How to build a 7 figure vending machine business by finding the best locations. Ep. #035

I'm doing in the range of like, 1500 to 2000 in, like, sales per day. It's definitely trending up higher towards, like, 2000. I mean, I eclipse it. Here's what happens, though. Like, all eclipse it. But then, like, Pepsi or Frito Lay or somebody will come in with, like, some price hike, and then you got to adjust your prices, and then, you know, you see a volume dip.

How's life since we last spoke?

Pretty good, man. How about you?

It's been good.

Where are you right now?

I'm in Utah, just on vacation, kind of visiting family.

Nice.

Nice. Why don't you just go ahead and just tell everyone who you are, what you do, and how you got to that point real quick.

Yeah, for sure. So I'm Quinn Miller. I own and operate a vending machine business. That's how I started. It's kind of expanded a little bit now, so it's transformed into. I do traditional snack and drink. We do, like, smart coolers. We do, like, market concepts now. I also have a ATM business as well. I got into the business because I am based in California, and I love real estate. But the problem out here is that it's heavy appreciation, light cash flow. And, yeah, most people are like, oh, well, why is that bad? The reality is, when you're transitioning out of corporate or whatever, you know, foundational income cash flow is way more important than appreciation, in my opinion. Could I be wrong? Can I take some loans on and kind of live off that?

Yeah.

And then depreciation comes in, and then you're good. But so, effectively what happened was, is I bought some real estate out here with my buddy. I bought a property for quite a bit. We renovated it, and then the cash flow is so, so light. It was about like 700amonth split between three parties. And when you're fresh out of college. And this might sound crazy to a lot of people, but the house was like $550,000. Right. So it wasn't cheap.

Yeah. And that's in San Diego.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so we did the renovation, and the cash flow is really poor. But it reappraised for quite a bit. But it reappraised for, I think, like, 800 now.

Wow.

Which is awesome. Yeah. But we bought it at the back end of 2018, and then, I don't know, maybe a year or two later. That's what it looked like. And the goal was to buy more. Right? Right. Not just have the money sitting there, because I couldn't have all my effectively life savings sitting in this piece of property, not cash flowing at all. They didn't want to do it. And so I got out of that. And I was looking for alternative, not going to say asset classes, but some things where I didn't have to be there all the time. Low cost of capital to enter, and then had some solid cash flow. That's kind of where I stumbled into vending. And I saw other people doing it online that didn't necessarily have the same background as me from a sales perspective. And so what I did was I put it out my buddy's mechanic shop, a machine that I bought off Craigslist, and it didn't do good at all. But what I realized was I didn't have to ever go there to make a sale. So that's good and bad. If you never have to go, then the machine's not selling. But I learned.

And could you say that again, Quinn, because you cut out just for a minute, you said it didn't do well at the mechanic shop, but then you.

Realized, yeah, so I never had to go there. So. Right. If it's doing like, yeah, 150 bucks in sales and the machine holds 600 drinks. Right. Go there once every six months or once every three months, whatever the number is.

So you at least fell in love with that aspect of it. But you realized finding locations are going to be harder than you thought. Good. Finding good locations would be harder than you.

I didn't think it would be harder than I thought because I never even prospected. I just. What I saw was like, hey, I never had to go there for the sale. And then so what I started doing was making calls, cold calls. And then I landed a location that did pretty well. I think I did maybe 1500 bucks in the first month. So I was like, okay, now we can. Now we have something here.

And what type of location was that?

It was an apartment building.

Okay.

Yeah. And yeah. So I landed that and I was like, okay, we have something here. And then left corporate and did that full time.

Wow. Left corporate after the second machine.

Yeah. Granted, I had about, let's see, from getting out of the real estate deal, maybe like 60, 80K. So I had capital to work with. You gotta live too. So it's not like that might sound like a lot, but the reality is in California, rents are insane. I mean like a one bedroom apartment, 500 square feet, could be $3,000. So cost of living is just astronomical out here. So that dwindles down pretty fast.

After you quit your corporate job, what was your first Plan of action. What, did you start hitting the phones, calling apartments or what?

Yeah, just strip cold calling all day, every day.

Okay.

Yeah. So I stock the machines and then just prospect all day, every day.

Was that discouraging?

No, no. Well, my, my first software sales job, I was an SDR and we were making 200 a day. So that's, I would say that's my one superpower I have. I actually enjoy cold calling. Like I can multitask, like cold call. Like I can do a bunch of things while I'm literally cold calling. And, and that's just from the 10,000 hours me putting in. Right. I had over 200, 250,000 cold calls under my belt by age, like 25, 26. So we were making a lot of dials. But so it becomes second nature. The thing that would slow me down was like when I was growing, when I was first starting out is when you land a location, you gotta prep the machines, do all this stuff. So then I couldn't cold call during those times. Cause we were just getting the machines ready to go. But yeah, I think the thing that separated me and my growth in the business as a normal operator, they are going to stock machines all day and then come home and drink a beer or whatever, relax. Whereas me, I'd stock machines and come back and make calls. So that's what really helped me grow quickly.

Everything, you know, today, if you could go back and like perfectly script starting this business from scratch, what would you have changed to make things really clean, really profitable, really efficient?

