204. The Boring Businesses that Print Cash

0:00Imagine this, you're 18 years old, your dad just had a heart attack. You and your twin brother are working warehouse shifts and mowing park-ons just to help keep your family afloat. And despite all that, you're watching guys with less money than you quietly buy up rental properties in cash. A janitor, a guy from church. That's when it hit Brandon. It's not about chasing flashy startups. It's not about being the smartest person in the room. Wealth is built by the people willing to get their hands dirty in the business nobody else wants to touch. I'm Ryan Atkinson, and you're listening to the Outfit Podcast, where we uncover the secrets of building and running successful businesses.

0:34Today, I am so excited to welcome Brandon to the podcast. Brandon owns over 140 rental units, rents multiple laundromats, and pulls thousands a month from vending machines while spending only a few hours a week managing them. I'm super excited to welcome Brandon. Brandon, thank you so, so much for being here. How's it going? Super excited to have you. You were a webinar guest for us about a month ago, and that absolutely crushed it. So excited to talk about boring businesses today. But before we do that, a super important part of your story is your background. Tell us what it was like growing up.

1:04I alluded to the intro there, but really tell us about your situation financially growing up and how that shaped your view on money and stability. Sure. So in my case, you know, born and raised in Southern Ohio, literally grew up in the middle of a cornfield in a little itty bitty rickety tenant house in the middle of said cornfield. Pretty poor lifestyle growing up in the sense that my mom sold cosmetics door to door. My dad was a truck driver who just never made any money, lived very well below the poverty line through the 80s and 90s. My dad ended up, he quit trucking and got a job working stocking shelves at Walmart, which was actually an upgrade for our family.

1:40Trucking just was not good for my dad. Got to the point that I was 18 years old. I do have a twin brother for reference. Dad had a heart attack. He couldn't work anymore at Walmart. My brother and I had to go out and get jobs. I ended up working at a warehouse, stuffing boxes for outbound online orders. And my brother picked up trash for the city of Circleville, Ohio. Had to do that so that we wouldn't lose our house. But after it was all said and done, we got evicted twice actually while I was growing up. So just not a very wealthy lifestyle. Loved my parents dearly, but it just was money was not something that we had a ton of growing up.

2:11Worked at the warehouse for about three years. Was like, you know, it'd be nice to have a family, want to get married someday, want to do the traditional lifestyle stuff, but I don't have a college degree. That was just never in the cards for me when I was 18, working at a house, trying to make sure that mom and dad's rent was being paid on time. So it was a situation was like, I looked at my community, what can I get into that doesn't require a college education? The only thing that I found that was visible to me was real estate. So I put a real estate school on a credit card, went and took my classes, got my real estate license, did that for quite some time.

2:47But very early on, it became apparent to me that the real estate agents were just generally in my area up to their eyeballs in debt. They drove nice cars and all the agents had Cadillacs and they wore nice clothes, but they were just a lot of them were in debt or they were working 14, 16 hours a day. And we're talking 2006. So it's right as the point that the bubble in the mortgage world is starting to bust. And I did that for quite some time, but I ran into these people that were, they're not well educated, but they had tons of money and they had done it through investing primarily in real estate.

3:21I met a truck driver who was very similar to my dad. His name was Joe. He drove trucks for General Motors, which is a pretty big company if you're in a Rust Belt state like me. And he had tons of money. He came to my office, wanted to buy some more rental properties to flip. And we're talking 2007 at that point. So the mortgage crisis is upon us. I'm thinking this guy's crazy. And he says, well, you know, I just need to make a little more money than I'm getting in the stock market now. He flips houses. He shows me very clearly he has half a million dollars cash sitting in a bank account. Blows my mind.

3:53Like, you're a truck driver. You don't have any money because my dad never had any money. Ran into a janitor for Nationwide Children's Hospital. His name was Bill. He had flipped some houses up in Columbus near Nationwide Children's Hospital in his spare time. Came to the realization at that point, I got to be in investment. I can't just be selling houses for other people. I need to be in the driver's seat because I just was not meeting any poor landlords. Fast forward a few years, I start coming to the realization I need to learn to pitch people on investment. Proceed to do so, bought my first rental property in 2013.

