Vending Machines: How to make $500/day in Passive Income With This Side Hustle

Happy Tuesday. I hope you are having a great day. I hope it's been a great day for you. So far, no matter where you're at, I'm excited about this one. This is actually a passive income opportunity that I've been looking at for a long time. I've been thinking about it for a long time. Mike started showing up on my Twitter feed just here and there, and each time I would like it and be like, oh, sometime I need to look into that. I have since made the plunge and I am going to be purchasing my own vending machines and I'm going to be doing this in Lincoln, my area. So if you're in Lincoln, you know, back off. Okay. This is my area, my area for now. But I wanted to bring this to my community. Kind of wanted to talk through who's thought about vending machines as an income opportunity before answer some questions, see, you know, learn from Mike what he's learned from getting into that. So what I need from you audience hit the like button. Obviously that's the currency of YouTubers. We appreciate that more than, you know, I want to welcome Peggy to my community. So thank you for joining my paid community. Good to see you, Ben. And let's comment for the day. Have you ever considered vending machines before? And what type of vending machines are your favorite? Which vending machines do you go to? You know, I was at the library yesterday. There was some vending machines there. Which ones really get you excited? Like, oh, I want to go see what's in that vending machine. So, and we'll, we'll talk about that. And if you have questions as we go, please bring those up. Mike is the expert. Don't wait till after the video and ask me. I do not know. Ask him now. We'll get a, we'll get it straight from you're not a horse, but from the horse's mouth is the same. So Mike, let's start with an introduction. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? And I'd love to hear just a little bit about your story, how you got into this. And then we'll we'll get into vending machines after that. Yeah, absolutely, James. And thanks for having me on. Obviously a little bit about me is I grew up not too far from you down the road on I-80 in Southwest Iowa, a town of 600. Both my parents were kind of the hardworking Midwest entrepreneur type people growing up. So kind of had that initial exposure as a kid. Now I live in Oregon. I got into vending machines inadvertently. Not even as a, as a passive income stream, but actually my background's in human performance. And every time I flew through Denver or some layover, and I looked at what's in a vending machine, I was just like, this is terrible. And none of it's going to get after the obesity crisis of our military, not getting enough recruits in the door because they're not fit enough. And just kind of some of the things in human performance issues I would deal with. So that's how I got into it. And then I was like, wow, this is amazing. And, you know, I've really kind of set up, you know, I kind of joke, it's like my kid's college fund. And then, you know, every machine I had just kind of parlays into something else that with the goal of financial freedom and spending more time with my family. So excited to be here and dive into any or all of it. Okay, awesome. We are so aligned. And again, we were just talking before we hopped on here that, you know, on Twitter X, I still call it Twitter, but on Twitter, you know, I have access to the world, right? I'm making international connections left or right. Meet with Mike. And then right away, he goes, hey, wait, 402 phone number. Are you from Nebraska? And I'm like, well, yeah. And he said, hey, I grew up just down the road there. So it's crazy. Huge world, but at the same time, small world. So very, very cool. And Mike's a Midwest guy. So, you know, he's got, you know, good morals. You know, the Midwest is anti-rug pull. I will tell you that. So great to have you, Mike. And then are you so are you doing vending machines? Is that like all you do now or do you still have a job that you're working or how does it fit in? Yeah, it's one of many classic multipreneur. I consult for a couple Silicon Valley startups, have equity and a couple different things that I'm a part of. And then the vending machine business kind of grew organically. And now I have a community like yourself, James, that we're going to do for you and Lincoln, where I have 150 members all over the world that we're building, you know, cash flowing assets for them that are all trying to build that generational wealth and spend more time with their family. Like people that all grew organically. And the crazy thing, James, that not to get into too much of the weeds, but 95 percent of of the people in the community have kids. And I was like just blown away when I was looking at like, oh, what's the persona of the people in the community? And it's all people that want to spend more time with their family. And that's kind of the root of of it all, really. OK, love that. Love that. A couple of things from the audience. Every vlog. Good to see you. Can we do an NFT about this? Maybe we'll talk about that, Mike. What I've been doing is I've been creating NFT collections to kind of help fund the initial investments for some, you know, some things like this. So we can talk about that. That might be something maybe my community can do. We'll we'll talk about that. Ben, good to see you. He doesn't use vending machines. Change your mind. And then Scott says non crypto Jimbo. Yes. So I usually do crypto stuff, Mike. And so they call me crypto Jimbo. I'm about to come up with a vending machine version of that. I mean, a passive place Pelton is something I go to often. But yes, I really, really appreciate that. I once rented a Ferrari up of Turo. The owner's main business was in vending machines. Once a side hustler, always a side hustler. Yeah, that's always you know, when you are renting a Ferrari or something like that, you always ask, hey, what do you what? By the way, what do you what do you do for a living? You know, something that you ask. Awesome. All right. Well, so what I want to do first is I want