The Inglewood deal was serendipitous. After four months of searching, a friend who is an Inglewood police officer told me that his partner had just fallen out of escrow on his laundromat. “Hook it up!”, I said. Within a couple days, Clay (my laundry broker) and I met with the laundromat owner, Javier, and we were in escrow. That entailed performing money counts once a week (pulling all of the quarters out of the washers and dryers and weighing them on a scale), reviewing utility bills and all other expenses, hanging out talking to customers and staff, and checking out the local competition.

Back to Fred and the importance of the lease… that’s what it all boiled down to with this laundromat. There were dozens of emails back and forth between the strip mall owner/landlord and me. I will call him “Keith” (not his real name). In fact, Keith wanted to conduct all business over email which should have been the first red flag… but I am learning. I paid a $2,500 “application” fee and provided him with an outrageous amount of documentation… pretty much everything short of my childrens’ birth certificates. In hindsight, I regret doing this before actually meeting with him.

Keith threw a lot of dollar figures and scenarios out there in his correspondence. My responses to each of his emails concluded with the request for me to come to his office, meet at the laundromat, meet for coffee or lunch, something. Call me old-school but I always insist on in-person meetings. The importance of being in a room with someone when negotiating a contract is imperative. That way, both people are fully engaged with few distractions and focused on the task at hand. Obviously, in-person meetings have become almost obsolete during Covid but I have faith that they will make a strong comeback!

After three weeks of trying to meet with Keith, I was able to get on his calendar. I can’t believe I am even saying that, “get on his calendar”. Any landlord should be eager to meet with a prospective tenant! I walked out of the meeting feeling certain that things went well and that he would certainly work with me to renegotiate the lease. Long story short, he did not. Keith had numbers in a spreadsheet that he needed to hit and I wasn’t going to fit in that box. 

I do not like to give up on things. I tend to try too hard to make things work. Walking away from this deal was tough and I was extremely bummed out about it. But, boy oh boy, do things work out for a reason!

A week prior to meeting with Keith, Clay called me to ask how I would feel about taking over a store in Culver City. “She needs a lot of TLC!” he said. After our third or fourth trip to Inglewood to perform a money count, we drove a short four miles to CB Laundry at the corner of Culver Blvd and Slauson Avenue. 

It’s funny how we conjure up ideas of how people look prior to meeting them. All Clay told me was that the owner had taken over managing the laundromat when her husband of 42 years passed away the year before. So I was expecting a frail, timid, elderly woman. Upon meeting her, I was taken aback. She was strikingly beautiful and poised, dressed to the nines, with bright red lipstick. Chrys (short for Chrysanthe) greeted me with a tight, warm hug and I immediately knew this was meant to be. Trying to keep my business mind about me and not let my emotions get the better of me. 

Chrys was very reluctant to let go of the laundromat because it was so special to Harry. So why was she selling it? Was it a money pit? I could see that it was neglected. At close to 3,000 square feet, almost half of the machines had “out of order” signs on them. Come to find out that she simply didn’t have the time to manage it. She has been selling high-end homes on the Westside for over 35 years, and is the recipient of countless accolades, one of them being the Society of Excellence (Top 1% of Coldwell Banker Realty Agents). In the coming weeks, at several of Chrys’ various favorite local diners, we swapped stories about marriage, family, my children (she doesn’t have any), travel and business. When she spoke about her husband Harry, she smiled a little more and her eyes lit up. It warmed my heart and reaffirmed my belief in love. 

Then it came time to negotiate the lease with the landlord. Talk about a completely different experience this go-around. Robert is truly someone that any business owner would want to have as a landlord. He is genuinely interested in seeing my business succeed. Of course, this makes sense, why wouldn’t he want that?

So when I say that Inglewood was serendipitous, it did not turn out exactly how I thought it would… but a new door opened and I am so glad that I walked through it!