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If you're selling online or in person, you're familiar with this challenge. You need people to find your products, which usually means paying for ads or hoping they stop by. Whatnot flips that this is the live shopping platform that's exploding right now. On whatnot, you go live and sell directly to real people in real time. I've seen whatnot climb to the top of the app store. I've seen the seller earnings everything from small part time projects to multi million dollar businesses. Whatnot is the largest dedicated live shopping platform. They see what you've got, they can ask you questions and then they buy. And what's fascinating is they keep coming back for more Whatnot. Buyers are spending more than an hour a day in the app. And all that is great news for sellers. In fact, sellers on whatnot sell 10 times more than on other major marketplaces. That's because you're not just listing products, you're building real connections with buyers. From collectibles to cookies, from resale treasures to vintage fashion. People just like you are building real audiences and real businesses on whatnot. And for a limited time, Whatnot will match your first $150 sold in the first month. Visit whatnot.com sell to start selling. That's W-H-A-T N O T whatnot.com sell whatnot.com sell here's an oldie but a goodie from the archives from the Side Hustle show greatest hits collection.
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Plus stick around at the end for the real time.
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Check in with Jono to see what's
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happened with the Laundromat business since this
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original recording
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for his side Hustle.
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D
This week's guest didn't start from scratch. Instead he bought a business that was already profitable and then he went out and tripled the revenue in his first year. All while working a full time job. What's up? What's up?
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Nick Loper here.
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D
Welcome to the Side Hustle show because building extra income streams is just plain fun. This week you'll meet Jono Santa Maria from Melbourne, Australia. By day he works in digital marketing, but as a side hustle as of about 18 months ago, he's the proud owner of Nina's Laundrette, a small local self service laundromat. Stick around in this one to hear how he found embedded the business and
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the quick win actions he took to multiply the revenue.
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Ready?
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Let's do it.
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E
I want to choose how much of my time I give to people for money by the time I'm 40. Uh, that's my investment goal. So I based my strategy around looking for a business around that. And I was able to form a criteria that met what I'm currently doing. So it needed to be relatively hands off. It needed to be non consolidated. I didn't want to be competing with big box companies and I needed to be able to add value through technology and my skills. And a Laundromat really fit that bill.
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C
Interesting. How many years do you have Left before. Before 40 before the timeline is up here.
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E
I'm 31 and a half, so I've got a fair chunk of time to go.
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C
For me, that milestone birthday just hit earlier this year. So I'm like, okay, that's why I asked.
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E
Congratulations.
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C
I don't know if it's a congratulations. People would be like, hey, happy birthday, congrats. Like ah, it's a big one. I don't know if I want to talk about it. Okay, so that's a great goal. I want to make work optional by the time I'm 40, through a variety of different investments and you know, time leveraged cash flows and a laundromat kind of checked that box like, well, here's something that you mentioned is relatively hands off. We'll talk about. I mean it's a money making machine.
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D
The machines do the work for you
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C
in a lot of ways. There's maintenance involved, all that jab, where can I add value? And we'll talk about the unique skill sets that you brought to the table where maybe this was somewhat of an undervalued asset. And then the third element that you mentioned was it had to be somewhat of a fragmented market. I want to compete with national brands. I don't want to compete with big box conglomerates.
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D
Right.
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C
And so I thought that was an interesting element as well. So you decide, yes, a laundromat is it. This is going to be my next side hustle experiment. What happens next? How do you just, you happen to find one that's not too far away from you is my understanding.
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E
Yeah, I was really lucky. I basically was strolling through TikTok and that led to Googling how to buy a laundromat, where to buy a laundromat. And one of the first ones that sort of popped up on an aggregator site that I was looking at was in north, which is not too far from where I live. And it was seemed to be in the right price range. And I started to look into how do you actually buy a business. Started reaching out to friends, you know, reached out to the actual Ad to ask about the business and the process and yeah, got started from there.
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C
So in the States it would be sites like Biz Buy Sell and stuff like that. Is it similar in Australia?
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E
Yeah, we have a website called, I think it's called Business Sales or Seek Business maybe. So that's one of the aggregator sites. But there are many. There are probably like five or six and they all have the same ads.
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C
Okay. So you can look up businesses for sale near me and see what pops up. And these are typically valued on a multiple of annual net income. I, I understand. And so I was like, well, how much does something like this cost if you're comfortable sharing?
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E
Yeah, so mine cost 83,000 is what I paid. It had four years left on the lease. So yeah, I mean it works out to about a 2 year multiple based on that. But yeah, it can range. I imagine that there would be other laundromat businesses that were performing much better than the one that I bought that had longer leases that would probably be selling on a larger multiple.
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C
So you'd prefer to have more years left on that lease because when that expires that's kind of a wild card. If you're going to be able to renew. If you're going to be able to renew at favorable terms.
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E
More that it's a bit harder to move a laundromat than it is another brick and mortar store. If you sell shoes and your lease runs out, then you can rent the shop next door and just move your shoeboxes into the storeroom. If you have a laundromat and your lease runs out, you've got 20 odd washing machines and dryers, but you can't just cut them next door and put them in the ground. You need plumbing and that sort of stuff. The security of a lease is kind of important in a laundromat deal.
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C
Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. If it's expiring in six months to a year, that kind of makes you a little bit nervous. You want to have. Maybe that's part of the due diligence is reaching out to the landlord and saying like, hey, what's the, what's the relationship like? What's the situation here going to be going forward if they would be forthcoming with that information?
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E
I think so. I think also the first deal is always going to be the hardest because I know that I'll look for a second deal and I've got runs on the board when it comes to running a laundromat. So if the current owner isn't invested or isn't running the business. Well, I can come in and say, well look, I've got this place, place in Northgate. I've been running it for two years. Here's what I've been able to do in that time and give them the confidence to sort of say, all right, well, he's going to be a good tenant. There are law in Australia, at least there are laws that protect you. So if you buy a business, the landlord can't reject you outright. They need to have a valid reason. Oh, okay, yeah.
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C
Okay, so the sticker price is 83 grand, which represents a roughly two year multiple on the income from the business. So let's call it 40 grand a year. These are Australian dollars For the sake of reference.
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E
Yeah.
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C
Okay, so at press time, 70 cents to USD roughly. So to get a sense of what we're working with here, what might be available locally. If you do go down this path for your own side hustle, what happens next in terms of due diligence? Like how do you verify the books? A lot of it is cash or quarters in the machine. Right. Or how do you figure out, is it really making what the guy says it is?