to disqualify people from this. I like to kind of not waste people's time. So I like to say, who is this not right for? So first question is, how much capital do you do you realistically need if you're going to get into this? If somebody has $50 in their bank account, is this going to work for them? Yeah, that's a good question. Probably not for $50. I think the first disqualifier in my mind is it's not get rich quick. Like it's 50 to 60 percent margins that you know, you buy a Snickers off Costco.com for 75 cents and you sell it for two bucks. And then that just adds up over time. It's not a you make 20 grand in the first month and now you're set and you just time the market perfectly. That's not what this is. But as far as capital, absolutely. Like it's no different than getting a vending machine is no different than a car. You go to the vending machine manufacturer and they're going to ask, do you want to pay for it up front? Do you want to finance it over 60 months? And that's what I do. I just got three machines, 18 grand in value for my route here in Oregon. I didn't put a dollar down. And so, yes, I had to spend more than 50 bucks in inventory, probably around 300 to stock the machine the first time. But then, you know, any future inventory I buy is off the sales of what's sold on the machine. So there's ways to get creative with very minimal capital. And that's also what kind of led me to it. Pre-COVID was the housing market. I couldn't afford another down payment on a rental. So that's kind of what led me down this path. Also seeing them in the airports all the time. I'm like, I wonder how much this guy I'm buying a six dollar Starbucks from is making a lot of Yeah, absolutely. No, that's great. And what I want to take from that answer is, if this is something that you want to do, if this is something you're interested in and you think, wow, I'm willing to put in some work, make this happen. Don't let not having a little bit of capital be what holds you back from something like this. There are ways to make it work, whether it be whether we do an NFT collection or whether you're able to find financing from the vending machine itself. Don't automatically just be like, oh, nope, this isn't for me. There's ways to make it work. And I've had a lot of people that have turned down, you know, side hustles or other opportunities because they're like, well, there's no way I could come up with money to do that. But there is money to be found. So I just want to encourage people with that. So great. That's that's good to know. How much work would you say that this takes to get started? And then how much work does it take to kind of maintain? You know, when we say passive, nothing's really ever like, OK, just buy it and set it up and then never do anything. But how much work is involved? Yeah, so there's definitely some upfront time, whether that's popping into apartment complexes, just being built and trying to close them as a lead or just stocking the machine and understanding the workflow of inventory. Now, with my route here in Oregon, we do have between micro markets, cold brew machines and many machines, over 14 machines. And I have an operator that like I think I spend 30 minutes a week on my business. I have an I posted a job ad on Craigslist. I was like, hey, these machines need stocked once a week, once every 10 days, half hour machine. I'll pay you 20 bucks an hour. James, I had 40 applicants in the first 48 hours on Craigslist. And, you know, the first guy that I ended up hiring was a guy like me who's driving his kids to the town I live in for Catholic school, just like I was down the interstate. And so we just hit it off and he just sits in this town until his kids get out. So he's going to stock the machines. Well, cool story is now I've built my route so big that I brought him on full time. So he was able to leave his day job and he completely runs my route for us. And, you know, it can be truly passive if you get the systems in place to do so. OK, no, very good. That's super helpful. And can you give kind of an idea? And again, you can talk about your own numbers or just what you typically see. But what should people kind of expect where how much can they make? It really is what I'm trying to ask. How much do people make through this? Yeah. So typically the margins are 50 to 60 percent. So if if I have a vending machine and a hundred and fifty unit apartment next to, you know, Memorial Stadium, that's a bunch of college kids. That machine will probably do between nine hundred to thirteen hundred dollars a month. And so right there, you're you're profiting five hundred bucks. And then you start stacking the next one, the next one. The cool thing is with these micro markets and some of these smart vending machines where it's open faced and they don't have to fit into a motor. Now you can start offering things where the transaction values get exponentially higher. So yesterday my micro market sold to two deli sandwiches for seven fifty that that's fifteen dollars in revenue. That would take me 15 snicker bars at a dollar a bar to get to where I just sold two items. So that's like where things are going now is you can start you know, I sell these energy drinks like Celsius for four bucks. If I would do Dr. Peppers instead, I would be doing a dollar. So you can start to get like creative on increasing those revenue numbers. But I think kind of to get started, minimum amount your goal should be a thousand bucks a month with a machine and micro market could be upwards of a three to four X. OK, and then it's kind of then you can kind of just expand from there. That's that's my plan. Me and Mike actually have our kickoff call tomorrow for my vending machine venture. But my plan is always I like to dip my toe in, start small, get it working, and then you can kind of expand from there. Is that kind of what you generally see with people? Exactly. And then when you get into like ordering inventory, whether you order for one machine or five machines, the time it takes is you just start to parlay that that one machine that takes a half hour to stock a week. Now you get two or three. Well, now you're up