Welcome to How the Money. I'm Joel, I'm Matt.
And today we're talking outside of the box passive income ideas with mister passive.
That's right. Yeah, who doesn't want automatic recurring deposits Joel, just showing up in their savings accounts? I would love that. Yeah, with minimal effort, that's the dream. Well, so that last part I mentioned, the effort that is required. I think that is the part that a lot of folks get wrong. Actually, I was recently talking with a very smart friend and we got to talking about rental properties and he said, oh, yeah, I bet it's nice to have that passive income streaming in.
Not a let him know it wasn't, you know, I purely hands off activity. But we are not mainly going to talk about real estate today. We're actually going to talk about vending machines and what it takes to be a vending preneur. And the guy that basically invented that term, Mike Hoffman, that is who we are speaking with today and online. He's more commonly known as mister Passive, and I don't know of anyone who knows more about vending machines than he does. You know what it takes to
succeed when it comes to vending machines. So Mike should should we call you Mike or should we call you mister passive during our conversation everyday, Mike's Mike. Okay, Mike, mister p thank you for joining the podcast today.
Matt Joel, thank you for having me. This is great.
You wear like a gold chain with a big pea on it.
I don't know.
Efforts, I get the reference now, I'm a brandy coach. Just turn to me for that. Uh, Mike.
As you know, Matt and I we like to drink craft beer. But you know we're spending a lot of money on high quality craft beer from time to time. But it doesn't mean that we're not investing and thinking about our financial future simultaneously. Do you have something like that, Hey, you're being smart, you're investing in all sorts of things to grow your net worth, but hey, you're willing to splurge on what in the here and now.
Yeah. So for me, I have two kids under three, so we always splurge on kind of a daycare slash date night once a week. So every week we have a date night where you know, you're basically factoring in the cost of dinner plus the cost of daycare, and it's been you know, I just having a wife that understands entrepreneurial kind of grind and being on the same wavelength. I'm a huge believer and kind of that time.
Together very nice. It's so important. That's something. Okay, you want to hear a little life little hack that Joel and I have implemented.
Absolutely.
This is something we started over ten years ago. Is that we both had our first kids around the same time, and so we implemented a date night swap. And I don't know, ten years like, had we invested that money that we didn't stand on a babysitter, I'm sure it would be a quasi impressive number. Yeah.
If you got a friend who's willing, who's got kids similar age, and you put your kid to bed and then you you know, swap off seven seven thirty and then you go out to dinner with your your your significant other, that could be I.
Could save money the next week you're on the closs. I just gotta be willing to put that time in. I guess just think about it.
Oh, I like that, Okay, I was wondering what the swamp was. I was like, are the husband's swapping Dade?
Yeah, glad you explained it. Yeah, exactly what's going to go over watch his kids and vice versa.
Yeah, and it really does cut down on the babysitting costs.
But add up into minera though you don't think with the girls getting older. Yeah, thanks for sharing that, Mike. Uh Yeah, time with your partner like that, that's incredibly important. Yeah, while we're talking, I guess about our personal lives a
little bit. You were a strength and conditioning coach. How did you go from something like that that's I don't know, that's not an area like when you're talking about personal finance and you're talking about entrepreneurship, you don't typically hear about dudes that also used to spend a lot of time in the gym. But how did you transition from that to becoming mister passive?
Yeah? So I actually used to live in the Bay and the Silicon Valley and Mendo Park there and was a strength conditioning coach for a think of it as like a lab where we worked with high level athletes from Stanford and cow but we also developed a lot of software to predict injury risk that teams in our military would use. So I would travel a lot to these professional and college teams and even down by you
in the South Southeast. But long story short, traveling a lot requires you to be in an airport a lot, which if anyone's ever been in an airport, including Atlanta's, there are a lot of venue machines. So I still remember to this day. I was in a layover in Denver, flying back west from the East Coast, and our flight got delayed at eleven PM. They're like, oh, the pilot's gone over as hours for the day. You're gonna have
to stay in the airport overnight. So I went up to this venue machine and I was like, One, there's crappy options in here, and I'm a healthy guy at least I hope to be. And then two, this water i'm paying for. I know I'm paying two bucks, but I know it cost ten cents at costco and someone is making whatever that is, five hundred percent margins off of me while they're sleeping and I'm currently in an airport. So I actually went down this rabbit hole of venue.
And I had a couple rentals back in the Midwest from when I used to live there, But so I had real estate and things like that, So I always kind of had the entrepreneurial mindset. But that's how I got into vending was during that layover in Denver.
So, yeah, you started with real estate. Talk about that? Was that essentially this goal? Did you kind of have this? It sounds like it maybe the vending machine was like an aha moment, but also not an epiphany because you'd also already thought about kind of passive income and the role that it could play in your life, and that started with real estate.
Yeah, that's right. So I actually my first I guess, if you want to call it, outside of my W two income stream was a rental. I was coaching as a strength conditioning coach in Saint Louis at the time, and I got a seventy thousand dollars house at the And all I knew about real estate was you typically have to put twenty percent down, and this is right around twenty twelve. You have to put twenty percent down, and you want to you want to get the one
percent rule. And that's all I knew. I wasn't like a bigger pockets guy or read a bunch of these books. I was like, okay, seventy thousand dollars house the neighborhood oz Inc Had rentals listed on Craigslist for about nine hundred and fifty bucks. So I bought the house. I hired a property management firm. We listed it for I think nine to twenty five and I knew I was I was doing more than the one percent, so I knew I could afford to pay the mortgage and make
a little bit of money off of it. So that was actually probably five years before I got into vending.
Okay, So I guess while we're talking about that first house, I think I saw that you used your emergency fund to purchase that house. A. Is that correct?
But that's absolutely correct, Okay, B Do.