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E
Yeah, so I sort of cowboyed that one. I sat in the store and for, you know, three or four hours at a time, counted how many customers came in, counted how much they spent on the machine. And we did at different times of the day over like a two week period. And then a friend of mine and I sort of worked off a number that we generated based on that usage and then extrapolated that over 12 months and that was our estimate at what he was making.
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C
Okay, so you arrived. So like, yeah, these, based on what we're witnessing firsthand, these seem reasonable. Seems like it'll add up.
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E
Yeah, it wasn't what he had. We were just like, well, based on our observations, this is what we assume they are making. And then we work backwards to say, well, this is what we assume that we would generate if we made X, Y and Z improvements. If this is the bottom, if this is our bottom, this is based on the business, how it's currently running. Now, we would make this improvement, this improvement, this improvement, and it would generate plus 10, plus 20 based on our assumptions.
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C
Okay, and did that adjust? Did you bring that to the negotiation table?
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E
No, not really. Honestly, we put in an offer based on what we thought was a fair price. I actually sort of undershot and we got it first go. It was a, it's a very unique process. I don't think this Would have happened for many people.
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C
Okay. Yeah. I've never bought a business and I've only sold one. So it's always curious to see, well, what gave you the confidence to plunk down that kind of cash? And was it. Does it have to be a cash deal? Is there financing programs?
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E
So mine was 20,000 of my own money, and the rest was a bank loan. And that bank loan was anchored by an equity in existing property. But, I mean, 70 or $80,000 isn't attainable. I would always stress that if you can get the right terms on a loan, use the bank's money. Because if we look at, like, 12 months down the track, I've put 20,000 of my own money into this business and 75,000 other banks. But everything since has been bought and paid for by the business, not by the bank of Jono.
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C
Okay, so by that, I mean you're paying for the improvements with the cash flow from the business, rather.
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E
Okay, Correct.
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C
Gotcha. Okay. So you say, hey, I think these numbers are going to add up. I think we can make these improvements. Was there anything else that attracted you to the business aside from it seems like a reasonable price point, seems like an honest seller? It seems like we've got several years
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left on the lease.
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C
What else gave you the confidence to go for it and pull the trigger?
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It really comes down back to that investing. Why? Around. I want to be able to choose how much of my time I give to other people for money. And that helped me set this really strong criteria. So that was really it. It met the criteria. It was really conveniently located and at the right price point. So we had to go.
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C
Yeah. And so here's something that is already generating cash flow. Customers already know about it. Hopefully it's part of their weekly or monthly routine to come in and use the place. It's relatively predictable. I imagine there may be some seasonality to it, but it's not. You got to spend some money upfront, but it's not. Not likely to go to zero the next day. So let's say you get the keys to the place. And what happens next? Like, are you surprised by what happens in the first few months, or is it. Or does work out kind of how you expected?
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E
I was surprised to learn that his numbers were pretty honest. So you know what? He was reporting his tax return, and the first three months of operations was near enough to what he was saying the business was doing. I went about making improvements straight away. So one of the things that really stood out to me was that it was a cash only coin operated laundromat. There wasn't any PayPass options and in Australia it just doesn't fly not having PayPass or cashless card payments as an option. So we actually organized that to be installed during the due diligence process and that made the impact almost straight away because people were happy to come in, not have to break a note or go to an atm. They can just tap their card. And it took a bit of learning from the customers but once a few customers knew how to do it they started teaching other customers and we got the right signage in and that was probably one of the biggest improvements. The second one was building a website. So again there's an elderly gentleman who used to own the place, wasn't interested in marketing, didn't know much about the Internet. So it didn't actually have a website and it had a resident generated Google my business page. It didn't even have the right business name on it. So yeah, that was the second thing that I did and it made a huge difference straight away.
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C
This is ninas laundry.comau if you want to go check out what a local laundromat website might look like. So just. And that was something too during the due diligence to say well there's not a lot of online presence here. Maybe there's an opportunity to increase just the people who know about the store. Like if we could increase market share of people coming by and they come and Google us or they look for a laundromat near me, maybe they're going to be more likely to find this than they were before.
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E
Yeah, for sure. That really helped. I think the other thing was I mentioned before adding technology or value through adding technology in my skill set. I work in marketing automation. That's my, my job or my day job. And I'm a sort of generalist digital marketer as well. So one of the things that I really noticed was that laundromats don't really have a high bar of expectation. So people who come in and use a laundromat they expect to the place to be somewhat clean and their machines to work. So if you put coins in a machine or you pay for a machine, it doesn't work. You have a lot of anxiety because there's no one there to help you or in a self service laundromat. So one of the first things we did is we added cameras with a speaker in them and added QR codes to all the machines that basically said if you're having experience that's not the one that you want to. If the machine leaks, if there's a payment issue, scan this, fill out the form and we'll help you out. And the cool thing about that is the form comes straight to my phone via email. If I'm available, I'll get onto it straight away and I can either turn the cameras on and speak to the customer directly through the camera and talk them through.
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C
Oh wow, this is like through a ring cam or something like that.
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Yeah, yeah, Google Nest. Or I can call them or email them and just give them that reassurance that hey, sorry the machine didn't work the way it was. Happy to give you a refund. If you can provide a little more information about what's going on, we can troubleshoot from our side. And that just leaves a much better customer experience that 99% of laundromats aren't going to offer and they're not going to offer.
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C
So there were some additional infrastructure investments. First with this adding the cashless payment systems and then this technology layer of like the cameras and the customer support that maybe wasn't there before. I want to go back to the cashless payment things. It sounds like, is this a matter of retrofitting the machines? Is this just a load of prepaid card at some point? Kiosk at the in the entryway, trying to get a picture of.
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E
Yeah, we have a third party company that will install a kiosk. There's a touchscreen pad and then they have chips that I'm assuming run off some sort of radio waves that are added to each machine and will load up or pulse the coin mechanism when people pay. So you touch the screen, you select I want to wash. You can choose as many washes to add to the payment as you want. And then you hit pay, tap your card and then the machine will pulse the machines that you've chosen to use. Same with the dryers.
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C
How many machines are in there?
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I have 12.
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C
It seems like 12 commercial washers could be a big chunk of the purchase price just in equipment.
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Yeah, I think so. And also infrastructure. So I've looked at other deals recently. I looked at one for about $200,000 that was only two years old. So the machines probably would have cost that much or a little bit more. But then there's also the infrastructure to connect to sewerage and they had cameras in there already and things like that. So the purchase price actually seemed quite reasonable when you think about it.
