory's a little, but I want to say it was somewhere around like 65, 70, 000 what I bought the business for. And then one of the good
[00:13:10] Naseema McElroy: So you just had that money saved?
[00:13:12] Jordan: on, yeah, no we did have that money saved.
That was, that was most of what we had saved. But we we had bought we had bought a condo in Bay area up in mountain view and sold it, bought a house, but we had some leftovers. So there was like, there was some money there. And so we bought it all cash and I wouldn't do that again.
that way
[00:13:32] Naseema McElroy: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:34] Jordan: But there are a hundred percent financing options on the equipment. And so I did a hundred percent finance that, and that can be a really great option. You can lease the equipment, but almost never does it make sense to do that for a laundromat? Maybe for an apartment complex,
if you're going to have a few washers, but for a laundromat, like those are your assets.
Of the business. And so it makes more sense almost always to own them. You get the depreciation on your taxes. You, you have the responsibility for them. You have those, they're like a hard asset, similar to kind of real estate which is it's a hedge against inflation, all that stuff, right.
So it just makes more sense usually to own it. So I bought it
[00:14:15] Naseema McElroy: and the what? And those, those financing terms are usually like how long?
[00:14:20] Jordan: Usually around seven years. get them two to sometimes 10 years, but I'd say seven's probably the average that you're paying them off. And so that can be really great. I mean, right now is a interesting time is very different than a decade ago when I bought, right? Interest rates are a lot higher.
Uh, prices have gone up, especially since, the last couple of years with COVID and all that stuff. So it's a little tricky. I mean, you gotta really make sure your numbers make sense. Now you can still get great deals on laundromats and you can still one of the great things about these businesses that they're high cash flowing businesses.
So if you're. For example, your goal is to leave your job, your nine to five, or to achieve financial freedom, I think you should probably consider something like a laundromat even before like real estate, because for a laundromat, you're looking at 20 to 25 percent return on your money without using any loans.
And so if you use loans, those returns can actually go much higher than that. And good luck finding that in real estate or really many other places, especially considering the relatively small time commitment of owning a laundromat.
[00:15:34] Naseema McElroy: Yeah. So let's, let's get into that. So you, you bought that place or you bought the equipment, like you had, you had a Good amount of money to invest initially into the business. And you you said, you did it wrong, but how long did it take you to turn that first business over into actually being profitable?
[00:15:56] Jordan: Yeah. It took a couple of years and it didn't need to, but what happened was got in expecting to make money and have relatively small time commitment. And it ended up being the exact opposite. I was spending a lot of time trying to figure out what was going on and how to turn things around and I was losing money, right?
Exact opposite of why we bought the place. So it was really, that, that hurt a lot too. But with money going out every month and, growth just being so slow. I, I, I kind of turtled up, right.
And I'm like, I don't, I, I, I invested all this money into rehabbing the laundromat, adding new equipment, renovating all that stuff.
And I spent 0 on number one, even telling people that I did it, letting them know. And then number two.
[00:16:53] Naseema McElroy: Yeah.
Mm
[00:16:54] Jordan: to get people in there.
Right. And and, and I, and I got scared to invest in marketing because I was already losing a bunch of money and I didn't, I was like I can spend even more money trying to market, but I don't really know what I'm doing and I don't know who to trust and I don't know what to do.
And I, it got so, so scary. Right. And so it just took time for. The word to get out that, that business has been turned around under new management and for people to sort of trickle in. So it took a couple of years to actually hit that break even and profitability.
[00:17:30] Naseema McElroy: Hmm. Okay. But from there, what made you. Start want to open another one.
[00:17:37] Jordan: Yeah. I mean, I saw, I saw the potential, right? Even though it didn't work out with that one, the dream was still alive and well in my
heart,
[00:17:45] Naseema McElroy: Mm hmm.
[00:17:46] Jordan: know, if not in reality, it was alive and well in my heart. Right. And so I, I was. I was like, okay, look, and I wasn't actually looking for another one.
I had a, a broker I had met in the industry who brought me an off market deal, a pocket listing, and it was a seller finance deal and it was seller finance with, with the land and the yeah, and the laundromat. And so it was just sort of this opportunity that fell. In my lap and I just, I jumped at it and I was like, okay.
And I wasn't out of the woods with the other one. I was still losing money with the other one, but I was like if I do this one, right, and I've, I've learned all these lessons now, and so as long as I don't make those mistakes again maybe this one can even help cover the other one until I can get that one up and running.