4:24It was a HUD foreclosure, bought it for$23 ,000, put$27 ,000 fixing it up, which at that time, you know, still a cheap property at$50 ,000 all in. Rented it for$1 ,000 a month. It's still rented as of today. And that's 2013, so that's 12 years ago at this point. Bought two properties in 2013. The next year, 2014, I bought another five or six. Year after that, I bought a dozen more. Just started getting to the point. I was just buying properties left and right. Ended up 2019 with 140. Decided to get into business. Let's buy some more things because the world of rentals is getting a little boring.

4:59Ended up buying the laundromat that I'm well known for on social media. Fixed it up. I was only making a couple thousand dollars a month. Now we're in the point we'll be doing probably a little over a hundred thousand this year just on my laundromat. But I've gone ahead. I've bought multiple other businesses, car washes, self-storage. I bought a commercial roofing firm in another state. I own my hometown newspaper. We took that digital four years ago, five years ago. So I'm just in a little bit of everything. Jack of all trades, master of none. Done a lot of it with essentially creative finance because I never had any money growing up, nor did I know anybody growing up that had money.

5:34And I've just become very good at pitching people on investment. and I've become very good at figuring out how to structure deals in creative ways so much so that I don't have to throw a ton of money into them. So that's kind of like my whole story in a nutshell in the quickest fashion. You really do have your hand in everything. I want to talk specifically today, we're going to talk about like the boring business aspect. That's the upflip wheelhouse, the boring businesses. Why do you think boring businesses are so overlooked compared to like digital companies? Like I have a video marketing agency, that's a sexy business that you can kind of call, I guess.

6:06Or like, yeah, why do you think boring businesses are just generally overlooked by people. From my standpoint, they don't get much attention online. I recently did an interview with a very large group of people and they hated what I had to say to them. And as I had a conversation with them, they all wanted to know for me how to make money doing digital marketing, doing search engine optimization, doing faceless YouTube channels, all these different things. I said, why are you so opposed to going out doing any of these businesses that I'm pushing you into. And they said, well, they all sound like a lot of work.

6:39And I said, you understand that you're competing with, when you're building a faceless YouTube channel, you're competing with 1 billion other people on YouTube. I'm not saying you can't do it, but you're competing with a lot of other people out there. Meanwhile, you could go to your town, I don't care where you live, and you could get into, let's say, laundromats. And in your town, you might be competing with five or six other people. I know that if I built a laundromat where I'm physically sitting doing this interview today, I would compete with two other people. If I would go one town south where my laundromat is, I compete with four other people.

7:15Maybe it's the way that my mind works. I want less competition and not more competition. And a lot of people, I think it's called the Dunning-Kruger effect, where they think they know more about something than they actually do. And I talk to people about web design or online marketing or whatever it is. I ask them, do you understand how good you need to be to be in that top threshold that makes money doing online sales or whatever it is? And they say, well, I think I can do it. I say, you need to be in the top 5 % or top 2 % on YouTube to make really good money off of it and you're competing with 1 billion other people.

7:51So you're competing with over 900 million other people out there and you have to be better than every single one of them below that peer group. and I talk to people and you know once some people once they come to the realization that they need to be really really really good to make a lot of money some of them get that spark and they come to the realization that it would be better to own a local landscaping company or it would be better to have a vending machine route or it would be more advantageous to own a restaurant or one of a thousand different things where they're not competing with everybody else and their brother most people spend months sometimes years just thinking about starting a business.

8:28But what if you could do it in just 10 days? That's exactly what the 10-day business launch plan is designed for. It's a step-by-step roadmap that takes you from idea to real operational business in just 10 days. Click the link in the description below and get ready with your business. I've actually never asked on the Upflip podcast, so you're getting this for the first time and the listeners are hearing this for the first time. Before I do that, a quick caveat. I was literally texting someone. He's a 22-year-old postgrad and he's very entrepreneurial. He's like, oh man, I have so many ideas. Yesterday's like, hey, I got to run this like this e-commerce business by you.

