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Money Focused Podcast
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Money Focused Podcast
EP 69 - Laundromat Industry Tips Every Aspiring Owner Needs to Know
On this episode of Money Focused Podcast, we hear about Jordan Berry’s journey from being a youth pastor to finding success in the laundromat industry. It all started when his wife suggested buying a laundromat instead of a condo in Hawaii, which led him down a path full of challenges and wins. Jordan shares some laundromat industry tips, talking about the highs and lows of his first business venture, including mistakes he made and lessons that helped him become a successful laundromat owner and real estate agent. For those interested in the laundromat business, Jordan breaks down the key steps to buying and growing laundromat locations, focusing on mentorship, managing costs, upgrading equipment, and picking the right spots. He also gives a glimpse into his program that helps people scale from one laundromat to many. With his coaching, mastermind groups, and a little humor, Jordan is ready to help anyone who wants to make it in the laundromat industry. Tune in for some helpful advice and real-life stories.
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Welcome to the Money Focus Podcast. I'm your host, Moses the mentor, and on this episode, I'm excited to welcome Jordan Berry to the show, who's the founder of Laundromat Resource. He's a seasoned owner of multiple laundromats and a commercial real estate agent. He's here to help us understand the laundry business, how to own and operate a laundromat and the pros and cons of getting into the industry. I'm eager to hear what he has to share, so let's dive in.
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, thanks for having me on, super honored to be on here and look forward to having a good time ironically, talking laundromats, but I have a good time talking laundromats. So I was a pastor for 15 years, youth pastor and a pastor for about 15 years and along that time had a couple of kids with my wife and, yeah, at some point when my kids were pretty young, there's a lot of demands on pastors and you're spending a lot of time, you know emotional energy, helping people deal with their stuff and all that. It was just time to take a break from vocational ministry, spend some time with the family and so trying to figure out okay, if I'm not going to do that, what do I do? And so I live here in Southern California and we owned our house here and I was like I've got a great idea. Why don't we rent out our house here in Southern California and take the money we've got in the bank? Let's go buy a condo on the beach in Hawaii and until our kids are like school age, then, if we want to, we can come back toifornia and net gain condo on the beach in hawaii. And I was like, yes, sounds great. So I told my wife about it and she said we could do that or we could buy a laundromat. And uh, I still to this day don't own a house on the beach in hawaii.
Speaker 2:They have on laundromats and uh, the way that that kind of came about is she has a family friend who he was working a high paying tech job, but working 70, 80 hours a week, and he bought a laundromat and replaced his tech income and was working five or 10 hours a week. And we heard that and we're like, actually that sounds pretty good. And we heard that and we're like, actually that sounds pretty good. That's a fast track to a condo or a house on the beach in Hawaii, you know. So we decided to go that direction and you know, just, I guess a little teaser it did not go well for us initially for a little while and you know the goal was money coming in with very little time investment and it ended up losing money for a long time with a whole lot of time investment. So the exact opposite of what we were hoping there. But glad to dig into that too. But I'll pause there and let you do your thing.
Speaker 1:No, I appreciate it. I mean, since you're already on it, I mean, you know, I'm sure we're going to talk about a lot of the pros, but we can flip it and talk about the opportunities. So what were some of those initial obstacles that you had when you invested?
Speaker 2:in a large amount. Yeah, so it's a little over a decade ago and I mean, honestly, I knew nothing about business. I knew nothing about real estate investing. I knew nothing, honestly, I'll just shoot you, I knew nothing about anything really. So I did not know what I was doing and, yeah, I did as much research as I could, but, like a decade ago, there really wasn't a whole lot of information about how these businesses operate, how to run them, what I needed to know, and so I did as much research as I could, but really, what it came down to is I relied almost entirely on somebody who's who depended on me buying the laundromat in order to make their living, which was the broker, right, and it just turned out that the broker that I connected with just did not have my best interest in mind and, you know, sold me something, sold me a dream that was never going to be, you know, come to fruition with that particular laundromat, and so, you know, a couple like specifics right is you know, this laundromat was in a very rough neighborhood.
