How This 23-Year-Old Profits by Renting Out 200 Used Washers and Dryers. Ep. #102

I post on Facebook Marketplace all the time to try to validate ideas. I posted a simple ad that said rent a washer and dryer month to month. I went on a cruise for seven days and I came back and there was a lot of interest. I went and bought $30,000 worth of washers and dryers.

I just want all the haters to listen up. What about insurance? What do you mean you're going to have a contract but just freaking buy it, Throw it on your porch and people will venmo you like. That's probably the reason that 90% of people would never start this.

Didn't know what I was doing, just figured out as I was going to.

And that's what business is. You're just solving problems. Big deal.

My name is Kyler Liston. I live in orem, Utah. I'm 23 and one year ago I started a washer and dryer rental business. I don't do anything full time, but that is one of the major sources of money in my life right now.

Okay, what was the triggering event that made you say huh, they're there could be something here.

I'm a big believer in taking opportunities and creating your own luck. So I'd say it kind of started. My grandparents own a lot of rentals, did a lot of maintenance. They slowly said we're not doing any washers and dryers. So I knew there was at least 30 apartments that didn't have washers and dryers. Then I also started delivering third party for some companies in Utah county, delivering appliances and kind of learned how to install them, how to change the plugs, the common issues with them, and how to fix some of them. And then, I mean, I'm a pretty observant whatever person. And I just started thinking that there's probably a lot of people, that there's a lot of apartments that don't offer washers and dryers. But the main thing was I, I mean I, I, I've done this a thousand times, but I just posted on Facebook Marketplace. I post on Facebook Marketplace all the time to try to validate ideas. I posted a simple ad that said rent a washer and dryer month to month. I went on a cruise for seven days and I came back and there was a lot of, a lot of interest.

Okay, I want to get hyper specific. Go back to your grandparents. What was the conversation? What happened? When did you first learn that this might be an opportunity?

I don't know if the exact moment. It's my very first business idea. When I got Home from a mission was I started renting nine squares. If you've seen the nine square in the air games that are like the PVC pipes, I was like, if I buy a. If I buy a legit one which costs 800, could I rent this out? So I posted it for a week, got a lot of hits, and I bought it. And everyone's like, you're never going to make your money back. Which. Which I made my money back times. Times a lot.

There's a business there.

There's a.

First of all, I think most people outside of the church don't even know that exists. I've only seen it in the context of church.

So big in Utah County.

Okay, so it's a PVC contraption that's 9. It's 3x3 9 squares, and people stand in it and they're like hitting a ball over the PVC pipes, right?

Yep. And. And there were people renting them out, but they were all homemade PVC ones. And there's one company who makes legit, like, fittings that lock in and they don't unconnect. And it is pricey. But I bought that one, which made me stand apart from everyone else. And then, yeah, that was my first thing. And then I always just liked. I was just always thinking, like, what else could I rent out? So I got some paddle boards from Al Sporting Goods, rented out lots of paddle boards. And then I was always looking at websites of like, what could I rent out? Because you have to be. You have to be different from everyone. And at some point, whether I saw it somewhere, which I don't think I did, but at some point I was like, oh, I wonder if I could.

Rent a washer and dryer back to the nine square. How much did you rent them for?

I. I started renting them, like, between 30. It was like $30 on a weekday and $50 for a weekend around. Around there.

Okay. And you got your money back?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know how. I mean, it would make several hundred dollars a month. It got to the point where it, like, paid itself completely times. A couple times. And then I was just like, I don't really need to do this. So I kind of have stopped. I mean, I rented it a couple times this summer, but, like, I literally, I would leave it on my porch. They'd come get it, they'd Venmo me. And I never did, like, I never did anything. No contracts, no. They never signed anything. And it never got beautiful or stolen or anything. Beauty of living in Beautiful Utah.

Oh, I just want all the haters to listen up. Not that there are any haters listening to this, but, like, what about insurance? What do you mean? You gotta have a contract, but just freaking buy it, throw it on your porch, and people will venmo you. Like, you've had one set of washer and dryer stolen in a year. That's probably the reason that 90% of people would never start this. And it's. It's a nothing burger.

