95 - Elevating Life Quality Through Time Freedom and Home-Based Opportunities with Poplin's Mort Fertel

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional, and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show, and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Ward Fertel, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are the CEO, and, and I think, were you the founder? No, I know you're the CEO of poplin.co, which we're going to talk about. Co-founder, co-founder, right? Co-founder and CEO of Poplin, which can be found at poplin.co. Thanks for joining me.

Welcome. Thanks for having me.

So you've got a really fascinating backstory. I interviewed you on Authority Magazine, and, you know, that was pretty, pretty interesting interview. For those who are listening and want to check it out, go to just Google Mort Fertel Authority Magazine and you'll see the interview come up. Tell us, for those who haven't read the interview, tell us a little bit about yourself, your backstory.

Well, I, I grew up outside of Philadelphia. I was into sports as a kid, which I think is a great teacher of discipline and grit. Um, my parents divorced when I was a young boy. I don't remember living with my father, but I had a nice relationship with him growing up. And my mom remarried a wonderful, wonderful man who raised me like his own. And I went to the Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia and started my first business when I was at school at 18 years old. I sold that business a couple of years later, my senior year at college. And went to work on Wall Street for a few years, which was exciting, but I actually hated it because it was, it was all about money, which I don't mind making money, but I need for my work to be, to have more meaning and to be about something beyond money. Money, I find, is kind of the byproduct of adding value in really good ways. I had a direct mail advertising company for a number of years and exited that company. That was my second exit. Then I took about a long time, took about 5, 7 years off, and I was just studying and reading and thinking and exploring for the meaning of life. I ended up writing a book called Marriage Fitness, which I developed into a self-help online program, uh, which I've been doing for about 20 years now. And, and then about 5 years ago my wife made a comment that changed everybody's life. She was in the laundry room with our 5 kids buried in laundry. She's like, this is crazy. I can tap an app and get to the airport, FaceTime someone on the other side of the world, but I'm still doing laundry like my grandmother. And of course, as always, she was right. Technology's transformed every aspect of our life, making it so fast and easy, except for this chore that we hate the most and takes the longest. Wonderful. It's actually shocking if you think about it that we're in the midst of this technological revolution. There's been no innovation in this space since the washer and dryer almost a century ago. And as a result, in America, we're spending 13 billion hours and $75 billion a year doing something that literally no one wants to spend any time and money doing. There just hasn't been a good alternative. There's always been 3 things certain in life: death, taxes, and laundry. So Poplin, me and my family, we solved laundry. It's beautiful. You just tap the app, take your laundry, put it outside, outside your front door, you're done. You go on, you enjoy your life, you do what you really want to do, which of course is not laundry. And one of our laundry pros throughout the nation, we have over 100,000 of them, they come, one comes, They pick up your laundry, wash it, dry it, fold it, return it to you the next day.

Happy.

All you have to do is get dressed. We call it life without laundry. It's like magic. I love that.

I checked out, I went to the website and I put in my zip code. I'm in rural California and I put in our zip code and sure enough, you said, your company said, oh yeah, we got people around you. I mean, I was impressed because this is pretty remote where we are.

Wow, that's actually surprising to me a little bit because we are nationwide. We're pretty much everywhere, but we're not in really rural areas. So, uh, at least by our definition, unless—

unless I live about 30, 35 miles northeast of Fresno, Clovis, California. Now maybe there are people down there that would drive all the way up here to pick up Lonnie, but I don't think so.

That wouldn't be— I guess we're— we deemed your area to be densely populated enough that it works.

You got some people in there. I was pretty impressed.

That's great.

Okay, the other thing that I, I was struck was how you are opening up opportunities for, I would say, primarily women, but I'm sure there are probably men involved who wouldn't otherwise have an extra income source.

