122. Here's Why They Call Me the Laundromat Millionaire

19:58And I never charged them anything. I didn't really even think I was doing anything. I was just trying to help this lady or this guy today. And that exploded and turned into, I always tell people, if you want to build a booming business, build a free coaching business where you actually know what you're talking about and bring value. Man, that'll grow up in a heartbeat. Education is a true Trojan horse. For sure. And I had no idea. It really came from a place of, I was just grateful and still am to this day to the people that gave me all those little golden nuggets. No one was going to give me the playbook.

20:26That didn't exist. Nobody really wrote books or like I said, did podcasts back then or had workshops or things like that. But I just picked it up one nugget at a time and I was like, hey, I want to pay it forward. It's the old cliche. And that's where it started. And it just turned into me having the time because of the businesses we had built here in Cincinnati, me having the financial resources to kind of start to build a blog and start to build a website and wrote the book. You know, I wrote my book kind of the same way that I was just sharing my story on these podcasts and things like that.

20:52And what I found is people responded and said it was inspiring and it was helpful. And they were the quote unquote, 10 year old Dave Menz who always wanted to own his own business. And that just permeated my soul, if I'm honest. And I don't mean to sound cliche, but it literally just stole my heart. And I was like, you know, going back a little bit, when I first got in the laundromat business, I fell in love with the industry really quickly and went from one to two stores very quickly, probably too quickly with a lot of leverage. And I fell in love with the industry. And I looked at my wife, Carla, one day and I said, I want to own 50 laundromats.

21:21I want to own 100 laundromats because every time we take over a rundown nasty laundromat and fix it up and make it into what I call a modernized laundromat, it changes the community. Like the community was not being served properly and it literally changes the community in the same way that like a boys and girls club type of does or any type of, not that this is philanthropy, but you get the idea. And I became addicted to it. Well, one of the things that I learned when I started helping other people is it's really hard to build the chain of 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 laundromats. And it's really expensive and it would take my whole life to do it.

21:52But one of the things I learned is that I'm uniquely prepared to help other laundromat owners go and do that. And then when things like podcasts and evergreen content came out where it's magnified and I can spend 15 hours producing a podcast that will help people hopefully forever and ever, amen, or at least at that point, it might help six or 7 ,000 people with one or two golden nuggets. And I was like, okay, this is way more scalable than actually trying to do this by myself, right? One laundromat at a time, one loan at a time, one piece of debt at a time. And that was when I really fell in love and I said, okay, I have a great chain of laundromats.

22:25I do this every day. I built an amazing team that doesn't need me, but I'm still intimately involved in all the decision-making of the business. These two things, there's a synergy here, right? Between helping others and innovating in the industry and running my own chain of laundromats. Like I think the important thing to understand here for any thought leader is I did this for like seven or eight years before I ever thought about intentionally helping someone. But I was a thought leader in a very insignificant way and a coach and a mentor for probably four or five years unintentionally before I ever tried to turn it into a business that I could scale.

23:00And I think that when we look around, if we really dissect the best of the best, because man, there's some amazing thought leadership out there in the world, usually you're going to find a lot of consistencies in. They actually just did this because they wanted to make a difference, right? And yes, sometimes, oftentimes it does turn into an amazing business. The laundromat millionaire platform has exploded and God is giving us opportunities to do things in the world today that we never dreamt would be possible because of that. But it all started with me just getting down in the weeds with one little laundromatic, no money and figuring out how to serve my community in a better way.

23:32And then came the SOPs and the documentable things and the processes and the team building and hiring layers of management and the margins and the P &Ls and all the things come with running a business that's much more pragmatic. And you know what's interesting? It seems like sometimes people who are thought leaders or people who have a lot of knowledge, they're a little hesitant because they don't want to give away their trade secrets. And it doesn't seem like that you weren't hesitant about that at all. And I have a couple of questions about this, about hesitancy in a way. Were you at first hesitant when you were getting on those boards?

24:01Were you hesitant to put out your thoughts and your responses and your answers? Or were you confident in the fact that, look, I've done this. I know I have the answer to it. But I always find when people are first starting out with thought leadership, they're a little hesitant to put out their thoughts. Yeah, John, it depends on the day and the minute. The answer is kind of yes and no, because I always had the heart to want to help others. And I've always had kind of that abundance mindset. So I wasn't intimidated by, oh, what if I share my secrets with somebody else and my competitor up the road finds out.