Oh, exactly. Yeah. There's a lot of pessimistic people that are like, well, what? I mean, so. Exactly. One Thanksgiving ago, like, we have our big family Thanksgiving, and at that point, I had put out one set. And I, like, my family knows me as, like, the entrepreneur kid or whatever. And I was like, telling everyone, like, I think this is going to be awesome, and my parents do support me, but there was a lot of people that were like, that sounds like a ball and chain. Like, good luck, like, you're never gonna be able to leave again. What if this happens? What if this happens? Or whatever. Anytime I bring any idea to anyone, it's a bunch of hate. I feel like it's like, well, what if this happens? Worst case scenario? And I'm just like, okay, well, every business sucks. So, like, just figure it out.

Yeah, Every time I tweet about a business idea, I hear the same things and it's like, yeah, that's an obstacle to overcome. That's a problem to solve. That's. And that's what business is. You're just solving problems. Big deal.

Okay, sure. Yeah.

Like, that's such a critical framework when starting a business. Like, I really feel like you. You do yourself more harm than good when you solicit opinions from anyone because everyone's biased. You tell your friend or your buddy and he's jealous, he's going to tell you it's dumb because he's jealous and he doesn't want it to succeed and. Or he wants to copy you. If you tell it to your mom, she's going to tell you it's amazing because she loves you and you can do no wrong. Like, how do you actually get real feedback? There's only one way. You post to Facebook Marketplace. Exactly what does the market tell you? What does the free capitalistic market tell you? That, like, the first step is almost always try to get a customer. Go to Facebook Marketplace. Go validate it, put up a landing page, wait for your first dollar, and then everything else can follow.

Yes, I agree 100%. I like to do things and then, and then tell people about them. And like, you don't have to tell me about what could be wrong because I already am doing it and it's not happening.

Yep. That's why, like, of all these businesses I've built, I never, ever, ever talked about it on my Facebook page. Like, 10 years ago, I would post a Facebook about normal family stuff. I would never talk about businesses. And outwardly, my excuse was, well, I don't want to have to start a business that's reliant on. On my friends and family. I want it to stand on its own. But the real reason, honestly the real reason is I was insecure about what people would think or say, and I was insecure that the idea would fail and then I'd have to come crawling back to my Facebook friends as if I have. As if I owe them anything. It's like, hey, that thing I posted about, it failed. Like, first of all, no one ever, no one would ever remember that you started it in the first place. No one cares. No one's thinking about you. You just do your own thing, whether you post about it or not, for sure.

And I guess my biggest thing is I've heard you say once that, like, people think you're a big risk taker, but it's like a very calculated risk. And I think it was the same way. For me. I was doing the math and saying, worst case scenario, I'll make my money back. And I don't actually see any risk. I did summer sales. I took my money and I went and bought $30,000 worth of washers and dryers. I gave it to some guy and I was like, order me a bunch of sets. And I was like, I. I didn't even have 30 customers or whatever. I was just like, I. Based off the one week of demand I've seen, there will be enough to get those all rented out. And these were brand new sets.

Who's a guy? What guy do you give 30 grand to? Who was this guy? You find him on Craigslist?

There's like three or four wholesale places in Utah. And I mean, I would always just say, hey, like, I'm a property manager. Like, I'm looking for like 50 sets. What's the discount? And I found a guy that had a, had a, A good price. And I, I mean, eventually, he, he knows I'm not a property manager. When I walk in, I'm 20 years old.

Yeah.

And so I. So I bought those. And what I'm trying to say, though, is that in my Mind. It wasn't a risk in my mind. It's always. I was gonna break even, at least.

Yeah. It's like the guys that take the huge risks, right? Like, Elon Musk sells Tesla. He gets 140 million bucks. He pushes it. He sells PayPal, gets 140 million, pushes all into Tesla. That's a massive risk. That makes the headlines. We all know about him. But the average Joes like you and I, everyone listening that are starting businesses, most of us are much more calculated than people like to think. We're just better at doing research. And when I say doing research or posting stuff to Facebook.

Yeah, exactly. And I. There was always the fear of, like, what if someone steals it? But then it's just. I just don't think you should live your life thinking that because, like, you could say that about a lot of businesses. Why don't people just go around, like, stealing and killing people? Because people have morals and most people have morals.

Yeah. So you bought 30 sets for $30,000?

It was a little bit more than.

30 sets, I would think so. Do you remember how many it was?

So the very first one, like, I got home from the cruise, and I had, like, people that wanted them installed. I bought those ones from R.C. willie, which is like a box store in Utah for everyone. Pretty. It's very pricey. I knew that was not the route I wanted to go, but I had to. I wanted to, like, get those. I think I did.

