The other week I sat in the car for about ten minutes before walking into the store.
Not because anything was wrong. I sat there because the weight of every decision I'd made that month was pressing down and I needed a minute before I put the owner/operator face back on.
Nobody posts about that.
This is the last Wash Weekly of 2025. And I want to talk about the part of this business that doesn't make it online.
The Highlight Reel vs. The Reality
Scroll through the platforms right now. LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, etc. You'll see the wins and smiles. New equipment installations. Before-and-after renovations. "Just closed on my...” Revenue milestones.
No post about lying awake wondering if starting this business was a mistake or where the next dollar is going to come from to fund payroll.
No post about the pit in your stomach when your new PUD service is bleeding money and you're not sure if you should kill it or keep going.
We don't talk about:
- The store not making enough to cover all the bills AND pay yourself
- Will this client pay on time so you can make payroll this week?
- Someone no-call no-showed and now you're covering that shift yourself
- Your landlord is being difficult and the lease renewal is coming up
- The ironer broke down, your service person can't get there until Thursday, and you need it NOW to handle today's workload
- The delivery van got a flat and you're driver has no clue on how to change a tire
- Inspectors giving you issues with permits you thought were handled
- Staring at machine utilization numbers trying to figure out what you're missing
That's not a complaint. That's just Tuesday.
The Weight Not Talked About in Laundry
At the Laundry CEO Forum, we were starting day two. Jessica, my co-host, and I were on stage talking about how great day one went. In the middle of it, she turned to me and asked how I was doing.
"I'm tired," I said.
Not physically tired. The kind of tired that comes from being the one people bring problems to, even when you're still figuring it out yourself. The kind that comes from making decisions after decision. From building something that matters while wondering if you're getting it right. You know what I mean?
That's the entrepreneur's tax, and it’s due every week. Half of CEOs report feeling lonely in their roles and 61% say it affects their performance.¹ Did you know, entrepreneurs are 50% more likely to experience mental health challenges than the general population.² That’s serious.
Reid Hoffman put it this way: "I often say that starting a company is like throwing yourself off a cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down. That's terrifying enough. But even more terrifying is the fact that you've convinced an entire community of people you care about to throw themselves off the cliff with you."³
This isn't you being weak. It’s the cost of the path we chose as entrepreneurs.
The Dip Is Part of the Pattern
When you look at the S&P 500 over any 10-year period. It trends up. But zoom into any single year, any quarter, any month, and you'll see several drops. Sometimes really significant ones. Days that feel like a disaster. Weeks that will test your conviction.
The people who build wealth don't panic on the down days. They understand that dips are normal and expected. Part of the pattern, not a deviation from it.
Running a laundry business works the same way.
The week your best employee quits without notice. The month your utility costs spike. The quarter where you're pouring money into a new service and the numbers aren't there yet. The year you opened a location that's still not performing the way the proforma the distributor gave you said it would.
These aren't signs you're failing. They're the dip. And the dip is where most people quit, not because they couldn't make it, but because they couldn't tell how close they were.
Seth Godin calls this the long slog between starting and mastery.⁴ The grind looks the same whether you're three months from breakthrough or three years. The calendar doesn't mark which month your PUD service finally hits profitability.
The Pattern That Shows Up Everywhere
Joseph Campbell spent decades studying myths and stories from every culture across history, ancient Greece, indigenous tribes, Eastern religions, Western folklore. He wasn't looking for entertainment. He was looking for patterns.
What he found changed how we understand human experience. The same story showed up everywhere. A hero leaves what's familiar, faces trials that test everything they have, transforms through the struggle, and returns changed.⁵
He didn't invent that pattern. He just noticed that every culture already knew it. Thousands of years of human storytelling, across every continent, kept telling the same story because it reflects something true about how growth actually works.
The transformation doesn't happen despite the struggle. It happens because of the struggle.
The doubt you feel when you're adding WNF and wondering if it's worth it. The isolation of being the only one in your circle who understands what you're building. The weight of decisions that keep you up at night.
That's not the obstacle to your success. That's the process creating who you need to become to achieve your success.
The Isolation Builds Something
Here's what I've learned and observed about the loneliness.
It forces you to develop judgment you couldn't develop any other way. Even when you have data, opinions, advisors, you still have to compile it yourself, make the call, and have the courage to stick with it when things look bleak.
That muscle only builds under load. And the load is the isolation.
Pressure Is the Privilege
Billie Jean King said it: "Pressure is a privilege."
The only people who feel the pressure of high-stakes moments are the ones who earned the right to be in those moments.
You feel the weight of payroll because you built something that employs people. You feel the stress of equipment decisions because you own assets worth protecting. You feel the anxiety of expansion because you've grown enough that expansion is even an option.
The person working a job doesn't carry this weight. They also don't have what we're building.
Thinking about the thinking of laundry:
When you realize the isolation isn't punishment for choosing this path, it's the pressure that creates who you need to become.
Find The Others
Ben Horowitz wrote something that's stuck with me:
"The Struggle is when you wonder why you started the company in the first place. The Struggle is when people ask you why you don't quit and you don't know the answer. The Struggle is when food loses its taste."⁶
He didn't write that to make you feel bad. He wrote it so you'd know you're not the only one.
Timothy Leary put it differently:
"Admit it. You aren't like them. You're not even close. Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others."
We chose this entrepreneurial path. We're building something most people will never attempt in their life.
The isolation is real. The doubt is normal. The struggle is part of the process.
But somewhere out there, someone else is sitting in their car for ten minutes before walking into their store. Someone else just made a decision they're not sure about. Someone else is carrying weight that nobody in their daily life understands.
Find them.
That's all I got for you today.
Thank you for reading Wash Weekly in 2025. Here's to finding the others in 2026.
Waleed
PS: A private network for laundry entrepreneurs, get notified when applications open: joinpressed.com
Echoing the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius.
The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.
Footnotes:
¹ Harvard Business Review, "It's Lonely at the Top," 2012
² Michael Freeman et al., "Are Entrepreneurs Touched with Fire?" University of California San Francisco, 2015
³ Reid Hoffman, "Entrepreneurship and Loneliness," Greylock Partners
⁴ Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit, 2007
⁵ Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 1949
⁶ Ben Horowitz, "The Struggle," a16z