24:30In the laundromat industry, it's a little bit different. I mean, we're a retail business, but we're also service oriented business if you're doing it right. And And the truth is that people will only typically drive about four or five miles in any one direction to visit a laundromat. Rarely will they go further than that. And so from a local perspective, you know, the Queen City Laundry chain of laundromats I had built, I wasn't threatened in that way. Although I had a bunch of people tell me I should be, you know, oh, you don't want to share this with anyone because then they're going to turn around and use it against you in your market.

24:56I'm like, there's 350 million people in the US alone. We have an international following. Like there's like five competitors in a five mile radius of my store. And I think probably the biggest thing that was kind of an aha moment for me was when I learned that I could literally give all of my secrets, quote unquote secrets away and all of the knowledge and all of the experience to all of my competitors and the odds of them taking that information and executing at a level of excellence that my team can is almost zero. I didn't know that initially. So I guess what I'm saying is there were times where I had a little bit of insecurity and like, am I good enough?

25:31And am I bringing enough value to justify this? I think that didn't really start when I was doing it for free because I thought, well, I'm doing it for free when they want. And I built up kind of this confidence in myself that, wow, I was able to help, quite frankly, hundreds of people for free. This is really what I do every day and my team does every day. And it's really what I'm passionate about. So I think for me, that's just kind of what drove me into the next progression of, like I said, the paid services. And now we have workshops where people fly in from all over the world into Cincinnati and they stay in hotel and we rent a conference center and we spend about half the time in the workshop, in the facility, at our stores, actually not theory, but real world, showing them what we do, how we do it in the facility itself.

26:09And then we spend about half the time in the classroom actually teaching them. And then obviously I do a lot of coaching and things like that. As I mentioned, my book, Laundermat Millionaire, I mean, that book is the only laundermat book ever published that received an international publishing deal. There are hundreds of books on the laundermat industry out there. Every one of them are self-published. Now, I'm not suggesting that my book is better than theirs because of that, but I think it was just written in a different way. A lot of those are just very pragmatic, do this, do that, very simplistic.

26:35My book, I invested heavily in time and finances and editing and to really building something that I'm really proud of. And I did that not because I wanted to teach people to quote unquote, how to run a laundromat, but I wanted to inspire people to go out and change their community. And that's really what the laundromat millionaire platform is at its core, what me and Carla are at our core of my life. And at the end of the day, we think that that's why we're kind of exploding is because we have been there. We have done it. We're not the 19-year-old life coach. We really, really do this and did this for a decade and a half and still do it every day.

27:06And at the same time, we have the heart of a servant. We have a heart of someone that wants to go out in the world. We're on a mission to what we call elevate our industry. In the beginning, I talked about the antiquated, the old school, the lack of innovation. The way you drive innovation is by challenging people, not being afraid to take a position on something. But if you're going to take a position, you better do your homework. You better daggone know what you're talking about. And I don't claim to always be right, but I'm not afraid to share my opinions. And my opinions are always backed up by a lot of research and data, usually my own A-B testing and things like that in the field.

27:35And now we're to the point where a lot of companies in the industry are coming to us and they're wanting to partner with us and do different things like that with us to promote their products and services. And so, you know, more doors are being opened every day. But the foundation of everything we do at Laundromat Millionaire is all about the independent owner. It's all about that one single man or woman who owns a laundromat somewhere in this world and there may be struggling. Now they may be 80 % of the way to success. They may not be going bankrupt, but we want to help them get there because we understand by helping them be successful that they will turn around if we're serving the right people, they'll turn around and serve their community in a way that I can't.

28:12I can't own a thousand laundromats in North Dakota and California and Texas. And I don't want to, quite frankly, I want to help the people that are similar to me and mindset and heart, and they want to go out there and make a difference in the world. So that's what we call, you know, elevating the industry one conversation at a time. At the point when you're giving away thought leadership, right? You're giving it away for free. And then you get to this point where you say, okay, you know what? I don't want to give it away for free to everybody. I want it to be the people who, like you said, are real passionate about it and want to make a difference and kind of almost share the same values as you.

28:47Is that the time when you feel comfortable saying, we got to put a price tag on this stuff. And the people who are willing to pay are going to be different than the people who want it for free. Like, I want to get to that point where you get comfortable saying, I'm going to put a price tag on it. Because I think there's a lot of thought leaders out there right now who are willing, like we said, education is a great Trojan horse. You can get in the door by giving away information. But that time when you're going to put a price tag on it, what's that like? Yeah, I think it was a couple of phases for me.