Yes, that's exactly right. Yeah, so we're, we're a two-sided marketplace, um, and obviously on one side of the, on one side of the marketplace are the customers that outsource their laundry, and on the other side are the laundry pros. And so we're solving two problems. The first is that people hate to do laundry, but the second is that there are a lot of people that wanna work from home but don't want to be tied to a desk. They don't wanna have their hand on a keyboard. They wanna be more active. Maybe because they're, you know, watching their kids. Most of our Laundry Pros are stay-at-home moms. And so this is the first ever manual labor work from home gig in the world, because all of everybody, most people have a washer and dryer at home. So you combine the washer and dryer with the Poplin Laundry Pro app And voilà, you've got a work from home gig. And so most of our Laundry Pros are stay-at-home moms who want or need to be active. They don't want to be relegated to a corner of the house, whether they have a computer and a keyboard. They want to be active in the house, in the middle of the house, where they can keep an eye on the kids and run the house. And so yeah, we're creating an extra income gig opportunity for mostly women, not all women, but mostly, who want to make some extra money, who want to have their own little business, which is essentially what it is, and want to work from home.

And, and your pricing is really straightforward too, a buck a pound.

Doesn't get much simpler. $1 per pound, pickup and delivery is included. There's very simple pricing, no subscription, no commitments, no monthly fees. Just a dollar per pound.

Wow. And I think I saw on the website that a typical laundry hamper weighs about 10— has about 10 pounds worth of clothes in it.

Correct.

So how do you— the other thing I noticed was that there's— there appears to be a lot of training that goes into training your Laundry Pros so that you have consistent quality across the— across your platform. How do you go about doing that?

Yeah, so I don't know if I would call it training because they're not actually employees. They're independent contractors. But what we do is we create a series of best practices. So we know from experience what customer expectations are and we know how to wow the customer. So we create a whole series of articles and videos that educates and informs the Laundry Pros about how to wow their customers. And then we create an algorithm that monitors the performance of the Laundry Pros based on these different factors that we deem to be crucial. For example, customer reviews, pickup speed, delivery speed, customer friendliness of customer messaging, etc. So we not only deliver these best practice articles and videos, but we inform the Laundry Pros that, hey, if you really want to succeed on the platform, you got to learn these and apply these so that the customers are happy. And then if they're happy, you'll get a high rating, and the higher your rating, The higher your ranking, the higher your ranking, the more orders you get. It's all tied together with an incentive system that incentivizes them to make the customers happy, which of course is what we want.

That had to take some thinking to come up with all of this.

Yes. Well, my son is my co-founder. He is a brilliant tech geek and he coded the first version of the app and created the algorithm. And yeah, so he was in the laundry room that when my wife made that comment, he was 16 years old. And typical teenager, he's like, look, Mom, I'm not helping you with the laundry, but I can solve this problem for you. I'll build you an app. And we thought he was kidding. I mean, 16 years old, you know, but we homeschooled our kids and we taught them you can learn to do anything., and you don't need school to do it. And he believed us. And so this is at a time, this was 2017 when Uber was really taking off, right? He was watching what was happening both in terms of our usage of Uber and also he was interested in business. And so he's like, ah, this same business model could work for laundry. And so he built the first version of the app and we launched in Baltimore and it turns out a lot more than just my wife liked it.

Wow, you launched it in Baltimore?

Yes, that's where we lived at the time.

Oh, what got you out west to Salt Lake City?

My, uh, so we have 5 kids, as I mentioned. The 4, the Noxchon, uh, my co-founder, he's a triplet. He's now 22.

And he's got the triplet.

He's a triplet, yeah. And I have an oldest that's 25. So the triplets and the oldest, they're out of the house and, you know, living on their own. So my youngest daughter's 14. She plays the violin and she wanted to train with a particular violin teacher who happened to be in Salt Lake City. So we moved down here for her.

Well, there you go. I'm a jazz violinist.

Oh wow.

Yeah, yeah, I've been playing, I've been playing fiddle for over 40 years, but I picked up jazz 15 years ago.

You and my daughter would get along very well. She's a, she's a classical violinist, but she, she practices a lot, 4 or 5 hours a day, and she's really into it.