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C
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that you're not having to do in addition to just like the 0 to 1, like getting a business to lift off. But there's a lot of stuff that comes with just as a, you know, as a way to protect yourself, where it's like, well, if, even if it fails, like I still have now this asset that I, you know, or these machines as assets.
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E
It's a unique time in Australia too, because a lot of the, or all of the washing equipment is made overseas, a lot of it in the States. And obviously with the global supply chain issues, there's a long time for machines to get here. So there's even more of a premium almost on buying a setup store because those machines are already here and you don't have to wait.
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C
So having it automated, I want to get into like the automation of the store, like not having somebody required to be sitting there on staff for customer support and troubleshooting and stuff. But as far as the machines and their maintenance, what does that look like workload for you? You know, I'm, I'm working my marketing job 40 hours a week, 50 hours a week. And like, if something breaks, like, you know, do you have the expertise to go in and troubleshoot this stuff yourself? You're calling the repair guy. Just, you know, give me a sense of the, the longevity or bulletproofness of these types of machines. Like what, what's required on a, on a daily or weekly basis?
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E
Sure. Well, according to the manufacturers, the shelf life's about seven years, but I can safely say that it's well beyond that. Those, these machines are, I mean, I've got machines in there, we are getting rid of them, but they're 40 years old.
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C
Oh my gosh. Okay.
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E
The newer machines, obviously they all run fine. Occasionally you might have an issue where something gets stuck in the door and a washer will flood. But that's not a break, that's just a user error and you come and mop it up. The dryers do have sometimes issues with things getting stuck in the filter or a part might break. But Dexter, which is the company that makes the machines, has a whole bunch of YouTube videos that show you how to troubleshoot. And our distributor in Australia also has a 24 hour helpline, so you can get on the phone to them and they'll troubleshoot with you over the phone. And if I can't fix it myself through that, then I'll call someone out to fix it.
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C
Okay. And then as far as, you know, unlocking and locking the door, like do you have to show up at 7am or whenever it opens in the morning and you know we're open for business and then I just do that on my way to work. Or is it like this, maybe an automated way to unlock and say we're open?
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E
I think the previous owner would have had to do that and I feel very sorry for him. The lock is on an electronic mechanism that engages when the electricity's on and disengages when the electricity is off. And then I've plugged that into a Wi Fi PowerPoint or an App Control PowerPoint. So that's on a timer.
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C
Okay. So you know, it opens at closing time. Does it ever like lock anybody in there at closing time?
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E
Like where you can't get locked in? The way that the lock works is the lock engages on the outside, but if you're in the store, you can still turn the knob to get out.
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C
And then you've got the cameras going to see like if anybody is vandalizing your place. It just seems like, well, it's very trusting to. Let's just, oh, we're open for business. Nobody's here, but you can come on in.
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E
Yeah, that's essentially it. We've also got alarms set up so if people try to tamper with the coin box, even though there's barely anything in it, and try and get out the back or, or whatever, there is like alarm set up so that if people try to break in, that'll go off and let us know and let the police know. But by and large it's, it's a community space that people really respect.
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C
Yeah, that's true. It's become, by going cashless, it becomes less of an attractive target. Well, there's not a ton of money sitting here anyways.
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E
Yeah, yeah. About 70 to 80% of our payments are made on card.
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C
That was us in Japan. It was probably the last automated laundromat that we went to several years ago when our, our oldest was like three months old and we went to this automated laundromat and it's probably the first time experiencing something like that. Yeah, just nobody works here. Just you go in, you do your thing and you go out and it works. And it was like, oh, this is kind of cool. It made me think of who's owning this place. Right. They got the passive income dream right now and the machines are doing the work for them.
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More with Drano in just a moment, including his dedicated local SEO and Google paid traffic strategy to drive awareness in customers. Plus collecting positive customer reviews and our time travel check in segment. All coming up right after this when you're a small business, the right hire can be make or break hoping the right people see your job. Posting really isn't the best growth strategy when the pressure's on and you need the right hire. This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs Indeed Sponsored Jobs get you the quality candidates when you need them most. Like yesterday. How it works is Sponsored Jobs boosts your job post in the search results so you can reach the people with the exact skills, experience and qualifications you need to help your business thrive. Plus, with Indeed Sponsored Jobs you only pay for results. There's no monthly subscriptions or long term contracts. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes with less stress, less time and more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Inside Hustle show listeners will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves@ Indeed.com podc podcast just go to Indeed.com podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com podcast terms and conditions apply. Need to hire. This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs A lot of side hustlers suffer from this debilitating disease called what if itis? What if it doesn't work?
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D
What if I don't have the skills?
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What if I picked the wrong path? But one thing 100% of our amazing side Hustle show guests have in common is they took their shot. They faced down those what ifs and they got their answers through taking action. Our partner, Shopify helps you turn those what ifs into why nots. Shopify is the commerce platform that powers millions of businesses around the world. What if you never built a website before? Well, they've got hundreds of ready to use templates that help you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand's style. What if people haven't heard about your brand? That's where everybody starts. Shopify helps you find your customers with email and scroll stopping social media campaigns too. And what if you get stuck? Shopify is always around to share advice with their award winning 24. 7 customer support. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com sidehustle go to shopify.com sidehustole that's shopify.com sidehustleen
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C
what does it look like? Talk to me about the online presence that you built because I know this is a big Component of spreading the marketing awareness of the location. Talk to me beyond just the website and the branding that has gone into that, but the, you know, anything local, SEO wise, I'd love to spend some time on that.
- [24:19]
E
Yeah. So the principle for any real local service is that you want to show up when people are googling your service. So Laundromat near me, Laundromat Northgate. Those are the keywords that I've been really trying to target through paid Google at the start and then SEO more recently. In February we had a dedicated SEO strategy that we commenced and it almost instantly saw hockey stick growth for our business. So I think by the end of February we were second on Google and into the map pack and then we started looking at getting reviews and all the kind of best practice SEO things around utilizing my Google business profile and just building backlinks, making sure that the landing pages are all set up to target the right keywords. And it took a couple of months. But the keyword that we were really trying to rank for was Laundromat Northgate. We would say that the strategy was complete when we're ranking number one for Laundromat Northcote because there's about six laundromats in Northcote and we wanted to be number one and that happened in September. So like last month.
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C
Oh great.
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E
The month before.