29:12I told you about that like two or three year journey where I did coaching for free. And it started with just one conversation and the person was like, oh my gosh, we were on the phone for an hour and a half. Like, I can't believe you spent this much time with me. Thank you so much. And you're like, I can't either. Yeah. And I kind of wasn't either, but I was like, I, you know, Carlo sometimes would be like, what are you doing? Are you insane? Like, who are you talking to? Bob in Texas? You know? I mean, she knew that I had a heart to help people and I was grateful that other people helped me in their own ways.

29:37And I just wanted to give back in a bigger way. That's where it started. Now that two or three year journey where I coach for free, what happened there is almost every time I would coach somebody, they were just eternally grateful. And they were just like, you just blew my mind. Like, you just changed my life. Those are the things they would say over and over again. And that's very satisfying to somebody who wants to help them. So they'll go change their community. Now, not everybody responded that way and not everybody actually went and did anything. And that's where I started to separate, okay, you know what?

30:04At one point I want to help everybody. And now I realize like, quite frankly, the majority of this industry, probably the majority of a lot of industries are full of people that are just takers. They're not givers. You know, I don't going to be a desire to hurt them, but I have no desire to really help takers. I want to help givers, right? If I'm going to give to you in some way, something that's very valuable, even though if I'm charging for it, I want to know that you're going to turn around and go give to your community. And it's okay after you give and provide a service to charge for it, right?

30:28And so what happened is a combination of like that whole thought process. And I realized I really had some value and I really felt that it'd become a calling for me. And I looked at and I was like, I'm in my early forties. Like I got a whole life ahead of me, hopefully. And I think I can really make a difference in this world. And I'm talking to one of my mentors one day about this kind of quagmire I was in of, man, I love helping these people and I hate helping these people. And I don't think I want to do this anymore is what I told him. And he said, well, you got to start charge. Like very matter of fact.

30:56There it is. Yeah. I was already a millionaire. I thought, well, I don't, you know, I don't need the money. I don't really want to build a consulting business. That doesn't sound fun. He was like, no, no, no. What you want to do is you want to weed people out. You want to find the ones that are chasing excellence and And you want to pour into them. And he said, the only, not the best, but the only way to do that, this gentleman is insanely successful. And he said, the only way to do that is to charge a price that a taker would never pay. And it was shocking to me because I pondered on that for a good week before I realized that he was right.

31:27And so here's what I did next, John. I said, okay, I have a pretty good attorney here in Cincinnati and I pay him$300 an hour. And that seems like a lot of money to a kid that barely graduated high school, right? And I said, okay. Okay. So what I want to think my mentor told me is you got to charge like a ridiculous amount of money. And I said, okay, I'm going to charge$250 an hour. I mean, that's just absurd. Like no one would pay that. That is ridiculous. And what I learned is some people thought it was ridiculous and they thought, who does this guy think he is? And I got some, what I call nasty grams and I would get hung up on sometimes, but probably a solid 50 % of the people I talked to, they were like, done.

32:00Where do I send it? And I was like, really? What? Like, um, actually I don't even have any way to take it. Can you be able to check? I was like, I didn't think you were going to say yes. Yeah. Right. And then I coached them and I helped them. And when I was done coaching them and helping them with these calls, they were just like, this is the best, you know,$2 ,000 I've ever spent in my life. And I thought, oh my gosh, I'm making a difference. I'm finding the right people. Long story short, I charge a lot more than$250 an hour now for my coaching, because I realized that the more I raised my price, the more I could find excellence.

32:28And it was just a process of weeding people out. And the beauty of it is what we've now learned by going from that point to now building an entire platform and needing resources to be able to do that, right? To produce a podcast costs money and takes time. What we've learned is that the more we charge for our services, the more we weed out and find the best people that really, really want to go do something crazy in this world. We find them, we generate revenue that allows us to reinvest back in the platform to build more resources. Everything I told you was intentional, but everything that I told you was just like looking for opportunities to serve.

33:02That's it. So when it comes to thought leadership, you have to have the expertise, you have to have the heart, and then you have to just look around for opportunities. And when there's not opportunities there, like there's four or five card companies in our industry that make these card payment systems where you can put money on a card in a kiosk and you can use that card to start your washer and dryer, much like you could like a Dave and Buster's gaming system or something like that. There's a million companies that do that. There's a million companies that create software for running a pickup and delivery laundry service and an over-the-counter POS to sell products and services over the counter.