Yeah. You're validating the idea.

Yeah. I wanted to do three from R.C. willie. I did three from R.C. willie, and then I was trying to figure out how to get them cheaper.

How much were they?

The ones from rcb, they were like, I want to say like eleven hundred dollars.

Geez. Were they used or new?

They were brand new. And they come. Come with a warranty.

Were these like, high efficiency or like your ugly white ones?

No, these are like the. I mean, they're pretty nice. I have a glass top. They're LG machines. I mean, they're the. They're basic, but yeah, they're. They look. They look really nice real quick.

Is that like a freeze dryer over your shoulder? Yeah, I'm like, this is the most LDS household I've ever seen in my life.

Yeah, I. All of my family lives on one, pretty much one street. And I. I'm. I'm at my grand grandparents and they're big. My grandma's a big freeze dryer.

I wish I had one of those. That looks awesome. It looks like a washer.

Oh, yeah. Every day she's, she's freeze drying fruit and food. I believe the, the new ones were around $800. So the way I did my math was okay. So my, in my head, my ideal client was someone moves into an apartment, they sign a one year lease, they don't have a washer and dryer. And I wanted to make my price for renting for a year a little bit cheaper, but the same cost as like buying, buying one. I want it to be a little bit cheaper so they could in their head be like, I'm, I am saving money. So that's how I came up with like the 60 to $85. Cause at the end of the 12 months they had paid off off the machine. After I did installed the 30 brand new ones, I was like, why don't I do used ones? And the used ones, they are probably a lot better business model in my opinion.

It doesn't seem like people demand them any less. Like they're still in high demand.

No. Yeah, I think it's. So all I did was like, I changed what I was doing the new ones for up like 25. And then I just did the used ones for the same price and it was the same. Same.

Okay.

They just want to, they, they just want a washer and dryer that, that works and cleans their clothes.

Yeah. Period. Okay, let me back up real quick. You, you got 30 grand from summer sales. What percentage of like your savings was that?

At the time I think I had like maybe 60 grand. So it was like half, half of the savings just all just, just giving up.

Yeah. Half of your life savings on some used washers and dryers based on data points from one Facebook marketplace post. And I'm not making fun of you, I would do the same thing. And it worked. So hindsight is 20 20.

Well, the other thing is like the whole time it's like if this fails, all I did is I lost a summer knocking doors. Like worst case scenario, worst case, I.

Lose three months of my entire life in the hot sun selling things. That's kind of bad. But now, I mean, worst case is you just, you sell those sets individually on Facebook Marketplace and you probably make a profit. Yeah, you just sell them.

There's a lot of different ways I looked at it.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right, so you started with the more expensive ones and you learned there's no point in this. People just want reliable ones that work even if they're ugly. 60 bucks a pop. What did it look like to go from those first 30ish units to the next batch. What did scaling look like? Like what different kind of tiers did you hit in your business along the way?

I completely like bootstrapped it or whatever. Like my first one, I heard and made a Google Doc, made a contract and it was like pay me through Venmo, PayPal, PayPal or Zelle or whatever. And then they would circle which one they'd pay me and I would text them like, hey, today's your time to pay or whatever. And they would pay me and I was like, if I want to scale this, I need a. Not text a whole bunch of people. So then I got stripe. So it's all through subscriptions. It's collects their credit card. I tried to start collecting two credit cards so if one fails, I can just charge the other card.

Well, it's funny because that's usually, that's not something that most business owners have to even think about. If this card fails, then we need a backup. But in this demographic, that's fairly common, I imagine.

Yeah.

More common than average.

Yeah, probably. Yeah. And I mean the whole entire time I lean, I was kind of scared of like, it was kind of a very hard balance of like this is an experiment and do I keep scaling it and going bigger or do I find out if this works? And so I think the first like four or five months I was still like, really? Like, how much bigger do I want to go before I find out? Like if this is going to work? Like how long are these machines going to last and how much of a headache is it? And going into it, the whole entire time I was like, if I can make ten grand a month, I don't care how much of a headache it is. In my 23, 23 year old mind, it was like, if I could make 10 grand a month, I don't care if I'm working all day on this. And it has, I, I don't thankfully have to work all day.

How much are you working on this business, would you say?

Not very much. Maybe five on a busy week, maybe 10 hours a week. Two out of the six days. I mean I do work on Saturday sometimes, so maybe two out of the six days I will go install one or go pick one up or go clean one, or go knock on someone's door or something.