to an hour and a half at 20 bucks an hour. You hire someone and now your revenue just went from a thousand to three thousand bucks a month. So you're spot on. You just it's a parlay model for sure. OK, very cool. And we have we have some college students that live with us. So I'm actually I'm going to go the first time and do it, but then I'm going to hand it off to them and say, hey, this is your route and that's going to be their their contribution to the Pelton household here. So love that. Awesome. OK, what would you say are the risks? So I always like to kind of get to, you know, do you see people that sometimes fail doing this or end up, you know, they buy a machine and they end up losing money on or what are some of the risks people need to watch out for? And what do you do to kind of mitigate how risky is that? Yeah, I think the first risk is people just want to get a machine. And I, James, I get hit up all the time like, hey, I got all these machines. The first question I ask is like, what's the revenue that that machine is doing? And guess what they say? Oh, it's sitting in my garage. I'm like, well, why the heck did you get a machine in the like the first first kind of risk is you got to find a good location or a good lead to put that machine into. I'd rather have one luxury apartment next to Nebraska than I would five Jiffy Loops. You know, if I have one luxury apartment doing a thousand bucks, that's better than five Jiffy Loops doing two hundred bucks. Like that's just kind of the whole the risk is bad locations and not having any. And that's where, again, with our community, one of the aha moments was like, well, if we can find people locations for them, that minimizes the risk of of them kind of trying to do this and falling on their face. OK, no, that's super helpful. I I have personal experience. Should I name him? I don't know if he's watching my friend, Aaron. OK, I won't give a last name. But he decided the same thing. He said, hey, I wanted to have a vending machine. So he found on Craigslist a bunch of gumball machines and then and he bought them. And then he was like, OK, now I need to go find places to put them. And he went around to all these different restaurants and he found out that he was actually competing mainly against the Make a Wish Foundation. And a lot of people were not as interested. They're like, well, we already do gumballs with Make a Wish Foundation. What charity are you doing this for? And he was like, well, yeah. And so and then he ended up with gumball machines in his in his garage. So I totally I agree with that. And everything I do, I always try to sell it before I put in the effort, the money and all that to actually make it happen. I say, hey, is there actually a market for this before? That's why I didn't start with an NFT collection for this. But hey, let's see what interest people have first. So love that. All right. Well, let's go over to what you offer. How do you help? So, again, this is something somebody could do on their own, right? Somebody could go find a location, you know, work out a contract. I don't know how any of this works by a machine. Yada, yada, yada. Try to decide which machine is best. But again, I always think it's better to find someone who's gone before they have the bumps and bruises of what to do, what not to do. And that's what you're going to do. But can you tell us about the vending accelerator program? Yeah. So there's kind of two ways we help people. There's there's the we'll get you in the community and kind of learn about all the tips and literally hold your hand through the whole process. And you're going to be with a bunch of peers and you're going to get some leads from us for the region you live in. But actually closing those leads, calling into them, emailing into them falls on you. And then there's more of a higher ticket offer like some of these guys here. You know, Jason in Minneapolis, he's gotten 25 locations in our community since January. And it's the coolest thing because he has four kids and he's actually given some of the kids ownership of some of the machines and which products to put in the machine. So it's a total family ran business. But with that offer, we actually call into those leads. I have a cold call center in-house that will call into those leads on your behalf and represent you. So if we're calling in, let's say Husker Vending and finding these kind of locations for you, and then you just got to go take the meeting and close it, which they're not going to take a meeting if they're not interested. They'll just say no, not interested from the start. So that's kind of a big thing about the community. I think the cool thing is we're all, we all have the same, you know, values of why we're getting into this and whether that's, you know, future generational wealth for your kids or whether that's like Joe and the older gentleman in the testimonial that just wants to retire three years before he's 65. So that's a little bit of everyone that kind of has that same freedom goal. Okay. Love that. And then, so is this with your program? I mean, I saw up here in this testimonial that he came with zero experience. Is that kind of who this is geared for is if you never have even thought about selling vending machines before you can use this program and be successful? Yeah. And we have actually a next level to the program that is going to be more for those seasoned people that actually want to go through like, Hey, we have three to five locations. Now we want to get to 20 or we want to buy a route now, or we're ready to hire that full-time operator, uh, to run the business for us. So, um, it kind of is everywhere in between we have the, like you and I, we had no experience, but you know, buying a candy bar for a dollar and selling it for $3 can't be that hard. So we'll figure it out that type of person. And then we have those people coming in that are ready to take that 20 K a month to the next level. Okay. Very good. So if you're interested, if this looks interesting to you, I want you to just go to this website. The get started now is just scheduling a call because I like that. You do it this way to Mike, that