33:32So I'm not going to go try to reinvent the wheel. There's companies out there that are doing these things really well. I just want to find who's the best. I want to do my homework, do my research. I want to use the product and service in my chain of laundromats. And then once they've proven to me that they are as good as I thought they were, then we can talk about a partnership. But in some cases, there's a hope. There's a need that no one is meeting, at least to the level that I think they should be. And so I'm not afraid as an entrepreneur myself to go find the right business partner and be like, we're going to fill this void ourselves.

34:00Obviously, there's entrepreneurs out there listening to this and they want to be thought leaders. They want to, they want to, you know, maybe even take their thought leadership game to the next level. What are just some maybe final thoughts or words of wisdom for those folks who are interested in thought leadership and just want to keep moving forward and kind of almost get to the point where you are. Well, I think one thing I would tell him, and this applies to all entrepreneurship, is play the long game because I'm going to be real authentic with you for a second here. When I created my first course and I wrote my first book, I thought I was going to get rich.

34:30And I wasn't doing it to get rich, but I just thought, man, I got a publishing deal. This is an Amazon self-published deal. This is an international publishing deal. And I thought, I'm going to be famous. This is going to make me a lot of money. And then I saw people selling courses for$5 ,000. And I was like, you know what? There's a problem. There's a need. So I was genuinely trying to solve a problem and a need. And I was like, I'm going to make this course and just thousands of people will buy this course and it's going to make me a ton of money. Well, that's not how it works. You see the opportunity, you see the problem.

34:58You do a whole bunch of work, which I did do. I did it the right way. You do a whole bunch of work to try to bring an amazing product or service to your industry to solve an amazing problem. And there's about a three-year lack. I mean, your heart has to be in it because if you're just chasing the quick buck, I mean, you're going to be a flash in the pan. You're going to give up. You have to be in this for the right reasons and anything in entrepreneurship, in my opinion, what separates the contenders from the pretenders is just playing the long game. I'm going to do everything I'm doing right now until the day I die.

35:25I don't know when that is. I don't know if that'll be tomorrow or 50 years from now. I have no idea, but this is what I'm going to do with my life. And the beauty is all these synergies of owning and running watermats and managing a team of 40 people here in Cincinnati that serve our local communities really well and doing workshops and podcasts. They all synergize with each other. And when I go to conferences and I'm a keynote speaker, people come up to me afterwards and they're like, hey, I have this little product or widget that I think you should try in your laundromat. I think it'll help a lot of laundromat owners serve their communities better.

35:53And I'm like, hey, sounds like a good idea. Let's give it a try. That might turn into a partnership of some kind. And then we take all those resources that we've garnered and we reinvest them back in whatever is next. Sometimes I don't know what's next until I see it in front of my eyes. I never dreamed I'd own a digital marketing company. I never dreamed I'd own a podcast. I never dreamed I don't own a coaching business, but the opportunities are put in front of me. And I just look at them and say, is this going to accomplish my mission, my mission of elevating the industry? And the truth is, I mean, I'll just speak for our industry.

36:20Most people that are trying to do some semblance of thought leadership like us, they're not doing that. In most cases, they're not doing any of the things I just described for you. You know, it's interesting, Dave, and I know you know this, but it wasn't even a question I thought to ask because I had forgotten that you were in Cincinnati. But it's so interesting because you do realize that Cincinnati is the laundry capital and you know why, right? Is it? Procter & Gamble. Yep. They were a big client of mine. I mean, I don't think people realize that Tide Fabricare is bigger than most countries.

36:51Yeah. Tide is a multi-billion dollar brand. Most people don't realize that. They don't realize how big it is. And it is in your backyard. It is right there. I mean, up on like Spring Hill Drive or wherever it is. They don't have the city. Their world headquarters is downtown Cincinnati. But The funny thing about that is we'll tell you the other side. So you are correct. I am in the laundry capital of the world. The interesting thing is in most industries, the bigger market that you're in, the bigger the opportunity, right? So if you're in New York and LA, I mean, it's why Houston, Texas, it's why Chicago, right?

37:20Of the world. And our industry is no different. So that's one of the things that has kind of made us and Queen City Laundry and Laundromat Millionaire like kind of a big deal is most people in our industry, there's a lot of big players who do really well and make a lot of money and they do it basically because they bought the right location on the right corner in the right city. And they're honestly not that good of an operator. And I know them. They're friends of mine. They're very wealthy and very successful in many cases, way more than me. But what we try to kind of promote and teach to people is Cincinnati is like the number 115th market in the country in size.