I don't know if I would change what I'm doing, but my recommendation would be to other vendors is like, what most people do is they take on any location. And so what I recommend to them is be selective. Just because somebody says yes doesn't mean you should work with them. Like, having a ton of machines out there is not better than having less, but doing more revenue. But the reality is, most people, the hardest thing is the sales, right? So for me, it's not the sales, it's more the repairs on learning that aspect of the business. And then now it's. For me, what is tougher is just the backend work. I have what, like 53 traditional snack and drink at some markets. And so there's just things that go on. Maybe like today the credit card reader wasn't working out or there was having some like decline transactions. So that's what's tougher for me. So my recommendation to new vendors is to just be selective or just for most people, again, they don't have the sales side of things. So buy an existing route as a. Because a lot of people, they will like, if you cold call for six months and you don't get any deals, I, I think like 99% of people are just like, I'm not doing this anymore. Honestly, after a week they're going to say that. So a lot of times it's better just buy a location off somebody that is already established. And then, so then that way you have the momentum. Because in business, especially when you're leaving corporate, like, yeah, the hardest part is like literally just leaving corporate. But then it has to be followed by momentum. If not, you're just going to be defeated.

Yeah. And the momentum makes me think like, even if you could go back in time and be more picky about your locations, even if you pick a bad location, at least it's momentum and you're going to learn from that. You know what I'm saying? So it's almost like you wouldn't change much because it's like you got to win. Even if it's a crappy location, yellow win under your belt, which will line up a bigger win down the line.

Yeah, for sure. And that's another thing. Like if anybody getting new into the business, I know they want the biggest accounts right away. But the thing where I learned the most was that mechanic shop where I could fail and learn about the machines and just they had no expectation. Right. So if you get, go get a big account, like we're going to have a bunch of expectations and it might be overwhelming for you.

Is there a correlation between a crappy location like a mechanic shop and the ease of actually closing that deal, or is there really no correlation?

Yeah, yeah, I know, I know where you're going with us. Do bigger deals. Yeah, for sure. The bigger you go and the like, bigger business, like there's more, number one, there's more red tape and number two, there's more competition. So if I were to go prospect an Amazon warehouse, it's not like just you just go call up the warehouse manager and say, hey, you need some machines. Like you got to, I have to assume you're gonna be submitting RFP and then you're gonna be going up against like other like national vendors where they're playing a different game. Right. They push a lot of products, they get rebates, they have ties with the big national distributors. And so they can probably do things that you can't do that make financially sense, that make financial sense. So yeah, no, it's not like the bigger deals you do, the harder it is.

Yeah.

I don't know. Some people say that in real estate like smaller deals are the same as big, but it's not the same here.

Well, what if someone had the strategy of saying listen, I know that all of these mechanic shops are only going to pay out 300 bucks a month on average, but I can close 20% of those deals as opposed to 2% of the big deals. So I know that the payback period for machine will be a lot longer. But could someone have that strategy? Just like I'm going to place a ton of these low performing machines because it's easy and that's just my model.

Yeah, well that's what most people do. And what I would say is yeah, that's cool when you first start, but once you get to a certain size it becomes a logistics game. Right. So it's like how do I get X product from warehouse to locations and then at the end of the day they're machines so you don't need somebody there to make a sale. But they do have problems. Right. And so like when you have just like a hundred machines and you gotta send out a repair guy or something like that stuff adds up versus like just concentrating on your bigger accounts like where they're actually producing real revenue and making a sizable difference. It's okay if you have a repair guy go out there, but if this is consistently happening then that's just great. Throw their business back to cold calling.

If you make a thousand cold calls and what does your funnel look like? How many do you actually talk to and how many sales could you expect to get from that?

Yeah, I, I used to track these numbers in software sales when we had like salesforce and all this stuff and I, I think that's like beneficial. It's right. It's probably beneficial if you're running like not a one man org. I, I guess it is but I, I, me personally, I don't really need to track those numbers. I think maybe I shouldn't but I don't really get motivated based off like the numbers or that's what a lot of people need to see. They need to see like how well they're converting. But so for me I don't know the exact number but if there's a thousand potential locations and I'm able to talk to the decision maker, I have a pretty high hit rate in regards to like actually closing those deals. If I were to look at my pipeline, a reason why somebody would not work with me is not because of like my pitch or anything like that. It's more so, you know, it's a luxury apartment building and they're just like, oh, we don't have room or, or ownership. But I spent 5, $300 million on this property, whatever the number is. And they're just like, no. So I don't have the exact number. But what I can say is like, closing percentage is like way higher in this business. And I would say software sales.

Okay. And I think the important part is you like making cold calls and like this kind of like finding joy in the journey.

Right.

Is what you're doing. And it's not a grind to you, it's just part of the process.

Yeah, for sure. So you just relate it back to like accounting or anything like that. Like for me, like, I hate it. Like I would have to close off a whole calendar like a whole day just to review this stuff. But for cold clients, no problem. I could raft this call. Like even if I'm hungry, I can make a cold call. I cannot look at accounting if I'm hungry. But for some people it's not right. So it really just depends on the person. But yeah. And then some people say, oh, do cold emailing stuff like that. I, from my experience in the SMB world from software sales, I don't think it's as effective. Like these owners are not checking their emails like they're running a business. And so that's why I think it's not as effective. And so at the end of the day, there's like a finite amount of places that I can actually work with. So that's why I don't go that route. But a lot of people will go the cold emailing route.

What is your best selling product? Is it diet Coke?

Yeah, Coke. Coke, yeah. 12 ounce.

Can Coke break down the unit economics of that? Like what do you sell for, what do you buy it for? And then how do you look at like your cost of fulfill?