Well, good for you. Well, what is it, what is it that gets you excited in the morning to get up out of bed and start roaring through life?

I like to be useful. I think the goal of life is not to be happy, it's to be useful. And I think when we're useful, we're fulfilling our purpose, and it turns out that we end up being happy because that really is what is fulfilling. I like to be useful. And for Right now I devote a lot of my time to building Poplin. I feel it's very useful. I think it's useful in lots of ways. I mean, you could look at it as just a laundry service company, but it's not quite the way I see it. I think we're doing something much bigger than laundry. On the customer side, we're not really selling a laundry service. We're selling the most precious thing on earth.

Time.

Which is time. We're selling a better quality of life. We're basically taking this chore that's been a burden for humanity for literally thousands of years with really no help other than the washer and dryer 100 years ago, and we're moving it from a do-it-yourself burden to an outsourcing solution that frees you up to have a better life. And so in my mind, to have that kind of impact on people's lives where you really give them the opportunity to spend quality time with their husband, their wife, their friends, their kids, or their hobbies, whatever they like to do, whatever it is, it must be more valuable than doing laundry. And, and so I think that that's really, really useful. And then on the supply side, on the other side of the platform, as we already mentioned, We're giving mostly, you know, stay-at-home moms an amazing opportunity, the kind of opportunity that they wouldn't otherwise have. You know, it's not just, it's not just that we're creating an opportunity to earn money. There's lots of ways to earn money. There's lots of job opportunities, but this is really unique, right? It's the first ever manual labor work from home gig in the world. And so at a time when Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart, et cetera, they're spending a gazillion dollars trying to recruit workers and they're losing them, we're spending like nothing and they're coming in droves.

Really?

Yeah. And that's because it is, it's so unique if you really think about what it is. I mean, everybody wants to work from home, right? And there are lots of people that are fine sitting behind a desk with, you know, their hands on a keyboard, but there's lots of people that don't want to do that, don't like to do that. Or maybe they don't even have, could be some don't have the skills to do that, but they still wanna work from home. So this is that manual labor work from home opportunity. So again, it's, you know, when you're creating an opportunity that people wouldn't otherwise have, it feels very useful. And so for me, building Poplin is building a company that's really useful to these two segments stakeholders, right, the supply side and the demand side, the people outsourcing laundry and the people doing laundry, that's really having a significant impact on the quality of their life. And so that's how I view it, you know, to me it's not about laundry, it's about bettering people's lives, you know, in a significant way.

And because you're creating these opportunities, you're allowing on the the worker side, the supply side, to make money. You guys take a small piece of the action, I'm sure. That's how you get paid.

That's right.

And, and they, they probably get the bulk of the, bulk of the money. And that's true. You have happy customers because they get clean laundry and a couple of hours freed up.

That's right.

3 hours freed up every week.

That's right. And the other thing that really gets me excited in the morning is we— one of our core values is kindness matters.. And we're building a community in the marketplace of kindness. That's where, where, like, it's not unusual. In fact, it's the norm. With every order, our Laundry Pros will deliver a handwritten note and tie the delivery bag with like a pink ribbon so it feels like you're getting a gift. We, we, we, we teach them. We We encourage, we promote this. They don't have to, it's not an obligation, but we promote it because we want there to be this kindness and this personal touch in the marketplace. And there's many stories of customers on a $30 order giving a $100 tip.

I was just gonna ask about that.

Yeah, I mean, that's not typical. That's not the average.

Oh no, but they're so touched.

Yes, but I'm just giving you an example of, you know, or sometimes they'll, You know, they'll, they'll, uh, when they put their laundry out with a Laundry Pro that they've used many times before, they have a relationship, they'll put it out along with a little gift. Um, we see them exchanging gifts.

So there's a relationship that's built.

Yeah, there's just a kindness in the community which I'm really proud of and was intentional, you know. And it's becoming more and more intentional. It's a core value in the company. It's, I don't know how familiar you are with other marketplaces and the tension that there's often been between gig workers and the company.