If you really wanted to, to scale it, you could spend all, you know, full time on it.

So what's interesting, I mean, I don't think it's any secret. The guy I was talking to you about, he, so he has seven over 700 sets. He has no employees. Crazy zero employees. And according to him, it is not that big of a.

A pain time.

So I would go to some. I. I started going to property management places and saying, like, hey, will you pass these out? Or, like, can you put these in the welcoming envelopes to your new tenants or whatever? And one or two of them were like, oh, we already used this guy. That's how I found about this guy. Because, I mean, he doesn't have a huge presence online. So I. I mean, I called him and just asked about his business. And that was another validation of like, okay, this guy's been doing it for 10 years. He has 700 sets. After I heard about that, I was like, okay, this is kind of. I think this is gonna. I think this can work. A lot of my fear went away after I learned about a guy who was doing it and he was making money. I did not know about this guy at all before I started it, though. And then it turns out he was.

Tell me about the, the time that you spent. What was it? Delivering units for the. The warehouses.

Yeah.

I want to hear how people could emulate that in their local market.

Yeah. So there's. You have your big box stores like Lowe's and Home Depot. And then I would say in most cities, there's probably a scratch and dent place. At least in Orem, where I live, there's probably three or four pretty big ones within 15 or 20 minutes. They buy scratch and dent from, like, Costco and all of these big places, but they don't want anything. They don't actually really know anything. A lot of them don't have a ton of knowledge about washers and dryers. They're just buying, buying them, and they do not want to have anything to do with the install. So what I did is I just went to those places, asked if I could put my phone number there. Then when someone goes and buys a fridge, they buy a washer and dryer. They don't have a truck or anything, but they would like to have a cheaper option than going to Lowe's or whatever. So they go to the Scratch and Dent. Then they would call me and I would deliver them. And it was honestly a very. In my mind, it was a very good side hustle. Once again, didn't have insurance or anything. Didn't know what I was doing. Just figured out as.

As I was going, no trailer, just a pickup truck.

I kind of lied to you when I told you I have a truck. I mean, my grandpa has three Trucks. So I use his trucks a lot. I did all of the installs in a toyot Highlander that I put a hitch on.

So not even a truck, just a Highlander with a trailer.

Yep. No truck.

Geez. And so you literally just went to a. A washer dryer store and said, let me do all your deliveries. And like, okay.

They are actually pretty open because they want to give their customers as many options as possible. So at one of them, I was like the first one to kind of do it. They don't want you to be the. Their sole guy, really. They want their customers to have as many options. So they, they were all welcoming of like, yeah, you can put our phone number here. And then as if you, if you actually pick up your phone and you put your prices there, you'll get most of the work. Because a lot of people won't pick up their phone and don't actually want to do it. I mean, they're appliance repair places that are doing repairs all day and they don't actually want to deliver them.

I mean, here's what I'm thinking. Plano, Texas, 250,000 people go to outscraper, run it for furniture, appliance, anything that could have big items. Run a scrape, get all their phone numbers, call them up as if you're a consumer, say, hey, do you look for a couch, deliver couches? No, you gotta arrange that yourself. Okay. And then just check a box on the spreadsheet for everyone that does not deliver. And then you drive there to. Only those ones show up in person with a flyer. Hey, I do. This is all I do. You can have a dozen stores referring business to you all day, every day.

Oh, yeah. And I guess my biggest thing is I think there's a lot of levels of entrepreneurship and like, there's probably a lot of people that are doing way cooler, way more glamorous things than me, maybe even at my age at 23. But there's also a lot of people that are getting that I know that are my friends that are getting paid like $14 an hour and hate their life. The appliance delivery, I was charging between 100 and $200 and install and doing. I mean, there was a lot of days where I'd make four or five hundred dollars and I was working for myself. And it was like, in my opinion, a lot better than a lot of other people's reality. Some people maybe don't think that's glamorous or whatever, but, like, in my mind, it was like, I would rather go do one delivery for $200 and it takes me two hours than go work for someone for $20 an hour all day. So. And if there's, I think that it's a good hustle for someone who is like, gets paid minimum wage and they hate their life and they want to do something and they have a dolly, then they can do this business and make, I think you could make several hundred dollars a day during the summer. We did a lot of fridges and I just did my little brother who's 15 now, and we just go deliver fridges. And every, every fridge that was a French store was like over $200 and they're already paying like $1,200 for the fridge. So it's nothing. I'd give my brother like 50 bucks. He was making for $75. He was making over $25 an hour as a 15 year old. He, he loved it. Take him to Chick Fil A. Every. Every time is good.