Yeah. So a 12 ounce soda from Costco I believe right now is 49 cents. I sell for a dollar fifty. Now the one thing there is like, okay, so when I first started inventing a soda was 33 cents and I sell for a dollar. So it's a pretty healthy profit margin. But at the end of the day when they, it was at $0.52 at one point and they just lowered it. But at the end of the day there is only a certain price that somebody's willing to pay for these products. Right. And so if they raise the price let's just say to 75 cents. Like I'm not going to raise the, I'm not going to sell a 12 ounce can of Coke for, for $2, right? Yeah, you got to eat it. Well, I'm just going to change the product, right because my whole thing is like I want my customers to see, I want them to feel like they're getting value anytime they're shopping with me. Because this is not a transient customer. If you're doing apartments, if you're doing hotels like you can do, you charge whatever you want. And I have hotels as well. But if you do offices, stuff like that, then they need to see, they need to feel like they're getting value every time they use this. And if they do that then they'll use the machine a lot. So yeah, Coke is probably my best seller. And then I've been transitioning a lot to like Pepsi and 7Up Stuff. Gatorade's a big seller for sure. But those prices have been going crazy recently. Like I recently had to increase the price to like 250 unfortunately. And I think one thing to note is I think it's a big misconception. So I use Pepsi 7Up, Vistar, which is a food supplier, Costco and Sam's Club. And the reason why I use all these different places is because I work with Pepsi 7Up and Vistar for the bulk of my stuff. But when I utilize them, the prices are more expensive than going to Sam's Club or Costco. And so I'll buy my canned sodas from Sam's Club actually. And so that, that's a big misconception. They're like, oh you go direct to them. They're cheaper. No, but what they are doing is they are delivering their products to my warehouse. And so it's challenging for me to be able to pick up let's just say six to eight pallets per week of just product. And that's a lot of man out, right? And so that's why that makes sense to do that stuff. I guess another good seller for me is, is Celsius. That's really popular nowadays. Monsters obviously. Big. And then what's getting challenging now is the candy. They've raised the prices so much like the like Hershey and stuff like that that it's getting very expensive to sell. And I'm starting to transition out of that. Like I'll have some staples in there but I'm transitioning more like cookies and, and stuff like that in those candy ribs.

What about like salty snacks? What Are the.

The good sellers salty snack, like chips and stuff? Yeah, yeah. So I was. Well, so we're. I'm in Southern California, so spicy stuff is like hot fries, like Chester hot fries. Cheeto. Cheetos, hot Cheeto lime, like those like gangbusters. And then, let's see. I don't really sell like, peanuts or anything like that, but in regard. I used to sell Lays and Lays barbecue, but I've already transitioned over the. To Boulder chips because Frito Lay is actually, again, raising prices again. So I'm trying to look for alternatives that are similar but where I don't have to raise prices. I'm recently, I've always. I've been looking for a lot of that stuff. I was actually literally at a conference in Dallas and I was just checking out a bunch of new products and seeing, like, what is out there that I'm missing.

Yeah, that's what I was going to ask. What is owning this business taught you about consumer psychology or consumer behavior? Because it's like, everyone says they want to eat healthy. People want to eat, but it's like, I don't know how. I don't foresee Doritos not being around in a hundred years. You know, it just seems like human nature will always allow for people to eat like crap.

Yeah. So. So my take on the situation is that so America shops at Walmart, okay? And they do not shop at Whole Foods. Like, just because you and your friends do does not mean that, like, I can say 90. But a majority America, that's not where they shop, okay? And a majority of Americans do not eat, drink raw milk and nice steaks and. And all this crap.

Right?

Yes, it is very nice for us, but most people are just barely getting by. Right. And so these products, it's the same thing with cash. Everybody's like, oh, is cash dead? No, it's nowhere close to being dead. Same thing with gas for cars. So nowhere close to being dead. These unhealthy product. Unhealthy products. I would say if you consume them for your every single meal. Yeah, like, that's not good. But if you have a bag of Doritos and a sandwich and a drink, like, it's not the best for you, but at the end of the day, it's not like to absolutely kill you. So I think it's just a big misconception out there in regards to what consumers want. I was literally at a. I was touring a property the other day or yesterday, and the property manager is like, yeah, we really like your fresh food. Products like sandwiches, salads, stuff like that. She's like, that's going to be a big driver for business. I'm like, maybe, but. But I can tell you right now.

That'Ll be a first for me, that.

That'S not the reality. And that's going on to another point. So a lot of people, they'll come up to me like, hey, can you put X into the machine? And I'll look at it and I'll say, I always test products and then start to change things. So if Lays is selling well, I'll add more products just like Lays. If Lays is selling bad, I'll reduce the Lays and add whatever is selling more, right? And so they always say, like, hey, put this, put that. And what I've learned in the business so far is you only do things based off what people are doing with their money, not their mouth. And anytime somebody has told me this to make this change for what they want, they never buy it, Right. And other people don't buy it either. And it'll always be like some specialty product, right? Like, hey, can you put coconut water in this machine? It's like, no.

Like, absolutely, I'm not doing that.

Yeah. If 50 people came in here and told me, please put coconut water, and then I put it in there and then they all bought it, then I would consider putting it other places. But that's just not how it works from my experience so far.

So I. I want to learn more about you testing products or testing, like, vending concepts. Have you ever tried something wild, like a $5, like ollipop soda or whatever those are called, Or a vending machine that was just completely off the wall just to see how it would do. And tell me about a time where you've done that and you were surprised one way or the other.