8:59I literally texted him like, dude, like you've got to just like consider like some of these like boring businesses. Like it's such a great way for someone to stand out. To your point, though, the competition aspect. So what I heard there is where you're at right now, there's two other laundromats, I believe it was. If you open a laundromat in like a location like that, is that enough money for someone to live like a good life off of? Or is the power of this having like multiple laundromats where you're stacking, you know, whatever. This is just a number$100 in profit every month. It's obviously way more than that, but just for simple numbers.

9:28So I'm looking at doing a new series on building a laundromat from the ground up. I've identified a geographic locality where they need more laundromats than they are. They don't have enough good laundromats. They're all terrible trash locations. And I'm looking at going in with one of my subscribers and building a brand new laundromat from the ground up, essentially. We'll probably rent space at a commercial facility rather than just build the whole structure up, but ground up, all the machines, all the plumbing, all the electrical. After it's all said and done to get all the equipment in, get everything done, it's going to be half a million dollars.

10:01But when I look at this market and we do all of our validation on it, I believe that I can generate between three and$350 ,000 per year in revenue. The rule of thumb in a laundromat, once you include labor, cleaning, all of the ancillary costs, 50 % of that is going to be your margin. So let's say we hit the$350 ,000, half of that's going to be net income. So we're looking at$175 ,000 a year in net income for one laundromat location. And we're not talking about going to a city. Like I live outside Columbus, Ohio, or Cincinnati, Ohio, or Cleveland, Ohio. And you just find a location that doesn't have a laundromat within 30 miles of it.

10:49There are places out there where a laundromat can truly print money. A friend of mine, his name's Mark. He's down in Austin, Texas. He just sold his laundromat to private equity. There you go. He sold his laundromat to private equity because he was doing$3 million a year off one laundromat location. That's insane. $3 million a year because he had become, you know, we talk about being the best in an area, being the best. Mark became the best in Central Texas at running a laundromat and it got the attention of everybody and their brother that has money in the laundromat industry and he got acquired.

11:27He had a second laundromat he had just built out in Houston doing$2 million plus a year. Two laundromats,$5 million a year. That's kind of like what the higher level looks like when you run two locations really, really, really well. And he wasn't near downtown either because I visited his laundromat because I did a YouTube video on him two years ago. I went and took a look at it. Not much has changed. He still has the same lady working for him. We interviewed her two years ago on YouTube and I did a little quick short with her. But that's what the top echelon looks like. Now, I've got a person I'm very close to.

11:57They're in the e-commerce world and they are making millions at this point off e-commerce. And I'm not the guy that says, oh, boring businesses are the only way that you can make money online. But I can tell you, I intimately know this person's business. They run a YouTube channel. They have phenomenal amounts of traffic. They have a Shopify page. They are the best at Shopify. They're best at cart abandonment. They're best at writing email campaigns. They're best at logistics. They're best at order fulfillment. They're best at product creation. Like I run eight different businesses and I wear eight different hats.

12:33And this other individual wears eight separate hats in one business. And ultimately, at the end of the day, my commercial roofing firm will make four, five, six times more money than he ever will. And it's because we are rapidly becoming the best in the construction industry in our specific trade. And his upper echelon that he can make being the king of Shopify for XYZ products, it's only so far. Now he's doing it all digitally and things like that. But for me, it's, oh, I got to hop on a plane. I got to go visit Chicago once a month, whatever that takes to run that more boring business than a Shopify e-commerce platform.

13:11And he is competing with everybody. And I'm competing with, on my laundromat, I'm competing with four other people. With my car wash, I'm competing with six other people. With my commercial roofing firm in the Rockford region, I'm competing with four other people in the greater Chicago region, third largest market in America. I am competing with 25 other people. You think about that. $1 billion worth of opportunity in one specific skilled trade in the greater Chicago region,$1 billion a year. And there's only 25 reasonably sized players in the whole entire market. And the top one gets around, from my understanding,$100 to$150 million a year of that$1 billion.