Well, look at Uber and Lyft and all the problems they've had. I mean, that's a classic example.

Exactly, exactly. So, you know, we're working really hard to create a very, very different experience. For our gig workers and to create a just different culture in the marketplace.

How did the word get out about the company?

Well, sorry, I sort of already answered that question on the supply side, right? Because it's such a unique opportunity.

As people started hearing about it, spread word of mouth.

Yeah, people— there's also a lot of publicity, media coverage on it. And same on the supply, same on the demand side, same on the customer side. You know, people have been burdened by this chore for generations and nobody wants to do it. So when they find a magical solution like Poplin, they're just like, you know, posting on social media. And I mean, the most common refrain we get from our customers is OMG, I'm never doing laundry again. Like, why didn't I know about this last week, last month, last year? Like, It's just this feeling of relief and yeah, just, oh my God, I'm never doing laundry again. This is unbelievable. It's just magical. Some of our customers, this is their term, not ours, they refer to the Laundry Pros as like laundry fairies.

That's the experience.

Like they take this dirty pile of laundry, right? That's wrapped up in a garbage bag They put it outside their back door, right? And then it comes like magic. It's like magic. Like it just disappears. And the next day it comes back, these perfectly beautifully, you know, stacks, pristine stacks of perfectly folded laundry with a little ribbon and a handwritten note. And it's just, it's just this magical experience. And when you create that experience, you know, you really don't have to do much marketing.

Wow. No. So what is it you think, and maybe we've touched on this, but what do you think it is that's unique about you that you bring to the table that's made all of this so successful?

Oh, I don't know. I don't know how much I enjoy talking about me and what's unique about me. I guess, you know, if you look at my my history. Uh, I won't talk about me, I'll just talk about a little bit what I've done.

I told you this was going to be about you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I love, and I guess I'm pretty good at, making something from nothing, like really creating things. Um, having a vision and a dream I love it when people say this will never work, which was the case here.

Really?

Oh yeah, oh yeah, everybody, everybody said this is stupid, nobody's going to do this, nobody's going to give their laundry to a stranger, you know. And, um, and then making that dream come true and, and figuring out how to do it without there being clear steps. It's just constant, it's grit, it's constantly iterating. And it was just such a joy to work on that with my son, who I'm so proud of, who was, you know, I mean, he was the one that— that's really what I did right here was I just gave birth to him. I mean, he's really Popwin's hero.

And he's still with the company?

Yeah, yeah, he's the, he's the CEO, co-founder, CEO. And, um, yeah.

Wow. Huh.

And it's such a joy to work, you know, when he was 16 and we started this, I mean, he was still, you know, a teenager and, and, you know, home. Uh, but now it's a real joy. Uh, and actually my, one of my other sons, uh, his triplet brother joined the company since a couple years ago. And it's such a joy to work with them because as every parent of adult children know, as they become adults, it, you have to manufacture, it's become harder. You have to manufacture ways to stay in touch and to have interactions and to have conversation. You know, it's like they're not home anymore. So you have to create these family moments. So here when you're working with, well, as we're working with my boys, it's, I, I don't have to create or manufacture moments. I, I'm engaged with them every day. You know, which is a wonderful opportunity as a father to, uh, to have that kind of relationship.

Really? Is, is the company mostly remote, or, or you have a physical—

No, we are actually an in-office company.

Wow.

Which I know surprises many people. And, and, and, and I made that decision in the middle of the, uh, pandemic. Wow. Uh, so when no— everybody was going remote, you know, And I decided I wanted us to be an in-office company. We have an office here in Salt Lake City. We have about 30 employees. We have here marketing, finance, customer service, support, operations people. And then we have an office in Minneapolis where Nakshon is, my son, and we have there product and engineering. And then we have a small office in Miami where my other son is, where we have business sales. And then we have some remote employees who are grandfathered in from before we went in office.

Wow.

