Leading Under Fire | Starting — and finishing — when everything is against you

Welcome to Episode 23 of Voices on the Wind with host Toby Lyles, sponsored by artist Denise Patton from Art at the Hynds.

Connect with Denise on FB @ https://tinyurl.com/Artatthehynds

Toby is joined today by Courtney Shillenn, owner of Drop N Dash.

Courtney’s laundromat is the newest in town. She talks about her personal reasons for starting the business, larger community vision and airs out some of the challenges she faced going through inspections and licensing. In the end she persevered and has launched a laundromat/social gathering place.

“I felt like I had enough liquidity. I'd run the numbers. I figured I could float the cost that I had and my personal costs for about 12 months. Worst case scenario. So I thought I was good. And so signed the lease, got the general contractor in there, and then the problems with the permit started.”

“So turns, so usually it's every machine in the store goes around once through one cycle. I have 24 washers in the store. So a turn would be 24 cycles, one on every machine. And I just figured that every 24 cycles is a single turn. And so if they each rent on average three times a day, that's kind of my break even to cover my business costs and just mostly my big business costs like my loan, my rent, my utilities.”

“...we get older people who are living on their own in apartments are coming in and they're not getting a lot of social interaction because they're not working anymore. And it's something that they have to come do. Right. And so then that's an opportunity to make that a useful time for them because a lot of times they're socially isolated. And so if we can make that something that kind of fills in some of those gaps that society has left, then all the better.”

Episode 023

Release Date: September 16, 2025

Host: Toby Lyles

Guest: Courtney Shillenn

Get in touch with Courtney

https://dropndashcheyenne.com/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/DropNDash