Speaker 2:I mean, I literally I don't want to scare people too much, this is not common, but just just my story, my experience, right. So don't don't get too scared about this, but I literally got in like a gang turf fight. The previous owner just stopped coming and just did not manage the business whatsoever, and so, so, yeah, so I that was part of the problem the, you know the, the broker, said, hey look, we're going to come in here and put new machines in, so we really don't need to do any due diligence. We know that it's just breaking even, it's really not making money. And I was like, oh yeah, that makes sense to me, but it wasn't breaking even, it was losing a couple of grand.
Speaker 2:And then, once I purchased new equipment, I had loan payments too, and it turned out it was a lot harder to rehab the reputation of the laundromat than to rehab the laundromat itself. So those are just some of the things that I just didn't know going in. And I say a lot of times if me back then could have a 15 minute conversation with me now, if me back then could have a 15 minute conversation with me now, it would have saved me six figures easy. But it is what it is and I learned a lot. I learned a lot going through it and getting in the business that way, and I mean expensive lessons, but really good lessons.
Speaker 1:And yeah, that's, that's essentially how it went down for us early on. Wow, and I mean, did you ever, you know, get that larger mat and into a spot where it was even profitable, or did you have to just really just cut your losses and start somewhere else?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll tell you, man, it was I. We held onto it for, I think, eight years. We only sold it, like maybe a year and a half, two years ago. Yeah, I mean it was a struggle, man. So, yeah, we did, we were able to turn it around. I mean, it was never what the broker, I mean he showed us pie in the sky numbers. It was never going to be that. But, you know, got it to where it was a functioning laundromat again, and um and ran it for a long time that way. Uh, for that, so, but it it was. It was hard, man, like there were so many. I mean, part of the entrepreneur rollercoaster, right, Is going through the ups and downs, learning, making mistakes, learning from them, trying not to repeat them. But it was. There were some dark times in there where I wish I would have just kind of cut bait and ran.
Speaker 1:So before you scare everybody off now, talk to us a little bit about the market in itself. What makes owning a laundromat a great investment opportunity? Talk to us about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, and I think I've set everybody up now and I'm going to knock it down here's. The thing is like I think it should mean something that I'm here advocating laundromat ownership after that experience, right. So I don't want to scare anybody off because in in that process I saw the powerful potential of laundromats Right and the thing about laundromat and I and I saw a lot of people around me, you know, succeeding with laundromats and making really good money almost kind of quietly under the radar. It's a little more above the radar now than it used to be, but even back then I mean it was below the radar but people were doing really well. And the reason for it is that laundromats, on average, return about a 20 to 25% return on your investment, and that's unleveraged, so that's without a loan. So if you use a loan and appropriately use leverage, that number goes up, sometimes pretty dramatically.
Speaker 2:And I'm a real estate investor like you and I love real estate. In fact, real estate is my first love. However, most real estate investments can't touch just the average laundromat investment in terms of cash flow, and I am a firm believer that both of them work really well together because you get the best of all worlds when you have both. So I mean that cash flow potential is huge. And then the laundromats are not passive. They get sold as being passive a lot. They're not passive. But the way I look at it is there's a scale of from completely passive to completely active and you can heavily weight laundromats on the passive side of that scale to where, once you get it set up and running right, you're only working maybe five, maybe 10 hours a week on your business. So I mean the income potential versus the time commitment necessary makes them very appealing to a lot of people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what are some of the you know you mentioned five to 10 hours a week, I'm assuming, like once you're at, like BAU, you got your system down pack. What are some of the things that eat up that time? I mean, other than collecting the money? Is there some other things that you know you have to really account for?
Speaker 2:Yeah, making your TikTok videos of you collecting coins and it seems like everybody's doing that now? No, but yeah. So I mean, money management is one of the things right, and more and more laundromats are going to digital payment systems, but still the majority of them are coin-based. So that is definitely one aspect. Depending on how your business is set up, you probably have, at the very least, some cleaners to manage people cleaning your laundromat. I mean, the goal is not to be the one cleaning the laundromat and do this. Maybe you have to do that for a time sometimes and that's fine. And even if you do it and that's your plan, there's nothing wrong with that. But the power of them is that you can have other people do that and still do well.