13:55So they capture between 10 and 15 % of the market. Second players, you know,$50 to$75 million. So that's what the top player in a market looks like in a boring business. And it's one of those things where you look at what all does it take to have the high skill set? You know, it's to me, it's something you can learn. I didn't know anything about laundromats. I didn't think about car washes. I want to ask, that was leading my next question, geographically. Obviously, you don't have to give the whole playbook of where you're looking at investing. I'm not asking you to do that. I will respect your privacy enough there and your business opportunities.

14:28But geographically, what are some green flags to look for? Just for listeners, because obviously, I mean, you're hearing these numbers. You can control 15 % of a Chicago market and make however much money. Geographic green flags, what do you look for? Let's take the average laundromat and figure out what the average laundromat, what does it need to look like? The average laundromat brings in around$150 ,000 a year. Half of that's net. So the average laundromat's bringing in net$75 ,000 a year off that$150 ,000 gross. It's in a town or it's in an area of less than 7 ,500 people in that geographic range.

15:02And 35 % of the people in that geographic range are in a rental property. So laundromats pull on non-owner occupied rentals, and they typically pull from very well-defined geographic regions because the average customer is willing to travel less than one mile to go to a laundromat. So based on those numbers, you can kind of engineer what will you do. So I'm looking at an area, there's 15 ,000 to 16 ,000 people that need a laundromat, and they can't really access a clean, safe, and affordable one. So I will be doing more than double that statistic. It's also in an area with higher rental base. So that's why when I target three to 350, I'm pretty sure that we can do it so long as we can bring that into the market.

15:50Car washes kind of have a similar metric, although you have a higher pull on people driving through the area. So you look at half a percent to 1 % of the people that drive on the road that you have access to. 10 ,000 cars a day, 1 % of that, 100 cars a day. half a percent of that's 50 cars a day. You also have to look at competition. All of these things you can get on the internet and you can research how to vet your local demographics. And those are the kinds of things that you have to build a skill set up to do well. But from my standpoint, that's a lot easier than other kinds of businesses that are out there.

16:27You know, I don't know any of the metrics about like, let's say landscaping, which is a business I'd love to be in someday. Love to own a landscaping company. But it is a situation where you have to be able to do the research and look at your marketplace where, you know, vetting those opportunities. But what you realize pretty quickly is there's not a lot of competitors. You know, you do like a laundromat landscaping. This isn't like a very low barrier to entry. Like you have to have some sort of equity or some sort of merit to start it. A question I want to ask what you're going off of is like, what are those resources that people can find?

17:00Is it a Chaggbt deep research? Is there a specific website to do this research on. Would love to shortcut that for people. So Chad GPT is good. I like it. The demographic data has been reasonably accurate. I would say ask Chad GPT, you know, pull a demographic study with the primary characteristics in an area being population within a mile, how many renters are there, and then give me the validation tools that you use to determine these numbers. Some of them are definitely, you know, going to be erroneous. Many more, I do ChadGBT plus Grok to see if the answers coincide with each other because they both use different models.

17:36But if you look at, you know,$150 ,000 a year for 7 ,500 people with a 30 to 35 % renter demographic, you can kind of start looking at areas where there may or may not be reasonable laundromats. But I also don't want people to think that it's just endless opportunity and they're easy to do because they do run into people every so often. You talk about the Dunning-Kruger effect. They say, well, I'm going to buy a laundromat here. Well, there's a laundromat one block away that someone has sunk a million dollars into. Don't buy that laundromat. Well, I could be better than they are. I could be better than they are.

18:05They've already put a million dollars in it and they're doing a good job. You know, you go on Google business rankings and they're at a 4.5. The store you want to buy or build out is, you know, a two and a half. You do have to be able to pick your battles and realize your own skill set. But the thing I find out is there's so much opportunity out there because you could just go to a different location. Once again, the average laundromat,$75 ,000 a year is hanging in the balance of net income that you could be putting in your pocket or you could be doing something with. To me, growing up, the idea of owning a business that would make me money while I was not physically there was just unheard of.

