By Becca Anderson

It would be impossible for me to convey all the information and experiences from the Laundry CEO Forum, held in Dallas, TX on October 5-7, 2025. There was so much knowledge shared among the participants and from the stage. If you are a laundromat owner and want to grow your business, get Laundry CEO Forum on your radar and make plans for next year. It will absolutely be worth the time and money you will invest.

NOTE: The day before the conference began, there was a plant tour in Dallas, and also a Free Laundry Day event, held in conjunction with CLA. Read our report on that here.

Four Canadians were in attendance at the conference, looking for input on their operations.

General impressions

This year’s theme was Think Bigger! The attendees (well over 100) arrived with some simple goals: to network and to learn. Unlike some conferences I’ve been to, there was never a moment without people talking together about their businesses. They were open, eager to learn, and enthusiastic about what they were hearing.

The conference included an area for supplier booths, and they were all quite busy. Everything from detergent companies to equipment like washers and dryers, and even robotic equipment from Presso was on display.

This conference was so well organized that it felt seamless from start to finish. Audio/visual was flawless and the audience had the most comfortable seating I’ve ever seen at an event. We started each day at 7 a.m. with breakfast and moved briskly into programming. Days were long but nobody complained.

There were two levels of programming for the attendees. One gave all the normal sessions—which were more than enough to spin the average person’s head—and the other (the C-Suite) offered additional special sessions and experiences. Regardless which track people signed up for, they got more than what they expected. How much? Let me put it this way: I came home with 28 typed pages of notes from sitting in on the sessions. And that’s just what I could get down in the time allotted.

Sessions

Brian Wallace from CLA (the coin laundry association recently rebranded as Connect/Learn/Advocate) explained why gatherings of self-serve laundry facilities are so friendly and welcoming to new people. “We all started not knowing anything, and then invested time in relationships. Now, we’re paying it forward,” he said in his talk titled “The Industry Download: Trends, Truths, and What to Watch.”

One trend he highlighted is the boom in Wash/Dry/Fold (WDF) and commercial accounts. “Years ago, we said laundry was going to be the next household chore to be outsourced. Now, it’s happening. Awareness and technology are making it possible.”

CLA is at the forefront of advocacy when it comes to government regulation, and Wallace cited the positive impact that educating legislators on the reality of what they are proposing in their new regulations can have. In California, for instance, they invited a legislator to a large self-serve laundry store and showing her where the proposed microfiber filters would have to go, and the unreality of expecting customers to clean them out. As as result, the regulation was changed for the benefit of all laundry operators there.

There was a definite encouragement for the attendees of the Forum to align themselves with CLA and join the organization. They were even given a $200 incentive to do so. A show of hands indicated that over half of those at the conference were already members.

AI was everywhere

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in improving how a business is run was a major theme at the Forum. And it wasn’t just talk. Speaker Marcus Sheridan, author of Endless Customers, emphasized that AI isn’t about doing things faster; it’s about letting a genius loose to do great work on your behalf.

Sheridan explained how AI is outside of and beyond Google searches and other methods used to rank websites and companies, and then spelled out what AI is looking for. He closed the loop by telling attendees how to give AI what it wants, often by using AI itself to create the parts of their website that are flagged by searches as indicators of “top” companies and drawing customers to them.

In a special session, Sheridan gave a breathtaking demonstration of the power of AI to help operators communicate their messages better and make interaction with customers easier. He worked through the process of using ChatGPT to generate ideas. “You have to talk about what others won’t talk about—that gets you read and moves you up in terms of getting noticed,” he said.

As an example, he gave the AI some definitions and then asked it to create headlines for 5 Facebook posts that fit the criteria he’d listed. Within a moment the list appeared, and it had interesting, provocative topics that any company could use to draw solid attention to its business.

Later in the session, he challenged it to create a tool for a company’s website that would give customers a way to choose what services they wanted, how often they needed them, and the pricing. Then it told the customers how many hours a week/month/year they would save by using the offered service. It generated all the HTML coding for the tool in about 15 seconds. “This would have cost you about $10,000 and 6-9 months to get done if you asked an agency to do it.”

Brian Riseland, President of Laundry Genius, used AI in a general session to demonstrate how fast and how well some of the tools could produce ads that could be used online to promote a business. He utilized 365 CoPilot for his demonstration, and there were nods around the room when the results of his queries were shown. The tools are powerful and readily available at nominal cost.

Pooling information

The Forum also featured a series of “fireside chats” that brought together panels of company owners to discuss real issues in the industry, and in their particular companies. Waleed Cope (co-founder of Laundry CEO Forum, and owner of The Soap Box and of VIP Bubble) posed a series of questions and panelists responded honestly and with deep insights. A question and answer period at the end of each “chat” enabled attendees to ask for more details in specific areas.