Speaker 2:So maybe managing employees whether it's cleaner or attendants, that are there part-time or full-time, or if you have the service side of the business which, by the way, is booming. So that'd be like drop-off laundry, where somebody brings their laundry, we do it for you and you come pick it up. Or pick up and delivery, where we go to your house, snag your laundry and deliver it the next day, folded clean, ready to put away. That side is booming and obviously that's a little more intensive, so there's a little more intensive, so there's a little more management there. But also you can scale it bigger and bring on managers to help you manage that. So managing employees is part of that.
Speaker 2:Your equipment is your lifeblood, right? So making sure that equipment is taken care of. Some people like to fix it themselves, some people outsource that and bring in service technicians. So just minding your business right, like doing the basics making sure everything's clean, making sure everything's working, making sure your employees are following what they should be doing and the way they should be doing it, with good attitudes and all that stuff Right, and just the business basics that you're making sure are happening to keep your business humming along.
Speaker 1:Nice and you know, going back to your story, you know when you had the horror story with your first experience, you said that you had seen some you know other people be successful in the business. What about their success made you say, hey, I got to keep going. Like, what about their? You know, those conversations and interactions with them said, okay, well, it's light at the end of the tunnel, just curious, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean, if I'm going to be perfectly honest, which I will be, part of the reason I kept going was because I didn't know how to get out early on, right, because I was like underwater. I didn't know how to get out early on, right, because I was like underwater, I didn't know how to get out. So that was part of it. I don't want to, like, be some kind of hero over here. Part of it was I just didn't know what to do. But the other part of it, you know, and talking to these guys is, I mean I saw them making good money and you know there's a stat that floats around To this day, but you know, laundromats have a 95% success rate. And another part of it was like I, my, my version of myself in my mind does not jive with me being in the 5% that can't figure out this easy business, right, and so part of it was like I just I can't leave until I get out of that 5%, like that's not me and that's not acceptable, all right, so that was part of it too.
Speaker 2:But but as I was talking to owners, I mean I was seeing people who were like, like I said, like like my wife's family friend who is replacing big incomes with one or two laundromats and and not putting in a ton of effort. And I realized, like I have now paid a lot of money to learn some very expensive lessons, like I have now paid a lot of money to learn some very expensive lessons, I can either cut bait and try something different or I can apply those lessons that I learned and just say, okay, well, I paid for the education, so I might as well, you know, forge ahead and you know that's what I decided to do. And again, it took a little while Probably took two plus years for me to hit like a break even point there. But hearing how other people were doing their business and and and learning how they were being successful, I felt like, okay, this is, this is doable for me, I can do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's good. I mean you definitely don't want to be in that 5%. If you can help it, yeah, no, that's good. I mean you definitely don't want to be in that 5%. If you can help it, yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's where eventually, I was like okay, I paid this money to learn these expensive lessons. I'm going to start sharing it, and that's sort of the heart of the platform, a lot of my resources, the platform that I have. We've got a podcast where I interview people because I wish I had that Right, and we do Q and A's and you know we've got a YouTube channel and we've got a blog and like all that stuff, right. But the whole point of that is so people don't have to learn the lessons. I learned the way that I learned them Right, and I think it's really created a community in the industry that is more collaborative, more. Here's my experience, here's what's working for me, and I just wish I had that when I started up, but it didn't exist yet, so I just built it.
Speaker 1:I mean, thank you for calling that out, because you know, of course you have to vet every program and, you know, figure it out. You know, not everybody has the greatest intentions, but the best way to learn is from someone who's done it. You know, if you want to go through yeah, like, if you want to go through this and make a six figure mistake or learning bumps along the way, like Jordan did, or would you rather be a part of his program and avoid those six figure mistakes? You know what I'm saying. So that's the thing I always tell people.
Speaker 1:Fortunately, I haven't had a six figure mistake in my rental business, but I've definitely had some tens of thousands, you know, and those are the things that I'm like okay, well, if I can help you with that, if I can get you one step closer than I did, then I'm I feel good about that. You know now. You know, if you don't want to make that investment and being part of my program, I mean, have, have at it. You know, but I promise you, I promise you you're going to run into the same issues I have because you don't have the proper education and it's worth it. So people should consider that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it totally is. And, like you know, for your program, right, it's like I, you know I could. I could try it myself. You know I'm, I know I'm going to make mistakes, I know you know it's stuff that probably pretty easily someone like you or someone else in your program could say, hey, you're about to make a big mistake. Do this instead, right, and it would instantly save me far more than whatever it costs to be in your program Right.
