Speaker 1: 0:00
You can make more money in a few minutes of negotiating than what takes years to make welcome to state of the laundry industry. With laundry , Matt , episode 30, how to negotiate a laundry lease increase your bad mat . Negotiating. A good lease is so important for the health of your business. The number one tool to negotiate a good lease is being able to walk away. Could you imagine if you’re negotiating and the person you’re negotiating with knows that you have to make a deal you’re in a really bad position. If you’re buying a laundromat, the laundromat you’re buying is only as good as the lease, because if it expires in one to three years, you need to negotiate that. Now you can’t wait until that time ends because it’s gonna be a lot easier to negotiate a better terms on the lease or extend it . Then after you buy cuz after you buy the landlord knows you’re stuck. Sometimes it’s easy to get greedy meaning, oh, I want to get this opportunity. I wanna make it work. And you ignore the red flags. And the red flag is if there’s not much time left on the lease and you’re not able to get extensions. An important term is BATNA B a T N a. It stands for best alternative to no agreement. So when you’re buying a laundromat and there’s not much time left on the lease, you’re BATNA. If there’s no agreement, if you can’t negotiate with the landlord, you’re BATNA is you could walk away, take it or leave it. As long as you can walk away. You’re in a much better negotiating position than after you make the purchase. And that begs a question. What do you do when you’re renegotiating your lease? And you’re out of options and all your machines are hard mounted in there. You got all the plumbing and the landlords looking at that and saying that persons in BATNA best alternative to no agreement is they lose their laundromat. They know they’ve got you. And it’s gonna be hard to negotiate from a position of strength. One way of increasing your BATNA is pick up and delivery. If the landlord sees that you’ve got all this business with pick up and delivery and you could take that business wherever you want. And it’s not hard mounted into that location that the landlord owns. You’ve got a strong BATNA. I’ve even seen it where somebody has not much time left on their lease. The future’s uncertain, the landlord doesn’t wanna negotiate. Right now. I’ve seen laundry owners purchase the second Lama and they start doing production over there. Not only are they increasing their BATNA, but now they’re able to create value immediately at that second location. So as their operations expand, they’re now in a better position and they’re not going to sleep at night. Wondering is my business, is it gonna end when the lease ends? And I’ve also seen a number of landlords who at the end of the lease become laundry owners, but the landlord might just see it as a bunch of vending machines that are just accepting people’s money 24 7. So it behooves you to have a business that expands beyond the bricks and mortar. If the landlord shuts down or takes over the business, what happens to your in store business gone? What happens to your wash and fold where people drop it off in store gone, but with a pickup and delivery, that’s a brand that is not tied down to a location. The landlord can’t take over your pickup and delivery business. And you own that . And you can take that with you. So your BATNA, your negotiating position is stronger than ever because ideally you could work it out, but you don’t have to. You could take your business with you. So at curbside laundries , we have clients who they were not able to renew their lease, but their pickup and delivery business is going strong. Some of our clients who lost their laundromats, they’re doing their laundry at other places. Some of ’em have bought another laundromat and are doing the pickup and delivery at the new location. Some of them have actually purchased warehouse space and are doing the wash and fold at an industrial location. But the point is, is when they were not able to renew their lease, they didn’t lose everything. They still have their business. And especially during times of uncertainty, it’s great to have a diversified business. One of our clients said he went into pick up and delivery defensively.
Speaker 2: 4:00
It was a defensive play because if we didn’t do it, we were afraid that, you know, there were gonna be the other laundromats. We gonna poach. Our was pole business.
Speaker 1: 4:10
I see pick up and delivery as the future because Washington fold clients value, convenience, and what’s more convenient than having your laundry picked up from your doorsteps. You want to get as close to your customer as possible with nothing in between. And that includes not having a landlord get in between you and your customer. I’ve seen so many laundry owners stop investing in their business because they only have one or two years left on their lease with pickup and delivery. You could always have your foot on the gas pedal and continue growing your business. When it comes time to renegotiate your lease. You’re in such a better position because you have already future proofed your revenue stream. To learn more about the curbside laundries wash and fold and pick up and delivery software, go to curbside laundries.com. You cannot take a chance with laundry software written by people who don’t know the laundry business with curbside laundries. We have hundreds of successful clients making tens of thousands of dollars per month.