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C
The climb to the top has worked well. Let's dive into this. So three segments, the paid search to start the SEO and getting reviews. Talk to me about the paid search. So just targeting that same keyword or variations of it I'm assuming and just trying to. Yeah, I mean that's fantastic. Being able to jump the line so to speak. To say, hey, we are what you're looking for.
- [26:01]
E
Yeah, for sure. Almost all the people I speak to in the store ask them, how'd you find out about us? Most will say Google and the ones that don't say that they live two streets down. So it definitely has helped paid Google Ads, especially because we had just created the website so we didn't have any domain authority, we didn't have any data running through the ads. We really needed that boost to get to the top. It wouldn't have any reviews either. That was really important. I think over the long term though, I found that paid Google is really effective for pickup and delivery. So we have a boutique pickup and delivery commercial laundry service and that was really good for generating leads for that service.
- [26:46]
C
Like on the paid search you just send people to the. Assuming it's a consumer looking for laundry Service. Like, are you sending them to the. Just the homepage, or are you sending them to, like, a new customer special offer page or, you know, anything more granular than that?
- [27:02]
E
Just a landing page about the service. So we didn't have any particular offers or anything like that. We were just saying, hey, we're a commercial laundry service. These are our rates. These are the type of clients that we work with. And yeah, we're generating really, like, strong leads almost right off the bat. Like I said, we're a boutique service. The reason that I run a commercial laundry service is so that I can do that while I clean the store. I choose to clean the store. I haven't offloaded every part of the service because I wanted to keep my margins fairly strong. And I live nearby, and cleaning doesn't take long.
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C
Okay, and so while you're in there, you're adding these larger commercial loads to the machines as they're available.
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E
Yeah. So I'll, you know, I do towels for an Osteo, a local Osteo. And while I'm sweeping and mopping and wiping down the machines, I've also got a load of towels in one of the machines and move them over to the dryers. And by the time they're finished in the dryers, I've finished mopping and all the chores I need to do at the laundromat, and I can head home.
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C
So this was another lever that you were able to pull instead of just going business to consumer targeting individuals and families needing their laundry done, saying, oh, we can target business customers for higher volume, higher ticket, or maybe more consistent things, too. We're going to have towels this week. We're going to have towels next week. That makes a lot of sense. And that's something that a lot of businesses can think about, whether it's a laundromat or anything else. It's like, okay, well, who are the whales of the customers? Who are the bigger fish to go after? It sounds like these more commercial accounts was one of these elements that allowed you to increase the revenue for sure.
- [28:48]
E
And it also meant that I could be disciplined in having to clean the place because the cleaning bill would have been somewhere between seven and ten thousand dollars out of my pocket. Instead, I'm cleaning, keeping that money in my pocket. And I'm also generating an extra $25,000 a year from washing these people's.
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C
Gotcha. Yeah. Because you'd have to hire somebody to take on that work if it wasn't you.
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E
Yep.
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C
Do you have an estimate of the hours that you're putting into it on that physical labor side rather than the puppet master digital marketer side?
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E
About five hours a week. Ish.
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C
Okay, that's not bad.
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E
Five to seven to keep the place clean and pick up all. And drop off all laundry.
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C
Yeah. For something that is now in the what, 12 to 15,000amonth range, revenue wise,
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E
the whole business Overall, it's like $3,000 a week.
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C
Okay, so that was the paid search, the SEO. So building out the website, creating the content for that local targeted keyword, anything else that you had to do, like local citations, are those still a thing? Like trying to add your business to other directories and point back to the website?
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E
Yeah, that's how I started. I'm not an SEO expert by any means, but I knew that high domain authority backlinks is where we need to start. So a lot of directories, a lot of looking for local opportunities. So local council have a business directory and that was where I started. But I reached out to a third party who knew what they were doing. So I've got an agency that I work with and they're every month putting in 15 hours to strengthen our web presence, concentrating on really particular keywords.
- [30:40]
C
Okay. And then on the review side, talk to me about how you've been collecting customer reviews for Google and if you're focusing on any other sites there or. Primarily Google. My business.
- [30:53]
E
Yeah, primarily Google, my business. The way that we started was obviously reaching out to family and friends and hey, I bought a laundromat. Come and do your washing and then review our service, please. From there, the added benefit of cleaning the laundromat or being present at the laundromat is you get to meet and talk to customers. So every time you meet someone, you learn a little bit more about their journey. And I've been going to this laundromat for five years and I really love what you're doing with the place. Great, you've got card now. It's so much cleaner than it used to be. Like, hey, can you let people know about it? Can you leave a review? And that really helped. I think for the first kind of, you know, five to six months. That was, it was me asking people, you know, can you, can you do a review? I remember once talking to someone who that driven about 5km to get to our laundromat. And we're in the inner city of Melbourne, near 6 million people live in this city. So they would have had to pass at least like three or four laundromats to get to ours and they came because of the reviews. Could you guys leave one too? Because it'll help other people find us.
- [32:03]
C
Yeah. I'm looking at Google at least at press time here. 68 reviews, 4.9 stars. People love this place.
- [32:09]
E
Yeah. One one star review from someone who was bitter and I reckon that's more. They don't like me. They don't like the laundromat.
- [32:19]
C
They're ruining your perfect five star rating.
- [32:22]
E
Yeah. I think the other really exciting thing is that more recently I've started to get organic five star reviews. So especially in the last week I think we've had two come in that I don't remember talking to the person or asking them to do a review, but they left a five star review and spoke about how they really like the space, they like the music that we play. They've been coming for a long time. It's really cool.
- [32:48]
C
Yeah, that's fun. And it's like, hey, you're waiting for your clothes to dry anyways, you can do it right on your phone if you're striking up that conversation in there. It's a relatively easy ask if somebody is happy with the service for sure.
- [33:02]
E
And if you put in the effort. I suppose every industry is different but if you look at the map pack for us, there's the other people in the map pack. The closest number of reviews to us is about 28. So I think we're 40 ahead of our next closest.
- [33:18]
C
Nice. Don't underestimate the power of those reviews. Just in social proof to make it a no brainer decision for anybody searching just like, well, clearly these are the ones you got to go with because they're just head and shoulders above everybody else.
- [33:32]
E
The other benefit about reviews as well that a lot of people don't recognize is that they are an awesome place to stuff your website with keywords. So when people review you on Google My business, they'll put the word laundromat, laundry, coin laundry in their review. And if they don't necessarily include the right keywords that you want, you have the right to reply to all of those reviews. So you can start to add keywords in your reply.