Speaker 2:And so the way I think about it and I started doing this myself, I'm naturally a DIY guy Like that's in my roots. I like doing things myself and learning the hard way. Until I really started learning things the hard way in this laundromat and I started to see the value of this. And now I'm a hard and fast believer that joining a program like yours if I want to do rentals and I want to learn it, it's going to help me not just go faster, but it's going to help me not just go faster, but it's going to help me go farther also. And so programs like yours if you're thinking about getting into the rental stuff, jump into that program, because you're going to go farther faster with that than if you try it on your own and ultimately you're going to be much better off.
Speaker 1:Appreciate that. So I want to talk now about acquiring a laundromat, right? So the first time when you work with the broker, you know if anybody has ever done like commercial real estate or anything like that. They probably showed you the performer and they said, oh, you can make X amount of dollars or whatever. So, taking those lessons on, you know understanding the financials behind a laundromat. How did you go about finding your next one?
Speaker 2:and you know build it from there yeah, so so there's a couple different ways to buy laundromats. Right same with real estate. Actually. Right, you could buy like turnkey real estate. It's already you're gonna make your 200 bucks a door or I don't even know if that's possible anymore. But I mean, I know it's possible.
Speaker 1:But I get four or five hundred. I get four or five hundred. I'm in Cleveland, though. That's what I'm talking about, though you got to find those markets right, right, yes, that's exactly it Right.
Speaker 2:So you know finding, you know finding those turnkey things. You know finding those turnkey things right and you're going to value them one way. But then the other way is like go find fixers, right, and there you know, for a laundromat right, maybe it's not making money right now or maybe it's breaking even, maybe it's even losing some money. So you'd approach them two different ways. Basically is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2:So if you've got like a fixer laundromat, you know really, you've got to figure out, okay, what's the potential of this laundromat. So you have to look at things like the size of the space and what you know equipment makes you can put in there, and what equipment makes sense for the community. It's in what the demographics are. Demographics make up, so that you can determine, like, how much potential revenue there is in a particular radius from that laundromat. And then you got to do a competitive analysis to figure out, okay, who are the competitors and how can I compete with them if at all possible.
Speaker 2:And then you've got your more turnkey laundromats where your valuation is going to be based on the net income of that laundromat, right, and it's based on a multiple of the net income Pretty common right now today is somewhere between four and five and a half times the net income is what most laundromats are valued at. And so you're going to see, okay, well, how much income is coming in, how much are the expenses going out before loan payments, and then apply the right multiple to it. And that multiple, just real quick, is determined mostly by three main numbers it's the age and condition of the machines, the rent amount and the number of years remaining on the lease rent amount and the number of years remaining on the lease.
Speaker 1:When it comes to equipment, you know I've gone to many large amounts in my life as a kid growing up in Brooklyn. You know I've seen large amounts with like look like old, old school. You know coin base push, slide it in, but they seem to be still active and working. But then you have the new or nicer ones with the, uh, the, the credit card, swipe. What do you really recommend? Do you recommend going with the high-end um credit card? Or, if it's functional, would you still keep the, the coinbase operated machines in?
Speaker 2:yeah. So it depends little bit. It depends on the laundromat and the community that it's in the demographics it serves. If I'm in Brooklyn, though I'm probably if those machines are 15 to 20 plus years old, I'm probably going to replace them because, number one, they're going to give me less headache, they're not going to break down as much. Number two, the new equipment is much more efficient in terms of utility usage, and laundromats are heavy on utility gas, electric and water, and so they're much so you're going to save money there. You can charge more with them and then almost everywhere else you can pay with a card, and so laundromats are.
Speaker 2:There's still a lot of holdouts on in laundromats that only accept coin, which is fine. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that. But I think you open up a different demographic when you accept card payments as well and you can also do more things that that benefit your customers more. Right, you can. You can do things like do 10 washes, get one free, or you know just different incentives that you really can't do very easily with coin. You know coin based laundromat, so you can really serve your customers better when you have that option. So, but if you know, I get in there and there's machines that are, you know, five, seven, eight years old. I may not replace the machines, but you actually all of the card payment systems are third party, so they don't come with the machines, so you can actually add those onto existing machines.