37:50Or we also don't know any stores in the city limits. All of our stores are about 25 minutes out in the suburbs on the east side of Cincinnati. So what I'm saying is our population density and our demographics and the communities that we serve are very so-so, very average. And so I like to point out to people that if you're in the number 200 market in the country, then maybe there's some relativity here. If you're in the number three market in the country, you can take the things that we've learned and make them successful in your market and it'll be magnified because of the population and the market that you serve and the opportunity that you have.

38:20I think if we were in New York and trying to do what we're doing, I think probably a solid 75 % of the industry would completely disregard us. And they'd be like, yeah, but you're in New York. But instead, what kind of happens is the opposite is people are like, man, if you can take$30 ,000 and become a multimillionaire in less than 10 years with no college degree and no business acumen whatsoever, just for some hustle and hard work and focusing on serving his community. And I'm in the number 50 market in the country. Yeah. Imagine if this guy was in New York. That's exactly right. Yeah. It's the opposite of that song, right?

38:50Like if you can make it. Yep. That's exactly right. And so people started to recognize that without me realizing it, I was just doing my thing. They recognize that they pointed it out to me. And then now I started to turn around and kind of point it out to other coaching clients and workshop attendees and things like that. Like, hey, you're in a lesser market than me. Your opportunity might be a little less, but don't think you can't make a difference in this world. And if you're in a bigger market. So my point is like the market that I'm in actually, I think is a portion of our success because people, they don't have that excuse.

39:17Now, maybe they're not looking for it, but they don't have an excuse of, yeah, but you're only successful because you were born into the certain family or you live in a certain city. None of those things are true for me. I was born into poverty. I'm in overly intelligent. I went to a very average high school and barely graduated. Like nothing about me is special, nothing at all, but that I have people tell me that my heart is special and I probably can't disagree with that. So maybe that's a little bit of that ego. I mean, the authenticity, the vulnerability. I mean, you are a true example of why everybody says the entrepreneurs that are the most successful are the ones who are real, the ones who are human.

39:53And you're a perfect example of that. Well, thank you. The last thing I'll tell you, John, is I realized I didn't know that initially, But when I started, you know, once again, making an impact and becoming a thought leader, I realized that part of the reason that people resonate with me is because I was authentic. And I realized that there was a time where I could have, you know, quote unquote, sold out, right? The vanilla ice story that he always talks about. If he would become anyone they wanted him to become, just to become rich and famous, right? And I never would have compromised in that way anyways, because I'm just too stubborn.

40:20But one of the things I realized is the reason that this was taking off. And this is, by the way, from a community aspect, Queen City Laundry. The reason our chain is so powerful on the east side of Cincinnati to this day is because everyone that works for us is there to serve the community. When you walk in the door, if you're not there to serve that customer, get out of my store. You can't work here. And so we've built a team of 40 people that believe that same thing. But from a thought leadership perspective, that's what laundromat millionaire is all about. And people have started to pick up on that.

40:45So my point in that is I reached a point early on where I realized that was my secret sauce. And I looked at my wife and I said, well, that's really good news because I refuse to try to be anybody else. Like I'm just going to be me. 100 % real. You know, there are some sponsors and some companies in the industry that don't want anything to do with me, right? They don't want me promoting their products or services. And you know why? Because they can't control me because I'm just me. And if I have an opinion and it's based on research, I'm going to share that opinion. And I always say, and when I get new information, I reserve the right to change my opinion.

41:14I don't think I'm right. I just think this is my opinion today and I'm an expert on my opinion, right? I get that right. I have that right. So that's a big part, you know, going back to teaching people to be a thought leader, be authentic, be yourself. You are good enough if you're good enough. And if you're not, you need to go get better and then come back and try it again. That's great. Well, Dave, this was fantastic. Thank you so much for the time. Really appreciate it. Yeah, man, this has been one of my funner ones. As I told you before we jumped offline, I've done 40 or 50 of these now, and this was a blast.

41:41So thank you. Thank you so much. To all of you out there listening, I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Dave. Furthermore, in case you didn't know, Upflip Academy just launched. It's a premium membership program where you'll find things like comprehensive courses and complete business blueprints created by industry leaders, a vibrant community of entrepreneurs, both eager novices and rugged veterans, and workshops dedicated to mastering very specific skills where in four weeks you'd learn what would have taken you months if you were doing it alone. And by the way, Dave is one of the course creators, so be sure to check out the link in the description to sign up.

42:17Thanks again, Dave. This was great. And thank you to everyone listening.