- [34:06]
C
Oh, okay. Yeah. Thanks so much for stopping by our Northcote North Laundromat just to make sure that it's in there each and every time.
- [34:14]
E
Yeah.
- [34:15]
C
The pictures on the Google profile are those ones that you've added or these are ones that customers have put in.
- [34:22]
E
It's two or three of them are ones that I've added and some are ones that customers have added.
- [34:28]
C
One of the marketing tips that was shared on the show recently was treating that Google my business profile almost like you would social media and trying to post constant updates, like several times a week in some cases to feed that algorithm with more data and just more to chew on. And Google was rewarding the businesses that were doing that. Have you played around with that at all or seen any impact from it?
- [34:53]
E
We didn't start. I mean there's only so many photos of an unattended laundromat that you can take. It's not like we're at the store washing clothes and we can do fun things. I have more recently made some sort of how to videos which we're planning on putting on there. I suppose from a picture point of view, what I did notice when we added pictures, that was our views went up. We had a lot more views on our Google business profile. But I didn't necessarily see too much of an uptake in people asking for directions or revenue or things like that.
- [35:29]
C
Yeah, that's something that personally, when I'm looking for a new place to go, especially with the kids, I want to look at the pictures and see trying to figure out okay, where am I supposed to go, how is this going to work once I get there? Trying to almost do a pre visit walkthrough without having to go make the trip.
- [35:46]
E
Yeah, I think you're going to make things especially if there's an unattended. You have to make it as easy as possible for people. Because as much as once you've set up your store, as much as you know how things work, you built it or you're there all the time. So you got to assume that people don't know it's their first time, they don't know how to pay by card, they don't know that you have to go to the kiosk at the back of the store and hit wash, then pay and load up your machine, you need to provide as much sort of visual prompt or information for people to do that as possible. So Google my business profile is a great place to have a video if that's where people are finding you to show them how to use the washing machines and dryers or pay by card.
- [36:31]
C
Yeah, here's how it works, here's how make it dummy proof in that way. So you're a year and a half into being a side hustling laundromat owner. What's surprised you the most over that time?
- [36:48]
E
I think the thing that surprised me the most was how Much infrastructure or how important infrastructure is to a laundromat business. In particular, the building that I'm in, it was super old. So every time that I wanted to do something like adding a new machine or moving stuff around, we would run into issues where I didn't have the right type of PowerPoint for a bigger machine because this was built 50 years ago and the power requirements for machines back then were way less. So those are like some little things that kind of shocked me. And obviously I'm not a tradie, so I don't know much about electricity requirements or things like that. But outside of that, I think the thing that really shocked me was just how much of an impact, having a strong web presence and how low the bar to success is to run a really successful laundromat or the expectation of customers.
- [37:52]
C
Yeah, that's a really interesting one to see. You know, of all the different levers that you can pull and if you're shopping businesses or even working on your own side hustle, like just checking some of these boxes that other businesses may have overlooked. It's like, oh, you know, it's 2022, it's almost 2023. Like having a, even a basic brochure style website is pretty easy to go and do and you know, I'm trying to make it almost reverse engineer. Well, how are people going to find this unless they live two blocks away like the guy you mentioned? They're going to probably find it through Google. So having a presence there, going after these commercial accounts, trying to go for bigger ticket sales rather than one off washes, I think that makes a lot of sense. Even if it does take up some time initially and maybe down the road you hire that out, what's next for you? Are you going to build an empire of these things? Melbourne wide domination, Australia wide domination. What's next for Nina's?
- [38:49]
E
I think so. I think the goal will be to buy another laundromat in the next sort of 12 to 18 months. I'm not in a rush, but if the right deal came across the table and I could find one that met that criteria that I was talking about before, similar to what Nina's has set up, I think that that's the logical next step.
- [39:11]
C
You've got yourself nine years left on your timeline to hit your goal. I think you've got plenty of leeway to get that done. Is there a point where you see, revenue wise this becomes a full time thing and you call it quits at the day job?
- [39:26]
E
I've done some Paper maths and I think that four would be the right number of laundromats where that could be my full time job comfortably. In saying that though I work for a really great company at the moment that has amazing opportunities and really supports the growth of their team and outside interests from work. So I don't think I'll be quitting my day job anytime soon.
- [39:52]
C
All good. No pressure on that front. I was going to ask is there a way that you think about or target the profitability on a per wash basis or even per month? If I take in $5 worth of washing credits and after my utilities and machine costs, I Hope to have $3 left over or something like that.
- [40:15]
E
Not necessarily like that, but in terms of making decisions around how to improve the business or what to invest in next I. E. Buying bigger machines or getting solar power, starting a commercial service preface around that is I want the business to maximize the amount of money each customer spends per visit. So if I'm investing in something, we put it through that litmus test, is that going to help us increase the average spend per customer per visit? And that's how I can sort of gauge whether that's something I can do now or something I sort of wait on. And I'll give you an example. We bought a vending machine almost straight away after buying the store. And the reason that we got the vending machine is because people forget their laundry detergent. And we can have laundry detergent for sale at a significant markup that people need at a convenience. So by doing that we can increase the spend per customer per visit. Then in that vending machine it's got other places so we add snacks. So now people are paying for a wash, a dry, a laundry detergent and a can of Coke. Then PayPal. What PayPal also enabled us to do was to program the machine to have multiple mend prices. So rather than just having one type of wash on the washing machine, we now have an express wash which is the regular everyday wash and a superwash which is an extra couple of minutes on the cycle. Again, just another opportunity to increase the customer spend per visit.
- [41:56]
C
Oh okay, yeah, super common. When I go through like the drive thru car wash, it's like you know, good, better, best and they have clever names like you know, ultimate supreme and it comes with this, this, you know, it's an extra thing. Basically you're sitting in the machine longer, they put some clear coat wax on you. I don't know what they do but similar like you're giving, you're Adding a higher ticket menu offering, like, it kind of anchors the price there. Well, okay. You know, I could just do express today, but, oh, my clothes are really dirty. I want the, you know, the full meal deal.
- [42:24]
E
Yeah. On the dryer side as well. So the dryers are $1 for seven minutes. If you're paying by coins, you physically adding a dollar and you might get to $4 and be like, I need this extra dollar. I'm going to keep it. Whereas with the pay pass, it starts at 5, and then you can move up or down. So for the lazy person or for most people in a rush, they just tap the thing. Hit dryer, hit five. Yeah, five sounds about right. Hit go.
- [42:52]
C
Yeah. 35 minutes worth of dry time. Okay.