Yeah, for sure. So. So what I would say is, like, testing products is much easier in my markets because open concept customers have a little more discretionary income. And then on my traditional machines, like, each product has a slot, right? So it's hard. Like, you got to change it in the back end. The team's got to go put it in. It's a little more challenging. So my markets, I always test new things, right? Like, a lot of my food suppliers, they'll be like, hey, we're doing. It's called short codes, right? Like, it's a deal, but the product's gonna expire in two months or, like, faster than normal. And so I always do those, and not all the time, but whenever they send it to me. So I always test like new products and stuff like that. And I haven't really tested like products on the high end. But what I can say is people are willing to spend a lot of money for like household items. So if they really need it, they're going to, they're going to spend money on it. So like I'll put like medicine and stuff like this and I'll still maintain a 50% margin. At least that's my goal. So if you buy Motor or Claritin, like Claritin is not a cheap product just in itself. If you were to buy it from, from Walmart, I think it's like, and don't quote me on this, I'd have to look. But let's just say the bottle for like 24 of them is like 15 bucks, right? And then if you sell 30, I don't know. To me that's a lot of money. Same thing with Burt Bees Chapstick. Like it's not cheap. You buy it from Walmart and people will still buy it. If they really need it, they'll just buy it. So I think that's the biggest learning lesson that I've seen so far in regards to testing. But for the, for those like abstract drinks, I'm kind of a, I don't know, I'm not a huge fan of them and quite frankly.

Well, you'd be a huge fan of them if they sold right?

I don't know. And for me, man, if I will not consume it, if I will not purchase it for myself, I generally not, will not put it in my machine. Like all the products that I put in, I'll take a bite before I put it. If I get a new product, I will literally take a bite. Not so I can eat it, but I'll try it, taste it. If it doesn't taste well, I don't care what it is. I'm not putting it in there. I couldn't be the main consumer. I can't expect my customers to be a consumer as well. Now could I be wrong there? Potentially, yes, but it's certainly. Well so far.

Yeah. What about vending machines? What if you went, what if you had like a poor performing vending machine in a really strong apartment complex and you're just surprised it's not doing well. Have you ever thought about approaching the owner and say, hey, I'm going to swap out this machine with an electronics machine with USB chargers. There's just, doesn't have to be that. But anything completely different from food just to see how it goes. What do I have to lose? Have you ever done that or thought of doing that?

No. It's good ideas for sure. I actually have a buddy that does like rental out of machines. It's like you can rent a.

He does what? What? Out of machines.

You can. It's a little bit different machine, but what it is, like you can open it up and then you can rent like a beach chair or something like that. I don't know, like, start doing these like, funky things. Like, number one, the machine is like more expensive. So let's just say you want to do like hot food, right? Like, that machine is 20, $30,000. Right. To have a hot food machine, right. Like that, that can bake you a pizza, Right. And then just like, logistically it's more challenging. There's just like other factors that are involved with just literally just testing it out. What I would say I've tested like smart coolers where it's like you swipe your card, you open the machine, you kind of grab anything you want. It automatically charge you. Maybe I'll put some funky things in there. But outside of food and stuff like that, I generally don't test too much.

Yeah, you're pretty married to food though, right? Like, you're. You have food vendors, you have a warehouse for food, you have systems around food, you have expiration dates. I think it'd be kind of tough to take one vending machine and swap it out with something non food.

Yeah. It's just. So the way I've built my business is trying to be like the Ford assembly line. Right. Everything is going through the same. All machines are getting the same things for the most part. Right. Maybe if somebody was wanting to get in there and stock stuff themselves, then I'm sure you could. Or even just building a team around that. But I. I don't know. It's just. For me, it's just easier just to do what I do.

Yeah. How many different products do you carry actively today, give or take?

Yeah, it's a good question. I know for sure it's ranging from the range of, I believe like 2 to 400, I think is kind of the number I've looked exactly. But I. I actually went through it recently. I. I didn't take an exact number, but I started cutting out some things because I was like, man, I have way too many SKUs, because I think I was at like 600.

Yeah.

Yeah. And it sounds like a lot, but the reality is, like, when you look at these machines, like the glass face machines like every single slot could potentially be different. The snack machine, same thing and then not all. Like, I have different consumers across different places, and so it adds up quickly. Like, the easiest way to run this business is literally just have a drink machine where you click the button so it has holds like eight different products. And just put a bunch of those out there, your life will be noticeable.

The drink machines are the easiest.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Because like, you can just buy a case of it and just put it in there. Like you don't really need a story. Yeah. And I've heard like stories of people doing that. Just, literally just a drink machine only route.

Hmm. Yeah. What numbers can you tell me with regards to your volume? Like snacks sold per day or machines place or revenue? I'd love to hear anything you're willing to share.

Yeah, for sure. I'm doing in the range of like 1500 to 2000 in, in like sales per day.

Nice.

Yeah, it's definitely trending up higher towards like 2000. I mean, here's what happens though. Like, all eclipse it, but then like Pepsi or Frito Layer, somebody will come in with some price hike and then you gotta adjust your prices and then you see a volume dip. So like right now we're going through the process of changing prices, and it sucks when you have to do that because when I first started out again, like, if you have a dollar in your pocket, you can get a Coke. Ice cold Coke, coldest Coke you ever had in your life. And I think that's a pretty strong value proposition. But now you have to have a $50, so you have to have some change in your pocket. Yeah.

Is there a day of the week that's typically busier for you?

So I have some locations that are Monday through Friday. So Monday through Friday I do more volume, but okay. Yeah, on the weekends it's still up there, but some of the locations aren't online, basically.

Okay, so I want to switch gears and I want to get your thoughts on this vending concept. So I came across this concept in Europe, and it is a perfume vending machine. Have you seen these?

