From homelessness in Australia to a million-dollar laundromat venture — this story spans continents and proves it’s never too late to rewrite your future.
Watch the journey.
#DownUnderSuccess
#LaundromatLife
#FromStreetsToSuccess
#AustraliaBusiness
#DreamBig
#UKStartupStory
#LaundromatMillionaire
#HomelessToRich
#BritishBusiness
#Inspiration
#FromHomelessToMillionaire
#LaundromatSuccess
#AmericanDream
#BusinessBreakthrough
#SideHustleEmpire
Don’t miss this remarkable journey — hit play and get inspired!
Watch the journey.
#DownUnderSuccess
#LaundromatLife
#FromStreetsToSuccess
#AustraliaBusiness
#DreamBig
#UKStartupStory
#LaundromatMillionaire
#HomelessToRich
#BritishBusiness
#Inspiration
#FromHomelessToMillionaire
#LaundromatSuccess
#AmericanDream
#BusinessBreakthrough
#SideHustleEmpire
Don’t miss this remarkable journey — hit play and get inspired!
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LearningTranscript
00:00From broken homeless to multi-millionaire, this is Brandon's story on taking $15K and turning it into more than $10 million with laundromats.
00:08Let's copy this guy's homework.
00:12Hey guys, this is Brandon with InvestmentJoy.
00:14I run two laundromats, two car washes, over $130 rentals, I have assets over about $10 million, and yet I did it while growing up poor, being evicted twice, and working pretty much every day of my life.
00:25As normal people do when they walk into your laundromat, I wanted to ask you some totally standard, nothing weird about this questions, like, how much did you buy this thing for, how much money did you make, and what was the story that got it all started?
00:37So those are all questions that I love, and the answer is $85,000, $15K down, and the reason I bought it was because I like money, and I want to make money.
00:46And after seeing the books on my first laundromat, I realized that these things actually are profitable if you do them in the right way.
00:51First of all, I think people overestimate how much money they cost.
00:54Of course, in big cities, that's a different story, but a little one's like, how do you pronounce the name of this place?
00:58This is Chillicothe, Ohio.
01:00They're actually pretty reasonable, and they're pretty profitable.
01:02So break down the profits for me, specifically on this business.
01:06Acquisition was $85,000.
01:08I got it through seller financing.
01:10The seller financed $70,000 of the $85,000, so all I had to do was come up with $15,000 down.
01:15My goal is $10,000 a month off this one.
01:17We're currently at $7,000.
01:18Water runs me $300,000, $400,000 a month.
01:21Gas runs me $200,000 to $300,000 a month.
01:22Electric runs me $400,000 to $500,000.
01:23That's because currently I pay the electric bill for my girl that lives upstairs.
01:28I've got two apartments as a part of this piece of real estate.
01:30My biggest expense here, beyond the mortgage, the mortgage is $537 and some change a month.
01:36$1,600 a month in equipment loans.
01:39So you're making $3,000 or $4,000 a month profit in your pocket off of just the machines, or the machines and rent?
01:45The machines, rent, and vending.
01:47And vending.
01:47And that's the whole pile.
01:48Most people do not think about adding real estate to it and ancillary revenue streams, or your vending and rental unit.
01:56What made you decide to go that way?
01:58Was that because you were in real estate before?
01:59As a real estate agent, I was allowed to take a peek behind the curtains on all sorts of different businesses.
02:03And it was always interesting to me to look at a business and see how much vending made or how much ATMs made.
02:08I looked at buying a convenience store, because it was down to this and a little convenience store in my town.
02:13The convenience store made an extra $1,500 a month net, not gross, off vending machines.
02:18So I thought, well, if I have a business, I need to build ancillary revenue.
02:21I think what a lot of people don't realize is that 10% to 15% in your business is a huge amount.
02:26So sometimes it's a little thing, some matter.
02:27This is a busy street, Brandon.
02:29What's the deal?
02:30Did you do a car count before you bought this thing, or how does that work?
02:32Yeah, we did.
02:33The state of Ohio provides data to investors or whoever for traffic counts, and this was a very well-studied road.
02:38So I know I have 2,500 cars a day that go in and out of here.
02:41I also know I have an apartment complex where no one owns their own washer.
02:44There's 168 units in there.
02:45So that's one of the key reasons I bought this.
02:47What do you think this place is actually worth now?
02:49If I sold it with the dead as well, probably over $300,000.
02:52I've already had a couple offers in the $250,000 range.
02:54So we've already built a decent bit of equity on this business.
02:57Do you think that's because we single-handedly increase the price of laundromats everywhere?
03:02Maybe.
03:03So you used to be in real estate.
03:05Yes.
03:05You started with one unit.
03:07Then you got up to how many?
03:09I'm at 135 right now.
03:11135 units.
03:12That's a lot.