You feel that that was a risky move? Like if someone, if you had a friend who came to you today, was just like, hey, I'm thinking about doing this, I guess what would you say to them?
So definitely a risky move, there's no doubt about it. I think back in whatever that was twenty twelve, the market was in a completely different place and it just hadn't been going up and up into the right for this long. So if I was in those shoes. Today, I'd probably say there are other things you can do with that money to be a little bit more smart. Keep in mind too, the other risky part of this why I had to tap into an emergency fund is as a strength conditioning coach, I was the lowest on
the totem pool at that university. So I was literally making twelve hundred dollars a month, like that was my W two paycheck every month. So I had to dip in an emergency fund because you think about or seventy thousand dollars house, I had to put fourteen grand down at twenty percent.
So this felt like to you, like the real estate investing, did this feel like an necessity? Was it one of those things like, Hey, if I'm going to continue to do this job that I love, the only way to make ends meet is if I find income somewhere else. And then did you have this ultimate goal in the back of your mind after you saw the success of the first rental property, like, oh man, I want to quit my day job and continue to ramp this up.
Or is it just kind of like no, this is this is supplemental income so I can continue to do the job and the career that I'm interested in.
Yeah, at that time, it was more supplemental, just because look, we were renting it out for nine to twenty five. After expenses and mortgage and escrow and all that, we were probably making three hundred bucks a month, and I couldn't keep affording to stack more rentals because it's not like I just had another emergency fund that tap into for my next rentals. So it was more of a that's an extra three hundred bucks a month type of thing.
But when I got going down the vending route later on, that's when I really realized, oh, wow, I can stack vending locations way easier than real estate properties and even buy these machines with no money down, and like you, like, you could just use leverage financially a lot more simpler than what's real estate.
Yeah, it's a bit more, a bit more feasible. So we're yeah, we're talking about passive income. But before we kind of dive into the specifics, do you think that the concept just gets over hyped by folks who are out there trying to sell a course or trying to get you to buy their product, that kind of thing, Like you always hear about passive income. But I'll you know a lot of times there is. Sometimes it's a part time job, sometimes it's you maybe even just selling
your time. But yeah, I'm curious to get your thoughts there as somebody who's there in the space.
Yeah, so it's interesting. The thing so mister passive came about, I wasn't really like, I wasn't in these courses. I wasn't reading all these like oh, make money on YouTube or faceless YouTube or all the different things that are out there now. So I wasn't really in the know of that hype. But now I'm really starting to see it, and I just come back to you can make whether it's vending our real estate, you can make it as passive as you want to, granted all the upfront effort,
it's just you're going to let go of control. And I see this all the time with our operators in our community. Is you got those that will have a day job and they'll go stock forty machines, and then you got people like me where I quantify the value of my time and like, I am totally fine with finding an operator and letting them take control of some of those tasks that I don't think are worth my time, and I will cut into my margins happily to make it as passive as possible.
Yeah. I mean the same thing in real estate when you hire property manager versus self management, and you're exactly you're paying to unload the hassle and the time suck and the potential frustrations of that gig. But you yeah, you minimize profitability. And you also there are other troubles you might run into with that strategy too, which we want to get into. I'm curious too though, before we get into it, we want to talk a ton about,
you know, vending machines in particular. How does like traditional investing in retirement accounts in the stock market, which is incredibly passive as well, but it obviously takes time to build up a nest egg, how does that factor into your passive income masterplan.
Yeah, it's it's a huge part of it. I mean we have we've kind of set up a system or I guess a pie, so to speak, and split up the pie in different sectors. You know, I look at it as like a passive income Disneyland, you know, vendings and the cash flow Kingdom. We got the the stock market, and long term kingdom over here, and there's just different you know, the real estate kingdom with our We have
an airbnb in Florida that we bought sight unseen. So there's just there's different pieces of the pie and we try to keep it as balanced as possible. You know. The thing with vending compared to like our our index funds and things like that, is it's actually a lot more stable these days. I mean, you guys probably follow
the market a lot more close closely than me. But it's been an interesting ride since the election in November, and and each day I'm like, wow, I'm way up, and then by the end of the day, I'm like way down or y versa. And it's like, holy caligator, because.
You said you think we might pay more attention, but not really. It's pretty passive on that too, so I'm not I'm not really looking all that much, which is some of the benefits, I guess of being kind of a long term passive investor.
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, so I think all of it's important. It's it's all it's just like you know what we were talking about earlier, Like even with exercise and diet, it's everything has a place in moderation right now. There's no doubt there's a revolution with AI and and people love to use that buzzword, but I look at it as what are the industries that are going through massive disruption are ready, and then how do we make those
things passive? So the reason like I'm so bullish on vending and not to like plug vending, but venning is going through a massive disruption right now. Like if you guys go into the like when you fly to Vegas, when you land in the Vegas airport and you go down the escalator where it says welcome to Las Vegas.
There's literally a seven to eleven store at the bottom of the escalator that is employeeless, and you walk in, the gate opens to the store with your credit card, and you walk out, Like the AI sensors literally track everything you grab and like, to me, that's unattended retail. That's technically vending. But like people think of vending as like the machine with a lego set in at the
O'Hare airport. And so the reason I'm so bullish on vending is because not because it's a new concept, it's like it's going through a massive disruption with unattended retail with AI everything around it, and I think that could
be for anything. I mean, I come back to like some of these Airbnb tools and things that now you can like we bought our house sight unseen in Florida, but we backdoored the comp comps of it by reaching out to the neighborhood properties that are on Airbnb and got in with the PM and we knew W two within ten percent or sorry W nine, like revenue wise, what it was going to do as a rental by just and now with AI, you like that would be so much more streamlined.