I, I, I have. I haven't dove into it and see how it works, but I've seen a picture.

The ones that spray perfume specifically.

Yeah, I've heard of the concept. Yeah.

Yeah. So I don't think it really exists here in the US and that could mean that it's just not a good cultural fit. But you put in five bottles of perfume and there's like a little glass case where you can See them and then there's a little plastic tube going in each of the bottles and it's, you know, cashless. Swipe your card and for a dollar you just put your wrist up or your neck or whatever and it sprays on you. And it's got 90% margins. You don't have to refill it that op that often. You also have the option to sell the whole bottles with a QR code with like affiliate links, drop ship it. Right. I thought that was interesting. They're like $2,500 machines. Do you think that could work? And if so, what type of a venue do you think that would be good in? And like what type of hang ups do you think one could experience?

Yeah, I think it, I mean, could it work? I don't know. It's gonna take somebody to go do it to let us know, I think. But yeah. Could you see it at fine dining, like when the guy in the bathroom gives you like the mints and all this stuff, like you just have it in there as opposed to that guy maybe trying to think, where else? I mean, maybe a strip club. Let's see.

I wonder if like in the bathroom at a gym.

Right.

And you like, you're kind of stinky and just like, ah, I don't want to smell like crap.

Here's a dollar. So maybe I don't. Yeah, yeah. Good. Even trying any of these exotic Ideas, I think 2,500 bucks for a machine is fine. But then you see some of those machines at the airport where they're doing like, I don't know, cosmetics, all these things. Like those machines are incredibly pricey and it's easy to do like a couple of them. But then when you really want to scale the business, like it becomes challenging. Yeah.

Especially if they're all over the country.

Or over the world.

Right?

Yeah. And the reality is like, for you to get high volume on these, like niche machines, I should say they need to be at like very heavily trafficked areas or just like for the exact audience. And are you going to be able to sell like, I don't know, can you really sell like that many people, like with these types of venues to do that? How many fine dining places are going to want that? Are gyms going to have the space for it? There's just a lot of different factors that go into this that I think makes it a little challenging. And what I would say is like, don't let anything, but don't let my words discourage anybody. If they're like listening to this and they're like, oh, I want to try ideas. I always think that they should try it out and then learn based off what they see in the marketplace and what's taking place. Just because I am unwilling to do it and I don't do it, doesn't mean that you should not. Because a lot of people, they'll tell me things like don't do these certain locations, certain areas or whatever and I'll go do it. And it's like, why aren't you doing these? Yeah, yeah.

People fantasize about a lot of things. And my fantasy is like snapping my fingers and having 10 of those perfume machines placed tomorrow at 10 different venues like a gym, a strip club, a movie theater, a mall hallway, gas station, a restaurant, street side in New York. I would just love to have all those place at the snap of finger and then just look at the analytics come in. You know, it's like, wow, oh, the gas station's killing it. That's surprising, you know.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then once you figure it out, then you can expand from there. Well, yeah, I mean like other niches like that I think are interesting. Like I've heard like people talk about jukeboxes. I think that's interesting. You posted about the massage chair. That's interesting. I think that that machine is probably a little pricey. See what else there's a whole bevy of things like that are like credit card reader based machines, machine based businesses, I should say, that are potentially very interesting. I, I, the, my only thing is like, is just scaling it up. What is the easiest thing to do. But you know, at the end of the day a lot of people, they don't want to scale it up. Like it's, you could you just have 10 machines locally and just have some nice side income. Yeah. And that's probably fine for like majority of people, to be honest.

Yeah. The hard part is with these new exotic machines is like there can't be much friction. Like you have four seconds to convince a consumer that they should swipe their card here. So if it's like too weird or too like a gold bar machine, like you have to have the right person in the right location and they have to grasp it immediately. Otherwise you're just going to lose everyone.

I think my favorite one was I was in college or we were visiting, so I went to Michigan City. We were checking it out and we went to this tiny little bar. I guess it wasn't tiny, but it was a sports bar like in the middle of nowhere. And we Go in, go to the urinal, and I can pay money to see how big my P is. And so basically what it is, like, I go pee and then it's like, oh, can you set the record? Like, biggest.

What? Yeah, how big your P is. Like, how much volume you put out?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I gotta write that down. That is crazy.

One of the more interesting concepts I sign, and here's the reality. Like, men are extremely competitive. So it's like, if two dudes are doing that, like, like, you're probably gonna be like, hey, let's try this out. And I did try it out, right?

You did. And how big is your pee?

Yeah, I take big P's.

So I can't even picture what this looks like. I'm gonna spend an hour googling this today, I hope you know, but, like, would you pee into something and it, like, measures it on a, like a ounces basis?

No, no, no. It's like just a urinal and there's like a. A trap, I think, at the bottom.

Okay.

Yeah. You're not like peeing in a cup.

Or anything, but you have to pay.

Yeah. And there's like a game thing on top. They'll show you.

Like a leaderboard.

Yeah. This is many quite a few years ago, so, like, maybe the designs have changed, but yeah, that's effectively what it was. Like, you pee and then there's like a leaderboard. I think it was like, for that day, though, I didn't really.

Wow. Holy cow. To be the guy that thinks of that idea and then spends who knows how much money to get it developed, like, right now, that's crazy. Like, people that invent things like that, I think are the opposite of me because I have too many ideas. And so I'm going to go with the cheapest, the least amount of friction, the one I can test for a hundred dollars. But some people, they go 60, 80 years and they get one big idea, right? And they're going to go all in on that one idea. And it's like, that's how these stupid things come to be that sometimes end up being successful. Because that one guy just had that one idea and he had to. And I mean, respect, Right? I respect anyone that executes on an idea because most people just think about it until they die and then they regret it.