03:13Then you said, hey, wait a second.
03:14I think businesses might cash flow even more than real estate.
03:16What happened, and how did you find this deal?
03:18I saw the books on this one.
03:19A buddy of mine who's another big real estate investor, he said, have you ever thought about buying a business before?
03:23And I was like, I have no clue.
03:24I don't even know what they'd make.
03:25And he said, do you want to go look physically at a laundromat?
03:27This one.
03:28This is four or five years ago before it closed down.
03:30I bought it once again from a closed-down business owner.
03:33We came here.
03:33We looked at the books.
03:34They were making like $8,500 a month in cash on this laundromat before they closed down.
03:40And I said to myself, if this business can make $8,500 a month gross, not net, why am I buying only dumpy little single-family detached houses when I could buy one of these and make more money than 10 houses?
03:51I'd have one headache in one location as opposed to 10 headaches in 10 locations, so I figured, why not do it?
03:56Next 60 seconds, I'm going to reframe the way that you think about universities today.
04:00Now, typically when I talk about going back to college, I feel like this.
04:05And the reason why is because a lot of times they're really expensive, they're inflexible, and they tell you what to think, not how to think.
04:12But then I heard about this university called National University.
04:14They have hundreds of programs online that are flexible for people just like you and I, that are maybe running a laundromat or in a job that you don't like at the moment and need to figure out how to upskill and get to the next level, but do it while you're making some cash.
04:28They're actually really cool because they were founded by an ex-Navy veteran.
04:31They're one of the biggest providers of schooling for the military.
04:34There's actually this guy, Ryan Zinke, who basically went from being a Navy SEAL while going through their curriculum to graduating and becoming a congressman.
04:42The world's happening faster than ever around us, but we need somebody who's going to bet on us, too.
04:47That's why they gave out more than $50 million in scholarships last year.
04:50This year, they're giving away something to you guys, too.
04:52But it's not around forever, so you're going to want to click the link, go check out National University, do it while you're working, so that in the future, you have other people work for you.
05:00Let's talk about how much time it takes to run one of these bad boys, because that's what I always get on the internet.
05:04It's like, Cody, you could never run so many businesses all by yourself, and you must be there all the time, and blah, blah, blah, blah.
05:10And so, I thought I'd hold a laundromat thing, because this is about as much work as I've done on one of these things in a while.
05:15But, Brandon, when you first bought a laundromat, how much work did it take to find the deal, and then how much work did you have to do in the business every single day?
05:21I was spending a lot of work.
05:23This deal fell in my lap, more or less, maybe five hours of negotiation, mostly regarding the way the financing would be.
05:28It wasn't getting the deal down.
05:30It was just the financing aspect of it.
05:32I was in here two, three, four hours a day for the first month that we went in and we rehabbed it.
05:37But, incidentally enough, I recorded all that, so most of the stuff documented how much time I actually spend.
05:42If no one believes Cody or believes me on how much time does it actually take to do these deals.
05:46I was two, three hours a day for the first month.
05:48That's Monday through Friday.
05:49Then, once we got it actually up and running, I was spending maybe two to six hours a week here.
05:55I was down here every day, Monday through Friday, just to see how the business was working.
05:58Once we did the renovations, we really built up a good standardized business process.
06:02I am quite literally down to the time that I shoot video here.
06:05I could probably spend 30 minutes to an hour every other week.
06:10We are going to hybrid pay on this location, so I'm going to have the option for credit cards and for coins.
06:15I expect that to decrease my coin count by about half, and that will take me to the point that I only need to be here for about an hour or two every single month.
06:23I've got a sub manager under me, Kim.
06:25She's starting to appear in my videos.
06:27She's in here one to two hours a week making sure the floors are clean, the machines are working properly, surveying my customers, just making sure everything's fine.
06:34And I'm not paying her an arm and a leg to come in and be a manager for me.
06:37It's very time efficient, so now I'm on the hunt for looking for more laundromats.
06:41The only thing that people always say to me is like, you got these big expensive machines.
06:45You know, they cost about, you know, let's call it 10K to 40K, depending on how much you have.
06:50Do a bunch of people come in here and just like vandalize them and break them and all of this stuff?
06:54I've actually, knock on wood, never had somebody vandalize any of my laundromats.
06:58I'd be curious for you.
06:58Your doors are wide open here.
07:00The only machine that I've had people vandalize has been my coin pusher, which is the kind of gambling, gaming machine.
07:06It's there intentionally.
07:07I look at it like this big, easy target for somebody that's going to vandalize.
07:11If they're going to vandalize, I don't want them to spend it on my expensive machines.
07:14We took the location over and my equipment was crappier.
07:17You could see where vandals tried to destroy the coin mechanism.
07:21Those are expensive.
07:21The coin pusher, I can rebuild the whole thing for about 500 bucks.