[00:18:32] Naseema McElroy: Mm hmm. So how far into your first laundry mat? Did you buy the second? Okay,
[00:18:39] Jordan: I want to say nine or 10 months,
[00:18:42] Naseema McElroy: okay.
[00:18:42] Jordan: less than a year.
[00:18:44] Naseema McElroy: Wow
[00:18:44] Jordan: this one also didn't work out as planned. I, I thought I learned all the lessons, but it turned out there were more lessons to be learned. So it was rough,
[00:18:57] Naseema McElroy: two underwater
[00:18:58] Jordan: was a rough, it was a rough go. But what made that one a little a little easier was I bought that one under market.
Price and the real estate had some equity in it. And so that just kind of made it a little more palatable to be able to be like, okay, I found out some more things that I needed to know in this business learn some, some more great, great lessons to never make again. But I also have this real estate here.
And so that did help sort of soften the blow a little bit.
[00:19:31] Naseema McElroy: Cool. Cool. But now, a decade later,
[00:19:35] Jordan: Huh.
[00:19:37] Naseema McElroy: It seems like you've turned things around. Even though you're in this transition period of getting rid of some to be able to purchase some bigger stuff are, were you at a point where everything was to all your laundromats were totally profitable?
[00:19:51] Jordan: Yeah, I mean, I think, Things finally evened out like this business is great because it's a, it was an essential business before it was cool, right? Everybody needs clean clothes and it was, it's a, what I call it, like a rhythmic or a habitual business, right? A lot of people do their laundry on the same day at the same time, every single week or every other week or whatever their rhythm is.
And so it's got pretty consistent cashflow. So when you gain a customer. They get into the habit of coming to your laundromat. And then at that point, they're your customer to lose. Like you really only lose a customer if they move away or if you're just slacking on keeping your business up. Right. And so as you sort of accumulate over time, they just sort of.
Stack on top of each other. So yeah, I mean, I, this, the business is profitable and again, the dream, the flame is still flaming in my heart. Right. And, I think now it's more okay what would this look like to really scale it out? Which has been difficult to do in our industry for a long time, but.
I think now it's becoming a little more possible. So just that's where I'm at now is exploring how to do that and what that might look like.
[00:21:09] Naseema McElroy: That's pretty cool though. I want to talk about what are some like, must like, knows when you want to start like a laundry mat business. What are some things that you just have to walk into kind of understanding?
[00:21:24] Jordan: Yeah. Depends. Are you asking about on the acquisition or once you actually own it and what should you know?
[00:21:31] Naseema McElroy: I want to know on the acquisition. I guess it's both. On the acquisition side and then the daily operation side.
[00:21:37] Jordan: Yeah. I mean, when we're talking acquisitions, like here's the rub for laundromats is
They're more and more of them have like digital payment systems, which is awesome because it makes the due diligence really easy, but still the majority of them are cash businesses. So valuing them and really, Drilling into how are they actually performing in terms of, you Can be tricky. And there's a lot of potential gotchas in that process, which is, I ran into a bunch of them personally, and now I've done a ton of consulting where I've seen a whole lot of things, right.
Where sellers or brokers are trying to slip things past people or things that happen just unintentionally. And that due diligence is it's critical, right? Making sure that you. Know exactly, or at least as close to exactly as possible, what you're walking into before you close on that deal is, is critical, right?
And so the way it works is that the seller's going to give you their numbers. Basically, you're going to make an offer based off of those numbers, and you're not really going to know how accurate they are. And you're going to include some contingencies on your offer. And then you're going to go in once it gets accepted.
And you're going to go about verifying those numbers. And a lot of times you've got to layer multiple different ways of verifying the income on top of each other and just making sure. There's a, reasonable overlap between all the different ways of verifying income, because no single way is really going to tell you the whole story for a laundromat.
So that gets kind of tricky. So you should just know that going in that, that process is tricky. And I just, I highly recommend anybody who's thinking about buying any business or any investment. Especially for the first time, just have somebody do it with you who has done it before and who kind of understands the process.
It will just save you so much time, so much money, so much headache, emotional damage that I suffered. You know what I mean? It's just, it, it's a no brainer, especially if you're, I mean, if you're talking about investing tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars into any. Whether that's cash out of your bank or loans or whatever Hey, it's worth it to spend just a little tiny bit more to make sure you do it.
Right. The first time.
[00:24:02] Naseema McElroy: Yes, that's correct.
[00:24:03] Jordan: Yeah. In terms of operations, some things that you need to know is okay. One thing that I say a lot is anytime you have a lot of people, or if you have machines, you're going to have problems and laundromats have a lot of machines and a lot of people that are coming through there, right?