Speaker 1:Okay, and it could be a like both. It can have the coin operated or the car, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's called hybrid right, hybrid model.
Speaker 1:Nice Thanks. Well, you talked about utilities and obviously, being a larger man, I'm sure the water bill is high. So, water bill, you say gas, electric to operate the machines. What other expenses outside of labor we talked a little bit about that Is there any other, like OPEX, that a potential investor should kind of think about if they're going into this business?
Speaker 2:Yeah, typically your three biggest expenses are going to be rent, utilities and labor. So those are your big ones. After that, maintenance depending on how old your equipment is, maintenance can get up there as well. And insurance I mean insurance everywhere is getting more expensive. Maybe not Cleveland, I don't know you got to join the program to find out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's getting expensive everywhere, right, and laundromats are no exception there. So those are some of the other main ones. There's other stuff too security that you want to have and internet costs and stuff like that. But your biggest ones are usually the labor, the utilities and the rent, and then, after that kind of maintenance and insurance, be the next two probably. Yeah.
Speaker 1:What about like location? Oh, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Real quick. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you Real quick. I just want to say about utilities. You know, utilities typically run around 15 to 20% of your revenue and I really you know people talk about high utility bills a lot. But actually I don't mind high utility bills because usually that means as long as you're pricing your stuff appropriately, usually that means you're doing good business. Right, and I would gladly pay more in utilities If. If I'm only paying 20% of what I bring in to utilities, I'll pay as much as I need to if it just keeps going up like that. So I wouldn't stress about high utility costs. It's part of this business and as long as you're priced appropriately, utility bills tend to usually only go up with more usage, aside from price increases which you should be keeping up with by raising your prices, aside from price increases which you should be keeping up with by raising your prices.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and going back to your point about upgrading equipment, because that I'm sure probably helped as well, because it's a more efficient washer.
Speaker 1:It's using less water, less electricity, less gas, less maintenance. So the initial investment to upgrade everything is pretty much going to help you month over month. Um, so that's cool. What, what I was going to ask you is, um, about location. What best practices can you point out about location? Because you know again, I grew up in Brooklyn, I've lived in Atlanta now for 20 years. I've had a washer and dryer in my house for 20 years, so you know that whole city life is kind of different for me. I'm more in the suburbs now. So what areas do you? So what areas do you suggest to put a laundromat in? What works best?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I hate that most of my answers start with it depends, but it does depend, but I try to at least tell you what it depends on here. So it depends, however, you got to factor in the business model. So when people think laundromats, what we're normally thinking is a self-serve laundromat right, and so self-serve laundromats do well in a renter demographic or, in some places, homeowner demographics, where maybe, like, the homes are old and so they weren't built with washer, dryer hookups and maybe some people have added them, but the majority of homes don't. But typically we're talking renter demographics for self-serve laundry. However, as I mentioned the service side of the bit, I mean, listen, nobody likes laundry, nobody likes doing a lot of very few people actually like doing laundry. And who wants to spend half their saturday washing all the kids clothes? Cause we all know kids are filthy, disgusting creatures, right.
Speaker 2:And nobody yes, nobody wants to. No arguments anywhere around here, right, like nobody wants to spend half their Saturday doing laundry, and so that service side of the business is booming right now, because pretty appealing to never have to do laundry ever again, right, and so, uh, but it's a different demographic than your self-serve laundry usually, right. Usually it's a little bit higher income. You've got some disposable income. You start to value some of your time more than money, a little bit in some ways, uh, and you maybe you're dual income, no kids, or maybe you know you're a high income earner, or you're dual income with kids and you're just super busy, or you're just incredibly lazy and you don't want to do laundry, which I think is a great thing, right, so.
Speaker 2:So the demographics are a little bit different, where sometimes a really good mix is being on like one of those borders, right, like you want to be right on the train tracks so that you can serve both sides of the tracks, kind of thing, metaphorically speaking. Right, so you've got your self-serve customers who are going to come in and do the laundry because there's apartments or whatever, but nearby is a neighborhood that's a little more affluent and maybe would like for somebody else to do their laundry. So those are kind of like some general guidelines. One thing that I say like for self-serve laundromats, a good location is somewhere probably in a parking lot near a Dollar Tree. Fast food restaurants, right, check cashing places, you know, they're all serving kind of a similar demographic Walmart's right, so they're all kind of serving similar demographics. So that's kind of like a little hack, a little cheat code when you're looking for self-serve locations, gotcha.
