I definitely would say I'm happier running my laundromat than I was working as a nurse, but I also really enjoyed the time and freedom that my laundromat gives me that I didn't have working as a nurse.
My name is Cami and I'm 38 years old and I quit my nursing job to open up a laundromat in Arizona.
My business brought in around 475,000 in 2024.
I worked as a nurse for a total of 13 years, but once I hit my 10 year mark working as a nurse, that's when I decided to buy a laundromat.
It was the year 2020 when I really started looking to buy a business because I liked what I did, but I think I was ready for a change and I also didn't want to go back to school and get more education.
And so I knew really my only way out of working would be to own a business.
I definitely think COVID and working as a nurse during that time definitely influenced me in wanting to leave healthcare and look for a business, because that year I think we all know is a really hard year, especially in healthcare.
So I think COVID really pushed me to leave healthcare faster.
Otherwise I probably would have stayed a lot longer than I actually did.
Before buying my laundromat, I was actually looking at mobile home parks as well as storage units.
I was actually under escrow for a mobile home park at one point, but luckily it fell through.
Because after it fell through, about three weeks is when I saw my laundromat get listed.
Back in 2020, laundromats weren't really talked about.
And so when I saw it listed, I was very unsure of the business and didn't know very much about it.
But luckily I had a friend who I had brought up this laundromat deal to him and he said that he happened to have an uncle that owned two of them.
And so I called this old man randomly the next day and asked him a few questions about the laundromat.
And he looked at the numbers with me and he said something that I will never forget.
He said, you know, if I could go back in time, I would never go to college.
I would never get my master's degree.
He's like, all I would do is buy laundromats because laundromats scream money.
I had been planning on buying a business for probably a year before actually buying my laundromat.
And so I knew, once it came down to it that I was planning on selling my home, to use that equity to put towards my business, whatever business it was that I had bought.
And so Selling my home was a big deal, but I knew that the home that I owned, that I eventually sold it, was never going to be my forever home.
It was more of like a starter home.
So for me selling it, it wasn't very scary.
I was more excited about owning a business rather than owning a home.
So I sold my home for 310000.
Wasn't a fully paid off home so i took home 150 000 of that 310 paid off what was left on that loan and then put that 150 towards the down payment of my laundromat.
But i also had money saved so i put the rest of the 50 000 towards that down payment to purchase the laundromat.
So we sell our finance the remaining 100 000 with a six percent interest rate over the next two years.
So when I bought my laundromat the plan wasn't to ever leave nursing.
It was more of, I would just go down more in part time at the hospital and work on my business more.
So right now I'm only working maybe five or six hours a week.
I also am hesitant in telling people that, because that's not how it was five years ago four, three years ago.
I was working a lot more hours in trying to grow this business.
But since then I've been able to hire employees, incorporate more systems to be able to remove me from the business more, so that I can focus more on growing the business and not working in the business.
When I walked into that laundromat the very first time, I knew there was a lot of value that I could add to the business, because it wasn't exactly pleasing to the eye.
The first few months of owning my laundromat I went in and did a lot of renovations to make it feel more homey, more welcoming to those customers walking in.
I put about $20,000 back into the business to do some minor renovations.
When I bought my laundromat it was a regular self-serve laundromat where customers walk in, pay to use the machines and then walk out to do their laundry.
About six months after owning my laundromat, I had learned about this thing called pickup and delivery, and that is where we go out into the city, pick up their laundry, bring it back to the laundromat, process their orders and then return it back to them just a few days later.
I added the pickup and delivery service in April of 2021.
This iron is probably one of the best decisions I've made in owning my business.
And the reason for that is because we've been able to grow my pick-up and delivery of those table linens and napkins exponentially.
So wedding season is definitely our peak season here at the laundromat.
Right now we're walking behind the dryers and we're going to access behind the kiosk to collect the money.
So this is what we've collected at the laundromat probably over the last few days.
But people also don't just use cash.
They can use credit, debit and apps to loan money onto their card.
And then i have this very old school soap vending machine, which it does still take orders.
So once i have the new machine replaced it, then i will be completely order free.
Self-Serve Laundromat is a pretty simple business to run when it comes to your customers.
But when it comes to your customers in the pickup and delivery space, it's a much more advanced business because there's much more logistics involved.
And so learning that and understanding the balance of staffing and poundage of laundry and making sure they're balanced and making sure that everything gets returned on time.
There was a lot of moving parts in that business.
So it took me a little bit to learn that.
Whatever I make on the laundromat, I take a small percentage that I plan on putting back into the laundromat.
For the rest is what I used to take to live off of.
So I have a few loans on my laundromat.
That includes my washing machines, which I purchased new around 22 2023.
And I also have two vehicles that I use for my pickup and delivery service.
So at my laundromat, I also have a sublease.
So this sublease also pays me rent and this sublease is a salon.
So he pays me rent every month.
So within just my laundromat for the year 2024, I paid myself 66,000.
So I have about six employees.
About one or two of them are part-time, and we only bring those employees in when our orders are unexpectedly bigger than we expected.
I feel like the biggest learning curve I learned as owning a laundromat was learning how to be a leader.
Because when I worked as a nurse, I had always been an employee.
I always had a boss, a manager.
And so when it switched for me and I became the boss, I became the manager, I became the one that called the shots, it was definitely a different transition for me.
I decided to post on social media about my laundromat in July of 2024.
Posting on TikTok is where I primarily started.
And my TikTok did really well.
And I first started getting paid in October of 2024.
It wasn't until December where I started focusing more on Instagram as well.
So, as of February of 2025 is when I hit my very first month of making more money from social media than my laundromat.
And since then, it's continued to stay the same.
So in the year 2025, I'm on track to make around $200,000 off social media.
I'm actually hoping to build or buy a second laundromat, so I plan on staying in the business for a long time.
I would want a laundromat that's very run down.
Like I would love to do that renovation process again and putting a new machine, building it up and scaling it to be a bigger, better laundromat.
And if I don't buy, I would love to build one and just start from scratch as well.
I think my end goal with my laundromat or if I were to get a second laundromat is to have a really strong exit when I do plan to sell.
I feel like there's two really great things that I've grown to love about this business.
The first one is I kind of treat my business like it's a game and it's a game that I want to win.
But it's funny because I feel like I'm not competing with anyone.
It's just more of how can I capitalize on this business?
How can I scale it?
How can I grow it?
How can I be more creative?
And then, of course, the second thing that I really love about this business is that just my freedom with time.
This is my first time where I'm able to be home for all the holidays, have every weekend off.
Granted, I've only really felt that in the last few years.
My first years of ownership I didn't have as much time because I basically just put my head down to grow it.
But now I'm feeling the fruits of that labor and I would do it again in a heartbeat.