it's not just like, Hey, you know, sell everybody, whatever, you know, but it's, you meet with people and get their goals, their experience, where they're at, yada, yada. You know, you work through some of those get questions answered. Um, I love that, but you can go and schedule a call, um, to kind of talk through if this is right for you. And if you guys have questions right now, um, feel free. If you have them, probably other people on the call do too. So, you know, let us know what you have. Let's see. Um, I don't know anything about this, but there should be a rent amount for a machine and there is maintenance and stock refill. So after all the expenses, what will be the average profit on a single machine? Um, you want to talk into that? And I assume it's different per machine, but yeah, tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, that's a great question. So, uh, one of the common questions is like, Oh, what are they? What's the commission percentage? Or what are people going to charge me to, for rent, to put my machine in their building? And you would be shocked. Um, right now there's two things in your favor. Businesses are trying to get employees back to work and inflation. And so the first question I always ask is, yeah, we can give you a percentage of profits, but we're going to have to charge $5 for that Celsius instead of three 50. So now your tenant is going to be mad at you because we're, we're gouging them. And guess what they're going to say? Oh, we don't, we don't, we don't care. Like we just want them to be happy tenants so we can keep rent high. Or the second thing is we want to offer sandwiches and salads. So they don't want to come back into the office for work. And a lot of times we'll actually subsidize those salads for the employees as a, as a benefit to get them back in the office. So I have 14 locations, only three of them, um, asked about commission and we ended up agreeing on donating 2% of profits, uh, to a nonprofit, a mental health nonprofit that their ownership group was, was passionate about. So, um, at the other 11, uh, there is no rent, um, that they want, they want this as an amenity. And then I think from the second question, uh, that you asked V log is, uh, around profit 50 to 60%. Mine's closer to 50% cause I hire an operator to go stock the machines. If you want to do it yourself, it could be upwards of, of 60%. Okay. Very good. Love it. Um, and what's the average price for a vending machine? Yeah, it's a good question. So if you go to use drought, uh, Scott, you can probably get them on marketplace for, I don't know, three to four grand. Um, I did that for the first one and it stopped working after six months. So I only buy new anymore. Uh, they're usually five to $7,000 depending on the machine. Uh, if you finance them, that comes out to be around 180 bucks a month with the current interest rates. Um, and then micro markets around the, the 12 to, uh, eight to really 12, 13 grand, depending on how big you want to go with one. Okay. Awesome. And, uh, insurance for vandals who fixes, uh, and double question who fixes when broke two, two questions there. Yeah. So the insurance, I pay 20 bucks a month for my business. And I think that's a, either a million dollar or $2 million liability policy for the whole route. Um, and then from the, uh, uh, who fixes the machine, all my machines I get new now are under warranty. So the company I actually work with is based out of Des Moines, uh, evending.com. And so if I ever have any issues, I just FaceTime them when I'm at the machine and they walk through, I have no business or interest in being the vending machine expert. Like that's just not who I am. That's why I go new and warranties. Um, but that's just my personal preference. Okay. And that answers Scott, your question. Do they have warranties? Yeah. If you buy new, um, there will be warranties. So that's another reason, you know, sometimes it seems like it'd be better to, you know, try to cut costs and go use, but I'm with you, Mike, and just different businesses I've run. I've found it's better to get new, you know, it's history, you know, it's been taken care of. It has a warranty on it now. And in the long run, you actually will save money, um, doing it that way. And I've already looked a little bit. And a lot of these vending machine places do have pretty, um, pretty generous financing terms. And the goal would, for me would be if I, you know, tend to scale this, the goal would be that I can finance and then just use the profit from the machine to pay the financing costs. And then it ends up being something that I can scale pretty quickly. Um, is kind of the way I'm looking at it, but again, I'm a new, but Mike, does that sound like a plan? You're spot on a lot of these, uh, you get a new machine for let's say six grand. You don't put any money down. A lot of them won't require payment until 90 days after it's delivered. So you're doing 90 days of sales before your first monthly payment. So like those three, I bought, um, brand new was zero money down two months ago with the current interest rates that are high. My monthly payment is 180 bucks. Why did three months of sales? I did three grand in sales before my first machine payment. So I was able to add towards the principal and get as aggressive as, as you want, uh, to not cause there's no prepayment penalties. So I'll shave a lot of times these 60 months plans I have for my machines payments. I'll have them paid off in the first year. Okay. Love that. Yeah. And just, just so you guys can see, this was just one vendor that I was looking at, but, um, again, the 12 to 60 month terms, flexible first payment date, they know what you're trying to do and it's in their best interest for it to work out. Um, and so, and they even, this company offers, you know, promotions and programs. If you're to help, but these, this vending machine vendor, um, which that's kind of a funny vending machine vendor, but they'll, uh, they'll help, you know, get, get you sales as well. So, um, and that's, I looked around at several and they all kind of offered stuff like that. Well, and James, that's where I think