Speaker 1:And what would you say? As far as if someone was looking for a laundromat, what's the best way to go about even finding one for sale?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that right now is easier said than done at the moment, because right now there's a lot of interest. There's more buyer interest actually, than I've ever seen before. I mean, there's lots of people who've been in this industry a lot longer than me but I've been in a decade and I think probably ever before is a safe assumption. And you know we can, we can thank. You know, like Cody Sanchez and you know, brandon Schlichter from Investment Joy started, I think, the coin collecting thing that everybody does now and you know, and I think it's a good thing actually, but it's really attracted a whole lot of other people who've kind of had our eyes open to the potential of this business. So finding one is tough. So you know, most people you know are going to do a search online and find something like biz buy Sell, biz Quest, biz Ben, biz Jungle I don't know like they're all Biz something right, one of those sites that has laundromat listings on it and you can find deals there. For sure, people do find deals there. However, like I said, they're fewer and farther between Usually those are the ones that have gotten passed over already or between Usually those are the ones that have gotten passed over already. So really the three best ways.
Speaker 2:I do a ton of consulting coach. I just crossed over a thousand consulting calls not that long ago and so I've done a ton of them and so I've seen what's worked and the three main things that are working right now and they're not anything innovative or anything but number one it's maybe going to that biz buy sell site and checking out the laundromats, but reaching out directly to the, to the broker who's listing that laundromat, and starting to build a relationship with them, and as many of them as you can, because your goal is to get those deals before they end up on those business sites. So that's one thing. Number two is direct mail campaign and just mailing laundromats and just saying, hey, I'm Jordan, I'm interested in buying a laundromat, just want to see if you were interested in buying a laundromat. And you can actually download the actual letter that I use and that a lot of my clients use for free on the website. They're just a Word doc template or Google doc template. And then number three is going to the laundromats and doing the same thing.
Speaker 2:Hey, I'm Jordan, nice to meet you. I've been looking for a laundromat for sale. I saw yours here. It's awesome business, any interest in selling it and door knocking essentially in real estate terms, right, and those three things are working right now, and the thing that all three of those have in common is they take more effort than surfing the internet in your underwear on the couch on a Thursday night.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean I used to do mailing campaigns for my rental properties. Well, I mean, I used to do mailing campaigns for my rental properties and I'm sure it's a whole lot less laundromats in your you know radius. So if you did have to do a mailing campaign, you know if I can do hundreds of letters on my own.
Speaker 1:You can probably do what? A dozen maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's not that, it's not that difficult to do that, so, but it does require you to, you know, take the initiative to do it. You know you can't just surf like you, like you were saying, but what about if someone said hey, you know what? I don't want the hassle of trying to find one. Do people like build brand new laundromats? Is that a thing, or is it too expensive?
Speaker 2:Oh, tell us about that, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can definitely build a brand new laundromat and actually I mean this is an exclusive for you right now. But I've just put together a partnership with a company where they help you find a laundromat location and help you manage the whole, because it's a lot. Right, it's a big process If you're building a laundromat that wasn't there before. There's a lot of infrastructure in building a laundromat location. Right, you've got a lot of plumbing. You've got to bring in a bigger water line, you've got to bring in a bigger power line, you probably have a couple of different panels. You've got to run plumbing internally. You've got to run electricity electricity internally. So I mean, you got to have machine layouts, you got to have thick enough concrete. You know it gets really like a lot overwhelming, um, pretty quickly if you don't have somebody to help you.
Speaker 2:But uh, with that said, there are plenty of people who, for their very first laundromat, they built a location out and are killing it. They're crushing it, right, and there's a lot of perks to building it out, like, you can put it where you want it and you can lay it out exactly how you want to lay it out and you can design it exactly how you want to design it. You don't have to inherit that from somebody else and work around there. So yeah, definitely a lot of perks to that. But also, you know, when you build it out it's a little bit longer to break even. Because you've got to build it out and you got to ramp up the business because everybody who you need to come to your store to do laundry is currently doing their laundry somewhere else. So you've got to snap them out of that habit of wherever they're doing their laundry and get them to come to your place and then get them to stay. So some obstacles, but it can be super lucrative as well if you get the right location.