All right, if you are watching this clip right now, you are watching this on YouTube and if you are a fan of podcasts, please check out my podcast while you're at it. Because sometimes I have podcasts that aren't on YouTube and sometimes I have YouTubes that aren't on podcasts. So check out the Kerner office on any podcast platform. Or you can go to tkopod.com on also my newsletter. We'll throw that in there. There are no ads, it's weekly. It's different content than my podcast and YouTube newsletter.chrisjkerner.com you'll see the link and we'll see you there. I don't even think this is like a good option for someone working a crappy job or minimum wage. Like, anything can scale. Like, I will go to my grave saying that anything can scale. Some things are harder to scale. But like, the more we move towards AI, the more people, enterprising entrepreneurs like us are going to be moving away from the sweaty startup that are outside. That means that we're going to be able to charge more. We're going to have fewer competitors. It's just going to get better. The pie is getting bigger for everyone as technology advances for sure.

Yeah, that was the appliance delivery and that was a. That definitely helped me before I did. I mean, my appliance rental business, I had already installed at least a hundred washers and dryers.

Okay. And so with the appliance delivery business, you're charging to both deliver it and.

Install it almost always. Yes. That was my like, upsells. Like a lot of some people did, like, garage drop off, but I'm like, if it's an old lady, you drop it off at their garage. You almost did them nothing. They still have no way to get in their house. So I, I would, I would put them in their house.

With the rental business, has there ever been a time when you felt unsafe in these areas?

Personally? Me? No.

I mean, where was your mission again?

I was in Argentina and then Covid hit, and then I was in California. That stuff doesn't scare me at all. I took my older brother to some of them and he was, he was sketched out, but I'm like, this is, this is West Valley. I did one install like two weeks ago in Rose park, which I had always heard, like, rose park is so dangerous. And it was like the nicest couple ever. And they're like, we want to run this for the rest of our lives. And I was like, sounds good.

So do most people end up having them for longer than six or 12 months?

I mean, I've only done it for a year, so I can't exactly say that, but kind of back to like, being observant. Like, I think most people have the mentality of I'm gonna only rent here for one year, but I think a lot of people end up staying there for five years. I don't know what the percentage is, but out of the 30 apartments my grandparents had, there's probably 15 that have been there for 15 years. And yeah, there's some overturn for the other ones, but there's a lot of them that just. They think they're going to rent there for a year and then they raise their whole family and die in the apartment. And I think there are some people that from day one say, I will be renting this until I die. And I'm like, okay, cool with me. Sounds good to me.

Most people listening to this, or many people listening to this, they're thinking, oh, man, that's sad. What a waste of money. Because the alternative to that is they could own their own unit and they would just pay for it once. But really the alternative for them is the, the laundromat, which is expensive and onerous and you're carrying laundry all over the place, and it's time consuming, and most of the time, depending on how much laundry you have, it's more expensive than $60 a month.

So, yeah, I mean, that was the biggest response from your. From the Twitter was just like, these people are idiots for. For renting. And honestly, I think there's like five or six reasons why the business works or, like, reasons why people do it. A. I. It is cheaper than the laundromat. I mean, multiple people have said, I spent over a hundred dollars a month. And. And people on the Twitter was like, well, that's if you have four kids. I'm like, yeah, I'm in Utah. Everyone has four. Like, all of these people have four kids. It is cheaper than the laundromat. Even this week, I've had two people call and say, I just bought a washer and dryer off Facebook Marketplace. It was $400. It broke the next month, and the guy blocked me. They're like, oh, geez, can you. I mean, a lot of people do that. They'll. They'll sell a washer and dryer, and they don't want to be responsible for whatever happens to it. So those people are out $400 and they don't have a washer and dryer. And I am just catering to the people who don't have any trucks. They don't have any way to deliver. And they just would. They would rather have a working washer and dryer and pay a monthly fee and know that it's always going to work and if it breaks down that the maintenance is. Is free. In an ideal world, like, they should all be able to get. Be able to have really good credit and be able to do a financing option and buy their own and maybe have a similar thing. But, like, that's not reality. Not everyone has.

Yeah.