- [42:56]
E
So the average spend for a customer is more when they're paying by card because the start price is five, not one.
- [43:05]
C
Okay. Isn't that cool? I don't know. You're playing puppet master in a way of like, oh, what are the different levers that we can pull to increase the value of this asset that we already have? And versus trying to get something off the ground. It's like there's already. You can almost already a B test. Like, if you had a website already got traffic flowing through it. What if we tweak this variable or what if we added this little thing and you kind of see almost immediately the impact that it has? Very exciting stuff. And Jono, I appreciate you sharing the ins and outs from it. Again, it's Nina's laundrette. We'll link up that website if you want to go check it out in the show notes. Any other place where people should go to learn more about you, what you do?
- [43:46]
E
If people want to get in touch, I have a LinkedIn page. I'm sure that'll be in the Show Notes as well. Otherwise, they can reach out to me directly on the Nina's Laundrette website.
- [43:57]
C
You got it. We're happy to link that up, Jono, appreciate you joining me. Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side. Hustle Nation does not have to be Laundromat related, just whatever entrepreneurial wisdom that you'd like to impart.
- [44:09]
E
Yeah. Get a Audible subscription and listen to audiobooks about business and emotional intelligence.
- [44:17]
C
All right, There you go.
- [44:18]
B
Well, very good.
- [44:20]
C
Once again, thanks for joining me and we'll catch up with you soon.
- [44:26]
D
All right, even if you're not interested in buying a laundromat, you've got some takeaways to work with here. First, I Love the idea of setting a target date by which you're going to make work optional and then really reverse engineering a plan to get there. In Jono's case, that was, hey, by the time I'm 40, I want to be in charge of how much of my time I sell to somebody else. And in his case, that looked like going out and buying some cash flow. That's a line from Ace Chapman on the podcast years ago that's always stood out to me. When I need money, I go buy it. Yes, in this case there's time involved, there's some upfront investment involved, five to seven hours a week like Jono described in the business versus working on the business. So it's not totally passive, but it is quite leveraged. And it sounds like by being there in person, by being in the Laundromat in person, that's developed some positive customer experiences that's helped drive some online reviews, which turns into this virtuous cycle of new customers coming in and using the laundromat for the first time. It makes me think of what other types of businesses might be similarly time leveraged or self service or automated. Obviously rental real estate checks that box for a lot of people. Although your cash on cash returns might not be as exciting, especially with the cost of debt increasing the last six to 12 months. And in part because you may not be able to apply the same kind of so called forced appreciation that Jono's done here by improving the cash flow, operations and profitability to the same extent. Personally, I'm partial to online businesses, but there is a certain skill set and learning curve involved there. Self storage might be an option, which is certainly having a moment on Twitter championed by Nick Huber and others. An automated car wash, an ice vending machine, a video game machine, an ATM business, a billboard business. There are a few out there that may be similarly low maintenance. At least you know, from my perspective from the outside looking in. Second thing, whether you're looking to buy a business or improve one you're already working on, is looking for the simple little tweaks that you can make to eke out more profit. This is one of the most exciting parts of running a business for me. Finding those little ideas, those little wins that earn an extra 500 bucks or a thousand bucks, you know, to the bottom line. Maybe it's a new partnership, maybe it's a subtle change to your email sequence, maybe it's an improvement to your SEO. It's a new product. Upsell. All that stuff is really cool and I'd like that to be your homework from today's episode. To think of just one incremental improvement or inexpensive split test that you can make to your business, to apply some of Jono's thinking to how can you earn more from the traffic or customers you already have? Or what simple changes can you make to attract more customers? And then finally, if you're looking to acquire a business, looking for something that has opportunity for improvement that's suited to your skills. It doesn't sound like Nina's, like the Laundromat was necessarily a fixer upper project, so to speak, but just that there was opportunity to modernize the customer experience and especially the online presence that made it fairly valued in the marketplace as a static asset, as a snapshot of what it was historically earning but undervalued to Jono and his experience and skill set. So if I'm out there shopping for cash flow in the form of an existing business, that's what I'm looking for. The type of business that is foundationally solid but has some proverbial low hanging fruits that I'm confident I can implement to add to the bottom line. So in Jono's case, not only has he tripled the monthly income from the business, he's also tripled the value of that asset should he turn around and sell it. And to me that's exciting, this combination of cash flow plus equity. If you want to go deeper down the Laundromat rabbit hole, check out episode 433 with Jordan Berry. Jordan hosts the Laundromat Resource Podcast. He stopped by to share 10 reasons why a Laundromat ought to be on your short list of side hustle ideas.
- [48:44]
G
Retirement is one of the big reasons people get out, which I think is probably a good sign for the industry, you know, because once people are in, if you're spending five, maybe 10 hours, I mean, at that point you're probably not spending 10, but you know, five or 10 a week, you know, and your cash flowing enough to sustain you, that's pretty tough to give up. So retirement is one of the big reasons. There are other reasons also, but I always encourage people, if you're interested in buying a laundromat, start stopping in to laundromats and talking to owners and asking them if they're willing to sell. I've definitely had deals come across my desk that way just from stopping in and talking to laundromat owners. Also direct mail campaigns similar to real estate, you can find laundromats for sale that way too. There's a host of reasons people might want to get out. And so if you catch them at the right time, you could find yourself a good deal.
- [49:35]
D
Again, that's episode 433. If you scroll down in your podcast app, you'll be able to add that one to your playlist. And then on the virtues of buying a business in general, I think you'll enjoy the friendly debate style episode we had between coach Chad Carson and Cody Sanchez. With Chad arguing on behalf of investing in real estate and Cody making the case for investing in a small business.
- [49:59]
H
And so the SMB space, the small and medium business space is something that I've been really interested in for. I started investing in this space probably 10 years ago and did some early deals with partners. But the part that I find fascinating is these are businesses that do $5 million or less in revenue. They're the businesses that all of us use every day. The cleaning service that comes to your house, the landscaping service that does your yard, the accounting professional that you utilize, the plumber that you have to call when stuff's broken, the laundromat or the H Vac company that comes and fixes your air conditioning. So we have owned or do own pretty much all those types of businesses. Totally different sectors and niches. And what I like about them is this model of investing and buying boring businesses has existed forever. It's called private equity. The difference is that these big huge firms like Blackstone, Carlisle, kkr, they went out and used opm, other people's money to buy these businesses with bank loans, leverage debt, right? And it is just like when you purchase a house, right? Nobody really, I mean people buy cash, buy houses with cash, but usually refinances into a mortgage. That's what you do with small medium businesses. So you use something called the SBA loan. So you know, SBA is just a government allowed loan to buy a majority of a small business up to 90%. So you only have to put 10% down. Very similar to a mortgage, except the terms are usually anywhere from five to seven to 10 years. And usually my deals I can pay off the whole business within three to five years. So at the end of three to five years, I own the business outright and have a cash flowing asset. Maybe sounds a little intimidating, but I keep trying to push on people. In my opinion, doing a startup is really hard, doesn't always work. And so if you could buy profit from day one, I think it's interesting
- [51:42]
D
that one is episode 4 60. You can find that in Your podcast player app of choice.