it's, um, different from like buying a car and that this is an asset that's going to appreciate, you know, where we're from Warren Buffett's kind of a big and his first investment as an 18 year old was a vending route. He sold it at a two X multiple when he was 19, one year later. And the whole like thing he always talked about was how he regretted it. But you don't under like, if I, if I have a machine that does a thousand bucks a month and revenue, I can sell that for one and a half to two X multiple on yearly revenue. So if I have a machine doing a thousand bucks a month, that's 12 grand. I can sell that location for 12 to 24 grand. In fact, I have a student just now in Dallas who got a micro market lead, did 2,500 bucks last month. Well, it's too far of a drive with traffic. So he's going to sell it. He's, he's asking 30 K for 2,500 times, 12, one and a half X multi. He just made, who knows what he just made 25 K on this, this micro market, just from it's an asset like anything else. It's not a machine that just depreciates in value. Love that. Love that. That could be another strategy. Maybe you don't want to run vending machines, but you want to just get a market set up and then you, then you flip it. You could do flip vending machine market flipping or something like that. So love that. How often do you see certain locations not work out? Like it's just not bringing in sales and then you have to move the machine. How often do you see things like that happen? Yeah, it's not as common from our side. Cause we were, we're really picky on, on revenue generation and calculation where it gets a little tricky is when property managers lie about their numbers of, of people that live there. Or, you know, I have a student in South Carolina, we were kind of on the fence, like this probably C grade location. And she's like, yeah, the pool's used all the time. And that's not true. The pool's never used. So we're actually finding him a new location for that vending machine. But we're, we're really picky before we try to go into these places on how much revenue it's going to do before. Cause look, it's, you're just like you and Lincoln, we find you a lead, you run all the numbers. If it doesn't make sense, we just walk away where it gets a little tricky is when you go meet with that location or that lead and they're saying, Oh yeah, 200 employees work here. Well, we installed the machine and they all work from home. It's like, well, you just lied to us type of thing. So that's why we're really big on qualifying. Okay. Nope. I really like that. Um, let's see. I feel like I, Oh yes. So when you're the vending, uh, the vending accelerator program, can you kind of walk through, uh, how much you guys do, what do you guys do? And then how much is still up to me? This is kind of a selfish question cause I want to know for myself, but how much is up to me, um, to still do like, what kind of work do I still need to do? Yeah. So we try to do 90% of it. I will say, uh, you can't beat face to face. And so if we find you a lead and Lincoln that we call into or that eat responds to an email and they want to meet in person, we lean on you, James. The other side of face to face is it just creates urgency. If someone talks to us on the phone and then James pops in to say hi, and he's the founder of this vending company in Lincoln, they're going to have more urgency to want to work with us. So, um, but as far as like lead scraping, as far as teaching you, um, the type of machines, where to source products, what to price them at, how to handle vandalism, insurance, LLC, et cetera. Um, all of that's in the community that we go through. Um, but those kind of, you know, get them across the finish line meetings that are face to face. We need to lean on you for sure. Okay. And then how long do you kind of help out for, and then can you also tell us about the Mike's guarantee as well? Yeah. So the, how long question is, is currently, um, what's the right word? Probably under construction. Cause what's happening as you saw up above, like Jason and Chuck and these students that are having success, they actually want now that they've tasted, you know, three to 5k a month, they want, uh, they want to go to that next level. So we're actually, um, building out, we have that advanced program for them to keep them around at a, at a lot lower cost, um, where they want access to our cold callers or our outreach campaigns to find them more leads or more targeted. Like we find them, uh, a lead with property a and their, their portfolio has 12 more properties around Lincoln. Now we need to expand and go after a more targeted approach with that portfolio. So, um, that's kind of how we're, we're helping people the next step. And then as far as the guarantee, I mean, honestly, this is, uh, pretty much, um, one machine, like literally we're going to get you one location, uh, within six months, or we're going to keep helping you until you do, you know, like Brett is a great example in South Carolina, uh, month six is when they all came rolling in and now he has a micro market, um, and, and two more machines, but, um, it's not get rich quick. That's why, um, you know, we don't, uh, the program six months and not two months. I always tell everybody, uh, the reason it's six months is a machine takes 48 weeks to get manufactured. So there's that delay before you're even doing sales. So, um, the guarantee is just, I mean, it's, uh, blocking and tackling and it's a numbers game with the funnel of leads in your region. So that's why we do it. Okay. Yeah. And you pretty much answered this, but I just want to, you know, get, uh, make it clear. So from the day that somebody decides, Hey, I'm going to purchase the vending accelerator program to the day they get their first paycheck, we'll say how long on average would you say that that span is there? If they're quick about everything, uh, if they're quick. Six to seven weeks. Um, and keep in mind, that's from, we get a lead for them in the first week of the kickoff call to they close it. Let's say contract signed within three weeks, they order the machines another four weeks. And so those direct deposits from the credit