Good credit, and they. They can't do that. And I mean, what's funny to me after, because I thought about it a lot is, like, every business, you're buying something for more than what it's worth. So, like, I sold pest control. Why does anyone do pest control? The chemicals cost $5. Chemicals we used. Yeah. The average treatment with the truck and the employee and everything was $32. And you would charge that person 150 or $180. That's every business. The chemicals for a pool cleaning cost $5 too, I bet. And I guarantee you pay a hundred dollars. So, like, yeah, I'm. I own a business. You're gonna pay me. Honestly, it's for the convenience. Yeah, it's for the convenience of having washing dryer free install and people that. Yes, Ali, there are people that. That live month to month, but their other option is just spending more money at the laundromat. So anyways, that's my soapbox on, like, why it works.

Well, the Fact of the matter is, financial education is terrible in America. And so because of that, we have a large percentage of Americans that make poor financial choices. Honestly, by no fault of their own, they grew up with parents that did the same thing. They didn't learn any better in school, and that's the hand that we're dealt. Right? And so you can do one of two things. You can say, I'm not going to be in affordable housing. I'm not going to touch that. I don't want to be a slum lord. Like, you could say that the reason is for ethical reasons or just for headache reasons. Or you could say, the less good guys there are in this business, the higher percentage of bad guys there are in this business making bad decisions that are in their best interest. The higher percentage of people that are taking advantage of people that live in poverty. Right?

Yeah.

And so we can either just throw our hands up and say, I, oh, it's a shame. No one knows any financial education. No one even knows what a credit score is. They make dumb purchases. People are so dumb. People are so dumb. Why do they do that? Well, they don't want to do that, Right? Like, they're born into that situation. They're kept in that situation. And we can either turn our heads or we can donate to charities, or we can start a business in that space and commit to being a good guy. Right? Maybe an RV park. Maybe it's your business. And we can not be a piece of crap and take good care of people and treat them like we would treat any other customer in any other industry.

I was going to pull up a picture on my phone because I think a lot of people think I'm renting to like the hood, which I don't even know what the hood in Utah looks like, but I would say almost 50% of them are one to two year old brand new townhomes. And either vineyard, Eagle Mountain, Saratoga Springs, like, these are brand new people. These are, are brand new homes. I bet that people are paying over $2,000 a month in rent they don't want to deal with.

They don't want to think about it.

Dryer. And I mean, even on Facebook, Marketplace, like, it was a little bit discouraging. Like, I'd say for a while, once a week, I would get someone cussing me out saying, you're an, you're an idiot, you're a retard. Who's going to do this? And I was like, all right, well, like, I'm already doing it and people are, are doing It, My other thing was I only needed 1% of Utah county to, To do it, for it to work. And yeah, I mean, there's. Yeah, I only needed less than 1% really, for it to make sense to me.

It's funny because Nick, my business partner, he. He always buys new vehicles, brand new, off the lot, and I've never done that. Well, I did with my Tesla, but other than that, I, I would never do that. It's the worst decision ever, right? You want to buy a car that's like one to four years old, still under warranty, but it's already depreciated. And I've been telling him this, and his excuse is, his reason is really good. He's like, I grew up poor. My dad was always tinkering with cars. Our car was always breaking down. It was unreliable, broken down on the side of the road, stressful walking home. And I don't want to ever deal with that. I don't want to ever think about that. So, yeah, I'm paying a premium to buy a brand new car off the lot. It's a poor financial decision. I know it is, but I don't want to have to deal with it. I don't want to think about it. So there's literally no difference between that decision and the decision that your customers are making.

This is going to sound, maybe controversial of what I said before, but, like, it is surprising how, how do I word this without being offensive? People? Okay, this is just an example. So dryers, they have two different types of cords. There's a three prong cord and a four prong cord. I think anything, any house built after 1996 has to have the new, the new cord. Anything before that has the old cord. If someone bought. It's a very easy. What I'm trying to say is if someone bought the wrong cord, I would say like maybe 60 of the population would have no idea how to unscrew the cord and put the, the new one on. Like, that's the kind of people I'm dealing with. They have no idea how to like, grab a channel lock and put the hose on. They don't know how to clamp anything. Like, they don't own a drill. They don't own anything. So those are the people that are just like, yeah, I, I'm not a handy man. I'm not going to install my washer and dryer. To me, it's common sense.

