The Laundry List Blog

In most parts of the United States, there are distinct seasons – spring, summer, fall, and winter. There are exceptions to this like Florida, southern Texas, and most of California, where the weather is much less volatile.

Like the weather seasons, there are also seasons in business. As the country ...

This will be a welcome break from my usual focus on the 80/20 rule (The Pareto Principle). I love the 80/20 rule and it applies to almost everything, especially when you are acquiring, ascending, and retaining your clients but the 10/20 rule is totally different.

I learned the 10/20 rule from Mike A...

If January or February is a relatively slow month for your business, consider launching a coat drive one of those months.

Years ago, before we had our January coat drive, January was our third worst month of sales in the year. The only worse months were the heat of summer in July and August.

That al...

There are tremendous benefits to your prospects, existing clients, and your company by installing a Live Chat widget on your website.
 
At In The Bag Cleaners, we have five to seven daily prospects ask questions on our chat widget, that they want answered before they start using our services. Usuall...

Don’t worry, I haven’t completely lost my mind! I know it’s not spring in the Northern Hemisphere but it is spring south of the Equator. Anyway, this article will help you whenever it is spring in your area...
 
The ups and downs of business and life are similar to the seasons.
 
Following each wint...

Does a great leader bring you down or raise you up? When a great person walks into a room, does the positive energy increase or decrease?
 
The best leaders energize other people. They are battery chargers rather than battery drainers. People generally feel better about themselves after being in the...

Why do people buy a Mercedes automobile? 
 
If you guessed safety features, an upscale dashboard display, a robust engine, tight suspension, or fine leather, you would be wrong.
 
People buy from an emotional level and they justify the emotional purchase with logic.
 
The purchaser is often only awa...

Each week, I talk with a handful of prospective mastermind members about their outlook for future growth – both in revenue and profit. We discuss how to do this while building their teams to take care of daily operations.
 
There have been some positive trends over the past couple of years from thes...

After 23 years of owning my own business, and now four years of coaching other business owners, I have learned a business owner almost always loses by beating himself/herself.

Please - do not have limiting beliefs in yourself. I have seen many a business owner self-sabotage because they did not ...

There are revenue hurdles we face as drycleaning business owners.
 
For some reason, the top-line revenue hurdles come in 1s, 3s and 5s.
 

• $500,000
• $1,000,000
• $3,000,000
• $5,000,000

 
Why do you get stuck at each of these levels?
 
For one of two reasons – 

1. there is an obstacle in your wa
...

Does Direct Mail Work?

Absolutely.

Direct Mail is my top choice to acquire new clients – for a number of reasons.

For target clients, we usually do not have their cell phone number – and a phone call or text would not be warmly received if the prospect does not trust us yet – which they don’t.

We cou...

As dry cleaning business owners, we are always looking for tactics to get more clients. The goal is for these new clients to create more revenue.
 
We might try to create more awareness of our brand.
 
We might look for the right direct mail postcard or digital ad that will create a surge of new cli...

The definition of “marketing” from the Oxford Languages is The activity or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.
 
Let me give you some additional ways to think of marketing:

Marketing is:

• What you say (the message)
• Who you say it t
...

The primary objection most drycleaners have to scaling retail wash, dry, and fold (WDF) service is they don’t have the right equipment mix. If you are limited on washers and dryers, you might want to expand your commercial WDF lines instead of your retail WDF lines.

The advantage to focusing on com...

Why is it critical to have a constant flow of new clients to your business?

Acquiring new clients is one of only three ways to increase your top-line sales. The other two are to increase the average frequency of your clients’ visits and to increase the average monetary value of each visit.

While a...

If you haven’t played around with Chat.openai.com, sign up for a free account and start playing around with it. As an example, I typed in “show me the most powerful marketing tools for a dry cleaner” and this response came back in about 12 seconds:

Certainly, here are some powerful marketing tools ...

One of my Maverick members asked me last week, “Dave, what’s the difference between a pixel and a cookie? How does it impact my digital marketing?” Great question! Here’s how I replied:
 
You first need to know what a web server and an ad server are. A server is a computer that delivers data to your...

Earl Nightingale in his famous recording “The Strangest Secret” summarizes this powerful concept. You become what you think about. Think about your rotten customers and you will have rotten customers. Think about not having money and you’ll never attract it.
 
Think about the bad nightly news storie...

In life, there are givers and takers.
 
Givers love to give, with little to no expectation of receiving anything in return.
Givers have an abundant mindset and understand there are plenty of resources to create the life of your dreams.
Givers find their batteries recharged once they give to others.
...