Yeah, okay, so let's get all the way into vending machine talk. You talk about real estate and hey, I want to buy that next property, but I don't have twenty percent to put down on it. It's going to take me a heck of a long time to get going in that space and to really ramp up my real estate investments. So and then you have this, you know, airport moment where you're like, somebody else is sleeping right
now and they're making money off me. Is was that kind of part of the push into ventding machines saying listen, the capital that's needed is minimal and this is something that can scale, Like what are the benefits of vending, you know, running and owning vending machines as opposed to other ways of trying to pursue passive income.
Yeah, so at the time, all I had and was the real estate properties, which required twenty percent down. I also bought some miners for bitcoin at the time, I think it was like twenty eighteen or twenty nineteen, and those required a little bit of a significant investment of the miners and the facility and stuff. So I was
testing out a little bit of different things. But when I bought the or when I was in that airport and I saw that machine with that water, at the time, I didn't know that you could buy those machines with minimal money down. I also didn't know how consistent the cash flow would be. The other thing that really played a factor at the time was I hated looking in those machines and seeing the types of products that were
sold in those machines. Like if you look at when I got into this before COVID to now like now you literally these smart machines. They are just smart coolers with a lock on the door and a point of sale, so you could it's just shelf space, so you could put in theory. I mean, we have people that will put packs of eggs in there, they'll put keifer in there, they'll put olive oil in there.
It's just a lot of like a hippie vending machine.
Yeah yeah, but like it's like a corner store machine.
I guess a Brussel Sprats and my vending machine.
Yeah, but you think about it. I mean, honestly, like we have tampons, we have day quill, niquil, Like Walgreens just announced they're closing twelve hundred stores. Well, what do people willing to pay for for convenience? And so it's just kind of like this perfect storm of the industry alongside technology disruption.
It certainly only makes a vending machine possibilities sound well, extremely.
Well, specifically to what you consider these smart coolers essentially, which is what you like, I've seen you post a picture of this up on X But like with one of those, like, how much are we talking about being able to make from a single well placed quote unquote vending machine that's actually kind of looks like a mini fridge that's.
Sensors and and all this other other sort.
Of stuff like that's that's what folks appetite here as we are talking about vending machines.
Yeah, so we we had an old school machine with the kind of the motors and the you had to enter a C four on the on the little code and then snickers would spiral down and then shoot down into the chute and you had to grab it. So we replaced one of those with a smart machine, same
exact location as an apartment complex. We went from doing twelve hundred dollars a month in revenue to twenty five hundred dollars a month in revenue really in one month, and it's purely off of when you open that so you have to the doors are locked on these smart machines. You have to put a credit card or tap your phone to unlock the door. It authorizes that you actually have money in your account, it's not just a gift card. And then whatever you grab once that door is unlocked,
the AI cameras track it. So you build out a planogram that's like, oh, the case of eggs is in the bottom right corner, the laundry detergent pods are in the bottom left corner. So once that door's open, people will just grab multiple things because you don't have to re enter on a machine a code. So watch something inspired. Yeah, you're reducing friction exactly.
Are going to try the keyfer Yeah?
Yeah, like your friend told me about it, time to hop on it.
But yeah, but think about it, like people go to a machine thinking they're going to get a water or a bag of chips or snickers, and now that the door's open, they'll just grab three different things and walk away and it just charges your cart. Man.
It just makes me think of the advice I would give to people using the vending machine, though, would be to not use them, just because of how expensive it is and how hey, you could go buy a case of water at Costco for the same price you're getting one water from the vending machine. But I guess on the other side, you can capitalize on the fact that people like vending machines and they like convenient.
Or if you just don't have the ability to you know, like let's say the car broke down, but you're there at the apartment complex and you're like, dang it, I really need some eggs. I'm willing to pay a slightly higher premium in order to have that now, because guess what, it's time to feed the kids, time to cook breakfast. Yeah, but Mike, we've got plenty more questions to get to. We're gonna ask all about vending machines, what it takes to be a vending preneur. We'll get to all of
that right after this. Okay, we're back from the break.
We're still talking with Mike, mister passive about investing for it to get passive income, and specifically we're talking about vending machines. And it is this is a fascinating subject, Mike, because I think most people listening, myself included, before I started to dive into this, I am thinking about the old school Snickers machine, and I am thinking about the fact that like, who uses those anymore? But you're right, like you can get legos. I mean, there's a million
things you can get. The vending machines are made in all sorts of different shapes and sizes and varieties. Now, can you talk to me maybe about what other kinds of ending machines exist? And also you mentioned the you know, increase in revenue from getting that nicer smart machine, the cooler version. Yeah, how much those machines cost.
Yeah, So there's all kinds. There's kind of the what we would call smart machines, like we're talking about here with the coolers that are locked and the point of sale on the door. And then there's the open market. So if you think of everyone stayed at a Marriott or a Hilton where there's a little market connected to the check in desk, and theory you can build out those are just shelves and you can just build those.
We do a lot of open milk markets at like office buildings and throw a camera on there, and you really don't have to worry about theft because you can throw a sign on the market that says you'll be to or have hr to it, you'll be terminated if
you get caught stealing. So in those scenarios where you're really not worried about theft, that you're not worried about the drunk Kig coming home at two A and rating the open market, there's those options, And then you know, I'm a huge believer in these smart machines just because the flexibility in the shelf space. You can do if it fits on the shelf, it doesn't matter if it's dayquill or if it's a twelve ounce celsius, you can do whatever you want.
Interesting, Okay, So what makes in your opinion, like, what makes the best location for one of these vending machines or one of these smart coolers.
The simplest way I would say it is if it has a full parking lot, it would it would do great. So if there's people there exactly so, so backing up, think of it this way. You got two types. You got high employees, so a business with a lot of employees, and then you got high foot traffic. So think of like a YMCA, think of an urgent care of that hospital and apartment complex. Any of those type of places that have high foot traffic or high employee counts would both crush it with machines.
