I came across an interview recently with Ian Schwartzman, the CEO of the Joe Budden Network. Schwartzman helped build Budden's podcast into a $20 million a year business.¹ During the conversation, the hosts started doing what hosts do. They threw out the big numbers. "You're making a million a month. Somebody can make a hundred thousand."
Schwartzman stopped them mid-sentence.
"Stop throwing those numbers out. Why can't you tell people to get 100 people to subscribe for $10 a month? That's $1,000 a month passive. That changes your movements. That maybe frees you up one day a week."
Then he went further: "At some point, as leadership in this industry, we have to stop putting these ridiculous numbers in front of people."
Here's a person running a $20 million operation telling the hosts — educated, well-versed professionals with large audiences — that the numbers they're putting out aren't helping anyone. His point wasn't about being modest. It was about math. $1,000 a month might cover a bill. It might free up one day. It might change how somebody moves. And nobody talks about that number, because it doesn't sound impressive enough to say out loud.
That got me thinking about our industry.
The Number That Was Never Defined
The laundry business has its own version of this. The conversation tends to center on scale. More locations. Higher gross revenue. The numbers that circulate on podcasts, in forums, on social media, and at trade shows are almost always the big ones. Somebody went from one store to ten. Somebody else is doing seven figures.
There's nothing wrong with those stories. Ambition is a good thing. But here's what I've been sitting with lately.
Where did the number you're working toward actually come from?
Not the general idea of "doing well." The specific number. The one that makes you feel like you're on track or falling behind. Where did it originate? Who published it? What data is it based on?
Because when I went looking for it in the industry's actual data, I couldn't find it.
What the Industry's Data Actually Looks Like
The CLA's annual Industry Survey is the most comprehensive financial data collection in the laundry business. In 2024, they emailed 5,986 industry professionals and received 377 usable responses.² For an industry of roughly 29,500 laundromats, that represents about 1.3% of the total.
The CLA recommends using median figures rather than averages because a small number of very high or very low performers can skew the mean.² The median gross revenue reported was $335,000. The median operating net profit was 27% of gross revenue, before taxes, debt service, and owner compensation.² Applied to the median, that's roughly $90,000 in operating net profit — before the owner pays loans, taxes, or themselves.
Those are real numbers from real owner/operators. They represent the most reliable snapshot available.
Now consider what happens when someone searches "how much does a laundromat make" online. The range that appears across multiple sources is roughly $30,000 to $1,000,000 per year.³
That's a 33x spread. For comparison, imagine a restaurant investor being told "you'll earn somewhere between $30,000 and a million." That range is so wide it functions as no information at all.
Beyond the CLA survey, there are no widely published gross revenue benchmarks for laundromats by region or market type. No performance categories. No standardized way for an independent owner/operator to look at their store's numbers and understand where they sit relative to the rest of the industry.
Where Financial Transparency Does Exist
Financial transparency isn't impossible in laundry. It already exists in one part of the industry.
The FTC requires every franchisor to provide a Franchise Disclosure Document. Item 19 of that document covers financial performance representations. If a franchisor makes an earnings claim, they have to substantiate it with real data.⁴
Speed Queen's FDD includes projected revenue of approximately $466,000 per store, based on their corporate store performance data.⁵ WaveMAX reports actual average revenue of roughly $382,000 across their franchisee-owned locations.⁶ LaundroLab's most recent disclosure shows actual average gross revenue of approximately $538,000 from 10 franchisee-owned locations.⁷
It's worth noting the distinction: Speed Queen publishes projections based on corporate-owned stores, while WaveMAX and LaundroLab report actual franchisee results. The level of transparency differs even within the franchise space. But all three are publishing financial data in a standardized format, substantiated and required by federal law.
The independent owner/operators who make up the vast majority of the industry's 29,500 locations have no equivalent. No FDD. No standardized disclosure. No required transparency.
Context That Rarely Enters the Conversation
There's another set of numbers that most laundry owner/operators have never been shown.
The median small business owner in America pays themselves about $67,000 a year.⁸ According to actual payroll records analyzed by Gusto, the median is closer to $57,600.⁹ Eighty-six percent of small business owners pay themselves under $100,000.¹⁰ Only 9% of small businesses in the country generate over $1 million in annual revenue.¹¹
There are 36.2 million small businesses in the United States.¹² Most of them are solo operations or employ fewer than a dozen people.
Now put the CLA data next to those numbers. A laundromat at the median — $335,000 gross, 27% operating net profit — is generating roughly $90,000 before taxes, debt service, and the owner's draw. That level of performance, from a single location, places that owner/operator ahead of the majority of small business owners in the country.
That comparison rarely appears in the laundry conversation. The numbers that do circulate tend to come from the top end — the biggest operations, the highest gross figures, the fastest expansion stories. Those are real stories worth telling. But without the broader context, it's difficult for any individual owner/operator to understand where their business actually sits.
The Number Worth Calculating
Schwartzman's point wasn't anti-ambition. He runs a $20 million business. His observation was that the number most people actually need — the one that changes how they live — is usually different from the one that gets talked about.
The same observation applies to laundry.
What's the number that would free you up one extra day a week? The number that covers your kid's tuition? That pays off one bill that's been weighing on you? That lets you breathe a little differently?
That number is different for every owner/operator. And that's the point. It's a number only you can define, based on what matters in your life and your business. Not something assembled from the loudest numbers circulating in an industry that hasn't published its own benchmarks.
In a $5 billion industry with almost no standardized financial data, the most important number might be the one only you can calculate.
Thinking about the thinking of laundry:
When you realize no one in the industry ever defined the number you've been using as a finish line, the race changes.
Is the number you're working toward one you defined or one you absorbed?
That's all I got for you today.
Waleed
Echoing the thoughts of Daniel Boorstin.
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
Footnotes:
¹ How Ian Schwartzman Helped Turn Joe Budden Into a $20 Million Podcast Powerhouse — Billboard, January 2026
² 2024 CLA Laundry Industry Survey — CLA/Readex Research, 2024 (Pages 2, 12, 21, 25)
³ Sources citing the $30,000–$1,000,000 range include: Laundromat Industry Data — The Laundry Boss, Key Laundromat Industry Statistics — Martin Ray, Laundromat Statistics 2025 — The Laundry Bag
⁴ Item 19 of the Franchise Disclosure Document — FTC Franchise Rule
⁵ Speed Queen Laundry Franchise Review — Assett Franchise, 2025 (Referencing Speed Queen 2022 FDD; note: these are projections based on corporate store data, not reported franchisee results)
⁶ WaveMAX Laundry Franchise FDD — SharpSheets, 2025 (Reported franchisee results)
⁷ LaundroLab Franchise Analysis — Franzy, 2025 (Reported results from 10 franchisee-owned units)
⁸ Small Business Owner Salary — PayScale, 2026
⁹ Small Business Owners Earn 1.4x More Than Employees — Gusto, January 2026
¹⁰ Small Business Revenue Statistics — Entrepreneurship HQ, 2026 (Citing Guidant Financial 2024)
¹¹ Small Business Revenue Statistics — Entrepreneurship HQ, 2026 (Citing Small Biz Genius 2024)