card readers on the machines are every week. So you're, you're going to get your first deposit week, one of the machine being installed. So we're looking at six to eight weeks. Okay. Very cool. Okay. We've got a bunch of questions from the audience here. Um, I've been batching them. So let's get some of these first off Tim. Good to see you, Tim. I'm glad that you could make it. He's in Cote d'Ivoire and usually it is too. It's too, uh, the time difference is too hard to get there. So this actually brings a good question though. It would this be us only that you kind of support? No, we actually have a separate program for international. Okay. Awesome. Should they still go through that same vending accelerator program link and schedule there? Or is there a different link? Yeah. Or they could, there's a different link, but, um, they could also shoot me a DM on Twitter or YouTube or something that just says, you know, international vending and we'll send them to the right link, whatever's easiest. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. Maybe I'll grab that link from you after this. And I'll, I'll leave the link for everyone to Mike's Twitter also. Um, and I will say that he provides a lot of free value, honestly. So, um, if nothing else, if you're like, Hey, I don't have any money for a program, I'm not that interested in this, just following him on Twitter. Um, there is, he offers quite a bit of value. I've learned a lot just from following him on Twitter. Um, which is again, how I found this was just following him on Twitter. So I'll leave a link to his Twitter account here as well. And yeah, you can shoot him a DM on there, but yeah, great. Uh, good to see you, Tim. Um, he says we have some friends that adopted a down syndrome boy and that boy now has his own vending machine business. His spot owners love him. Yeah. That's amazing. How cool is that? Yeah, that's super cool. Um, and you know, honestly, like, you know, my kids are getting older. I have an 11 year old and I want to start teaching about business and entrepreneurism. And it's like, Hey, this is a good way to kind of get your foot in the door and get, uh, get your kids started. Well, and Tim and James, like there's no better way to teach kids economy one-on-one or economics than supply and demand of a vending machine. It's like, you know, the, yeah, it's just such a great real world example for kids to learn. Yep. Absolutely. I love it. Um, what are your main locations are businesses, apartments, retail locations, or does it kind of vary kind of all over the board? I think the lowest hanging fruit and like a college town, you know, like Lincoln is, is going to be those luxury apartments that are near campus. Um, the thing that I'm, I'm kind of most recently bullish on is a lot of, uh, manufacturing plants and, um, businesses that have a lot of employees that are there 24 seven. Um, even like trucking businesses where there's a lot of trucking that comes through, you know, I think right there along I-80, but, um, those are kind of the, the different types of, of businesses. Again, when we're, uh, vetting a lead Scott, we're focused on foot traffic and, um, that's kind of, you know, re retail locations are a little tricky because if they're going to go shopping at, at the mall, they're probably going to stop by the Starbucks while they're walking by it or, or something like that. So that's a little more difficult, but you know, there's a, there's a student I have in, uh, the Midwest in the winter and it's an apartment complex with 1200 units. Well, they're not going to want to go outside to get their candy bar or go down to the seven 11. So, um, they're going to go to his micro market. So, um, things like that, that are just, uh, kind of making it, uh, friction proof, so to speak, to get their, their snack craving. Yep. Gotcha. Can you actually, can you explain what you mean by micro market? I think some people might not be familiar with that term. Yeah. So our big thing with, um, kind of the latest is unattended retail. So as you go to the grocery store, if there's a line to do checkout, where do you go? You go to the self checkout where you can scan things yourself, pay for it yourself and off you go. Well, that's kind of how this is, is it's a kiosk with a literally a refrigerator and a snack shelf and you just grab an item and you, um, pay for it right there and then, and those typically do three to four X the revenue than a vending machine, mainly because you can do way more different types of items. Like I can, uh, my micro market, we have 112 different items from frozen burritos to bags of chips to cans of beans and everything in between. We're like a vending machine. It's whatever fits in those motors that can be pushed out through the machine to purchase. So you just have more flexibility and people, people like the whole self checkout idea. Yeah, absolutely. No, I totally agree with that. I was, uh, I was just in Tokyo and in Japan they have vending machines for everything. It's crazy. Like you just, you find, I said there was a pillow vending machine where there are pillows that you buy. Um, what's the craziest that you guys, the craziest type of vending machine that you guys have kind of found, um, with, for your students? Yeah, that's a good question. Um, I don't know crazy. I mean like nowadays there's all kinds of, uh, phone charger stations. You know, you go to a game and your phone's dying. You can go like to the little vending machine and pull out a battery charger to charge your phone. Um, I was literally going through Epley on over the weekend, flying out of Omaha and they had these massage chairs and it was like two bucks, two bucks for a 10 minute massage. And you just put your credit card there. And the minute you do the transaction, you're getting that back rub on the chair. So like there's all kinds of things. I think something that's super interesting is these ice cream machines. Like a lot of my students in Florida and Texas, um, California, like, you know, you can start charging six, seven bucks for a ice cream bowl. That's just pre-packaged, you know, dairy that just comes out frozen. So, um, the other