I'm thinking about maybe early Another early vending machine example would be red Box, right, and red Box dominated and now their I source in front of every store possible, Like nobody is literally going is going down to the CBS or to Kroger to rend a DVD to watch
that night. So is that like an example of an opportunity maybe for vending machine entrepreneurs to say, listen, I want to take the spot that the Red Box occupies or has occupied in all these locations, and I want to like offer something much better for the retailer and for consumers.
Yeah, I don't know if we're going to go that far. I think the reason the Red Box is the is the I soore is because it's not being used, so it's been sitting there because DVDs are no longer. I would take it a step further, and you think about that convenience store you go into where you go to the back corner and it's got all the fridges and it's got a diet coke cooler and a Pepsi cooler.
Those coolers are made by the same company that makes the smart coolers, And so I would go to it where I would challenge you that, like by twenty twenty eight, that convenience store where the Red Box is outside, when you walk in, there's either going to be point of sales on every door of those coolers so you don't have to go to the front register and wait in line, or there's gonna be AI cameras so when you walk in you put your credit card in that that AI
tracks you through the shelves and what you grab when you walk out. So it's Almos, it's going to be employeless. I mean that's where we're going that Vegas. Uh uh just walk out technology by Amazon with for the seven to eleven it within the next two years, Hudson bookstores and airports will have no employees. I am very confident in that. Okay, We'll just think of like at the grocery store, the self checkout, Like people now there's bigger lines at self checkout because they don't want to talk
to anyone. They just want to go grab their stuff and leave.
Yeah, I'm gonna have to turn off the podcast I'm listening to in order to talk to the which I'm you know, I'm fine with because I'm a I'm a chatty guy, but still I get that, Mike.
Okay. So Joel asking about the red box locations got me thinking because on one hand, I was like, oh, yeah, that's smart because there's already maybe the infrastructure needed in order to run a vending machine or a smart cooler because there used to be something here. How remote can you go with these machines? Like, I guess what is
the infrastructure that's needed? Obviously, I'm guessing you need some sort of electrical hookup, but like, do you need Wi Fi as well in order to be able to communicate with the payment service.
No, so yeah, you just need one ten bowl so just normal outlet and a lot of these outlets you just like to have two outlets. You just need the one and run a searge cord to be protective. And then we like we actually prefer not to be connected to Wi Fi just because like if Wi Fi goes down and let's say it's a location that doesn't have strong Wi Fi anyway, So we do these routers on the machines on the back of the machine that connects
to two different cell towers. So we'll typically do like Verizon and AT and T. In case one of the cell towers goes down, it automatically kicks over to.
The other one using five G instead of WiFi exactly. Yeah, okay, all right, interesting, Okay, what about let's say you find a primo location and you're like, boom, this is my ticket to riches.
Got all the foot traffic, it's got all the employees.
You'll stick this vending machine in here, and I'm gonna crush and I'm gonna make money while I'm sleeping, well, do you have to typically pay for that space? Do you have to pay a commission to a landlord or something like that. How do you go about once you've identified places that a vending machine would make sense in your opinion? Or I don't know, maybe can you cannibalize somebody else's business too and say go to a the
landlord and say, hey, these crummy vending machines. I could do something way better than that for you, Like, how are you identifying opportunities and do you have to pay for those opportunities?
Yeah, so you'd actually be surprised. We probably have half of our locations don't have a revenue share and they or we don't have to pay rent. In fact, a lot of these places view it as an amenity for their employees or their residence at depending on what type of location. I see both sides of it. Like you know, clearly, if you don't have to rent space through a revenue share, your margins are going to be a little bit better.
But the reason I don't mind paying a revenue share pain rent is because when they have skin in the game to help you promote the machine to their employees or their residents, they're going to be a lot more motivated. So if they do get a revenue share from you or a rent check based on profits or something, they're going to want to help market it for you, whether that's promos, whether that's like employee the month credit to the market downstairs or whatever. So I actually don't mind that at all.
So when you do when there is a rev share, typically what's that split?
Does it very?
I guess depending on the.
Yeah, yeah, And you can also parlay it. We do a lot of parlaying where it's like, okay, if it's above five property, if we know they have a bunch of sister properties in the area, or a bunch of sister businesses, or let's say it's a YMCA chain and we want to get the whole whole region, will parlay and say, oh, it's let's say it's three percent up to five properties, and then then it jumps up to eight percent.
Okay. My mind keeps going to these smart coolers. Ever see, like, ever since seeing the picture of it that you posted online, I'm kind of like thinking through different spots, like where we live.
It looks like sticking, it looks like a bookshelf, doesn't it. Yeah.
Yeah, it actually like I get why property owners and quote unquote landlords might even want to promote it because they do look classy. It's not like like the old school vending machines where it's this giant thing that actually looks like a giant can of coke or something with the colors and people are hitting on it trying to get a free coke out of it. It's it's a different type of vending machine. And even saying vending machine isn't I feel like it's not quite fair, but like it's like.
Using old school terminology for something it's changed.
So we're talking about the difference between like these old school machines and the new ones. Did you say how much these new machines cost?
Oh, so that one would be you're putting me on the spot. I think they're around like eight or nine grand.
Eight or nine grand.
If you're in our community, I'll just give a little plug here. I think you get fifteen percent off. So I think our community pays around seven or something.
Oh nice, Okay, So I assume that that's a significant investment over kind of like the old school style of vending machine. Do you feel like that it's worth it to get some of these newer machines. And you've documented how folks are able to pretty much overnight double their double their revenue on that machine. Is it worth it to go ahead and just splurge for this nicer machine if somebody's wanting to get into it.
