My grandfather farmed cotton through droughts, freezes, and everything Southwest Oklahoma could throw at him. A lesson he gave me in high school now runs my laundromats.

My grandfather on my dad's side farmed cotton in Southwest Oklahoma. He grew up toward the end of the Great Depression with pretty much nothing, and he died a multimillionaire. Same dirt. Same crop. What changed over those decades wasn't luck. It was how he handled the good years.

I was in high school when he told me something I never forgot. We were talking about farming, and he said the worst thing that could ever happen to a farmer was a great year.

That made no sense to me. A great year sounded like the whole point.

So he explained it. A farmer has a great harvest. The cotton comes in heavy, the price is high, and all of a sudden there's more money in the account than there has ever been. In his day that could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars. And what he watched happen over and over, especially with younger farmers, is they would run straight down to the John Deere dealership.

You have to picture what a tractor was back then. Most of them were open cab. No air conditioning. No heater. No radio. A farmer spent all day in the sun, the wind, and the cold. So when the money showed up, the trade up was a cab model. Maybe one with air. A luxury none of them had ever had. Back then a new tractor cost a hundred thousand dollars. Today they have GPS and drive themselves, and the price is pushing a million. But the temptation works exactly the same. They'd buy the tractor. Then the new implements. Then all new equipment. None of it was something they truly needed. And every bit of it came with payments.

Then the next year the drought came. Or a freeze. Or something else wiped out the crop. The payments didn't care.

He watched men lose everything they had spent years and decades building because they had one good year. Not a bad year. A good one. The good year talked them into the debt. The bad year came to collect.

And here's the side of the story people never hear. My grandfather said he found his best deals when he didn't buy new. He stayed home when the money was good, and he waited. Normally within eighteen to twenty four months, he could buy that same tractor and those same implements from the farmer who couldn't make the payments anymore. He got the equipment anyway. He just got it at a deep discount, and he paid cash.

Think about that. The same good year that broke one farmer built another one. The only difference between the two was what they did while the money was in the account.

I still think about that talk all the time, because laundromats run on the same calendar farming does. Ours just has different names for the seasons.

Here's how the year moves in our stores in Southern Oklahoma. I've visited more than a hundred laundromats around the country, and the same pattern shows up almost everywhere, unless you're in a tourist town. The second week of September, business picks up. Wash and Fold and Self Serve both, double digit growth, and it ramps all the way to the middle of January. That's harvest.

Then the Christmas credit card bills start landing in mailboxes, and from mid January until about March, things pull back. For us that dip runs anywhere from 10%-20%. Wash and Fold feels it first, because when a family has to cut something, a luxury service goes before the light bill does.

Spring break kicks off another climb that runs until school lets out. Then summer slows everything back down. Families go on vacation. Clothes get lighter, and lighter clothes weigh less on the wash and fold scale. The customer filling a 60 pound washer in January is running a 20 pounder in July. Same customer. Same loyalty. Smaller ticket. That slower stretch lasts until the week after Labor Day, and then the whole cycle starts over.

To everything there is a season. That was true when Solomon wrote it, it was true on my grandfather's cotton farm, and it's true in your laundromat right now.

My first year, I didn't know any of this. When the winter dip hit, it scared me to death. I thought we were losing everything. That story gets its own issue later in this series. I want to show you what I got wrong and what the data taught me since. But for now, here's why I'm telling you the tractor story this week instead of in January.

If you're reading this the week it came out, your harvest is starting right now. The next four months will likely be the best four months your store has all year. The deposits will grow. And somewhere around November or December, sitting on the best numbers you've ever seen, you're going to feel the pull toward the dealership. Maybe it's a piece of equipment. Maybe it's a build out. Maybe it's a second location.

I'm not telling you not to invest in your business. I retool stores. I upgrade equipment. I'm working on more locations right now. What I'm telling you is the same thing my grandfather told me. The season with the most money in it is the season that takes the most discipline, because in this business, the drought isn't a maybe. It shows up on a schedule. Mid January is coming whether you plan for it or not.

So while the harvest rolls in, we stash cash. Not because we're scared. Because we've read the calendar, and the calendar doesn't change. It's the reason I've never had to lay anybody off or send anyone home with a lite paycheck, and we'll get to that too.

Over the next four issues, I'm going to open the books on how we work this calendar. The year I didn't know it existed and what it nearly cost me. The numbers we track every single week that tell me what's coming before it arrives. The discipline we practice when the money is good. And the promise we make to our team that the money makes possible.

Harvest season is here! Let's make sure it doesn't cost you the farm.

About a month and a half ago, in the middle of our summer slowdown, my wife Hannah wanted to buy a new self powered floor scrubber for one of our stores. We already run them at our other locations and we love them. It's about a $4K machine.

I told her this wasn't the time. Not because we couldn't afford it. The cash was sitting right there. But it was the wrong season, and I knew where we were on the calendar.

As I write this, we're about 2-3 weeks out from our yearly pickup, and I already know what that month is going to do. So the order is going in. Same floor scrubber. Same $4K. Different season. That's my grandfather's tractor lesson on a much smaller scale. Nobody loses the farm over a floor scrubber. But the habit is the same whether the price tag is $4K or $400K. Ask what season you're in before you spend.

Map your own seasons this week, before things get too busy to stop and look. Pull the last two or three years of weekly revenue out of your point of sale system. Print it, chart it, or just scan it line by line. Mark three dates: the week your climb starts, the week it peaks, and the week the dip bottoms out. If you've been open more than two years, I'd bet those dates land within days of each other every single year.

Then make one rule and write it where you'll see it: before you buy anything the store doesn't truly need, ask what season you're in. Not whether you have the money. What season you're in. Spending in harvest with cash you set aside is investing. Spending in harvest on payments that follow you into the drought is how the farm gets lost.

Every issue in this series comes back to one idea: the operators who win are the ones who prepare while the money is good. That's also the best description I have of the owners inside Laundry Advisors. It's a community built for operators who want to grow and scale, with trainings, weekly video calls, and resources covering the things that hold most laundromats back: staffing and HR, marketing, SOPs, equipment mix, customer retention, and expanding to additional locations.

Every store's next hurdle is different, which is why we start with a conversation instead of a pitch. Schedule a complimentary call with our team, tell us where you're stuck or where you're headed, and we'll point you to the tools that fit your store and your goals.