thing that's really interesting that has probably the highest margins is bags of ice. Like I was just down in Florida before Omaha on two bags. I are $2 bags of ice that is literally a plastic bag with some water that's frozen. Yeah, no, that's great. Yeah. Ice cream and ice might not be the best Nebraska option, but yeah, if you're in Florida or Texas, um, for sure. And that's actually a really good point. I'm glad you brought up the massage chairs. Cause when we think of vending machines, you know, people don't think, but there's a lot of different types of vending machines. Like it might be depending on the location. Yeah. Maybe a massage chair or you just, um, there's all sorts of options. So don't think that this market is saturated. Um, do you want to speak to that? Some people might think, oh, there's all probably all the good vending machine locations are taken. This is probably saturated. Do you want to kind of talk into that? Yeah, I would probably say, uh, 50% of the leads we find our students like, like for you, James, our locations that are trying to get a new vendor. Um, and the reason they're trying to get a new vendor is because their current machines aren't being stocked. And so if you think of like the baby boomer generation, so people, my parents' age, I got into business and they're not used to technology. They're not used to using their iPhones. Like my mom doesn't even have a cell phone yet alone, like tracking inventory. Like I can track all 14 locations inventory from an app on my phone. The old days of tracking inventories, you have to drive by the machine to see what's left. And then you have to go back and get the groceries or snacks to put in that machine. So like a lot of these locations now want new vendors because their machines are just sitting there empty. I mean, I was in Denver during my layover and I was blown away. There was two machines there. And you could tell the admin stocked at least three weeks. And it was probably, it's probably some 60 year old. The only way he can stock this thing is by going by it to see what it what's empty. Well, he has to go through security. He has to go take the train. Like you think he's doing that to know that nowadays you put a credit card reader on that machine and you can track inventory from your app. Even if they use cash, you're still tracking the inventory that comes through that machine. Gotcha. Okay. I love that. Um, any last minute questions for people? Scott says, just curious, what part of Oregon are you from? I lived in hood river. We'll be in Ben for a couple of weeks next month. Yeah. I love bend, uh, in the Willamette Valley. So feel free to message me, Scott. And if you're, if you come through over this way, we're right on I five. Um, we could grab a coffee or something. Oh, love it. Scott's a good guy. So yeah, he's, he's not a creep or anything. So it's good. You'll be good. Uh, and we kind of talked about this, but ever do healthy organic superfoods or mainly junk food, or is it just depend on the location, depend on the preference of them and your preference or yeah. How do you, how do you decide what kind of machines to do? Yeah. And that's, that's the root of why I got into it. I didn't get into it for the, the passive income to start. In fact, I didn't even know what the margins would be. I got into it because, um, I was really passionate about healthy options. My wife's actually collegiate, um, and collegiate athletics, uh, working for, with a lot of athletes and the goal is to like keep these athletes healthy. And so when I called into these apartments, that was the root of, um, trying to, to really keep these athletes healthy with protein bars, sugar-free energy drinks, things like that. It had nothing to do with, um, providing a college fund for my kids at the time. Um, and so that that's kind of the root of it is to provide healthy and local options. That's what we're big into leading with. And probably a differentiator is we're not pitching our Pepsi to get the best deal or Coke. It's we want that flexibility to provide the healthiest options. Okay. Very good. And Hartson said, are these healthy vending machines can't claim to serve God if you're knowingly peddling unhealthy food for a buck? Um, I would, well, we won't get into a theological debate about, but yeah, no, totally. One of the advantages of you doing this is you can do vending machines that you want out there. Like you can't complain. You can't go if you're at the library and they have just unhealthy stuff and you can't be like, Oh, I wish they had healthier vending machines. Well, you can make that happen. You know, you can sign up and say, Hey, we'll provide healthier vending machines for the kids at the library. Um, and it could be a service to the community. Um, in a lot of ways, um, I will say my kids, every time we go to the library, they get something from the vending machine and it is always something unhealthy. These are vending machines that only have unhealthy stuff in them. So maybe that'll be the first place we look, Mike. Yeah. And it's also the hardest part is, um, you know, I remember when I stocked my first machine and it was like LaCroix and all these like healthier options. And at the end of the day, the number one seller was Dr. Pepper and diet coke. So I had to like meet him in the middle. And now it's cool to see the evolution of what I put in those machines four years ago to, to what they're getting now, you know, beef jerky versus a Snickers. Like you got to break bad habits and those don't happen overnight. So, uh, it's a tricky balance. I'm, I'm with you, but, uh, you can't just go all healthy and you got to really kind of chip away at it one item at a time. Yeah. The celery vending machine won't do very well probably. So there's ways you can be creative too, about, you know, put some education on the vending machine. I mean, there's, I've seen different things with like, Hey, did you realize how much sugar is in a Dr. Pepper? Try this LaCroix, you know, there's things like that. There's different, you can be creative. Um, this is you starting your own business. Okay. There's not like a, there's not a set way you