The Customer Who Never Signed Up For Anything
The final word on why they stay.
THE FEATURE
Somewhere in your store right now there is a woman who has been coming every Tuesday for four years.
She has never filled out a contest form. She is not in your loyalty program. She never subscribed to you...
"The Most Expensive Gap In Your Business"
THE FEATURE
Seven out of ten people who try Wash and Fold for the first time never come back for a second order.
Did you catch that? It is the single most expensive number in this industry and almost nobody talks about it. 70%. You spend the money to get ...
"The $30 Save"
THE FEATURE
Last week I left you standing in a parking lot.
A regular customer, a family worth $4,680 a year, drove off after one of our attendants carried his laundry out the door and set it on the ground next to his truck. 90 seconds on a Saturday morning, and a relationship we s...
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 the doors are worth unlocking every morning. So we pour money into the front door and we count heads...
THE FEATURE
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 the Continental Army from West Point to Yorktown and at 81 years old argued before a cou...
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 anything, that milestone has to do with what I do for a living. Why would a laundromat owner care ab...
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 name. They'd show up, clock in for a couple shifts, and disappear. We weren't running a laundromat....
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 times over two years until they finally believed she meant it.
All of that is real. All of it matters.
...
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 thing. Knowing how to express it in a way that actually lands is something else entirely.
Most attem...
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 truth about this industry: we've convinced ourselves that consistent pay is the highest form of grati...
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 lost both of her parents before she had the chance to figure out who she was.
I told you about a man ...
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 actually walking into.
THE FEATURE
The first two issues of this series asked a question and showed yo...