Speaker 1:Right, right. So you know, being that this is the Money Focus podcast and people are making investments to make money, talk to us about, you know, like potential returns that you know you might see from one laundry per se out the gate, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I mean, one thing that I think is very exciting about this business is that probably 99% of America could replace their income with one to three laundromats. And I mean the revenue you get from a laundromat can vary pretty wildly. Right, you can get negative money, like I did for a long time, but really, like on the lower side, I mean, you can make 25 grand a year net with smaller laundromats, or you can make $500,000 a year with a bigger, higher performing laundromat, with a bigger, higher performing laundromat. So really, when you're thinking about it, it's helpful to think backwards, right, how much money do I want to net? I mean, obviously we all want to net as much as possible, but how much do I need to be able to net?
Speaker 2:And from there you can sort of back into a valuation kind of range for yourself. So, for example, if I was like I want to net $100,000. Well, I can say, well, you know, based on like a five times multiple, I'm probably looking in the $500,000 range, which is, you know, if I bought it all cash, it's 20% return on my money, but if I use a loan, maybe it's 30%, 40% return on my money, which it's just tough to beat. That Right, tough to beat that.
Speaker 1:Right, no, that's great. Well, talk to us a little bit about your program and you know the benefits and how people can actually tap into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean through doing. You know I'm almost 170 podcasts in. I've, like I said, done a thousand consulting calls, I've brokered laundromats, I've owned laundromats, you know. So I'm coming from a bunch of different angles on this and I've been, you know, I've been doing a free webinar almost every single week for three years or something like that, and I've been collecting people's questions like what do you need to know? What information are you missing?
Speaker 2:So the program is, you know it's built and designed to help people move from wherever they're at in the process. You know, anybody listening here is probably like I don't own a laundromat, so how do we get from there to? You know, I did a poll one time on hey, what's your goal for for owning a laundromat, how many would you like to own? And it was something like 97% of poll respondents were like 10 plus laundromats. So I was like, okay, well, that's great, but we've got to get like one first and there are different skillsets we need to learn and a process we need to go through to get from zero to 10 plus right, and it's possible. Lots of people have done it, but it's a process. And so I started thinking about okay, well, what is the process people need to go through, and so the program that I've sort of put together has a component of courses that you go through based on what phase you're in. So we start with foundations, because really this process and I think you might agree with this, in real estate investing too, the process, yes, is about money and financial freedom, but just as much, if not more, it's about us and who we're becoming along this journey. And so this foundations phase is about helping us be intentional about who we're becoming Right. And so, like you, you can't manage all of the uh, all of the, the properties that you're managing If you haven't gone through the process of getting to where you're at right now, like if you had, if you started from zero and you just said, okay, here's this whole portfolio, you're going to be struggling like crazy Cause you haven't become the kind of person who can manage that yet and have a program that has confidence that you can help people succeed right. So there's that foundations.
Speaker 2:Then we want to go to acquisitions and helping people find those laundromats or find those locations and buy right the first time. I always say, if you buy right the first time, sky's the limit for you, because your returns are so good. You just need a base hit deal, that's all you need. You need a 20% return on your money. It's a base hit deal and sky's the limit for you. You can roll with that all day long, right? So acquisitions Then we go to optimization.
Speaker 2:We really want to take. We're a fragmented industry here, kind of a mom and pop industry, so there's always opportunity to optimize these businesses when you buy them. So we want to go through that, because if you start scaling before you optimize your business, you're going to scale all the problems that you never addressed as well, right? So we want to address all the problems, optimize it. And then the next phase is the scale phase, and it's kind of two parts. So you can either scale through adding the services wash, dry, fold, drop off, laundry or pickup and delivery and or through building a portfolio of multiple locations.