- [51:47]
A
Let me get the time machine fired
- [51:48]
B
up and we'll be right back for the real time.
- [51:51]
C
Where are they now? Check in with Jono right after this.
- [51:55]
A
Right now we're all trying to do more with less. And I want to let you in on a tool that lean, mean, high performing teams are using right now to be more efficient and buy back some of their time. Our sponsor, Gusto, is the online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one. It's remote friendly and it's incredibly easy to use. So that means you can pay, hire onboard and support your team from anywhere. I'm talking about automatic payroll tax filing, simple direct deposits, health benefits, workers comp 401, you name it. Gusto makes it simple and has options for nearly every budget. And if you ever have any questions, you've got direct access to Gusto's certified HR experts. So you can get back to running your business. But you don't have to. Just take my word for it. Gusto is ranked number one on G2's highest satisfaction products list for 2026, and it's already trusted by over 400,000 small businesses. I want to invite you to try gusto today@gusto.com sidehustle and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll@gusto.com do one more time. It's Gusto. G-U-S-T-O.com sidehustle in sports, there's this saying that speed is a weapon. And the same is true in business. If you're missing calls or being slow to follow up with customers, you're leaving money on the table, sometimes without even realizing it. Because your potential customer, they've already moved on. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q U O. This is the business communications system built so you never miss a call. Kuo is the number one rated business phone system on G2 with over 3,000 reviews. And it's built for how modern teams work. More than 90,000 businesses, from side hustlers and solo operators to growing teams, already rely on quote to stay connected, stay professional and consistently reachable. And here's what's really cool. Calls, texts, voicemails, transcripts and contact deals all show up in one clean view in an app on your phone or your computer. So that way you and your team are always on the same page. Plus, there's built in AI that can even answer calls and qualify leads for you when you can't pick up the phone, money is on the line. Always say hello with quo. Try quo for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.comsidehustle that's quo. Q U O.comsidehustle all right, Jono, welcome back. Catch us up.
- [54:11]
B
It's been three and a half years, and if I recall where we left off, revenue had tripled in the first 12 to 18 months of owning Nina's laundrette. What's happened next? What happened? What's happened since then?
- [54:24]
E
Hey, Nick.
- [54:25]
F
It's awesome to catch up again. Things has been rolling. We definitely kept that momentum into year three. Obviously, we can't really sustain 3x growth, but we still kept growing year on year. I know that I spoke about not looking at having employees, but there was someone who was washing their Airbnb laundry almost every day at the Laundromat. And we had some ongoing small commercial clients that I was handling myself as part of the cleaning routine, and that was, you know, eating into my time, and I was ending my social life. And I ended up having a chat with her one day and said, look, you know, if. If I gave you some money to, you know, while you're here doing your Airbnb stuff, to wash some of my laundry and. And clean the Laundromat a couple of days a week, would that be something you're interested in? And she said, absolutely. And. And you know that a couple of times a week turned into four days a week, and then now she's with us full time, which is awesome.
- [55:26]
B
Okay, so Teresa was doing the guest turnover for a nearby Airbnb and just happened to be there all the time.
- [55:34]
F
Yeah, like, I'd come in and she'd be there on a Saturday morning doing her thing, and I'd just sort of vacuum around her and have a chat. And then my dad had helped me out during the week, and she'd be there. And it got to a point where I needed to step out of the business because I was getting on that threshold of, you know, is this a job? And, you know, I've got a social life to maintain. And now she's got set hours. Her husband works nearby as well, so they carpool in together. It's a. It's really sweet.
- [56:03]
B
So she's taking care of the commercial business and what else is she doing for you?
- [56:07]
F
She cleans and keeps the Laundromat clean as well. So, yeah, she's there from, you know, the morning till the Mid afternoon, she looks after deliveries and also turning over the commercial side.
- [56:19]
B
And help me remember, is it a setup where you don't need someone on site, you do not supervise? It's mostly unattended, correct?
- [56:29]
F
Yeah, it's open from 6am till midnight. There's an automatic lock on the door. We've got like a little office and I think it used to be a house out the back. So that's where we store all of our commercial laundry and towels and stuff. And that's where she does all the folding. And then the hours she works are typically pretty quiet hours for us. Getting the first loads in it at 7:30 in the morning. There's not many people really using the machines then. So we've done the bulk of the work. You know, by the time people start rolling into their laundry. Got it.
- [57:00]
B
There was talk a few years ago of acquiring the next laundromat and the next laundromat. Have you gone out and made extra acquisitions?
- [57:08]
F
I have looked at about nine laundromats or sites for laundromats. There definitely was an appetite early on to, you know, replicate the success. And there was a really close, close call where there were two laundromats kind of in adjacent suburbs that would have been a really nice triangle to acquire. But the timing just wasn't right. It was either, you know, the price was too much or the negotiations with the landlords just weren't the right terms for me. But I'm pivoting to more of a laundry route business rather than acquiring more laundries. Laundromats.
- [57:45]
B
What do you mean by that laundry route?
- [57:47]
F
A laundry route is where you'll lease machines typically like a multifamily apartment building or a hotel or a business that needs vended laundry equipment but doesn't necessarily want to pay. It's a really big outlay for equipment like that. Or they just don't want to maintain it. They just want machines that work so we can supply machines at no cost to the business or the building. And then the use of those machines via like tap and pay is how we get our money. And we usually sign like a long term lease so our machines are sitting in there for a long time. And over time we'll recoup the money.
- [58:27]
B
Okay, so the machines themselves are on location at the apartment building, at the hotel. And you're just making money every time it gets used?
- [58:36]
A
Yep.
- [58:37]
E
Yeah.
- [58:37]
B
And you're financing though? The equipment manufacturer is financing. How does that part work?
