On a mild winter day in Arizona, 38-year-old Cami’s laundromat can teem with customers loading their clothes into washers and dryers, and employees working on laundry deliveries.
For Cami, running the business as her only job is a welcome change of pace, she says. She worked almost full-time as a nurse at a hospital while simultaneously running the laundromat from October 2020 to April 2023, when she quit nursing. (Cami requested to be identified by her nickname only, due to security concerns over her cash-heavy business. Her identity and the name of her business are known to CNBC Make It.)
“Now, I’m only working maybe five or six hours a week [running the laundromat],” says Cami. “But I also am hesitant in telling people that, because that’s not how it was five years ago, four or three years ago. I was working a lot more hours trying to grow this business.”
In that time, she hired employees — the laundromat employs six people, including one part-time worker — so she can “focus more on growing the business and not working in the business,” she says. Cami also spends about 10 hours per week creating and posting videos on social media about her business and the experience of running it, she notes.