Canadian Jeff Moak, owner of Super Clean Laundromat in Ontario, was one of the panelists in a discussion titled, “The CEO Blueprint: Expansion, Efficiency and the Tools that Make It Happen.” Two other successful operators joined him in the discussion: Sharon Brinks (multi-store owner and operator, The Laundry Station) and Jon Schemmel (multi-Store owner and operator, SBL Ventures).

Questions ranged from how they got to where they are, to the ever-present online ads describing coin laundries as great “passive income” ventures, to finding funding for growth, to how they view their competition. Audience questions were on topics like how they structured their partnership agreements and specifics on applying for funding.

There were several of these panel discussions throughout the conference. One focused on the company owner and distributor relationship, and featured Justin Clark of EVI. Another included Kent Wales (owner of Happy Laundry and Dry Cleaning), Randy Roberts (owner of Columbus Express Laundry) and Joel Jorgensen (VP of Sales for Continental Laundry Solutions). It focused on “The Business of Commercial Laundry Sales and Strategies, with specific advice on when and how to get into handling commercial accounts—either in addition to self-serve laundromats or in place of them.

More sessions

Every session drilled down on important topics as they related to the coin store owner or commercial laundry owner’s needs. They included:

• Saichelle McNeill, CEO of The WashRoom Laundry Service, on “Five Customer Service Touchpoints to Win Big in the Laundry Industry.” She said, “Customer confidence is won or lost in the first 30 seconds.” Then she gave pointers on how to make sure every contact with customers builds that trust and does not erode it—even when dealing with complaints.

• Trish Lindo, owner and creator of Too Ambitious Consulting, on “How to Win on LinkedIn”. “Content is king,” she said. “Every piece of content you create should have a purpose.” She described the various missions your LinkedIn page has and different ways to fulfill them. As an interesting and helpful sidenote, the conference gave every attendee the opportunity to have a fresh LinkedIn profile photo taken by a professional photographer.

• Richard Vague, author and managing director of Gabriel Investments, gave an overview of the economy as it stands today, his perspective on where it’s going, and the impact on laundry businesses. One takeaway: The top 10% of people in the country own 60% of the assets. The bottom 50% [later broken out to be about $80K income and below] own just 6%. “Companies like yours that are trying to help the lower 50% save money are doing important work in our economy.”

• Schuyler Williamson, president and CEO of Laundry Luv, and an author, gave a moving presentation on “Steady Leadership: Leading through Chaos with Clarity.” Drawing from his combat experiences in Afghanistan, Williamson built the case for leaders needing to first lead themselves by focusing on their own physical, mental and spiritual well-being. “Leaders don’t have to have it all together,” he said. “You just have to be one step ahead, and pull your team up to where you are.” His talk drew a standing ovation from the crowd.

• Minsoo Pak, managing director (retired equity partner/principal) at EY, spoke on “The Future and Your Business.” His talk left the crowd awestruck by the reality of the technological changes we are on the brink of, and their implications for businesses. His talk ranged from robots to quantum computing to future mapping, in a way that made all easy to grasp and yet mind-blowing. In speaking of the next generation of computing he said, “We’re nearing the point where computers stop being things and are just all around you, feeding you the answers to questions without effort.”

That extra touch

There was nothing second-rate about this conference, from the venue (The Thompson in Dallas) to the fact that it encompassed the entire 4^th floor of the hotel. The food was superb and all meals were included.

A very special evening for the C-Suite attendees took them off-site to a WWII airplane museum. A docent explained the museum to us and then we entered the spotless plane hangar. A table 50+ seats long was decked out in dramatic linen, china and glassware and floral arrangements. A 4-course chef-prepared meal was served in the presence of historic planes that we could examine up close.

At the conclusion of the dinner, the docent and his assistant pressed buttons to roll open the massive hangar doors and everyone gasped as the museum’s prize display came into view: a B1 bomber rolled right up to the doors. It was dramatic, it was exciting, and a lovely evening for everyone in the C-Suite track that further encouraged them to Think Bigger.

Each C-Suite conference attendee was presented with a very special personalized gift (you had to be there to know what it was!)

Final thoughts

If you are serious about your business, you need to invest in getting to information you need to succeed today. That means seeking out conferences and other training that is specific to your branch of the industry—whether it be dry cleaning, wet cleaning, laundromats, industrial laundry, or commercial laundry. There are options out there for each branch, but you must make the effort to find them.

For the self-service laundromat and commercial laundry sector, the go-to has been CLA for 65 years. The Laundry CEO Forum is a new powerhouse in terms of quality conference with lasting impact. Waleed Cope spent several minutes calling out specific attendees who were back for their second year, and sharing the incredible progress they’d made in their businesses since 2024. They attributed that in part to attending this conference.

As one speaker said, “Did you buy your laundromat as a hobby, or as a company?” Get serious and get to conferences. We include a full list of those we get information on in our Conferences & Events section.

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SPECIAL NEWS:

Jeff Moak will be joining us as a columnist specifically on the topic of laundromats beginning in January, 2026! We know you’ll enjoy and be challenged by what he’ll have to say.

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