But, yeah, yeah, no, it's a really interesting concept. I would say. The only problem is, like, from a maintenance perspective, you're having to deal with, like, I don't know, it's all fills a P. Right?

Yeah, that is crazy. So I know you're leaning hard into ATMs. Last time we spoke. Are you still doing that? And how has that been going?

Yeah, for sure. It's. It's going good. I, I like the business a lot. It's a very clean business. Your inventory is cash, which is nice. And that's a very simple business. Right? Like when you look at a vending machine, there's a lot of SKUs. It's, you know, challenging to get the products from point A to point B. You gotta. It's just a lot more work. Right now the, the main difference between the two is a vending machine has the potential to do a much, much more revenue, more revenue than an ATM machine will ever do. Yeah, it's. The ATM is much simpler, right? It's put money in, you get hit with a surcharge and that's how you make money. Now there are some locations that could probably do quite a bit of revenue. You know, a strip club or a casino or a dispensary. I was doing due diligence on a dispense. On a dispensary location in Colorado and it was doing. You were netting like 50k a year on three locations, which is pretty solid. And so that's what a lot of them, you know.

So three dispensary locations, 50 grand a year.

Yeah. Pretty good, right?

Wow. Yeah, that's good. I have my notes from our last chat and you said that like you're looking for 4 to 5, 600 bucks per machine per month.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. At least like locations that I see around here. So. Yeah. What is that number? What is that, 50,000. Let's see, she's the.

16 grand a month.

Yeah. Right.

Or sorry, sorry. That's per year though, right? Yeah.

50,000 divided.

16 grand a year. So it's like 1400amonth. 1500 per machine. So three, four times as much crazy.

If you can get locations like that. And look, I mean, was this even that great of a dispensary? I don't even know. Right? Like, why is the guy selling it? I mean, he could be selling it because the laws and stuff like that. But yeah, I'm sure. Like there's monster dispensaries out there in Vegas. Specifically like Planet 13 or whatever it is. Like, it's huge. And you know, could this thing be peeling off a hundred grand a year or a month? Probably, yeah.

Are you trying to convince people that already have ATMs to swap them out with yours or are you trying to place ATMs where there is none?

That's a good question. Majority of the time, where there is none, it's challenge. So from a value proposition perspective, I can win a lot of business on. From the vending perspective, if their current operator is providing poor service on the atm, it's a little bit more challenging. Just because the only time like an ATM is not working is like if it's out of cash or the machine is broken.

Right.

And most of the time the vending machine will not break. It's just like they put bad products in. They don't do this, they don't repair the machines, they don't fill the machines. That doesn't happen as much in atm. So it's a little more challenging to win that business. That said, I have one accounts from existing vendors. A couple, but I don't think that's the lowest hanging fruit.

Okay, what types of locations are you in again? I thought you said gas stations the last time you spoke.

I do a lot of hotels.

Hotels. Okay. For ATMs specifically.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay. Are you in any gas station?

No, I'm not interested.

Would you like to be?

I'm open to it. The reason why I'm at hotels is because I originally bought a route off a guy. Yeah. Somebody that was retiring from the business and I bought a route from him and he just had a bunch of hotels. And so I kind of just built it based off that little niche. Most gas stations, they're going to have an atm. And so gas stations, it would probably like to acquire, to get those, they would need to have a very poor operator or I'd need to acquire somebody's business from. At least just from a macro perspective. Now once I get in the weeds and start calling them, like, could that change? Probably. But so far that's kind of what I see.

Do you find yourself when you go. When you're just driving, living your everyday life, not even working, you go somewhere and you're like, oh, geez, this place needs an atm. Oh, this? Oh, they would crush it right there. Do you do that?

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Do you ever do something about it, like go talk to the manager? Right then?

Yeah, absolutely. If I think it's a good spot, then I, I will.

Do you have a story of a time that you've done that, like impromptu and it worked out?

No, I haven't done it too much. For ATMs a little bit newer and.

Or, or with vending machines?

Yeah, yeah. So, so like vending for sure. Like, like I'll Do I have an example of this. I don't think I. I do. Let me see off the top of my head. I know I was at breakfast the other day and I talked to the. I believe it was the general manager. I was just like, hey, I'm in the ATM business. You guys know I'm an ATM machine. Like, have you ever considered this? They're like, oh no, we don't have enough room in the waiting, like in the, the lobby. And I was like, oh, okay. Like, I wasn't really pursuing it that hard. But yeah, I mean, the idea comes in my head. There was an account where I'm not going to disclose the location, but yeah, that we did it at. It was actually one of my buddies, he brought it up to me and he talked to the management group and then we got the deal done. That's a great thing to do for like newer people getting into the business is like, if they see an opportunity, like, just don't be scared to take advantage of it. Right? Like sit there and then call the number when you get home, go up to the person and see what's going on. If anything, like, they're gonna say no, but it will allow you to learn like just some information that maybe you wouldn't have. Like, without asking.

Yeah, like, I'm thinking of something that I did. I was buying and flipping single family homes and we were scaling this around the state and I would pay people on Craigslist to go just drive around and take pictures of dilapidated homes and then submit them to like a Google Drive with their address. And I'd pay them like five bucks per home. And it had to be. There had to be a picture and an address. And then I would use a VA to go find the contact information and reach out to them because that's one of those things that you just can't really scale, right? And I'm thinking like, what if you. Okay with homes specifically?