18:46You know, we had some family off in the distance that had certificates of deposits, CDs, and they were getting 5 % a year off of$100 ,000. And I was like, that's nothing. You're locking your money up for a year with a bank for$5 ,000 extra dollars? That doesn't make any sense. But meanwhile, with me, with my businesses, the laundromats net this year, we'll do$105 ,000,$110 ,000, half's net. It's$55 ,000 to$60 ,000 this year in net income. That's nice. Roofing company is three states away. Yeah, three states away. I can't be there and manage it. My goal next year is to collect a$1 or$2 million distribution check off the company.

19:30There's opportunities out there where your time effort is not exactly coinciding with what your compensation is going to be if the business is running jobs, if it's generating income. And I think that that's the appeal of people online with digital marketing agencies, faceless YouTube videos, e-commerce platforms, drop shipping, white labeling, you know, whatever that list of things are. That's where the appeal is. But it's also, well, one mile from where I'm sitting right now, there's a McDonald's. The owner visits the McDonald's less than once a month. He owns a dozen of them. And that McDonald's on North Court Street here in Circleville will generate for them half a million dollars in net income this year.

20:18And it's like, well, he owns a dozen of them. Yeah, he does make$6 million a year minimum. He might own some more restaurants other than McDonald's. And I know a lot of people dream about owning McDonald's. They're very expensive, but you can get to a point in life where you have a smaller scale version of that. Look at my vending machines. They'll generate some level of income. I won't go through and pull all my quarters this Friday and shoot a YouTube video. I did a collection here and I took in over$100 worth of quarters. And I'm telling you, my time involvement was 10 hours over the last month, month and a half on those machines.

20:56200 bucks an hour. And some vending machines. It's really nice. Really nice. Super nice there. Obviously, you have so many businesses, but we are such in a deep thread of like the laundromat. So I do want to stay within there. And if listeners are interested in your whole background, like I would definitely encourage you, them to go check you out. We'll have those links down below and we'll also plug out the end here. for the laundromat as well, though. I mean, we've talked a lot about the good, you know, the geographics, lower competition. If someone wanted to, you know, make an investment in a laundromat, what makes a bad investment when it comes specifically to laundromats?

21:26And like, how can people avoid getting burned by that? So I would say the worst problem, because I've done coaching and training and a lot of working with people on laundromats. Someone asked me this question, you know, just two hours ago. And I said, the worst thing that I run into is people that they look at these businesses and they immediately look at them and they say there's no work involved. And the problem is there's plenty of work involved, but it's almost all front end loaded. You look at, you know, I had the story about the$2 ,000 or the hundred pounds of quarters from the vending machines.

21:57Like, yeah, it's 10 hours, 200 bucks an hour, but there's a lot of time that I spent four years ago building a system and a process up to make sure that everything worked right. If I was the guy that did 100 % of the labor and 100 % of the work on them, my income from those, my income per hour, it's probably like 35 to 40 bucks an hour because then I would be stocking them. I'd be doing all the servicing. I would be doing the filling. I'd be running to Sam's club to get them. And a laundromat's that same way, just a bigger thing. Well, who's cleaning the laundromat? Who's maintaining the machines?

22:31Who's opening the store up? Who is dealing with customer complaints? Like there's a whole list of things that have to happen in the business for it to operate relatively hands-off, or at least to the point that all I do is go in. I'm there for 45 minutes. I shoot a YouTube video, some TikToks, and then I leave. That required a lot of front-end loading on getting the process set up. Same deal with my car washes, same deal with my roofing company, newspaper, whatever it is, self-storage. They all require some level of work, but it is a situation where that work was deployed early. We build a system.

23:07And then I've been able to step away and just manage my management portion very well. The worst kind of situation I've run into, and I've ran into somebody last week. We talked about Mark's laundromat in Austin. I ran into somebody else that's run their laundromat into the ground, kind of looking at buying it maybe because I've got people down in Texas that want a laundromat. I went to this laundromat and everything that could be wrong with the laundromat was wrong with it. And I've had interactions with this person and you sit down and you talk to them, which I have in the past. They don't want to do any work.