So you are going to encounter problems. And i, this, this business is sold as passive income all the time. And I would say, listen, there's no, there's no business that's passive income, zero businesses that are passive income. Right. But if you take a look at the, the, the. Scale the spectrum of passivity versus activity.
You can set your business up to lean pretty heavily on the passivity side. You're not going to be totally passive but you're, you can lean pretty heavily on that side of the spectrum with a laundromat and that makes it really great. Also, you can lean pretty heavily the other way and actually build a really big business in this business.
So it has a lot of flexibility, which is good. One thing to know about, operations is that number one, there, there is, there are going to be some things to do. If you're going to be the owner of the laundromat, now there's other ways to get into it. You can partner with people, you can invest in a fund, those kinds of things.
But if you're going to own it, there are going to be things to do. So it's not going to be totally passive. But you have a lot of options on how you want to run your business. And it, it surprises me even still to this day, like how simple this business is, but how many different ways you can run it.
Right. And so really drilling down into what is my goal is my goal. To free up time so I can have more time with my family and friends or my hobbies or this other business or whatever, or is my goal to, hit, whatever, 50, 000 a month of, of income or, whatever your goal is. Right.
And depending on your goal, that will help you dictate how you want to set your laundromat business up. So that's 1 thing that I would say is that there are going to be things to do, problems to deal with all that. But you can set the business up kind of the way that you, you want to, to help you achieve the goal that you have.
[00:26:11] Naseema McElroy: And I think the common question people would typically ask is, like, how much time do you actually have to spend there? Does there have to be an operator? Because I used to go to old school oh, man, in the bag, handing out coins and cleaning the machines and stuff like that. So there's usually somebody always there.
But I know probably they're like, things differ depending on, what kind of business you have, what kind of machines you have and all that kind of stuff. We were gonna be like, okay, so as an owner of a laundry mat, like, how much time on the ground do you have to spend? Yes.
[00:26:49] Jordan: But it, it does depend on how you set your business up. So there's, there's plenty of laundromats that are unattended laundromats where somebody just comes in and cleans two hours a day and the rest of the day.
Nobody's there for the business. Right. And, if you're owning that kind of laundromat, sort of depending on your neighborhood and that kind of thing, you're probably looking at maybe five, maybe 10 hours a week to manage that laundromat. But I think 10 is way on the high side. And maybe you'll hit 10 on some weeks where there's more problems than others.
But you know, I'd say five hours is pretty, pretty good. And then there's, there's semi attended, partially attended models where, somebody is there a chunk of the day, but then there's a chunk of the day where nobody's there and then there's a laundromats that are fully attended all the time.
They're open. Somebody is there. Then there's laundromats that also have the service side of the business, right? So self serve is 1 thing, but a huge opportunity for growth in this business right now is on the service side and the service side is. Would be like a drop off wash, dry fold where people bring in their dirty clothes, your, you or your attendant or whoever's working there, take some processes in the laundry and gives them back when they come to pick it up or pick up in the livery where you actually have a driver who goes out and picks up laundry and brings it back to process.
And those that side of the business can be super lucrative. But at least initially we'll probably require a little more time and effort on your part. And especially depending on if you're working some of those shifts to help get it off the ground or, those kinds of things.
[00:28:28] Naseema McElroy: So what changes like over the last couple of years, like within the business, have you seen as far as equipment, automation, payment systems, or even like delivery services, like there's is there like a door dash for laundry services?
[00:28:41] Jordan: Yeah, actually you can use DoorDash to do that with some of the softwares that are available now. Yeah, so our, I sort of half joke, but it's not really a joke. Our industry. For decades has been like a sloth riding a turtle waiting through molasses, in terms of technological development or change of any kind.
Like we just have not changed for decades. And then the last couple of years we're starting to see quite a bit of changes. There's been, a lot more payment system options. Credit card or apple tap to pay or loyalty card systems, which have been around for a little while, but they're really starting to come into their own now and be a little more valuable tools for some of the, our businesses.
And then obviously software is to help us manage, wash, dry, fold, pick up and delivery orders, keep everything organized. We're not losing people's clothes or mixing them up. Having apps for our drivers that we can optimize driver routes, so they're not driving all over the city all day long wasting gas and time.
So all that technology machines have been getting more and more efficient in terms of utilities, which is good because utilities keep going up like crazy all over the place. And yeah, I know it's craziness. So yeah, we're seeing a lot of that development and then we're seeing a big boom on the service side of the business.