Yeah, I would recommend that. One. It helps your sales pitch on the front end because you're not leading with like an iore traditional machine. But two, I mean we do this all the time where you know, if it's as so so location, we'll test it out with a traditional machine, And a traditional machine is still fifty five hundred or six grand, so you're still unless you buy it used off Craigslist like I did for my first
one and then it broke four months later. But you know, you're still if you're going to spend six grand for a new new, quote unquote old school looking machine, you might as well just splurge and get a Because for us, when we switched out the traditional machine with the smart machine, I mean that's an extra twelve hundred bucks a month.
And yeah, you've talked too about how financing those machines, just paying for them over time can allow someone to get in to kind of get reap some profits. Instead of feeling like they've got to save up the full price of the machine ahead of time, you're able to move a little bit quicker and kind of prove out the methodology of that passive income attempt right exactly.
And you don't even have to really get caught up on the interest rates at the time, like, oh, rates aren't coming down type of thing, because on a seven thousand dollars machine, if you finance it that let's say fifteen percent. The difference between fifteen ten percent and eight percent on a machine, or even five percent on a machine is only like seven to eight dollars a month, because it's only on a six thousand dollars loan or
whatever it is, depending on your money down. So for us, we always prefer to finance and then pay them off in a year. That's kind of how our model is.
It's a lot easier to stomach than yeah, going all in on real estate. Okay, before the break, you mentioned your sort of epiphany moment when you sort of realize that wait a minute, vitting machines. It was a bottle of water. And I think you even said something about somebody buying that at Costco? Is that typically what you do when it comes to supplying or stocking some of these different vitting machines. Where are you getting the stuff to stick in there?
Yeah, so that's where I started. We live in a town that has Costco but doesn't have SAM, so we went down the Costco train. I actually am releasing this month a platform that I've negotiated direct pricing with folks like Coke and Pepsi and all these brands because the problem with Costco as you're missing out on rebates, and a lot of these brands want you to buy their products so they'll give you significant rebates, and so Costco.
If you're getting started and you want to try to build a out yourself, absolutely you just go wherever it's cheapest. I mean even Walmart supercenters have good prices on salads. But the problem about going there is you know you got a six day shelf life. So I mean, we have folks that'll go to all kinds of places based on what they have access.
To, So talk about getting that route started. Let's say you have a couple of machines. You have to kind of monitor inventory, be purchasing new inventory showing up to restock the vending machine, especially early on, like before you hired staff to kind of help do some of those things for you, What was that like and what's it like to manage a handful of bending machines.
Yeah, So for me, and you'll hear this a lot with people in our community, is it's actually kind of therapeutic to stalk a machine. Like you were saying earlier, Literally, you have your pods in, you're listening to a podcast, you're listening to music, You're in your own little element. If you have a family, you're just kind of you know, it's an excuse to kind of go off on your own. And the great thing with this is you can stalk
on your time. So if you're a like with our operators that we hire, I always say, if you're a morning early riser, ghost stalk in the morning, if you're a night owl, ghost stock at night. It just needs to be consistent. And so for when you get going, you get into a battle rhythm. So when I got started with my first couple of machines, and I didn't really feel comfortable making it passive yet because I didn't even know what I was delegating because I was literally
learning this as I went. I would order product once a week from costco dot com. They had free two day delivery above seventy five bucks, which you're clearly going to hit that when you order product. We didn't have a garage at our house, so I bought a little landscaping shed from Costco, a little like four by six landscaping shed. I put it right inside the fence to our yard, right next to the driveway, and when these boxes came in from Costco, I would just throw the
product in that landscaping shed. And then you're tracking everything from your phone, so I could log in right now and track of all, you know, sixty machines. I could see what's selling, what's not, what we need to restock it with, And so I would. When I was getting started, I would whenever I go out to hit balls or go out to the gym. Usually at the time with two machines, you're spending about an hour a week. So I would block off, let's say Fridays, because going into
the weekend with apartments, you want those baby stocks. So I would look at my phone, say, okay, I need eight snickers, ten diet cokes and I throw throw the inventory in a bucket, and I had one bucket per machine, and I throw in the back of my car. And when I was heading out to run errands, I would literally go buy the machines with my pods in and do the stalking. And that's kind of how it was set up.
Did keeping track of the inventory and like what was selling and what wasn't did that help you make some changes and identify maybe snacks that weren't selling so hot, and say, wait a second, people don't like the orange fans to drink, they want the purple fans to drink or whatever it is. Did that kind of help you make changes? Like, oh, wait, coke zero instead of regular coke. Turns out folks don't like the keyfer Yeah yeah.
Yeah, no, absolutely, and you start to I mean, I'm a huge believer in doubling down on what's selling the whole, like pricing psychology stuff I didn't know what I didn't know, Like I didn't know why PEPSI will put a monster next to a cheaper spinoff energy drink on purpose because people will just pay more for the Monster because they think it's a nicer product, because it's listed for a higher price, Like I didn't know any of that stuff.
So for me, I was like fascinated, Like, Okay, if we're selling smart waters, but we're not smelling selling any Gatorades, let's pull the Gatorades and now let's add perier water, let's add desawny water. Like double down on the category that's working. So if you're selling a ton of Celsius and Alani, pull the rock star in the monster and double down on quote unquote the newer, modern, healthier energy drinks because that's probably like a college kid type property.
I mean, we have two apartment complexes. This will blow your mind. We have two apartment complexes. They both have a smart machine and each one one of them is for college kids that go to Oregon. The other one is for the crowd that's like fifty to sixty five years old that will just rent their whole life. The one machine for the college kids literally has products in it I didn't even know existed. Like I didn't even
know what these wrap snacks were. I didn't know what these like Skittles gummies were, Like.
The kids, Oh my god, Dune.
Yeah. And then the other apartment complex literally will sell thirty diet cokes in two days.
You gotta know your clients.