07:24Here's the truth.
07:24When you're running a small business, we talk about the big, fancy numbers and all the cash that you make because we want to create more owners like you.
07:30Because I think that makes a difference in the world.
07:31But you're providing a service.
07:33Brandon was telling us there are 160 unit rentals nearby without washers and dryers.
07:38Are they going to vandalize the thing that allows them to have clean clothes?
07:41When you're providing a service for humans and you do it in a humane way, it turns out people are pretty cool.
07:49Okay, now for the tough questions.
07:51How do we get a seller to agree to finance us $70,000 on an $85,000 investment?
07:58How did you do that?
07:59Number one, he was in distress.
08:00This had sit on the market empty with no money coming in whatsoever for about a year.
08:05I had made him an offer and he said, Brandon, I need $135,000.
08:08Have to have it.
08:09And I said, look, this location, it's not making any money.
08:12If you renovate it, it's going to cost all the money in the world.
08:14I'm going to be lower than that.
08:15So after about six months, he said, you know what?
08:16If you can come up with $85,000, I'll sell it to you.
08:18It's still not worth it.
08:19And then I would much rather prefer that you finance it.
08:22So that was at month six.
08:24At month 12, he said, tell you what?
08:25You come up with $30,000, I'll finance it for you.
08:28And I said, how about 15?
08:29He stood on it for another week and said, all right, let's do it.
08:32And then I came with the kind of the upsell to him.
08:34I said, you know, you're going to get some interest on this.
08:36So I'm not making you interest only or 0% interest.
08:39You're going to make some interest on it.
08:40So then he can buy back a little bit of the money that he was hoping to make at a higher sales price.
08:45So that's kind of my process for this laundromat.
08:47And what's crazy to me is I've done it a bunch of times.
08:50I've done probably a dozen projects similar to this one in terms of financing.
08:54Yeah.
08:54It's the other thing that I think people don't believe when you talk about on the Internet,
08:58that part of my mission is to get people to actually believe in themselves, which is a weird thing.
09:01There are people all over this country right now that need you to buy their businesses.
09:06They need to retire because of sickness or because their job got moved or because they're so tired,
09:13they just can't come in and run this anymore or they're getting older.
09:16And so I think this idea of seller financing, some people think, ah, that's predatory.
09:20You got it for that?
09:21What a steal.
09:22And it's like, no, instead, it's an off ramp to a human that then gets to go live another life.
09:26I think you were spot on on that.
09:28You know what?
09:28One of my favorite mentors, who's a billionaire, actually, told me one thing,
09:32and that is never fall in love with something that cannot love you back.
09:35And a laundromat certainly can't do that.
09:37Yeah.
09:38Now, owning laundromats isn't always awesome, as I know from firsthand experience.
09:42Fuck it, I'm calling a cop.
09:46Oh, we got this.
09:48What are the five worst things about owning a laundromat?
09:52Number one was starting a new business.
09:54It's just a new thing.
09:54I'm used to real estate.
09:55I'm not used to dealing with customers.
09:57So learning that whole brand new process, probably number one.
10:00Number two was probably dealing with the money situation.
10:03I don't worry about getting robbed and stuff.
10:05But the second that I had my work crews come down here and do any sort of work,
10:09especially like my female manager, she got scared to death that she would get robbed.
10:14I have business partners.
10:15They will not collect money for me.
10:16That was probably number two.
10:18Number three was just capital expenditure planning.
10:20The CapEx that I spent on this early on in the acquisition was way higher than my real
10:25estate investments.
10:26These machines here were way more expensive than I would have ever thought.
10:29This washer that's sitting right over here was about $12,000, which just blew my mind
10:33that this machine would cost more than the car I drive.
10:36Number four, real quick, would be just the amount of work that we had to do to get this.
10:40Number five was the amount of effort that I needed to throw in to attract new customers,
10:45to really make sure the place was spotless every night.
10:48The only thing I'd add to it is when it comes to the laundromats that I run, it's opportunity
10:52cost.
10:52When you first start out, this is a great business.
10:54As you get more of these businesses, if Brandon's running all of them all the time, it actually
10:59becomes a little bit of a net loss because of your opportunity cost, which is something
11:02all of you should be listening to out there.
11:04Everybody's like, Cody, you're telling everybody to do vending machines and laundromats.
11:07It's like, no, no, no.
11:08Those are the gateway drug businesses to learning how to do business.
11:11And then once you've done a few of those, you can go on to bigger games.
11:14You could do a core wash, which usually has bigger CapEx, and you could play this game
11:17at different levels because just like business, it's a game.
11:21Do you want to see who's better at Pac-Man?
11:22Sure.
11:23Another game.
11:24Let's do this.
11:26All right, let's see.
11:28I don't know who's going to be better at this.
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