have to do it. It's your business and a Michael help you kind of with the roadmap, but it's, you know, you can do what you want to do. So that's kind of a cool part of it too. Yeah. We actually just put in salads and deli sandwiches into our micro market cooler. And we purposely did the salads a dollar 55 cheaper than the subs, not because the margins were better, but because we're trying to create habits and where we want them to buy. And so there's total ways of even pricing psychology to get them to buy what you're trying to get them after. Yeah. And there's all sorts of, this is like you said earlier, this is a great way to learn marketing. I mean, you can do a B tests with, Hey, we're going to try these two. Oh, this sandwich, I sold a hundred, this one, I sold four. Okay. Let's switch that out. And again, there's a lot of, uh, business learning, uh, to be done through that. So I think that's amazing. Yeah. Um, Tim says, you'll find me a spot in the ivory coast. Uh, is that you, do you do the same thing you do here in the States where you help them find locations and things like that? Uh, not really. It's a little bit tricky to kind of dial into specific countries and things like that. But as far as like the framework of the education and, and being in the community, um, Tim, you'd have the same access as James, but yeah, we wouldn't be dialing into leads per se, like we do for people stateside. Okay. Gotcha. All right. Well, one last time, I'm going to give the call to action vending accelerator program here. I'll leave the link. Um, I want, if this is interesting to you at all. So if you're watching this and you're like, Hey, this is something I might want to do. I might need to talk with my spouse and just double check. I want you to go schedule a call with Mike. And I can say that because I'm not too worried if his calendar gets filled up. I wouldn't say this about myself because it's, you know, my calendar is pretty precious to me, but everybody go fill up Mike's calendar and say, Hey, I'm interested in this. You know, I heard about you from the James Pelton channel. Um, I think people should consider this. I get talked to people talk to me all the time. Hey, I don't have money to really get into a lot of the investments that you're talking about. I'm looking for a side hustle. Don't know where to get started to me. This is a really good one. This would be a really good place for you to get started. Um, I appreciate that. Yeah. And one step with that, James, I just want to add is, is we're big into educated decisions for people. Cause everyone's situation is obviously different. And so we'll actually do a free market analysis for folks. If they go through with the call, you know, we did it with you of like, okay, how many leads are in your market that fit our revenue generating criteria. So there is a personalized side of this too, with, with your kind of go-to-market plan that we'll do for you guys before you sign up and make it more of an Okay. Gotcha. And we, uh, we talked to that. You don't, um, you don't allow students within like 20 or 30 miles of each other. So like I'm, I'm in Lincoln and, um, that we're not going to have like two students in Lincoln that are fighting over the same locations. Um, you kind of work through that. Correct. Yeah. We have actually, uh, a gentleman in Omaha who doesn't get access to Lincoln and vice versa. So, um, yeah, Lincoln is mine. Roka. I actually live in Roka, but they're population 400. So I'm not interested in that market. Someone else can have the Roka market, but I I'll take a, at least part of Lincoln. Lincoln's a big city. Um, but we'll, uh, we'll, I'll take part of Lincoln. Um, one last question before I let you go. Um, I know that you do other passive income things as well. I know you do, you have run some Airbnbs and things like that. Is um, I don't know what, I guess, what else do you offer? Should I just send people to mrpassive.com to take a look, but what else do you offer? Yeah, I think so for now. Um, you know, there's always kind of things coming down the pipe that are intriguing and interesting. Um, we definitely have some long-term and short-term rentals across the country. Um, and, and we even got some FBA stores and things like that, but I think, um, the, the most stable and predictable assets I have right now are just, you know, snack and drink or food and water necessity to live. So at the root of it, that's kind of, um, my most predictable income stream right now that I'm, I'm the most kind of confident. And so to speak and not worried about what's going on externally in the market or rates or any of that. Yep. Absolutely. We've done a lot of Amazon stuff, but Amazon is so finicky because they change. Oh no, you can't do this anymore. And it's like, now we got to go change all our stores. Um, whereas this you're in a lot more control. Um, it's your business. It's not something that you need Amazon to run. This is your business. And, uh, I think great first business for people who have never ran a business on their own. So love that. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Hey, we will let you go audience. Thank you guys for showing up. I appreciate each and every day that you guys watch again. The only reason I can even interact with Mike like this and have him on my channel is because you guys watch. So thank you guys so much. We'll I'll keep bringing in passive income, um, and side hustles and just whatever I can find that I think is interesting. I will send to you. I'll keep you guys up to date too, on my journey game. Me and Mike are meeting tomorrow and then we'll kind of get that ball rolling and I'll keep you guys updated on, Hey, how it's going for me, what the process is like. Um, but appreciate you guys. And Mike, thank you for taking the time out of your day to hop on here and work through this with us. Oh, James is great. And, uh, thank you to all your, your, uh, listeners and yeah, reach out with any questions, but, uh, grateful for the time. Awesome. Appreciate all you guys and hope everyone has a great rest of their day, or if you're in Cote d'Ivoire, have a great night and we'll talk to you all later.