And I'm like, well, he's crazy. That's so funny.
Exactly, you double down on what works so like to me, I'm like, wait, should we And the great thing with these smart machines, it's like, well, shoot, should we put a six pack of diet coke in here? You can?
That's so crazy. Okay, So, like you mentioned multiple, you know, you've got these two different apartment complexes. How many machines overall do you have? Like I guess I'm curious as to how big you can get? Do you You just exhaled? Do you even know how many machines you have?
Yeah? Well I just got to know ifcation. We have seven that just shipped today, So I think we're up to sixty machines. Okay, we do. We do have two routes. I bought a route out of state and run that remotely or have have an operator that runs that remotely. I spent about an hour a week on that route just helping like close more locations, Like that's the only thing that's not passive that route for me. And then we have the route here in Oregon as well, which
we have seven machines shipping. We just had four come last week, so we're kind of at that point now where we know what works. Were also not the new kid on the block anymore, so there's a lot of referrals and stuff, and like we were talking about earlier, people are now seeing these smart machines out there, so they want that.
So you have people now working for you to help make this passive so that you can, you know, work your day job, make a lot of supplemental income from the vending machines, but also not have to put a whole whole lot of time and effort into it, except for maybe like the business building aspect of it, which sounds like you're more interested in how important are like systems and people to growing your passive income and making these vending machines become more like a lucrative, you know,
side hustle instead of like a massive part time or full time job with big headaches.
You know, I think that you just hit the nail on the head. That is the number one bottleneck I see with our ventingpreneurs is they want to do everything, and I think it's like the classic just I want to do it. I'm the only one that knows how to do it, mindset or just honestly being scared ask for help. I mean, we've all been there before, and
so I think that's for me personally. I spend an hour a week on our vending route, and honestly, it's literally I have a half hour blocked out on Fridays to any properties that are close to signing a contract with US. I follow up with those like high leverage, you know, because as you add locations really parlays the revenue. But then also a half hour to check in with our gms of each route. But I see in our
community all the time, guys, I blows my mind. They're like, oh, well, I don't want to hire that twenty dollars an hour stalker because now instead of my profit margins being fifty percent or forty percent, And I'm like, yeah, but what if you were doing twenty grand instead of ten random month?
Yeah yeah, it's like short sighted to yeah, yeah, to avoid growing the thing because there's only so much one person can do. But if you bring other people in, as long as you're a savvy manager and you're looking towards other opportunities, it's like the sky's a limit.
Yeah, and with these type of kind of these type of people you're hiring, you literally have a lot of flexibility with finding good talent, you trust, because if they have a morning job, they can do it in the afternoon. If they have a night job, they can do it in the morning. If it's Monday versus Tuesday, I don't care, it just needs to be done one of those days every week. Like, there's so much flexibility to find good
talent because it's like DoorDash er uber. These workers can literally that's where I found a lot of our best talent initially was on Craigslist gigs, not even Craigslist jobs, but gigs because these people probably already have day jobs and so they're responsible, they have kids, they need supplementary income or else they wouldn't even be on there.
Yeah, Okay, I don't want to cover ground that we've already covered. But you mentioned earlier something else you said was like you mentioned salads. But then the downside there is like it's got a shelf life of maybe only six six days. Like what are the craziest things that folks in your network that they're selling on there or stuff that you've seen I guess I think about here in Atlanta, there's like a pizza vending machine that made
the news at some point last year. Obviously this that goes beyond what we're talking about here, but like I guess, in your machines, what's like, what are some of the more kind of out there items that you were selling.
Yeah, so the pizza vending machine is definitely a fun one to watch. You also got the Lego machine at O'Hare. Always cracks me up because there's not a Lego set in there for less than seventy five bucks. But if you think about flying with your kids across the country for six hours, like I would pay seventy five bucks for a Lego.
So branding play for Lego, I'm sure.
Oh absolutely yeah. So I think for us, it's it's really kind of diving into some of these niche convenience items. Like we have one of our entrepreneurs in the Dallas area. His wife's actually a beaued a Titian or something, and they have one of these smart machines on college campus and they'll sell shampoo for like thirty like high end shampoo for like thirty five dollars. Gee, and that machine that smart machine that we were talking about earlier that
looks like a bookshelf. They have those one machine doing over five grand, multiple one of the like multiple machines doing over five grand a month each.
That's crazy, And is that way? Is that profit or revenue? So no, no revenue. So they're probably like he literally has five machines around this college campus that is doing over twenty grand a month. He's he's doing and he has a day job. He's a high school teacher. He's doing over ten grand a month. And I think he just finally hired an operator because I was on him
forever about like, dude, just give up some margin. You might now instead of ten grand in profit, you might do eight grand in profit.
But it's okay, yeah, yeah, for really, it just means you can Expand we've got just a few more questions to get to with you, Mike, specifically finishing up on the vending machine stuff on kind of entrepreneurship in that way, and also just a couple of questions. I'm curious about that airbnb you mentioned too. I want to dig into that. We'll give to a few more questions with Mike. Right after this.
We are back for the break talking with Mike aka mister Passive about vending machines, and my eyes have certainly been open to this entire industry. If it kind of feels like the scales of following up, yeah, a certain extent, But I'm gonna kind of, like, I guess, flip the whole vending machine thing on its head because this is totally unrelated. Mike. I heard you say one time something about the power of being relationally driven. I think this
is a separate conversation that you're having. But like you mentioned how a thank you note, how that helped you to land a job one time. I'm sorry to shift gear so suddenly, but like maybe the power of networking. And it's interesting too, I guess, given the conversation we're having about vending machines, But yeah, talk about that.
Highly relational too. I would think getting getting your vending machines in the right place.