Speaker 2:Right, so we want to help people move from you know, I have nothing all the way to. I have a huge laundry from. I have nothing all the way to. I have a huge laundry center that does all the laundry for everybody. And or multiple locations. So that's the essence of the program and it comes with one-on-one coaching because, listen man, being an entrepreneur, being an investor, it's a hard journey and it's a lonely journey. So having experts that can help guide you along the way, as you're going through these steps is invaluable. And then we also put people in mastermind groups, because it's lonely and it's hard and when you have a group of three or four other people that you meet with on a regular cadence and are encouraging each other, are keeping each other accountable to taking the actions we say we're going to take and our problem solving together, like talk about going farther faster, like recipe for success, in my view.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, being an entrepreneur it's, it's definitely rewarding, but it can be lonely at times. You know, my wife and I are in this together, so fortunately I have someone I can always, you know, bounce off ideas with. But when you're going into it, you're doing things that most you're probably most of your network can't even comprehend. They're like, man, why are you doing that? Just get a job. Why are you working these long nights? Just go to bed. And when you're building a business and you're setting up systems and processes, it's going to be a lot of work on the front end so that you can enjoy that time on the back end, so that you can. You know, my show is really about illustrating the good, the bad and the ugly, but hopefully you can see that with hard work, the good would definitely shine through. And it sounds like your program is really about setting people up for success, no matter what.
Speaker 1:Because, like you said, the foundation, understanding who you are as a person, as an entrepreneur like for me, for example, like with my rental properties I truly enjoy providing quality housing for people. You know. That's at the core. That's why I'm able to self-manage my properties, because when someone has a maintenance issue I don't immediately think of oh, I have to spend money. I think of I need to protect my investment and protect my tenant. You know, and that's important to me, and I've done the numbers to account for maintenance issues. So when maintenance issues come up, it's not a surprise. It's already accounted for in the numbers. The investment was sound. Now I'm in the people business. You see what I'm saying. So I want people to understand that this is a part of business. Like you mentioned, the utility bills. The utility bill is high. It means you're serving more people.
Speaker 1:You know, More and more people are happy with your service. They love coming into your laundromat. Your machines work, you have a clean facility. You have great services. That's what it means, so I think that's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that and I love that perspective that you're coming, and I come from the laundromat perspective.
Speaker 2:In the same way, like, laundromats are one of the few places that people still gather in in their communities, right like still getting together, and, and a lot of times, laundromats are located in communities that need uh, you know, need help and they need, they need people to come in and instill value in those communities and communicate. Hey, you're a valuable community here and unfortunately, I think our industry traditionally has not done a great job of that. People think of laundromats, they think of these rundown, half the machines are broken, half the lights work thing, and I think that that has been a huge disservice to our country really and to our communities that we're trying to serve. And so one of the reasons I do what I do, yes, to help people achieve financial freedom, yes, to help them achieve their goals, provide for their families and those things. But also I see what I do as an by extension I'm helping to serve communities and transform communities and instill value in communities by helping people know how to run businesses that communicate value to their customers.
Speaker 2:You're worth investing in right, and so I love that. I mean you said people first. It's one of our core values is people first, then profits.
Speaker 1:Well, tell us, tell the audience, how we can stay in contact with you, contact you about your services, listen to your podcast. So shout out your social network website. So the floor is yours.
Speaker 2:Sweet man Appreciate it Well. So I'm Jordan. I'm with Lawn and Matt Resource Lawnandmatterresourcecom. Lawn and Matt Resource podcast. We're Lawn and Matt Resource on all the social platforms YouTube, instagram, all the, all the things. Uh, there, and you know, head over to the website, my email is Jordan J O R D A N. Like Michael Jordan, get confused with him. A lot People mix us up, but it's our, I think it's our game. It's pretty similar, uh, but, and, and the money, and the money and the good looks and you know all the things. Really, we're pretty much the same person. Uh, jordan at laundromatresourcecom is my email address and yeah, if anything I can do for you or anybody in your audience.
Speaker 1:Just feel free to reach out. Great, great, and I'll make sure to include, you know, the contact information in the show notes. So again, thank you so much, Jordan, for coming on the show educating us on the laundromat business, and I might definitely have to get me a laundromat for sure.
Speaker 2:Hey, you know, if you do, you just let me know and I'll hook you up. We'll get it. We'll get it connected. But thank you for having me on man Seriously, such an honor and love what you're doing here and keep it up, man All right, thank you.
