You will spend the rest of your career chasing new customers.
That is the trap. It feels like growth. A new face is proof the marketing is working, proof the sign out front is doing its job, proof th...
Last week, I took you back 250 years.
I told you about colonial laundry in 1776, about the women who washed soldiers' clothes during the Revolutionary War, about Sarah Osborn Benjamin who followed th...
We The People: The Ones Who Kept Us Clean
This year, America turns 250 years old.
I've been thinking about that number for a while now. A quarter of a millennium. And I kept asking myself what, if a...
In the first 12 months of owning our first laundromat, we had 4 attendant positions.
63 people filled them.
Sixty-three.
We couldn't keep a person behind the counter long enough to learn their last...
THE FEATURE
When Gratitude Goes Beyond the Job
I've talked about handwritten notes. I've talked about public bonus announcements. I've talked about Hannah writing cards to the same person three time...
THE FEATURE
Last week we covered the problem. A paycheck is not gratitude. Most owners think it is, and their teams quietly disagree.
This week is the harder part. Knowing gratitude matters is one t...
Most laundromat owners would tell you they appreciate their team.
Ask them when they last expressed it - specifically, personally, intentionally and the silence says everything.
Here's the honest tr...
Three weeks ago I told you about a woman with a red wagon.
I told you about a cattle rancher who needed someone to wash his wife's dresses before he buried her.
I told you about a young woman who lo...
He was carrying a small laundry hamper and staring at the buttons on my washer like they were written in a foreign language.
I could tell he needed more than directions.
I had no idea what I was act...
He told me, with a straight face and a proud smile, that he walked his laundromat every night and removed the "out of order" signs his own customers had left on broken machines.
So the next person wo...
She pulled a beat-up red Radio Flyer wagon through my front door and asked if she could bring it inside so it didn't get stolen.
I said "absolutely."
What happened over the next hour changed everyth...
The Feature
Last week I said your store runs 168 hours a week and most owners are only making real money during about 80 of them.
This week is the fix.
A few years ago at Wash Bar, we started askin...