Absolutely, Yeah, I mean even dropping off gift baskets of items that you put in your machines to the front desk of a property you're trying to close. Or I'm a huge old school I'm also Midwest values like trust is number one thing to me, So I actually when I was moving from Saint Louis to Silicon Valley and
Menlo Park. The reason I got the job over two others in a highly competitive human performance professional athlete kind of environment was because of a thank you note I wrote after my job interview and to like, you know, I don't know if it's how I was raised it with my parents or whatever, but I'm huge into the soft skills and and that's the number one thing, especially today, people are so when I guess, lazy when it comes
to things like that. And so how do you stand out doing the simple things?
Yeah, that's a good point.
Simple.
It's not like it's this complicated thing to stand out, but.
But like actually doing the leg wars like like like we like, gosh, you even you saying it. It's like, that's not it's not rocket science to take a gift basket of the items you're looking to sell to get them on board, and all of a sudden they're like, okay, yeah, why not? But like, who is willing to take that last little five percent to in this case close the deals?
Like twelve bucks in a little bit of thought goes a long way. Yeah, right, I could net you thousands and you guys nail.
It on the head, Like I was at the National Vending Conference and I'm not you know, I didn't grow up studying the industry of vending. So I was like, but I went this year to this conference, first time I've been there. Crazy, Like, there are ninety five percent of the machine companies are from China. You think of every single snack you've ever had, ranging from beef jerky to crackers to Alli pop, poppy, Celsius, Pepsi, Mars Wrigley. There's over five hundred vendors there. I probably met with
two hundred of them. I gave out my business card. Guess how many of those two hundred actually sent me a follow up after that conference?
Three?
One? Okay, wow, one person, and guess who's getting my business.
That one guy?
Yeah?
Makes sense.
Man, a beef jerky vending machine, by the way, sounds amazing.
Well, but even like something simple like that, I'm like the power and a follow up. We have all bought from humans, Like I've bought my car from a sales rep that wouldn't leave me alone.
It's ironic, though, I guess. At the same time, like, so we're talking about the power of human connection. But we're talking about vending machines. Yeah, right, which is like kind of the opposite, not to like crap all over vending machines. Do you ever think about that? Just the fact that I don't know if you read this is a few weeks ago now. Derek Thompson's piece over at
The Atlantic. He's a front of the show, he's been on before, but he kind of talks about how we're the anti social, like we're living in the anti social century, and like vening machines, they kind of do that, like there's a certain amount of anti social behavior that they promote. Yeah, what are your thoughts again, I'm not looking to drag vening machines through the mud or anything, but do you ever think about that?
I haven't looked at it from that broad lens. I mean what you just mentioned regarding Derek, I think it ties directly into all of us at the grocery store. Like we go to self checkout so we can still have our podcast on there. We don't want the front desk lady to our front us sorry, the register lady to complain about whatever, so we just want to stay in our lane. So I definitely think a piece of that,
but like people aren't going to a vending machine. It's not like you're skipping out on a party to go to a veny. Like to me, it's your pain for convenience, We're not I mean sure, like, yeah, humans are expensive and all of that, but like even the Hudson bookstore example, you're still gonna have employees around there to stalk the shelves until we really get into robots. I mean, I don't know, I mean, it definitely plays a part. It's an interesting thought, for sure.
Yeah, that's a fair defense.
I think what they said about ATMs, But like, ultimately, lots of these technological you know, innovations actually accelerate a lot of more relational, more highly productive jobs. So instead of the opposite, right, killing jobs, they kill some kinds of jobs, but oftentimes there's room for bigger and better jobs. I'm curious too, Mike, you mentioned buying the Airbnb in
Florida sight unseen. That is one of those things that scares me a little bit, like just kind of like buying real estate without ever laying eyes on it.
It sounds like.
Relationships were kind of at least a part of how that deal came about.
As well. How how did you buy.
A property without ever looking at it and how'd they work out for you?
Yeah, so I've done that twice now. One time was a little less risky back in Saint Louis. It's kind of where we had another one, and after we moved away from Saint Louis, I knew the neighborhood, but yes I did. I did a kind of a backdoor development here in Oregon where we did a home in an adu, but we fenced off the adu as almost like when you drive up to the lot, it looked like separate homes on separate lots type of thing. And then had two tenants and we got a pretty significant off market
offer for that. And I was on a on a ten thirty one and I had read something on X around people loving and it was kind of during COVID people loving a vacation to Florida because it's driving distance from Atlanta and everywhere in the South blah blah blah. And it was also right outside of Tampa, so I knew there's a military base there, there's there's all kinds of business there, YadA YadA. And so what I did is I ran some comps, and I was like, okay,
four bedrooms with a pools is gonna do well. And so I went to Airbnb. I literally reached out to the hosts that had the highest ratings and most ratings in Clearwater, where our rental was, and I just reached out to her and said, hey, we're in the market for a home or looking at a rental, you would you hop on a call? And she was actually a host,
she was a property manager. So not only was she she shared their revenue for the year before to confirm the comps I was looking at, but then she was like also had a realer license, and so she's like, oh, well, I can also help you find a home that aligns with our home that we were discussing on Airbnb. So that's actually how we bought the home side unseen and it's done over six figures every year.
Very cool. That's so you got man, Yeah you got that monthly cash flow. But I'm assuming you've seen some appreciation there at this properties as well.
Yeah, but we've also dealt with hurricanes too, so.
Yeah, a lot of money to cover your insurance costs.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean we were doing very well and we have some gains and equity tucked away there. I think now that we're having kids out in Oregon that are younger and want to kind of getting to Florida's getting harder and harder to because we also wanted to visit, so we might look at more of a central Oregon Parlay ten thirty one back closer. That's a drive away instead of a flight away. But I mean, I would do it all over again if I could.
