I Bought a Side Hustle and Tripled Revenue in 1 Year (Greatest Hits)

28:09So this was another lever that you were able to pull instead of just going business to consumer, you know, targeting, you know, individuals and families like needing their laundry done saying, oh, we can target business customers for higher volume, higher ticket, or maybe more consistent things. You're like, we're going to have towels this week. We're going to have towels next week. Like that makes a lot of sense. And that's something that, you know, a lot of businesses can think about whether it's a laundromat or anything else. It's like, okay, well, who's the, you know, who are the whales of the customers?

28:38Like who are the bigger, 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. And it also meant that I could be disciplined in having to clean the place because the cleaning bill would have been somewhere between$7 ,000 and$10 ,000 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 towels. Gotcha. Yeah. Because you'd have to hire somebody to take on that work if it wasn't you. 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?

29:24About five hours a week-ish. Okay. That's not bad. Five to seven to keep the place clean and pick up all and drop off all laundry yeah for something that is now in the what 12 to 15 000 a month range revenue wise the whole business overall it's like three thousand dollars a week okay so that was uh the paid search the seo so you know 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 to add your business to other directories and point back to the website Yeah, that's how I started.

30:05I'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. 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.

30:52Yeah, 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. Yeah. 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. It's great that you've got card now. It's so much cleaner than it used to be.

31:25Like, hey, can you let people know about it? Can you leave a review? And that really helped, I think, for the first five to six months. It was me asking people, can you do a review? I remember once talking to someone who that driven about five kilometers to get to our laundromat. And we're in the inner city of Melbourne, six million people live in this city. So they would have had to pass at least three or four laundromats to get to ours. and they came because of the reviews. And I'm like, oh, could you guys leave one too? Because it'll help other people find us. Yeah, I'm looking at Google, at least at press time here, 68 reviews, 4.9 stars.

32:08People love this place. Yeah, one one star review from someone who was bitter. And I reckon that's more, they don't like me than they don't like the laundromat. They're ruining your perfect five star rating. 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.

32:46It's really cool. 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. 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. Nice. Don't underestimate the power of those reviews. just in social proof to make it a no-brainer decision for anybody searching.

33:24Just like, well, clearly, these are the ones you got to go with because they're just head and shoulders above everybody else. 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, that I'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. Oh, okay. Yeah, thanks so much for stopping by our North Coat laundromat just to make sure that it's in there each and every time.

34:14Yeah. the pictures on the Google profile, are those ones that you've added or these are ones that customers have put in? It's two or three of them are ones that I've added and some are ones that customers have added. 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 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?

34:52We did 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 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. 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 like trying to figure out, okay, where am I supposed to go?

35:38How is this going to work once I get there? trying to almost do a pre-visit walkthrough without having to go make the trip. Yeah. You've got to make things, especially if there's an unattended, you have to make it as easy as possible for people. Because 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've 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 visual prompt or information for people to do that as possible.

36:20So Google My Business Profile is a great place to have a video if that's where people are finding it to show them how to use the washing machines and dryers or pay by card. Yeah. Here's how it works. Here's how... Make it dummy proof in that way. Yeah. So you're a year and a half into being a side hustling laundromat owner. What's surprised you the most over that time? 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.

37:23So 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. Yeah, that's a really interesting one to see. 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.

38:05It'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, you know, they're going to probably find it through Google. So having a 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.

38:39What'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? 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. Yeah. 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?

39:25I'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. Yeah. So I don't think I'll be quitting my day job anytime soon. 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?

40:15Not 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.

41:02And 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 what PayPass also enabled us to do was to program the machine to have multiple vendor 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 super wash, which is an extra couple of minutes on the cycle.

41:51Again, just another opportunity to increase the customer spend per visit. Oh, okay. Yeah. Super common when I go through like the drive-through car wash it's like you know good better best and they all have clever names like you know ultimate supreme and it comes with this this you know it's an extra thing and basically you're sitting in the machine longer they put some clear coat wax on you i don't know what they do but but similar like you're giving um you're adding a higher ticket menu offering like it kind of anchors the price there like 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 yeah uh on the dry side as well so the dryers are$1 for seven minutes if you're paying by coins you're physically adding a dollar and you might get to four dollars and be like I need this extra dollar I'm going to keep it whereas with the pay pass it starts at five and then you can move up or down so for the lazy person or the for most people in a rush they just tap the thing hit dryer hit five yeah five sounds about right, hit go.

42:52Yeah. 35 minutes worth of dry time. Okay. So the average spend for a customer is more on when they're paying by card because the start price is five, not one. Okay. Isn't that cool? I don't know. It's like you're playing puppet master in a way of like, oh, you know, what are the different levers that we can pull to increase the value of this asset that we already have? And, you know, versus trying to get something off the ground, it's like, Like, you know, there's already, like you can almost already A, B test. Like if you had a website, you know, already got traffic flowing through it. You know, what if we tweak this variable or what if we added this little thing?

43:27And you kind of see almost immediately the impact that it has. So 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 check it out in the show notes. Any other place where people should go to learn more about you, what you do? 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. 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.

44:03It does not have to be laundromat related, just whatever entrepreneurial wisdom that you'd like to impart. Yeah. Get an Audible subscription and listen to audiobooks about business. and emotional intelligence. All right, there you go. Well, very good. Once again, thanks for joining me and we'll catch up with you soon.

44:25All right, even if you're not interested in buying a laundromat, you 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 the 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.

44:59There'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 to 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 in the last six to 12 months.