Yeah, I get it. And I'm on that spectrum somewhat because I don't, I'm not Super handy. But at the end of the day, I learned, like, it's a lot more convenient to be handy. Like, I have a couple bikes, you know, a mountain bike and a road bike, and they break down and I. I'm driving them back and forth to the bike shop. And then I just learned how to do it. And it just for convenience sake, you know?

Oh, yeah.

I want to ask some nuts and bolts about the business, but before I do, how would you address the common haters in the comments that say, like, why this wouldn't work? We had talked about before the call, like, what are the top four top five reasons that people think this is dumb? And what are your rebuttals to those?

We kind of went over the first one. The first rebuttal is just like, no one's going to do this. And I mean, the rebuttal is they. They are. It's the simple reasons that. Yeah, I already explained that part. Second rebuttal is probably like, okay, well, what if something happens for some reason, there's a misconception, Misconception that insurance costs, like, tens of thousands of dollars, which it doesn't. Someone on your Twitter said, like, this guy's for sure not legal. He's not insured.

Yep.

I wasn't insured for two months. I got three quotes. I have a $2 million policy. One million is like, if someone steps on a screw and wants to sue me. And the other million dollars is if I flood a whole apartment complex and I'm responsible for it. The whole policy for the whole year is like $600.

Yep.

So that's my rebuttal to, like, well, what if you flood something? Okay, well, I have insurance. And also, you own apartments. If someone like this happened to my dad's apartment last week, like, they didn't. They installed the washer dryer themselves. They didn't hook up the hose or tighten it. It flooded the apartment. And what I'm trying to say is, like, I. I will take responsibility because I installed it. But, like, also, the tenant is responsible for if. If something got flooded in your rental. You wouldn't. It would most likely you would look back at the. At the renter and they wouldn't even be responsible. You would just do it. Okay, so that's. The second one is they think that I'm going to burn a house down or whatever. You just buy insurance. That's my simple rebuttal. It's not that. Not that expensive.

Yeah.

Third one is, someone's going to steal it. We kind of went over it like, yeah, someone could steal it. There's a ways around it. You could put air tags in them, you could put tracking devices in them, you could do more creative things. Or you could just say they're not going to steal it. And if they do, it's the same exact model. What I'm doing is the same exact model as single family homes on a different, on a really small scale. If you have 100 of them, that's great. 95 of them are going to be awesome. 5 of them are going to trash your apartment and you're going to lose a lot of money. But as long as you have enough, if someone steals them, then you have enough that it doesn't matter. You just add it into your business math that 1's going to get stolen or 2 is going to get stolen. I don't know. Fourth rebuttal, let's see, what else do people say? I mean a lot of people were saying like, oh, they worry about like the deliveries. I sent you that video of the cart. That was the best 800 I ever spent on Amazon. So for the first six months, me and my brother would install them after school, after he was done with school and anything over. The second story I couldn't do by myself. And so I'd always ask him like, are there stairs in your house? If so, I have to do it at five o'. Clock. There's a something called a stair climber dolly and it just has rotating things. It can lift 800 pounds. You just push a button, it lifts them all up. And I use it for every single install. I've done every install by myself since then for the last six months.

Beautiful.

Those are the main rebuttals. I can't think of any others right now. I mean there's a lot of like, I guess some of the pains are you are dealing with some maybe lower class people. Their credit cards do get declined. Some people do change their phone numbers and don't let me know. There's a lot of ways you could get around that. But everyone I've dealt with, you just text them and say, hey, your credit card was declining. Like do you want to add another card or can you stop or are you like done renting or what's the deal? And everyone has responded and has been easy to, easy to work with. And then another thing I'm going to mention is that I am not the slum. I've never charged a late fee on anyone. They're supposed to pay. At first it was like $10 if they had a late fee. All I care about is if they communicate with me, I'll never charge a late fee. Some people are a month behind. Like, I would rather them pay. It's easier for them for me to just wait and pay than it is for me to go get their washer and dryer. So as long as they are committed to keep paying, I will never charge a late fee. They're also supposed to rent it for six months. If they rent it for two months and say they're done, they're supposed to pay $50. I've never charged anyone that.

Like, I've never charged a late fee in the mobile home park business either. Like, and I don't tell them that upfront. We put late fees in the contract. If they ghost me, I'm like, all or nothing, right? If they ghost me, they won't answer the phone. They're late. They're not, they're not making any communication. Then I have to evict them. I have to.

Exactly.

I'm not in the late fee business. That's not how we make money. We just, we charge rent.