Yeah. So when we were looking at San Diego, I was just cruising around just looking for just shitholes.

You could totally do that with this. Like, you could find a guy say, hey, I want to find gas stations under construction because they're going to need one. And I want to find hotels that don't have them or any apartment that doesn't have either an ATM or a vending machine. And I'll give you 20 bucks for every address you give me. And I'll give you 40 bucks or 100 bucks in. You can just go up to the person, say, hey, can I have my Business partner, come in person. Because I know you told me that in person. Closes, like, much, much higher than phone and queue up an appointment. What if you did that you just had. Because that's one of those things where you can't, like, scrape a list of hotels that don't have ATMs. Like, you got to drive around to hotels.

Yeah. I'll do you one better. What, what we do is we call and we say, hey, me and my girlfriend are looking to book a room there next week. And I was. And if they say no, then mark it down.

Yeah, genius, Genius. And you can have anyone make that call. Right. You could scale that infinitely. Has that worked pretty well?

Yeah, for sure. But I think the reality is, like, there's only a finite amount of places you could probably do this. There's more gassy. Like, there's only a finite amount of hotels. Right. So especially ones that are, like, big enough and stuff like that makes sense. So gas stations. This would probably make a little more sense to do this, to just like, literally scorch the earth. Because, like, the reality is if there's a gas station, there's going to be quite a bit of foot traffic. Right. Not all hotels get the same amount of foot traffic. And not all hotels, their customers really wants to demand or really wants to even use the machines.

Yeah, I, I remember you told me that for like a $5 transaction fee, you're sending a $25 to the vaulter who fills up the machine with money, and about a buck to the location owner, give or take. That leaves you with, you know, 250 or so. Do you have to, like, how often do. Do you or someone on your team have to go visit that ATM in person? If you have a vaulter.

Yeah, yeah. The vaulter is handling everything. So they're going to weekly, typically, to fill the machine, make sure it's working properly. Now, this is a professional vaulter, right. Like there. There's probably others out there that are not professional, but they're vaulters. For me, what I do is I actually will still hand deliver the checks. I like to have relationships with all my accounts. And so at the end of the month or the first day of the next month, I'll drive around to the locations and give the checks to the team, talk to them or the management of the sites, talk to them and see what's going on, build a relationship, stuff like that. Where most, most people will just do a direct ACH deposit and it's very transactional. Should I do that? Yeah, probably. To Scale. But I don't know what I'm doing right now works. I have enough time to be able to do that. There's other operators that are nationwide, and that's not even possible. So you can't do that.

Would you say that your growth is constrained by your. The city that you're in? If the city market you were in within the same geographical footprint had 10 times as many people, 10 times as many hotels, gas stations, yada, yada, yada, would you be able to just grow like gangbusters, or are you constrained by other factors?

There's definitely other factors. There's other operators in space.

Like for ATMs, specifically.

Yeah, ATMs, there's other. There's a ton of operators. Like, if, look, it was Blue Ocean then, and there's like, I'm just cracking into the business, then. No, I could grow to, like, infinity. But I think, like, out outside of, like, potential locations. I think the bigger factor for, like, growth hurdles is definitely, like, a crowded market. Again, it's harder to. From my experience so far, I think it's harder to have that value proposition to take over existing operators. Right. If I had the magic bullet and outside of just paying more commissions, because that's not a value proposition, in my opinion. That's what a lot of people do. They just say, hey, what's their current commission? Okay, I'll give you more. Let me get my, you know, machine here. I don't really roll that way. I'm not going to compete on commission. I don't think that's good business. But if there wasn't other operators out there, like, yeah, again, I could just grow it. Huge.

Yeah. Because I'm thinking, like, what if. And it could be like, quote, trying to solve a problem that you don't have. But let's say you were to identify five big markets, like, other side of the country, anywhere in the US and you were to take a thousand bucks and find five VAs to call up a thousand hotels in each market, put them all in a spreadsheet and say, all right, well, Jacksonville is only 20% saturated, but Charlotte is 40% saturated. And I know that my market, this is my baseline of what I'm used to, is 30%. So anything under 30%, I'm going to have an easier way of growing than in my market. And then you've got an audience. You can use your audience to find, like, operating partners in each area where it's like, listen, here's how I do business. I don't compete on price. I I hand deliver the checks, but I gotta install the machines. Like, I'm looking for someone. You can get a percentage of my revenue directly from that. That can be like just my presence. You install the machine, you hand deliver the check, and then we still use.

A vaulter, et cetera. Do you think that'd be possible? Yeah, dude, look, I love talking to you. Cause you're always thinking bigger. Is it possible? Yeah, for sure. One thing I would say, and this is not like take it to the bank gossip, but if you're gonna be spreading across the nation, the reality is, is like, will this niche work in Jacksonville? I don't know. Right. Like, you gotta go find out. Like, I don't think you just full send it everywhere. That's like a process now, obviously, you know, maybe different niches. It's literally. That doesn't matter. Again, so strip clubs, hotels, or not hotels, casinos and gas. Okay, so gas stations, strip clubs, marijuana dispensaries, and like casinos, I'm sure full stop. If you put them anywhere across the United States, they're going to do business. Right. Will hotels translate? I don't know. Right. Like, I gotta go test it out and I'm sure it will, but I don't know the type of volume and does it make sense to do all this stuff? So it just requires a little more dd in my opinion. Or just literally doing it?