So we're seeing more laundromats become more full service laundry centers essentially, where you can come in and do your, your self serve. Do your laundry yourself. You can do that. You can come drop it off or we'll come pick it up. We do all of it. Larger stores, bigger machines. It used to be all top load machines.
Now we're all trying to get rid of the top load machines because they use too much water and they don't clean clothes as well. And they create a huge mess and yada, yada, yada. And, and now there's yeah. 80, a hundred, 120 pound machines where you can essentially wash your children in them don't wash your children in
[00:30:40] Naseema McElroy: Please do
[00:30:40] Jordan: uh, metaphorically wash all their clothes all at once.
But yeah, these huge machines, right. That are, that are more and more available. And yeah I mean, I think those are some of the things that are starting to develop and I think. Implications of all that are yet to be determined, but I think, the service side will continue to grow. I think we'll see as people get into this business, we see this, a lot where people get into it, wanting the passive income and then decide they can and want to build a bigger business.
And so I think we'll see more people building either bigger businesses or having more locations, those kinds of things. I think all that is probably in the future here for us.
[00:31:22] Naseema McElroy: No, I love it I can see How that has grown one more question like as far as can you just Join a laundry franchise as opposed to doing everything on your own because i've seen bigger laundromats
[00:31:35] Jordan: Yeah. So there's they've been trying to do franchises for a while in the industry. And we've seen them kind of come and go. There's a one right now called laundry lab and one called wave max. Those are probably the two big ones that are trying to get off the ground right now. We'll see.
We'll see. Like I know those guys and you Yeah.
For me, one of the big benefits of a franchise is sort of that brand recognition. But I just don't feel like you're going to get that with laundromats. Because it's okay, say you're in Northern California. I'm in Southern California. Say, I want to go visit you. I'm not going to go look for a specific brand of laundromat.
I'm going to look for the closest one to me that has decent reviews, right? Like that's, that's what I'm looking for. And the other sort of benefit of franchises, having the standard operating procedures, having all the systems in place, but for most laundromats, there's really not a whole lot of systems to have in place.
[00:32:38] Naseema McElroy: So that's, that's interesting to know in itself too, but like when you're talking about that wave of like people doing a lot of full service stuff, though, the name recognition might be easier because you're just going to go on an app and be like, Oh yeah, I know these people. I don't know Bill and Ted's laundromat.
You know, I just know,
[00:32:55] Jordan: I would use there's a, if it was Bill and Ted,
[00:32:58] Naseema McElroy: definitely.
[00:32:59] Jordan: Yeah.
[00:33:02] Naseema McElroy: So I think we're the same age. I
[00:33:04] Jordan: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, I mean, I do think that there's more of an opportunity there, but I'm not seeing franchising on the pickup and delivery
side,
right now. But I am seeing some companies there, there are some companies like a happiness or whatever that. Essentially license their brand to laundromat owners and trying to have some brand recognition that way.
So maybe that'll take off more than it has. I mean, it's working pretty well in some markets, but we'll see it. It it's, I, it's just not that difficult to do it on your own.
[00:33:44] Naseema McElroy: That's I mean, that's refreshing to know
[00:33:46] Jordan: no, which is good. Yeah.
[00:33:47] Naseema McElroy: yeah, you can still keep it very much mom and pop. It doesn't have to be like this thing. And there's not this big pressure because I think a lot of industries are seeing that pressure of automation and a lot of people are losing their jobs.
And so they're looking for something that They can do to sustain a reasonable income without having, without that fear of being taken over or not having a source of income. And if this is something that's relatively easy, that's still like mom and pop ish, is super like self entrepreneurial that you could just do, I think it's a good industry to get into.
[00:34:22] Jordan: Yeah. Yeah. And here's what's interesting about it is I got really into the, financial freedom through real estate investing. And I was like, yes, I was the podcasts everywhere, reading the books, all that stuff. And I was on that hype train and then I just kind of stopped and I was like, man, I like 200 a door of cashflow.
I've got to have a lot of doors and I'm not even trying to make that much money. but what's great about laundromats is that. For 99 percent of America, one to three laundromats is all it would take to get you to replace that, that income. Right. And yeah. And I just think that it's one of the best ways for somebody who's trying to exit their nine to five or just achieve financial freedom.
And, and obviously even just have some income on the side. I think it's just one of the best ways to go about that. That there is, especially right now in today's market.
[00:35:20] Naseema McElroy: You've definitely convinced me, but I want to know, I know you put together like a cheat code and you do consulting, so how can people work with you or Mm hmm.