There's a total of about 80 people in the company right now.

Oh, very manageable. Yeah. So, so one of the questions that I always ask my guests on this podcast is, is how important is it— has listening been in your career, learning how to listen and knowing what to listen for?

Well, I mean, it sounds trite to say, but it's crucial, right? I mean, it's— that's the expected and obvious answer. Listening is difficult skills, and it's rare. I think it's difficult for the same reason that it's rare. Which is that it's almost impossible or very difficult to teach. Right? How do you, how do you learn to listen? I mean, you can, you can, it can be improved upon, but it's, it's not like learning, you know, to hit a golf ball where there's sort of steps and somewhat of a formula. Listening is, It's hard to pinpoint exactly why a person feels heard, but they either do or they don't. And what exactly is the difference there is difficult to pinpoint. A lot of it's in body language, right? A lot of it's in, like, a lot of it can be in a grunt, like, uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

But the way that, but the way that, uh-huh, comes out can be the difference between a person feeling deeply heard and a person feeling like you're paying, trying to pay lip service, but you don't really hear a thing they say. So, yeah, so, so it's a difficult and rare skill, and one that it can be improved, just awareness. You know, I think awareness and maturity and life experience.

You got to care.

You got to care. That's a good point. Um, you know, I don't know if I would say that's a step, but that's a— yeah, genuine concern. I would say it leads to, right? It's not a step. It's not, it's not a step in the, in the, uh in the act. I would say that a genuine concern leads to authentic listening. That's an excellent point.

I would agree with that.

Yeah. Um, it's interesting, and it's— I'm sorry, I didn't really answer your question. I think you said, why is it important? It's important because it's, it's the key and the basis to a relationship, right? If a person feels that genuine concern, you know, which is a great I love that phrase. Person feels that, so then you're likely to have a really good relationship with them because they feel that you care, and that means you listen. And if not, then you won't. And if the relationship is not good, then your life falls apart, right? Because not much you can do without other people.

That's right.

And that's true in our personal life as well as our professional life. Right.

Huh. One more question and we'll wrap it up. What is one thing about you, Mort, that we wouldn't know about unless you revealed it to us?

I'm an introvert.

Why am I not surprised?

Yeah, I mean, people see me in the media, and even the media, you know, the media is nothing. What I really love is put me on a stage with 1,000 people in the audience and, and I just like light up, right? You know, I love, you know, I love communicating. I love public speaking. I love working with the media. I love teaching. But I'm an introvert. I also really like being alone and having privacy. And even though I think I have some skills in the ways that I just described, it's draining for me. The way I recharge is by being alone.

Yep. Yeah, I'm an introvert too, and you would never know it because I was a hardcore trial lawyer for 22 years. Yeah, but exactly the same thing. I can get up and speak before thousands, but I'd rather be off skiing somewhere, you know, than going to a big party.

Yeah, and the other thing that you might not know is that, um, although as I mentioned once before, I, I like, I like making money. Who doesn't, right?

You're good at it.

I'm good at it, and I've done it many times in my life. It's really not so important to me. Um, I live in a, you know, truth is, up until a few years ago, I drove an old Honda Civic. And it wasn't until my tech-savvy son just convinced me I had to buy a Tesla. I went kicking and screaming with him to the dealership insisting that I wasn't going to buy it. But I have to admit, once I got in and drove it, it was an amazing experience. So I bought it. But, you know, it's not really important to me. I don't really like things, so I don't really I don't do much with my money. I try to give it away and sometimes I spend it on others and my wife likes to spend, so that works out. Somebody once asked me about if I had a money manager, so I said, well, yeah, my wife, she manages to spend my money. Good for you. But I love her for that.

Well, that's great. This has been a really wonderful conversation, Ward. Thank you so much for your time.

You're welcome. Thank you for having me. I enjoyed it.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media social media, just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up, ratings Your likes and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team. Want to know more? Go to my website, DougNoll.com, or follow me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. That's @DouglasEnoll. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next show.