Yeah. That's what's interesting to me about picking five markets. Because you could learn that the market you're in is a lot harder than average than the baseline, you know? And you take these five markets. Jacksonville is 10% saturated. Your market's 30. Everything else was 70 plus. And then it's like, okay, if I do, you don't even have to full send it. But if I do start making cold calls into Jacksonville or find an operating partner in Jacksonville, like, I could look up my market, be like, dude, what am I doing here? I need to move to Jacksonville. It's so much easier there, you know?

Yeah. And you're 100% right? 100% right. It just literally will just take me to just do that. Right? Yeah. But if you're already busy as it is, don't really need. Hey, if there's a will, there's a way, my friend.

That's true. Are you still wanting to sell your business at some point?

I'm open to it, I think. Well, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, at a certain point, for sure, I would say I was always building the business to create a bridge to bigger things. I think it's very hard to scale my business to, let's just say 20, 30 million. That's very challenging to do. And so know I would like to get into other ventures where that's doable. I think in my market, like there's service based businesses or just other things that like do these types of numbers right. Like I don't have where they don't need to go to five different markets just to get to that number. So that's kind of how I think about it. And yeah, it's nice to have liquidity and not have to raise a shit ton of money or just get a bunch of debt. Like you can just like if you see a good deal, you just do it right. Like, as opposed to like really selling the dream to a bunch of people.

Yeah, yeah. Last time we spoke, we talked about potentially raising money to growth by acquisition. Have you thought any more about that?

I think the challenge is just getting that operator in place. If I'm buying outside of like where my core operation is just getting the operator, it's not as, as easy as like just snapping the fingers, getting someone in there being reliable to do it. So I haven't thought about it too much, but it is an interesting idea. I think that I'm just kind of like still growing like organically and I haven't really seen a need to do that yet. But again, last time we spoke, like you mentioned these things to me and I probably should be thinking about these things more. And I'm trying to create a path where, or I am actually creating a path where I'm doing less of the day to day, like backend work. Cause I. That's really just not advantageous for me or it's not like the best use of my time. So I have, I had a VA and then now I hired another VA that's a little more. Has a more robust skill set to be able to handle mainly the back end of the business and the day to day operations. And so that will allow me to like more time to think about opportunities like that and see if we can like really pursue it.

Basically what I've learned from you and talking to you over a few short hours, like it doesn't even matter what you choose. Like whether you, you sell your business or you make it a $10 million business growth by acquisition or you go to freaking Jacksonville or you only do ATMs, like you're already doing the harder things. Like you've already mastered cold calling and if you can cold call, you can do anything. You're already like doing things that, quote, don't scale the high touch things, hand delivering. Like, you've already mastered these skills that you can apply to anything. So it literally doesn't matter what decision.

You make, like, you're going to crush it. You're going to do great. I appreciate it. I definitely would not say I mastered, like, the operational side of things. I think I've mastered the fact that I really don't like it.

Same.

Yeah. And so you just learn so much stuff, like, about yourself. And so if I were to acquire something that I would definitely need a partner in that to do the operational side of things and still be there with them and learning and stuff like that. But just allow me to do more of the sales and growth and stuff like that, which I know a lot of people like, they, they want to do that. But. So, yeah, yeah, I'm learning a ton, for sure. Definitely not a master. Still learning. And anytime I talk to people just like you, I'm learning a ton of another guy, Mitchell, who does ATMs. I mean, he's taking the concept and raised money and got a bunch of ATMs. Like, could I have done that? For sure. When I first started out and was tweeting, they're like, dude, how do I invest? They still do, right? They hit me up all the time like, can I invest in the business? And I've just always been like, yeah, like, I don't really need it, right? But yeah, could I take that. That money and acquired a bunch of routes and have a $5 million a year business right now? Like, yeah, for sure. Could have. Yeah.

But yeah, once again, it doesn't matter. You're in the game. So along those same lines, if. If an investor wants to reach out or an operator wants to reach out, where can they find you?

Yeah, the best place is Twitter. Just shoot me a DM or something like that, more than happy to chop it up if I don't respond or something like that. It's not because I don't like you as we get a lot of messages and if you're asking me this long question, I'm not gonna be able to type you a paragraph back, unfortunately.

But you do have a, you do have a course that people can buy, right? Where can they find that?

Yeah, I have a course. So what I recommend to people is, don't just buy the course. Check out my pin tweet. If you still don't know what to do and you're like, man, I still need more help, feel free to buy the course, it'll. It'll teach you a bun a bunch. But I think I have enough free information out there where you can get by. And then if all that stuff is still not enough information, feel free to schedule a call with me. I know a lot of people prefer to just at versus buy the course and so you can schedule a call with me, and I'll tell you my story. And I will tell you. Yes. No. What I think is right, what I think is wrong. Yeah. Those are the main ways.

Yeah. Everyone's different. Like, some people will read a pin tweet and go start a vending business. And some people, like, need you to hold their hand the whole way. Or they just want, like a. A paid call. So it's Quinn Q U I N N J Miller at Twitter, right?

Yeah. Yep.

Okay. Well, thanks, Quinn. This was great. I think a lot of people are interested in vending. I know I am. You've got an awesome business, you're an awesome person, and thanks for your time.

Yeah, thanks for having me on. We got to get you a vending machine next.

Dude, I'll do it.

I'll do it.

Dude, don't even tempt me. I'll start any business anytime it's a problem. It's a clinical addiction.

I love it. I love it.

So. Well, thanks for your time, man. It was good catching up with you again.

All right, man, we'll talk soon.

All right, see ya.