45:45And 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 from my perspective, from the outside looking in.

46:24Second 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 jano'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.

47:28It 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.

48:11So 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? 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 hours a week, you know, and you're cash flowing enough to sustain you, that's pretty tough to give up.

49:02So 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 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. Again, that's episode 433.

49:37If 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. 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.

50:15They'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 HVAC 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?

50:56And 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 and medium businesses. So you use something called the SBA loan. So 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 5 to 7 to 10 years. And usually my deals, I can pay off the whole business within 3 to 5 years. So at the end of 3 to 5 years, I own the business outright and have a cash flowing asset.

51:31Maybe sounds a little intimidating, but I keep trying to push on people. In my opinion, doing a startup is really hard. It doesn't always work. And so if you could buy profit from day one, I think it's interesting. That one is episode 460. You can find that in your podcast player app of choice. Let me get the time machine fired up and we'll be right back for the real time. Where are they now? Check in with Jono right after this. 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.

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53:51I want to invite you to try Gusto today at gusto.com slash side hustle and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll at gusto.com slash side hustle. One more time, it's gusto.com slash side hustle. All right, Jono, welcome back. Catch us up. 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 happens? What's happened since then? Hey, Nick, it's awesome to catch up again. Things have been rolling. We definitely kept that momentum into year three.

54:32Obviously, 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 eating into my time and I was eating into my social life. And I ended up having a chat with her one day and said, look, you know, if I gave you some money to, you know, while you're here doing your Airbnb stuff to wash some of my laundry and clean the laundromat a couple of days a week, would that be something you're interested in?

55:16And she said, absolutely. And, you know, that couple of times a week turned into four days a week. And then now she's with us full time, which is awesome. Okay. So she was doing the guest turnover for a nearby Airbnb and just happened to be there all the time? Yeah. Like I'd come in and, you know, she'd be there on a Saturday morning, you know, doing her thing and I'd, you know, just sort of vacuum around her and have a chat. And then, you know, 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.

55:56And and now she's got set hours. Her husband works nearby as well, so they carpool in together. It's really sweet. So she's taking care of the commercial business, and what else is she doing for you? She cleans and keeps the module clean as well. So, yeah, she's there from the morning till the mid-afternoon. She looks after deliveries and also turning over the commercial side. And help me remember, is it a setup where you don't need someone on site you to kind of supervise it's more mostly unattended correct yeah it's a it's a it's open from 6 a.m 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 about you know 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 you know like getting the first loads in it at 7 7 30 in the morning there's not many people really using the machines then.

56:53So we've done a bulk of the work, you know, by the time people start rolling into their laundry. Got it. There was talk a few years ago of acquiring the next laundromat and the next laundromat. Have you gone out and made extra acquisitions? I have looked at about nine laundromats or like sites for laundromats. There definitely was an appetite early on to, you know replicate the success and um there was a really close call where there were two laundromats kind of in adjacent suburbs that would have been a really nice triangle to acquire but um 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 what do you mean by that laundry route?

57:46A 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.

58:27Okay. 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. Yep. Yeah. And you're financing though the equipment manufacturer is financing or how does that part work? 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 I'll finance that myself. Okay. For larger locations, we'll go get an equipment lease. Got it. How many of those do you have running? That sounds like an interesting side hustle on a side hustle.

59:02Yeah. 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 you know about six to ten inquiries a month it just 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 okay they let us know and then there's you know three or four months of construction before they actually engage with this. Got it. So you capture the laundry fees, you capture the depreciation on the equipment.

59:46So 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. 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. Is there a way you think about break-even 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?

1:00:29Yeah, it's not that quick. usually like we're aiming for like year three okay um to be a break-even year in terms of like cash on cash uh and then usually the leases are like five to seven years where 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 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 second-hand machine or a refurbished machine that they've done themselves whereas i'm supplying brand new equipment you know 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 okay it starts and um 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.

1:01:31Have you seen valuations for laundromats kind of creep up over the last few years? This has been, they've become a sexy or sought after acquisition target, at least in the States. Yeah, definitely seen the hype. I think Cody Sanchez did a great job of doing, of hyping that. Yeah, she's the driving force behind this for sure. Oh, 100%. 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 text messages and emails and letters in the post and flies under the door from random people wanting to acquire a laundromat. Ever since I did the podcast, I've had so many people reach out.

1:02:17I've had random people come up to me at conferences. I work in marketing. I had some guy like eyeballing me from across the room and then came over and said are you Jono and I'm like yes I'm thinking that it was someone from the industry but no he 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 so yeah 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.

1:02:56And 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.

1:03:40And I don't know what that means for prices. I feel like we've still got another, you know, two years of, you know, people thinking that laundromats are this passive income, you know, 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. 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? It's definitely more passive than it was.

1:04:14So 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. Yeah. 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, you know, it's probably like two hours a week of the books and the accounting side of things.

1:04:53And then, you know, 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. Yeah, systems and a team in place to help out. So that makes sense. Yeah. 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. Well, it sounds like set up nicely in that four hour work week time slot there. What's next for you? What's got you excited these days? I think the laundry route business is a real opportunity.

1:05:29I 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 and really expand the fleet of if I can get 100 machines out in the wild once they mature, it should be like the equivalent to a full-time income. So I'm 34 now, so I've got another six years. You got time. if I'm 40 and I've got choice and control over my lifestyle, then I would have hit my goal.

1:06:08Well, 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. Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. 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.

1:06:40And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.