[00:35:32] Jordan: Yeah. So everything, I mean, everything's that laundromatresource.Com. We have a podcast where I, how this whole thing started was I was not trying to do anything crazy here. I just was like, man, I have all these like really expensive lessons. I should just share them with people. Cause there's nothing else out there.
So I started a little blog and then I was like, man, writing is so hard. I'm just going to. It's way easier to just talk to the camera. So then I started a YouTube channel and then I was like man, if I really want to help people and I really want to get better in this business, I should talk to the people who are the best in the business.
Right? So then I started the laundromat resource podcast. And that has been awesome. It's grown like crazy as a little laundromat podcast. It's grown like crazy. And I interview the best people in the business and, owners and other industry professionals. Some, some you're interested in any of those places, YouTube, podcast, laundromat, resource.
com. And when you're like, yes, I am, I'm a hundred percent. And I want to, I want to buy a laundromat. I, I compiled everything that you need. Into into one course all the, not just all the information, all the information that comes from my personal experience, all the information that comes from all my interviews that I do with the successful owners, all the information I do from my consulting calls, all the information from live Q and a, as I do a live webinar every single week and compile questions from people.
All that stuff is in this course. Yes. But also all the tools and resources that we have created to help make this process of analyzing a laundromat and doing the due diligence on a laundromat to make it easy and as clear and simple as possible. All that is included in that course. So if that's something that you decide, Hey, I want to get into this business that course is like gold there.
And I can. I I'll give you a link that you can put in the show notes or wherever you keep that stuff. but yeah, that's, it really is a good course and it's not me trying to sell the course because for me, the course is not, it's not my business but the course is just something that I've put together that I think will just help a lot of people to, and has helped a lot of people to get in this business the right way the first time,
[00:37:42] Naseema McElroy: Like I said, you're either going to pay with time, or you're going to invest some money into it. And but I think you still have an amazing amount of free resources that weren't available. When you were opening your business, so I always tell people. If it's something that you're really interested in really dive into the free resources until you're just like, okay I have the baseline information that I need, but in order to really get started and really to see it through, you probably want to invest in a course or a consultation to make sure that you're doing everything right.
And that'll give you the accountability also to kind of just do it. Cause a lot of people start stuff and don't finish stuff and think that they're interested in something, but then get lost in the weeds. And I think that if this is something, and it sounds very lucrative, very doable for anybody, pretty much as accessible for anybody.
So I say this check out the free stuff if you like the free stuff, just go ahead and invest in the programs because it's going to accelerate your learning curve and it's going to save you. So much money in like mistakes. Like I have made several money mistakes and that's why I'm just like, Oh, listen, if you, whatever you've done, I've probably done three times over, and if I could have somebody that can walk me through those things, so I don't have to make those costly mistakes, like it's. It's, it's super valuable, invaluable, I should say. So I'll definitely have all those links in the show notes. And I could just say I'm totally fascinated now with lodger.
So now I've got to go down this whole laundry mat rabbit hole. And, see if it's going to be an investment in choice for me, because I feel like it's super, super doable. I see the need for more in my neighborhood and my neighborhood is expanding a lot. Yeah, I'm looking forward to learning more and I've learned so much in this podcast.
I'm just like, man, like what you don't know, you just don't know. And so I'm always on the quest of, of learning, but you're a great. Conduit of knowledge, I think that
the way that you present information is super digestible and I just appreciate you being here to share with my audience, because I know that there are find some value.
And even if it's not something that they thought about, it's something that is definitely worth looking into. Thank you so much, Jordan.
[00:40:09] Jordan: Thank you for having me on. I always, I don't know it's probably more embarrassing to have such a great time talking about laundromats than all the other embarrassing things that I shared today, but I do. So I appreciate you humoring me and letting me talk laundromats with you.
[00:40:24] Naseema McElroy: Listen, I talk about some pretty obscure things. Like I talk about weird money stuff and then I talk about weird women's health stuff. So like I'm on the spectrum of always really doing deep dives into some topics that people. Usually don't talk about at a dinner table, so this has been fascinating to me.
So
[00:40:43] Jordan: to hear. I'm in the right
place then. I'm in the right
[00:40:45] Naseema McElroy: Definitely in the right place. But you guys, if you want to get access to Jordan's resources, I'm going to have all the links in the show notes. So you guys can check him out, check out his YouTube channel podcast course and consulting. So again, thank you, Jordan. It's been a blast.
[00:41:02] Jordan: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Hey there I’m Naseema
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