- [58:42]
F
It depends on how many machines they need for smaller locations. Where we're only supplying, you know, one washer, one dryer or two washers, two dryers. We'll finance that ourselves or finance that myself.
- [58:52]
C
Okay.
- [58:53]
F
For larger locations, we'll go get an equipment lease. Got it.
- [58:58]
B
How many of those do you have running? That sounds like a interesting side hustle on a side hustle.
- [59:03]
F
Yeah, I've got about 10 locations, so I think the fleet's about 24 at the moment. But we're speaking to a lot of people. We get about six to ten inquiries a month. It just, they take a lot longer to close just because usually it requires, you know, a body, corporate's AGM or a vote or for the retail spaces, usually they're building like a laundry. You know, it's a hotel that doesn't have a laundry, but they're going to build one. So they let us know and then there's, you know, three or four months of, you know, construction before they actually engage with us. Got it.
- [59:41]
B
So you capture the laundry fees, you capture the depreciation on the equipment. So that ends up being a nice write off and it's a way to kind of expand your footprint, so to speak, without having to open a new location or tear down walls in the existing spot.
- [59:58]
F
Yeah, yeah, pretty much. I mean like the pain point for me is that it's expensive in terms of capital outlay, but it's relatively low touch. Once the machines are in there, it's a much easier to scale business for me, which is why I'm more leaning towards that than more physical sites.
- [60:17]
B
Is there a way you think about breakeven in terms of the equipment cost and how much it brings in? It's like, okay, if I'm breaking even in 12 months or 24, like what's reasonable?
- [60:29]
F
Yeah, it's not that quick. Usually we're aiming for year three to be a break even year in terms of cash on cash and then usually the leases are like five to seven years. We started with five years, but we're moving the longer terms because we supply new equipment. There are people, in the current climate, I think the way it's been done before I've started doing it was there would be people who have machines like they've been doing it for years and people will say, oh my machine's broken. They'll come and swap out that machine for a secondhand machine or a refurbished machine that they've done themselves. Whereas I'm supplying brand new equipment with pay pass only. So there's no coin jams, there's no risk. Of vandalism and things like that. It's just people tap the card, it starts and yeah, if there's ever an issue we can troubleshoot over the phone. I think the only issues I've really ever had have been more to do with the plumbing of the sites than my actual machines.
- [61:32]
B
Have you seen valuations for Laundromats kind of creep up over the last few years? This has been.
- [61:38]
A
They've become a.
- [61:40]
B
A sexy or sought after acquisition target, at least in the states.
- [61:44]
F
Yeah, definitely seen the hype. I think Cody Sanchez did a great job of. Of doing. Of hyping that.
- [61:53]
B
Yeah, she's a driving force behind this for sure.
- [61:55]
F
Oh, 100%. I. I wouldn't say I've seen the prices go up only because I haven't looked hard, but I have seen demand. I get like text messages and emails and letters in the post from. And flyers under the door from random people wanting to acquire a laundromat. I've had ever since I did the podcast. I've had so many people reach out. Like, I've had random people come up to me at conferences. I work in marketing, and I had some guy like eyeballing me from across the room and then came over and said, hey, you, Jono. And I'm like, yes, thinking that it was someone from the industry. But no, their office had watched your last podcast and had shared it around and he just wanted to ask questions and take a photo to send it to his mate.
- [62:41]
E
Oh, that's great.
- [62:42]
F
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of hype and Cody talks about this a lot. What made Laundromats an attractive investment for me was the fact that it was so decentralized that there was no real consolidated player in the game. And I'm not sure how that's playing out in America at the moment, but I know recently there was an acquisition where the distributor for Dexter was acquired by a private equity firm, and that same private equity firm acquired a big chain, the biggest chain in Victoria, of Laundromats. So for me, that's a sign that the game might be changing soon. Like, I know that Laundromats have somewhat of a moat. Like, it's a pretty expensive setup cost to put a laundromat next to another laundromat. And there's also probably governmental red tape that would probably stop that from happening. So there are players starting to at least look at consolidation in the laundromat space. And I don't know what that means for prices. I feel like we've still Got another two years of people thinking that laundromat are this passive income golden goose. And as long as that's still what people think, then there'll always be a market for people wanting to buy a laundromat.
- [64:00]
B
Yeah. Well, how passive is it for you at this point? You had this great line in the first recording. It said I want to choose how much of my time I give to people for money by the time I'm 40. And so how passive is it for you at this point?
- [64:13]
F
It's definitely more passive than it was. So when I bought the laundromat in year one, I was probably putting in somewhere between 12 to 18 hours a week on top of my additional full time job. And that was the books, the picking up and doing laundry, cleaning two or three times a week, going to the bank and putting coins in the bank, like all those kind of things. I probably got that down to like four to five hours a week. Usually on a Saturday morning I'm down at the shop just emptying out the coin trays, vacuuming, doing a bit of cleaning, just making sure the place hasn't burned down like fill up the vending machine and then it was probably like two hours a week of, of the books and the accounting side of things and then just sort of general admin that comes with running a business. So yeah, probably less than half of what I was doing when I first bought it.
- [65:03]
B
Yeah. Systems and team in place to help out. So that makes sense.
- [65:08]
E
Yeah.
- [65:08]
F
And I think obviously the growth has helped that as well, like having the extra income or the extra profit to be able to start paying people to manage things that I didn't want to do.
- [65:18]
B
Well, it sounds like set up nicely in that four hour workweek time slot there. What's next for you? What's got you excited these days?
- [65:26]
F
I think the laundry route business is a real opportunity. I had a really exciting conversation last year with a private equity firm that runs student accommodation. They were looking for someone to take over the shared laundries in those sites. And I've also spoken at places like social housing and the government around things like that as well. So I'd like to really concentrate on trying to land one of those clients. Really expanding the fleet of if I can get a hundred machines out in the wild once they mature, that it should be like the equivalent to a full time income. I'm 34 now, so I've got another six years and you got time. If I'm 40 and I've got choice and control over my lifestyle, then I would have hit my goal.
- [66:09]
B
Well, we'll do another follow up at that point and see where you're at. So very cool. We will link up Nina's laundrette in the show notes for this episode if you want to check out what Jono is up to over there. Big thanks to Jono for stopping by, once again sharing his insight.
- [66:24]
A
Thanks to our sponsors for helping make
- [66:26]
B
this content free for everyone. That is it for me.
- [66:29]
A
Thank you so much for tuning in.
- [66:30]
B
If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share with a friend. Fire off that text message, let them know they should check this out. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Asala on.