Episode of My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.
Transcript
Note: This transcript was auto-generated from YouTube captions. It may contain errors and lacks speaker identification. A full Gemini audio transcript will replace this.
Kind: captions Language: en I see vending machines on our thing and I I think that a vending machine business is probably the most predictable simple understandable guaranteed type of business you could do is that what you’re going to yes so these uh two folks came to me and they pitched this idea they’re raising money for it it’s a vending machine business uh for it basically is mostly female products so tampons and stuff in uh bathrooms and oddly enough I had another guy email me a deck about a vending machine business and I’m not going to do that one but this first one was kind of intriguing they’ve got some traction they’re making money it’s kind of intriguing and I started doing some research and I tweeted out who knows everything about who’s the person need talked about vending machine it got a ton of traction for some reason I think guess a lot of people are interested in in this this guy named Quinn Miller reached out to me and I did a call with him this morning very fascinating he worked and I and I just want to bring this up because this is the exact opposite of what we were just talking about but it’s oddly as compelling and as interesting even though it’s the two totally different uh parts of the world so guy he’s 27 he worked in software sales he quit about a year ago to start this business he’s got a vending machine business and he gave me all his numbers and he said I could reveal it so he’s about 10 months into the thing he’s currently doing 600 400 to buy a machine and 9,800 a month in profit so far total investment into the biz so far after he already bought his first machine has been 2,000 machine he puts it in places like what Office Buildings apartment yeah so he Co calls uh lower income hotels uh motels Assisted Living places and and and uh low income apartments so sorry low income apartments Dash or comma motels comma Assisted Living places okay great and and so he he goes and he basically says hey put this here and he there’s a revenue split or he pays rent how does that work so most of these businesses the way that they work is they give 10% to 20% to the real estate folk right uh this guy he goes I actually and because I sold software I’m pretty good at sales and I do what’s called a value sale and he goes basically I say look your tenants are are if I just improve your tenant experience by just a small percent maybe you’re going to make more money because someone will want to stay or want to rent here he gives them nothing he gives them nothing so he keeps and so he’s got a bunch of machines in like 10 different locations and he just cold calls him and then it’s so unsophisticated where does he get his stuff Costco so he buys a can of Coke from Costco for 33 cents and he charges a dollar for it right uh it’s very simple uh not complicated At All by the way my grandfather used to have a vending machine so this was probably the first business I ever encountered was I think I was probably 5 years old and my parents you know they worked so my dad would work in an office building and he needed me to be babysat but then like you know old people also kind of need babysitting so my dad went for a two for one he basically bought or rented out a a little like kind of like a corner store inside like like a little Deli inside of the uh office building and um and then my my grandfather ran it and we used to go like work to register at the age of you know seven um and he was like baby baby he basically he occupied his Grand grandparents and his kids without having to like do any pay for any like caretakers in fact it made a little bit of money and then my grandfather had this vending machine that we used to go and do this exact refill we would go to Costco buy the cokes put it in he would collect a bag of like change and then we would like go to the bank and like exchanged the change and I remember being like what is this he had one vending machine as his business it’s sounds awesome and I asked the guy uh by the way this guy’s name is Quinn Miller I’ll give him a shout out Quinn Miller I asked him I go how big can this get he goes look I’m not trying to be offensive or anything but the operators of these businesses typically are pretty hillbilly um and so they’re pretty unsophisticated which doesn’t mean they’re dumb they’re just not sophisticated in terms of like technology or anything like that and they like just want a low-key easy life he goes but I met a guy in Palm Springs who had about 1,600 machines and he was making anywhere from five to 10 million in Revenue with about half in profit right and I was like wow that’s pretty amazing how else can it get big like what else is big and he said that there’s a company called canteen and I looked it up I I I think it’s public uh but they do like 15 billion in sales of this and they’re the largest vending machine company in America they operate them yeah and they do distribution so the thing is is like what this guy does uh Quinn he he finds he finds his route so he finds a route so he’s like all right if I go from destination A to B it’s a straight line I’ll do everything in between and so I try to find locations on the way so one truck can do all of it in a in an easy short amount of time and he’s like I’m very spe specific about where I choose and that’s where you make a lot of money is you can be very efficient with your time and so basically that’s what he does and he said this company canteen just does that on a huge scale and they’re ultimately at the end of the day a logistics company uh and a bit of a supply chain company but at this point Quinn told me he was like I rented a small warehouse now because I’m getting so much freaking Coke he goes the reason I like doing that and and so back to tampons he goes you have to like look at what the repeat purchase rate is he goes if I go to like a lower income area these folks love Coke and love Monster to the point that one guy will drink five Cokes a day I’m getting 8 yeah he’s like that’s where the money is right now huh that’s interesting and um yeah so it’s almost like there’s whales for the vending machine it’s not like everybody buys one every three days it’s like one guy drinks nine Cokes a day um or you know four red bulls you know a week and that’s where you make your money is on the like 10% of the of the residents who buy like 90% of the goods or something like that probably yeah this guy was interesting man he’s only 27 he’s the he lives in San Diego worked in Tech sales he told me that um he goes like basically I’m a pretty he goes I’m pretty I was pretty good at selling software um I’m not the best but I’m pretty good and this industry that I went into they’re just kind of not that great at that many stuff and I could out sell relatively easily I could kind of outwork relatively easily and so anyway fascinating story [Music]