That's. That's the same, same model. As long as they communicate. When they start ghosting me, then I'm like, I'm going to come knock your door. But as long as you text me, then I don't care when. When you pay. As long as you. You pay.

Yeah. Because ghosting almost always means they're not going to pay, right?

Yeah.

Lightning round. What, what are the tools you need.

To run this business as far as like hardware? I mean, you need probably like a hundred, maybe not even 100. Maybe like $75 worth of tools for blows. Probably not even 75. Maybe like 50. 50. You need some basic tools, screwdrivers, channel lock, some type of moving cart way to transport them, whether that's a truck or a trailer. Most cars can actually pull a trailer. They have a capacity of at least a thousand pounds, which. That's all the washer and dryer weighs. They only weigh a couple hundred. So you can put a hitch on most cars for $400 and buy a trailer for probably a thousand. As far as other things, I mean, you need some type of contract. You need some type of payment processor. I would say some place to store at least two to three sets. The storage facility is typically just the apartments you're renting in, but there is sometimes some overturn of between four and five machines that they're done renting. And you don't have someone rented out. So you need Some space. And that's really it. I mean, it's a pretty, pretty basic business.

Is there anything you would have done differently if you could start this over from scratch again?

I would not have bought as many new ones, probably. Well, okay, yeah, I bought a lot of. I bought a lot of new ones. And I think there's pros and cons. The new ones are going to last a lot longer without needing maintenance. I used a lot of money when I could have probably scaled. I probably could have scaled to the point I'm at with, like, half the money.

How often do you have to fix these things? Or how often can you just walk someone through it over the phone?

The used ones do have more maintenance because you're buying. So there's like, a lot of weird stuff about washers and dryers. They're actually made to break now, I guess, like, they are not very, very good. But the square ones that Whirlpool made, they owned all of them. They owned, like, Maytag and everyone. And they made the same washer and dryer. They're all interchangeable parts. Those ones are really easy to work on. And what's really nice is there's two websites. There's one called Repair Clinic and1 called appliancerepair.com. i think you type in the serial. The model number. It has every single model number that's ever been created, and it has like 30 videos for each one of, like, wow. Okay, if it's. If the. If it's not heating, here's one of the nine problems it can be. And then it has a part number. You copy and paste that part number into Amazon, and it's like a third of the price as the website. And you can fix. You can fix everything. I. I probably get maybe. Maybe it would average out to one call a week, but I don't think it would even be that much.

Wow. Out of 100 units, there's not that.

Much that can go wrong. Like a dryer, if you actually take it apart, it's literally just a motor that spins the barrel with a belt. So as long as your motor is working and the motor turns on the heating element. So there's only, like, two things that. And the heating element's like $12 on Amazon.

Geez.

So they're pretty beautiful business. There's not a lot of maintenance. And back to the ball and chain thing. I, like, I lived a completely normal life this year. Like, I went to Columbia in April. I went to California for a week. I went and picked pine nuts for Three months. All while this business was. Was doing this. And if anyone wants to scale it, like, all you have to do is find on Facebook, find someone who sells a lots of washers and dryers. They're most likely know how to fix them as well. And just contact them and say, hey, like, build a relationship with them and say, hey, like I. Are you someone I can call to come go fix these when I'm not there? So I have a really good relationship with someone in Utah that. When I'm not there, though. And they. They'll fix machines, replace machines, and do everything. And they charge me maybe 75 to $100 per thing, but I wouldn't do anything for less than $100, so.

Yeah.

Yeah. So they. They shouldn't either.

Okay. Kyler, this is great. I think people are excited about this. I just got an email an hour ago from a guy that was wanting to know when it would be released. Where can people find you?

I'm gonna make a landing page, but at the moment, I have a really, really ghetto website that is okay. It's called Utah Appliance Rental. And my. I mean, my cell phone number is the cell phone number that's on the business. And also there's a form that you can fill out. It'll think you're renting a washer and dryer, but there's also an ad comment, so you can add whatever, whatever you want there.

Utah Appliance Rental dot com. Beautiful website, beautiful business.

Half of it doesn't work, but the other. The other half does it. It's good enough where people can fill out a form, and they actually do fill out the form. And I got in quite a few leads from it.

Okay. All right. Well, thanks, man.

Awesome. Thank you, Chris.

All right, what'd you think? Please share it with a friend and we'll see you next time on the Kerner office.