Nice awesome, Well, Mike, we really appreciate you sharing your story with us. Just maybe I feel like you are kind of changing the tune a little bit when it comes to what it looks like to be a vendingpreneur. But where can folks learn more about you? It's not a class, but the program that you offer and what it is that you're up to.
Yeah, man, Joel, thanks for having me. This shows huge fans of it and just appreciate everything you guys have been doing. But yeah, folks want to reach out. Ventingpreneurs is our website around the vending stuff if they're just interested on some of the passive income and just general
following more frequent content. X is a pretty place I'm really active and you know I always share things on there as being a former coach, I'm huge on on helping other people along the way and trying to prevent, like if they can skip the pothole that I went through, even better.
Love it. Mike, thanks so much, man.
We really appreciate you joining us.
Thank you, guys, appreciate you well.
All right, Joel, I gotta say the I'm laughing to myself because when you think of vending machines, you don't think through what we talked about today, right, Like you don't think three machines that sell high in shampoo that bougie college students are buying on a nice campus. You never crossed my mind. You don't think about organic eggs. Shoot, you could even put like home home raised chicken eggs.
I don't know what the license licensing looks like there, but I guess I'm just highlighting the fact that this is it took a different turn than maybe I think we were initially expecting when we had some initial emails with Mike.
The mister passive these as your grandpa's vending machines, No, I think is kind of what you're getting at.
Yes, they're they're very different and I don't know. I think they could be much more appealing, especially to a lot of our listeners who might be looking into branching out from whatever it is that they're currently doing. But I'll let you go first that what was your big takeaway from our convo today? One?
For some reason, it's just bringing up a thought. I have a friend who bought a like you don't even have to just go straight vending machine, just like Mike is mentioning, I had a friend who had a photo booth that she stuck in a record store. That's right, an old coworker of yours. Yeah, And she would make good money every month. And it was a similar sort of thing where you go restock the film. You had
to make sure that the machine was working properly. But because people are going there to buy an album or something they'd like sitting there with their loved one, they're seeking another and take some pics and guess what she made good money from. You know, a little effort on the front end, but not a whole lot of ongoing effort.
All the customers are like, we're already doing the analog thing anyway as well take a film photo exactly.
I mean I think that it really does fit with the medium, and so it's that kind of thing though, like thinking outside the box. I remember when she did that,
and I was like, oh, it's a little risky. You can buy this machine that's coming from you know, a thousands of miles away across the ocean, and it worked out for And so I think similarly with what Mike's talking about is you have to be willing to take a little bit of a risk, but the reward can be meaningful and it can you know, add a lot of income to your life with some effort, but hopefully over time, less effort than what a traditional job would require,
and you might be able to scale it into something bigger. So totally, I also love the fact that he didn't go all in on one thing. He's still diversified when it comes to real estate and investing in the market, pursuing you know, a day job, and then also this job on the side. I mean, I think that makes sense too, that you're not just like totally sold out to one thing.
Totally. Yeah. Well, and I think one of the reasons, so my big takeaway is how I guess attainable or approachable. This might be because of how little money down it takes to get one of these machines. So he talked about that, which was like interesting because when you're talking about a six thousand dollars machine as opposed to a four hundred thousand dollars home, Yeah, you know, financing well,
it plays a smaller role in the overall equation. But then just as he was talking through the consistent cash flow that they're able to generate off of these machines as well, it got me thinking, and I'm it's hard to turn your mind off once you start imagining yourself in that situation. I start thinking through locations and all that.
But I think it's kind of fun, honestly it is. Yeah, I think this is a I don't know, hopefully folks found this to be a helpful conversation because a lot of times curiosities, Joel, they take us to things that we're more interested in. And maybe that's sabbaticals and thinking
through like identity and some of these other things. But there's a lot of folks out there as well who are looking to generate some additional income, and I think this is totally a way for a lot of folks to consider doing that.
Don't count me out on that either. I'm always up for like a creative waye to make some extra money. Find our how to money craft beer vending machine at a location near you.
Send. Do they have that where you have to hold your id up first? Only the finest beers? Yes, I don't know. We didn't ask about that.
Imagine how much you'd have to pay for one of the craft beers that wesel selling.
It would be a lot.
A cantillon would be like thirty eight dollars or something like that.
But that would be your job, just flying around the world sourcing these amazing beers directly from the breweries. Sounds like fun to me. You're on first name basis with all the come on I'm in that kind of sounds like sounds like a dream. Joe, off to twist my arm. On that note, Let's get to the beer that you and I enjoyed it during this episode, which was a ghost prime by Parish out of Louisiana. But yeah, what were your thoughts on this one?
This one would definitely be able to make it into the how of Money Vending Machine, the crafty vending machine. It was it was sweet, it was smooth.
I was hoping for a little more bite from it.
Just thinking, oh, I mean, this one was going to bring even more complexity because it's a really good beer, Like it's this an expensive ipa right.
Here, Matt.
But you know, while it lacked a little bit of that bite, it still had a ton of like like significant hop concentrate vibes going on.
Yeah, to me, it almost had like it had this edge. So it's funny, like, yeah, I don't know if bite in your language means edge in my language, but it did have almost like this sort of juniper like pininess to it that I was able to decipher and wrangle to the forefront of my taste buds. Yeah, I guess. But yeah, super hazy to me. Drink a little bit drier as well, didn't It wasn't like overly, and it
wasn't like sticky sweet or anything like that. And it's called Ghost Prime because I assumed this is just a doubled up version of Ghost in the Machine, or maybe it was based on that recipe. But regardless, I'm glad you and I got to enjoy this one during the episode today while we talked with mister Passive. We'll make sure to link to his community and where it is you can learn more about vending machines if you, after hearing this episode, are interested in perhaps becoming a vendingpreneur.
All that's up on the website at howtomoney dot com. But buddy, that's going to be it. So until next time, best Friends Out, Best Friends Out,